Tall, Dark And Dangerous

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‘Well, don’t try seducing me the way you did that other friend of Libby’s because it’s not going to work on me!’

The softness of laughter was stripped from his face, leaving instead a harsh mask of coldness.

‘So Libby warned you about me, did she?’ he enquired icily.

‘Yes, she did. And if you——’

‘I wonder what it is she’s so frightened I’m going to get out of you?’ he asked in that same frigid tone.

‘She’s not frightened you’ll get anything out of me,’ exclaimed Ginny, panic swamping her as she realised just what she had said.

‘So why did she feel it necessary to warn you?’ he demanded, his hands now fiercely gripping the tops of her arms and making any thought of escape a waste of time.

‘I…Because…You’re hurting me!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, releasing her, but leaving her trapped against the counter. ‘Now answer my question.’

‘She warned me because of me—not because of you,’ replied Ginny hoarsely, wishing the ground would open up and swallow her.

‘Am I supposed to make sense of that?’ he snapped, his tall body tensing with anger.

‘Libby was afraid I’d find you attractive,’ ground out Ginny, her cheeks flaming with mortification. ‘I… She thinks I’m—that I tend to be attracted to the wrong sort of men.’

‘So she obviously thought I’d find your neo-Huckleberry Finn appeal irresistible,’ he drawled, ‘otherwise she wouldn’t have felt obliged to warn you.’

‘No!’ protested Ginny, her entire being awash with humiliation. ‘I…She said there was a lot about me that was like that other friend of hers…She just felt she should warn me.’

‘You’re nothing like that poor, unfortunate creature I’m rumoured to have used so abominably,’ he stated callously. ‘If I remember right, she didn’t slop around the place in dungarees all the time and I didn’t have any problem working out whether she was male or female the first time I set eyes on her. And she——’

‘You didn’t seem to have any doubts which I was when you made a lunge for me after dinner last night!’ exploded Ginny, beside herself with rage.

‘By then you had your party gear on—denims and a T-shirt, wasn’t it?’ he drawled. ‘Though perhaps you wouldn’t remember, given the drunken state it seems you were in.’

Choking back a squeal of outrage, Ginny made to push her way past him. ‘Get out of my way!’ she hissed when he blocked her path.

‘What’s up, Ginny?’ he grinned down at her.

‘Just get out of my way!’ she shrieked. ‘What sort of a man are you? How could you possibly kiss someone you find as revolting as you do me?’

‘Believe me, Ginny, I’d feel a lot happier if I did find you revolting.’

‘I…What’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded, gazing up with hostility into a pair of laughing blue eyes and finding, to her utter horror, excitement fluttering through her.

‘I’m not too sure,’ he answered with a wry smile. Though it does seem Libby’s right in one respect—I’m sure you’ll agree, you’d feel a lot safer if you found me revolting.’

‘I hate to disillusion you,’ exclaimed Ginny furiously, ‘but I feel perfectly safe.’ Talk about rubbing her nose in it!

‘Oh yeah?’ he drawled with a humourless laugh. ‘So it really was that half teaspoon of cognac, and not my irresistible appeal, that stirred your libido last night.’

‘Haven’t you work to do?’ enquired Ginny frigidly, sidling along the edge of the counter away from the bulk of his body. ‘I know I have.’

‘If you want me to get out of your way,’ he murmured innocently, reaching out and pulling her against him, ‘all you have to do is say.’

Ginny made no attempt to escape; instead she concentrated all her energies on not moving so much as a muscle for fear of betraying the lazy, throbbing warmth with which her body was responding to contact with his.

It was he who moved, his arms tightening around her, a protesting groan of disbelief escaping him as desire surged hotly through his lean body.

Then his mouth was on hers, hard and demanding, while his tongue sought the succulent depths behind her parted lips.

Her absolute certainty that what was erupting between them was too explosively spontaneous ever to have been planned by him so side-tracked her mind that thought of resistance never once entered it. She wasn’t conscious of reaching up on tiptoes to entwine her arms around his neck; she was merely responding to the pounding need awakened in her to mould her body ever closer to the enticing heat of his. And the only protest that escaped her, when his hands reached beneath the bagginess of her dungarees and began an impatient search of her trembling body, was at the restrictions imposed on those hands.

He drew her from him, his lips murmuring their impatience even as they remained locked in passionate turmoil with hers, while his hands gave up their attempts to cup her throbbing breasts and reached instead for the fastenings that would free them.

