‘You’ve obviously forgotten my name is Caitlin.’
‘I haven’t forgotten anything about you.’ A glitter intensified the laughter in his eyes.
That kind of focus was enough to make any woman blush. She drew breath, fighting the flare of heat in her cheeks. ‘Okay, I definitely can’t stay here.’ She’d be safer on the streets.
‘Sure you can.’
‘Not if you’re going to flirt like a bulldozer,’ she grumbled. She didn’t want any man-attraction stuff in her life right now. She wanted peace.
He laughed. A deliciously low, warm, infectious sound. ‘You don’t like flirting?’
Caitlin fought to keep hold of her grump and not succumb to his charm. ‘It’s not appropriate.’ He didn’t even mean it.
He looked even more amused. ‘You honestly don’t think a guy and a girl can share a room without...’ He raised his brows.
Oh, now he was making her seem like some kind of sex-crazed spinster. ‘It’s not that but—’
‘Ah, you do think I’m attractive.’ He nodded in a confiding way, his grin absurdly boyish.
Confound the man, he was confusing her. ‘You know you’re attractive,’ she answered almost crossly.
‘I do?’ He turned his head and ran a finger down the thick red welt of the scar that came out of his hairline, cut across his temple and sloped crookedly down his cheekbone. ‘This is attractive?’
Caitlin stared first at the scar, then into his suddenly impenetrably dark eyes. Was there an edge of bitterness? He was insecure about it? When the world knew how he’d got it? What he’d gone through?
‘Your eyes are attractive,’ she said quietly. His eyes were lethal. And they were just the beginning.
He shook his head, his smile returning but a little twisted. ‘My bank balance is attractive. So is my surname—the family connection. The fame.’
Fame didn’t make him attractive to her. She knew fame cost—not with the clichéd sweat, but soul. Fame-craving people sacrificed their humanity. But she got the feeling he was as unenthusiastic about fame as she was.
‘Are you trying to play the pity card?’ She adopted a sassy tone to lighten the prickly moment. ‘You’re worried the only reason women want you is because of your assets, not your personality?’
‘You tell me.’ His lips twitched.
‘I’m not stroking your ego.’
He chuckled warmly again. ‘So you’re not attracted to me.’ He nodded again as he spoke. ‘Guess that means we’ll have no trouble sharing the room.’
Hmm. She considered his tactics and had to acknowledge he was good. She could be too, right? And she really couldn’t afford to go anyplace else. ‘And obviously you’re not attracted to me,’ she said with a small faux sniff.
He looked at her silently, the single dimple appearing again.
‘Given you fell asleep before you even hit the mattress,’ she added, vaguely piqued. ‘And you were desperately saying no.’
His shoulder lifted, a scant apologetic gesture. ‘I didn’t want to have to be nice.’
Another wave of heat caught Caitlin by surprise. ‘You didn’t want to have to be nice—in bed?’ She cocked her head, the provocative words tumbling from her tongue. ‘If I were a hooker, wouldn’t it have been my job to be nice? It would only have been about getting off for you. You could have done your thing in twenty seconds and we’d both have been happy.’
‘That’s not the way I have sex.’ He drawled the words, but his eyes kindled to a quick scorching heat.
‘Ten seconds would’ve been okay as well.’ She tried to shrug. ‘You don’t need to feel bad if that’s all you can manage.’
He leaned forward, his smile appreciative. ‘I don’t feel bad because I’m always nice to my partner.’
‘But you get tired of having to be nice? Why?’ She let herself look directly into his intense, intoxicating, eyes. ‘You want to get naughty sometimes?’
The fire in his expression flared into an inferno. He flung back the sheet and stood up from the bed. ‘I’m not allowed to get naughty,’ he said softly.
Why ever not? ‘But you’d like to?’ she pointedly asked, refusing to glance down and check out his legs. Or recognise the rapid pounding of her pulse. ‘Aren’t you all man? In control of your own destiny? If you want to be wicked, be wicked?’
‘Things are never that simple.’ He walked towards her.
‘No?’ She lifted her chin free of the rollneck of wool and fought the instinct to step back. ‘Seems they are to me. See, I’m bad. Bad news for anyone who comes near.’
