d. ‘God knows, you’re blind as a bat without them. It’s sort of cute but …’
Cute? Cute? Coming from a masculine specimen six foot two tall with twenty-twenty vision and in the physical peak of condition, that had to be on a level with Atlas admiring a beansprout! She even bet every one of Dane’s teeth was his own and that he had never spent time with a woman who wore spectacles.
‘They got broken.’
‘Spares?’ he enquired, walking her down a thickly carpeted corridor to stop at the carved door at the foot.
She managed a laugh. ‘No!’
‘Then you’ll have to go back to that optician and get some new ones until the contacts are ready.’
The door was opened by a dapper little man in the white jacket of the superior manservant. ‘Thompson, this is Miss Fletcher. She’ll be staying a few days and, as you can see, she’s had a bit of an accident, so if you could call a doctor …’ Dane’s voice trailed off as he herded her past the older man’s stunned visage. Suddenly chuckling, he bent down to whisper, ‘I’ve always wanted to shock Thompson. I think I’ve finally managed it. He’s usually so poker-faced.’
She had no time to study her surroundings. He guided her into a spacious bedroom and straight through to an en suite bathroom where he proceeded to turn on the bath taps before peeling off her jacket, his fingers reaching for the zipper on her flying suit. Hastily, Claire covered his hand. ‘No … I can manage … thanks,’ she declared.
‘Why are you so shy?’ Dane regarded her quite seriously. ‘You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before.’
She looked up into calm, midnight-blue eyes and resisted the temptation to snarl back at him, for he’d been kind and perhaps he wasn’t conscious of how very insulting he could sound. ‘You haven’t seen me.’
Disorientatingly he threw back his silvery head and laughed. ‘OK, I’ll leave you to conserve your mystery in peace.’
He was still laughing when he went, and for the life of her she couldn’t see what was so funny. She hated the idea that he might find her so prim and inhibited that she cut a comic figure in his eyes. Sinking into the bath she forced herself to go back to that mortifying moment in Dane’s arms when her body had inexplicably reacted to his masculinity. That had never ever happened to her before … well, perhaps that wasn’t quite true. When she was sixteen Dane had had that explosive effect upon her, and she’d been shamed and embarrassed by a physical awareness she was too immature to cope with. She was even more uncomfortable with its repetition now, when Dane had simply been offering her the proverbial shoulder to cry on. Was she a little naïve about her own sexuality?
Clearly, loving Max didn’t blind her to another man’s attractions … no, that sounded even worse. It had to have been a reflex response, some sort of nasty teenage hangover from a time when she had craved Dane’s arms around her. Or even more likely, the end result of over-excitement. Irritable now, she wrapped a towel round her and padded back into the bedroom where she discovered an extravagant négligé set lying across the bed.
Her fingers coiled into it with strong distaste and she raised the delicate fabric to her face. It smelt new. She put it on and got into the bed, feeling very self-conscious sheathed in pearl-grey satin and pale pink lace. Thompson appeared with a cup of tea on a silver tray and asked her if she was hungry before departing with the same silent, almost robotic air of detachment.
She guessed he was used to women here. Oversized blondes with endless legs, brunettes with the same attributes. Claire had seen two dozen over the years feature in newsprint with Dane, and they were all tall and gorgeous and glossy. Just like Dane. She just couldn’t see him with anyone ordinary. The hype and the glitzy wrapping were all part of his world.
Had Dane ever been in love? Her curiosity was exasperating but inescapable. She was extremely glad there wasn’t another woman in residence. She wasn’t sure she could have handled that smoothly. Her brow pleated. It was absolutely none of her business what Dane did in his private life. Max had once referred to him as a womaniser. He had somehow missed out on understanding the special affection she had for Dane, and that had annoyed her. For goodness’ sake, a woman could admire a man without any sexual connotation!
Claire had always appreciated Dane’s strength and the fashion in which he coolly and, without ever descending to rudeness, stood up to their grandfather’s loud, overbearing ways. Of course, Max had been in a different position, she allowed guiltily. One didn’t hand back cheek to one’s enmployer, and perhaps when he’d left Ranbury, he’d still been hoping to receive a reference. Nor would she have wanted Max to be like Dane.
They were complete opposites. Her life with Max would be peaceful and ordered and very much based on home and family, and naturally that would sound stultifying to Dane. He’d never had either, and to a free spirit, those sort of down-to-earth aspirations bore a close resemblance to a suffocating cage. Dane was the antithesis of peaceful. He raced through the day with an energy that was boundless and rather overpowering.
The doctor arrived, ushered in by Thompson. He was clearly from the private sector, and when that miserably tiny cut on her throat won her a painful anti-tetanus injection, she was relieved to see the back of his well bred head.
‘I know you said you weren’t hungry, but you missed dinner,’ Dane said lazily, strolling in with a tray. ‘I told Thompson to make you an omelette.’
‘Did anyone ever ask you to knock on doors?’ She tugged the duvet to her lace-covered breasts.
‘No, you’re the only one.’ Unperturbed, he set the tray down on her lap. ‘If you eat, you’ll sleep better, and we’re flying to Paris in forty-eight hours, so you need your rest.’
Forty-eight hours. That seemed so terrifyingly close. To conceal her sudden attack of uncertainty she blurted out the thought that had been at the back of her mind since her arrival here in his apartment. ‘I had this idea you had someone living here.’
He didn’t move a muscle. ‘Past tense is correct.’
‘Oh!’ A tactful withdrawal seemed sensible. She didn’t know what had possessed her to pry. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ A faintly feral smile marked his beautiful mouth.
‘Was she in love with you?’ She couldn’t help asking the question, her belief being that Dane would always be the one to back out of any relationsip that got too heavy.
‘She wasn’t in love with anything beyond my cheque book and the high I could give her in bed. In that order,’ he answered with smooth emphasis.
Hot colour rose in her cheeks. ‘If that was all she meant to you,’ she replied stiffly. ‘It was just as well she did go.’
‘Good sex is fun, Claire. Nothing else.’ He cast her a slow, coolly enquiring appraisal. ‘Next question?’