‘I can’t see what I’m doing,’ he groaned barely coherently, dragging his mouth reluctantly from hers. ‘Ginny, I…Oh, hell,’ he rasped, the words ragged with disbelief as sanity began imposing itself on him.

Ginny heard her own gasp of utter incredulity as her arms slid lifelessly from around the body to which they had been clinging with such uninhibited fervour.

‘So, you feel perfectly safe, do you?’ he demanded almost angrily, then gave a dazed shake of his head. ‘Forget I said that,’ he muttered brusquely, turning abruptly from her.

‘Why?’ demanded Ginny recklessly, her body still on fire from the feel of his, her mind spinning from the futility of the denials she was trying to impose on it. ‘OK, so I was wrong! But at least I have the excuse of being a lousy judge of men—what’s yours?’

‘I don’t have any excuse.’ he informed her icily as he strode towards the door. ‘But once I hear from the people I have investigating you, I should have a much better idea of what I’m up against.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_aee4988c-aead-53a7-8904-4a5c4567d345)

‘GINNY!’

Ginny’s entire body froze for an instant, then she continued hoeing the geranium bed, the stark white gleam of her knuckles against the handle the only outward sign of an inner fury.

That bellowed name was one of only a handful of words to have broken the silence that had descended like a wall between them since his announcement that he was having her investigated. Quite frankly, she couldn’t have cared less if they’d never exchanged another word for the rest of their lives, she told herself, hoeing like one possessed. And if he really expected her to believe his ridiculous claim, he must think her the biggest fool alive—the only information he had on her was her name, for heaven’s sake!

‘Ginny, I called you,’ exclaimed Michael exasperatedly, striding towards her. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘I’m sure the whole region heard you.’

‘So how come you didn’t answer me?’

‘Because, believe it or not, I’m not a dog trained to respond to your every command,’ she retortedly hotly, glowering up at him as his narrowed eyes flickered coolly over her dishevelled appearance.

‘You were some distance away, so I called loudly,’ he stated unconcernedly. ‘If you chose to interpret it differently, that’s your problem. Anyway, I wanted to tell you Libby called—and that I’m hungry.’

Ginny tried to counteract the shock surging through her by reminding herself that Libby had said that she would ring him and that her only reason for concern would have been had Libby not done so.

‘I…You were in your ofice so early this morning, I didn’t know what to do about breakfast,’ she stammered.

‘And it didn’t occur to you to ask me?’

Though he injected a questioning lilt into those mocking words, Ginny treated them as the statement they were obviously intended to be, and ignored them. ‘There’s bread and some goat’s cheese—or I could cook some——’

‘Bread and cheese will do me fine,’ he cut in, his eyes meeting hers in a look of chilling balefulness. ‘Get yourself cleaned up and we’ll eat together.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ retorted Ginny, willing herself not to be intimidated by those eyes.

‘I’d like you to join me, anyway,’ he stated, then turned and strode back towards the house.

Ginny flung down the hoe, her blood boiling—an effect he managed to have on her just about every time he opened that supercilious mouth of his, she noted with outrage. Except that it wasn’t always anger with which he made her blood boil, she reminded herself with a jolt of alarm that deflated her rage like a pricked balloon. She tensed as a now almost familiar honeyed warmth began slinking its way seductively through her. She wasn’t normally susceptible to looks, no matter how devastating, she reasoned exasperatedly, and especially not when they cloaked a personality as vile as Michael Grant’s did.

With a groan of pure vexation at her own stupidity, she ran to the house and raced upstairs to her room.

She couldn’t have it both ways, she argued impatiently with herself as she took a quick shower; despairing one minute of her apparent inability to feel anything more than a mild flutter of attraction towards a man, and wallowing in angst the next because one of them was affecting her in a manner she hadn’t bargained for.

Her look was brooding as she slipped on a fresh white T-shirt, a leaden heat throbbing through her as her mind attempted to skirt the passion that had flared between them the day before in order to examine his reaction to what had happened. She walked over to the wardrobe and opened its doors. Perhaps a really calculating man could have produced to order that groan of surprised disbelief that had escaped him… but never the accompanying desire that had surged hot and unmistakable in his body.

Never before in her life had any man had the power to reduce her to this mind-sapping state of permanent confusion—though what little she knew about men was probably dangerous, she reflected bitterly. Her trouble was that her aunt’s vituperative hounding of her over her first and only sexual experience wasn’t the only price she had paid for that oddly innocent indiscretion—ever since that incident it had been as though she had been trapped in an emotional time-warp, simply marking time until…She gave a violent shake of her head, dragging a navy skirt from the wardrobe and putting it on.