‘What makes you think I’m flirting?’ he challenged her silkily. ‘And don’t try to pretend to me that you aren’t just as aware of what’s happening between us as I am...I felt it in the way you reacted when I kissed you...’
Reduced to a mortified, tongue-tied silence, Beth could only manage to turn away from him and drag her gaze from his.
He was certainly persistent; she had to give him that. Personally, she didn’t know why he was bothering. She must have made it plain to him by now that she was no push-over, and that his dubious talents could be put to far more profitable use on another and more gullible female tourist.
It was tempting to tell him just why she was so immune to his practised flattery, but to do so would undoubtedly involve her in some more of the kind of dialogue at which, she was beginning to discover, he was more adept than she—and there was no way she was going to allow him to get the upper hand in their ‘relationship’ again.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘HAVE YOU MADE any plans for this evening?’
Beth tensed as she listened to Alex’s question. They had just walked into the hotel foyer, following their abortive visit to the factory. The journey had left her feeling tired and a little stiff, and she was looking forward to having a hot bath and an early night—on her own.
‘I’ve got some paperwork I need to deal with,’ she answered quickly, and not entirely untruthfully. Well, she did have some postcards she could write, and then she wanted to make a few notes on the factory she had visited and to read up on those she still had to see.
‘I would have asked you to join me for dinner,’ Alex continued, ‘only I’m already committed this evening—a family celebration; we’re going to the opera and—’
‘I hope you enjoy it,’ Beth told him politely, wondering why, when by rights she ought to have been both relieved and pleased to learn that she was not going to be pressured into spending the evening with him, what she actually felt was an uncomfortable and indigestible sense of abandonment and disappointment.
‘Do you?’ Alex challenged her gently, stepping forward as he did so.
Panicking that he might be going to kiss her again, Beth immediately stepped back from him, and then saw from the amused twinkle in his eyes that he had realised what she was thinking.
‘You’re safe here,’ he told her teasingly. ‘It’s far, far too public for what I’ve got in mind.’
The lift doors opened, disgorging half a dozen hotel guests, and Alex nodded towards them, telling her softly, ‘Now, had we been in there it might have been a different thing. There’s something very, very erotic about the thought of making love, wanting one another so much that it’s impossible to wait until one reaches the security of one’s room—of needing one another so immediately that one’s prepared to take the risk of being discovered, of having one’s passionate surge towards fulfilment interrupted...’
Beth stared at him, her face starting to flush, her body hot with reaction to the soft sensuality of his slowly spoken words and to the mental images he was conjuring up in her own suddenly fevered imagination.
‘I wouldn’t know. I do not have those kind of thoughts,’ she told him distancingly and defensively.
For the second time that day Alex threw back his head and laughed.
‘Somehow I don’t believe you,’ he told her wickedly. ‘I think that in secret, in private, you are a very sexy, very sensual woman indeed. But you prefer to keep the secret, the sweetness of that sensuality hidden from all but your chosen lover. And who can blame you for that? Or him for wanting to explore that private sweetness and possess it...possess you...?’
Beth didn’t know what to say or do. The way he was behaving—the things he was saying, the intimacy he was creating between them—was so totally outside her own experience that she simply didn’t know how to deal with it.
‘What time do you want me?’ Alex was asking her huskily. Beth stared at him, involuntarily licking her suddenly dry lips. ‘After breakfast...about nine?’ he was adding.
He meant what time did she want him to meet her in the morning, Beth realised. For one moment she had actually thought...
After Beth had left him Alex did not leave the hotel straight away. Instead he walked over to the gift shop, thoughtfully studying the lustres that Beth had admired.
In some ways the glass reminded him of Beth. Like her it was delicate, and yet surprisingly resilient. Like her its purity and beauty made one catch one’s breath, inspired and moved the human soul. Beth certainly inspired and moved his soul, not to mention certain far less ethereal parts of his body, he reflected ruefully. He had never known himself to be so dangerously at the mercy of his own emotions.
Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was in Prague. Perhaps being here released a hitherto unsuspected and very deeply emotional part of his personality, enabled him, empowered him to react instinctively and immediately to those emotions instead of behaving with caution and logic as he would have done at home. Classic symptoms of a holiday romance? Alex grimaced to himself. In many ways he wished that were the case, but he knew himself too well to accept such a definition of his feelings.
Love at first sight.
How did you account for the unexpectedness of such feelings? How did you evaluate or analyse them? You couldn’t...you simply had to acknowledge that they were too strong, too powerful, too overwhelming for mere mortal logic to deal with.
Beth.
Bethany...
Alex closed his eyes, trying to blot out how the sound of her name as it left his lips would make a possessive male litany of love and desire against her skin as he held and caressed her. In the morning light her skin would be as flawless and perfect as the crystal teardrops on the lustres.
No. This was no mere holiday romance, no mere giving in to the mood and magic of the city, even if Prague was a city that was a part of his heritage and his blood. Perhaps the intensity, the impetuosity driving him on now was a previously unfamiliar part of the British side of his personality.