Pride After Her Fall
But for how long? she wondered.
‘How do you gauge that?’ she asked aloud.
‘I like to compete. You’re a serious trophy.’
‘Pardon me?’
He gave her a lazy once-over she should have found insulting after the “trophy” description. Instead she felt it like a direct hit to her sleeping libido.
‘You’re smart and seriously sexy and I haven’t been bored since I sat down with you. Like I said, you’re a serious trophy.’
Lorelei inhaled sharply.
She knew this was how some men saw an attractive woman. She had just never met a man who had the nerve to say it to her in so many words.
‘Nash, a trophy is an inanimate object you sit on a shelf.’
‘A trophy can be anything you want to win,’ he countered, sitting forward.
Lorelei had to remind herself not to edge back. He fairly emanated thumping male entitlement.
‘I don’t get in the race, Lorelei, unless I’m fairly confident of the outcome.’
For a breathless moment she considered asking him exactly how confident he was of her. But deep down she feared the answer.
Another Lorelei—the one who could hold men off with a death stare at a hundred paces—would have stood up and thrown the contents of her drink all over him. This Lorelei—the one clutching her glass like a life jacket and breathing in the spicy, earthy scent of him like oxygen—found herself asking, ‘Is that a problem for you? Women boring you?’
He sat back, his hand resuming its drumming action. ‘On occasion.’ His head dropped a little to the side, as if he were considering her. He smiled slowly. ‘Most of the time.’
Arrogant bastard.
She couldn’t help smiling back.
‘Perhaps the better question is, do you think you’ll bore me?’ she asked sweetly.
‘How am I doing so far?’
Lorelei paused long enough to take another sip of her drink.
‘Oh, I think you’re in the race.’
* * *
Nash weighed up two options: dinner and dancing here in Monaco, or would he fly them to Paris? He was leaning towards the latter, because something about this woman made him want to impress her. She was beautiful, but she was also clearly highly intelligent...and wasn’t that a turn-up for the books? He hadn’t exaggerated when he’d told her he hadn’t stopped thinking about her. But what if she hadn’t turned up this afternoon? On the strength of her undeniable physical appeal would he have hunted her down? Until now he hadn’t seen her like this—elegant, restrained...witty. Good company. Yet deep down he knew he would have gone looking, asked around, put in the legwork. There had been something about her from the beginning.
But this...the woman in full...was a revelation that made his body’s unreasonable attraction to her no longer a betrayal of his common sense.
The chemistry between them was pretty much a flame to an oily rag, and if in the end she proved not much more than a spoilt rich girl it would be a disappointment, but it wouldn’t stop him bedding her.
* * *
‘Ms St James?’
Lorelei looked up. It was one of the waiters. She recognised him from the several other occasions she had dined here this year. He glanced nervously at Nash.
‘I thought you should know your car is being towed away.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Your beautiful car, Ms St James. The authorities are taking it away.’
For a moment Lorelei didn’t know what to do. Towed? Her lovely Sunbeam was being towed? But why...? This time she’d paid all the insurance and registration and...
She looked at Nash.
‘I’m so sorry. I have to handle this.’
She scrambled to her feet, scooping up her handbag. Nash was getting to his feet too, frowning.
She wanted to see him again, but in that moment she knew it wouldn’t work. She’d forgotten for a time just how bad things were for her out there. If circumstances were different in her world... But they weren’t, and they seemed to be getting worse every day.
Without counting the cost of her actions, only knowing she would regret it if she didn’t do it, Lorelei stepped up to him, put her hand gently to his jaw and lifted to kiss him. She inhaled man and aftershave, felt the heat of him and the surprising gentleness of his mouth because he hadn’t expected this.