She looked up, startled into animation, her sense of self-preservation reawakened by her persecutor, of all people. 'You can't deny it would be awfully convenient.' Had that been his intention all along when he'd tricked her into coming her? 'How far in advance do you plan your strategy, Luke?'
'You are so bloody predictable,' he flung at her, his expression cynically furious. 'I can almost see the wheels turning.'
'Predictable!' she fumed, looping the nightshirt once more over her shoulder, aware that his eyes were repeatedly drawn to the curve of her shoulder. 'It's you who are predictable,' she cried, torn between wanting to respond to the primitive gleam of hunger in his eyes and an instinct not to take anything he said or did at face value. 'You'll do whatever it takes to hurt my father.' The anger died away and a deep sadness replaced it in her upturned face. 'I don't think you take prisoners, do you, Luke? Not in the rules of combat.' She gave a small shrug. I'm irrelevant, she kept telling herself, a tool, a weapon. Don't be a victim of your own wishful thinking, Emily—hate him. She needed to hate Luke.
'If that were true, Emily, I'd have taken you when you were sixteen. You looked at me as though you'd die just to have me touch you,' he recalled, a nerve throbbing in his lean cheek with erratic force. 'Think about that and try to recall you have the most expressive eyes I've ever seen in my life.' He spoke in slow, measured tones, and then he was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
'Making yourself useful?'
Emily didn't flinch but continued to type, slowly transcribing the tightly packed writing in the notebook. She'd heard Luke's footsteps as he'd entered the room. She could smell the scent of fresh air, peat and the sea that hung about him.
'I don't want to be accused of sponging off your hospitality, do I?' she drawled sarcastically without looking up. Actually, it helped to have something else to concentrate on, something to divert her thoughts. 'Or don't you like anyone to see the embryo?'
'I've no objection to that, just your tone.'
'We aim to give offence,' she said cheerfully.
He slammed his hand down over her fingers on the keyboard. 'I wouldn't advise it.'
She lifted her face then and stared at him with unflinching scorn. 'I didn't ask to come here. If you don't like my company, take me to the nearest sign of civilisation. I've walked a mile in every direction and a sheep is the only sign of life I came across.'
'Such initiative, infant,' he said silkily. 'If you'd bothered to ask, I could have told you Beth is our nearest neighbour and she lives in the friendly neighbourhood castle…five miles as the crow flies and seven by road.'
'You weren't here to ask,' she replied, depressed by this information. She had dressed slowly, putting off the inevitable return match once she came downstairs. It had been an anticlimax when she had discovered she was quite alone in the cottage.
'You missed me. I'm touched.'
She got up and turned to face him. Even at full stretch she barely topped his shoulder. 'You can't keep me prisoner, Luke,' she challenged him.
'What you can't do is wander off around here, Emmy. It's not Hyde Park. It's very easy to get lost if you don't know what you're doing.'
She made a sound of frustration. 'Your concern is very touching, but you still haven't answered my question.'
His blue eyes regarded her steadily. 'What question? You made a statement, typically incorrect. You're my guest, not a prisoner, and you're here until I choose to take you elsewhere.'
Her eyes sizzled. 'That's an outrageous thing to say. You won't take me anywhere? You make me sound like a bag of flour! As for guest, prisoner, it's all semantics. I'm here against my will; in my book that means you abducted me.'
'My dearest Emily,' he said as though her outrage were completely unexpected, 'if you're that bothered, telephone home, call out the rescue parties.'
She stared at him. 'Telephone…?'
'You want a dictionary definition or a technical explanation?'
'You actually have a telephone here?' she said incredulously. Why hadn't that occurred to her?
'In case of emergencies.'
'Where?'
'In the bedroom; didn't you notice?' he mocked.
She flushed. She had walked through his room with her eyes downcast; the presence of the kingsize bed and the personal clutter had been too painfully evocative of the room's owner for her to linger. 'I want to telephone Dad; he'll be worried.'
'Feel free.'
She frowned. His reaction was too co-operative to make sense. 'What are you up to?'
'I'm trying to lure you into my bedroom and make passionate love to you.'
'Don't be stupid.' The sensation that sizzled along her nerve-endings was appallingly strong. She made an effort to subdue the erotic images that his words had sparked off in her head.
'True,' he agreed thoughtfully. Then, meeting the chagrin she couldn't keep from showing in her eyes, he grinned. 'I don't think we'd make it up the stairs, Emmy.' The tone was clinical, the insolent smoulder in his eyes anything but.