Defying the Billionaire's Command

She blinked up at him.

‘Just like that?’ she blurted out, surprise ripe on her face.

‘Absolutely.’ Because once Dare made up his mind about something it was done. ‘I’m staying one more night,’ he said. ‘You’re here. Why don’t we go down to dinner, make nice, then we’ll both go to bed—separately, of course—and tomorrow morning I’ll drive off into the sunset and it will be as if we never met.’

‘Sunrise,’ she corrected.

‘Sunrise.’

‘That sounds...’ She squared her shoulders, pulling the silk of her blouse tight across her high breasts. ‘That sounds like an excellent idea.’

Yes, it was.

‘Shall we?’ He directed her to precede him along the hallway. And he’d be fine as long as he didn’t put his hands on her.

Which was a bit like telling a three-year-old to keep his fingers out of an open cookie jar, Dare thought ruefully two hours later as the dessert plates were cleared.

For the most part the evening had worked well. Benson was a consummate host and Dare found that he enjoyed hearing about the history of the local village and how it had changed. He especially enjoyed hearing stories about his mother as a child. It surprised him to hear that she had been a rebellious child with a wild streak, but it shouldn’t have. It was that side of her, after all, that had seen her fall in love with his conman of a father, and also the side that had seen her knuckle down and go it alone instead of turning to her father for help.

Benson had openly admitted that he hadn’t known how to handle either her, or her after their mother had died and for the first time Dare saw some value in revisiting the past.

But for all his focus on the conversation and enjoyment of the delicious food, nothing could dull his awareness of the slender redhead beside him. Every slide of her leg under the table, every tilt of her wineglass against her lips, every soft laugh as she joined in the conversation ratcheted up his desire to finish what they had started earlier.

It made a mockery of his confident assertion that he could forget the attraction between them ‘just like that.’

And now, with all the barriers to them being intimate effectively removed, Dare was having a hard time convincing himself that his promise to disappear from her life hadn’t been just the teensiest bit impetuous.

And what would be wrong with spending a night or two with her? She was an adult, he was an adult...

‘Sorry,’ she murmured as her hand accidentally brushed his.

‘No problem.’ He cleared his throat. ‘What were you after? The sugar?’

‘Yes, thanks.’

Again their hands touched and again he felt an electrical current feather across his skin.

Carly stirred her coffee. Dare shifted in his seat. ‘That’ll keep you up tonight,’ he pointed out softly.

‘No, it won’t.’ She gave him a brief smile. ‘You learn pretty quickly as a resident physician to sleep wherever you can, whenever you can, no matter what the circumstances.’

‘Sounds hectic.’

‘Oh, it is.’ Her smoky green eyes were bright with pleasure. ‘Emergency departments are busy, chaotic, orderly—which I know seems like a contradiction, but it’s not—and really stressful.’ Her smile grew. ‘Coffee became my best friend during those years.’

‘I know what you mean.’

‘You do?’

‘Sure. You don’t put in an all-nighter at a gas station and then race back to campus to sit a three-hour exam after finishing up a paper on the history of economic rationalisation in the Eastern Bloc without a little caffeine hit on the side.’

Carly’s eyes sparkled into his. ‘Exactly.’ Her smile grew. ‘But you know the best coffee is the first coffee of the day, right? When it’s nice and hot and the acidity just rolls across your tongue.’ Her eyes turned heavenwards. ‘It’s sublime, isn’t it?’

‘The law of diminishing marginal returns,’ he said gruffly.

Her eyebrow cocked. ‘Say that again?’

Dare laughed. ‘DMR, as I remembered it for the exam. It means that in all productive processes, adding more of one factor of production, while holding all others constant, will at some point yield lower incremental per unit returns.’ He chuckled softly at her blank expression. ‘In the case of coffee it means the more you drink, the less pleasure you get from it.’