‘You’re bad news?’ His eyebrow quirked, as if he didn’t believe her.
‘Oh, yeah.’ In the last few weeks the gossip columns had been filled with it. Only because they needed some kind of cannon fodder to fill the inches of newsprint and populate their webpages with salacious scandal. They all needed a villain. This month, she was it. She’d forgotten how awful it was to be vilified. She’d thought she’d escaped it years ago. ‘You’re right not to be attracted to me. I’m the wild child who’ll ruin a man.’
‘I never said I wasn’t attracted to you,’ he replied calmly. ‘And your supposed badness can’t ruin me.’ He whisked the grey T-shirt off and tossed it onto the bed. ‘I’m bulletproof, didn’t you know?’
She stifled a gasp at his gesture. At the expanse of skin he’d exposed. Yep, the bullets would bounce off those bristling muscles. Dear heaven, this man was hewn.
‘Nothing you can do could tarnish my image,’ he said boldly.
‘You’re that perfect,’ she sarcastically humoured him. But though he was joking, she knew he was about as perfect as it got.
‘Apparently.’ A teasing gleam lit his chocolate eyes. ‘Though you and I know different.’
‘True.’
‘And what about what I could do for you?’ he said softly.
‘There’s no redeeming me,’ she said bluntly. ‘And you should be more careful. Reputations can only go down. Never up.’
‘What did you do that’s so bad?’ His amusement told her he thought she was kidding.
He’d find out eventually. And no matter what she said in response, he wouldn’t believe her. Nobody did. Not even her sister. And her father perpetuated it—not caring about the veracity of any of the stories spread over the Internet. ‘Any publicity is good publicity’ was his mantra. He was wrong.
It was only a matter of time until she saw the judgment enter James’ eyes. Hell, she’d seen it last night. ‘You took one look at me and thought I was trouble.’
‘And I was right about that.’ Softly, he didn’t deny it. ‘But haven’t you heard? I like trouble.’ He walked right up to her. ‘I go out of my way to find it.’
‘Only so you can fix it.’ She glared up at him. ‘And sorry, Handso
me, I don’t need fixing.’
‘No?’ he asked, so close she could feel the warmth of his body hitting her even through the baggy layers she wore. ‘You need something else from me?’
She could hardly breathe for the heated tension in the room. ‘All I need is a space in this bed to sleep. Nothing else.’
His gorgeously outrageous smile returned. ‘Maybe.’ He stepped to the side and then walked past her into the bathroom. ‘But you might be surprised what I can come up with.’
She couldn’t resist turning to watch him walk. Goaded by his jaw-dropping back view, she asked the worst possible question. ‘You think you’re irresistible?’
He glanced back from the bathroom door, his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his boxers, that wry-but-wicked smile on his lips. ‘I guess we’re about to find out.’
THREE
Caitlin turned away, hearing his laughter and the click as the bathroom door closed. He was being deliberately outrageous, trying to make her laugh and put her at a funny kind of ease.
She did feel somewhat better. At least they’d established an arrangement for the next few days. But oh, boy, was he a vastly different guy to the exhausted grouch who’d tried to boot her out of his bed last night. Still gorgeous, yes. Driven, yes. Determined—most definitely. But amusing, teasing, mercurial in his mood...not to mention arrogant. It all added up to appallingly attractive.
Still, Caitlin could resist anything, right? It was peace and quiet she was after really. She only had to get through a couple of nights next to him. Easy peasy.
She wasn’t thinking of being easy.
She pulled her straggly ponytail free and found her comb in her bag. She sat cross-legged on the lower corner of the bed and worked out the knots before twisting her hair into a plait. She’d just finished when he emerged from the bathroom, a white towel around his waist. Once more Caitlin was stunned into silence at the sight of his shoulders, chest, and sheer lean strength. Not bodybuilder bulky, but not skinny. Just right. He winked outrageously at her before walking into the wardrobe and closing the door behind him. A bare minute later he reappeared clad in a fresh grey tee and clean combat pants. She couldn’t help grinning at what was so clearly his uniform. Clean-shaven, dressed, uber-alert, he’d switched on his inner action man.