The Final Seduction

She glared at him, not caring about the interested faces of the other diners as she began to fumble around in her handbag. ‘I should never have agreed to eat with you! Or did you think that saying you wanted us to be equals gave you the go-ahead to just sit there insulting me?’ She pulled out her purse and caught the waiter’s eye, trying to calm her rage as he hurried over to their table. ‘Can we have the bill, please?’

‘Now what do you think you’re doing?’ growled Drew.

‘What does it look like? I’m paying my share of the bill, of course!’ She extracted a couple of crisp notes. ‘That way no one owes anyone anything! And certainly not in the bed stakes! Got that?’

The waiter was looking at Drew in a perplexed kind of way. ‘But Mr Glover usually settles—’

That did it! Shelley was appalled at her reactions and even more confused about their origins, but seemed helpless to stop herself from slamming the notes down on the table in front of him and leaning forward to demand, ‘Why? Just how many women do you generally bring here in the space of a week, Mr Glover?’

Drew laughed, suddenly elated. ‘And what’s it got to do with you, kitten?’

She frowned suspiciously. ‘In fact, you’ve hardly talked about yourself all evening. If we’re talking enigmatic—you fit the description pretty well!’

He smiled. ‘What did you want me to talk about?’

‘Well, where are you living, for a start?’

There was a brief pause. He had wondered how long it would take her to get around to asking. ‘In the old coastguard’s cottage.’

Her mouth fell open as if someone had twitched a string on a puppet. That was to have been their home—not his! ‘You mean you went ahead and bought it anyway?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Yes, of course I did. That had always been my intention. Or did you imagine that my pain was so great that I wouldn’t be able to lead an ordinary life there? That I’d be too haunted by memories of you?’

She knew that she was being unreasonable, selfish and illogical, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from asking questions to which he was probably going to provide the most horrible answers.

‘And have you taken other….?’ She couldn’t ask.

‘Other?’ he enquired helpfully.

‘Women!’ she got out at last. ‘Have you taken other women there?’

A nerve flickered in his cheek. ‘What an audacious and arrogant question, Shelley. I can’t believe you had the nerve to ask it! You’ve been living with another man for the past three years—so what do you expect? Yes, of course I’ve taken other women there! Or did you really imagine that I spent night after night alone, dreaming of my lost love?’ He raised his eyebrows sardonically. ‘Dream on, kitten!’

‘Oh!’ She levered herself to her feet and picked up her handbag and tried to think of something really, really withering to say.

But those mocking blue eyes somehow took the wind right out of her sails and so did the fact that he had scraped his own chair back and was rising to his feet as well, big and dark and menacing. And suddenly the vulnerability was back. She had to get away.

‘I’ll see you to your room.’

‘Don’t bother.’

‘It’s no bother,’ he smiled, but there was no disguising the glint in his eyes.

‘This is harassment!’ she gritted.

‘It’s all a question of interpretation, surely?’ he countered. ‘Let’s just call it etiquette, shall we, for the sake of argument?’

It seemed a mile to the door and into the panelled hall, but there was no sign of the blonde at the reception desk.

Shelley put one spike-heeled shoe on the foot of the staircase. ‘Don’t you dare come any further!’ she warned.

‘Why? Don’t you trust yourself?’ Unexpectedly he reached out his hand and captured her wrist, pulling her towards him, his other hand slipping down to the small of her back, so that she was enclosed and supported by him.

Standing on the step in her high heels meant that they were exactly the same height. His face was right up close, close as this afternoon’s dreams which had so tantalised her, blue eyes blazing with a passion she couldn’t tell was benign or malevolent. And the temptation to melt against him was intense.

She fought it. ‘Let go of me, Drew.’

His voice was a low, mocking caress. ‘Say it once more, kitten—only this time with meaning!’

‘Let me…Drew!’ He had dipped his head to her neck, a feather-light brush of his lips against the pale skin there, and Shelley trembled. ‘Oh! Don’t.’