Maid of Dishonour

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She lifted her purse off the bar, slid off her stool, the sincerity of her apology drowning in a puddle of humiliation. She’d made a twit of herself; time to make a dignified exit. ‘I should go. Thanks for the drink, Carter.’

But as she went to walk past him strong fingers snagged her wrist. ‘Where are you off to in such a hurry?’

‘I’m leaving. Obviously this was a mistake.’ She twisted her arm; his fingers tightened.

‘Not a chance, sugar.’ The casual endearment became shoo-gah in his low Southern drawl—and sounded so ridiculously sensuous she lost the will to resist for a moment.

He took the opportunity to place both palms on her waist and drew her towards him. She tensed, her will returning in a rush when she found herself positioned between his spread thighs. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Settle down, Gina. You wanted to talk, now it’s my turn.’

She lifted her arms, in an attempt to step free without making too much of a scene, but his grip remained firm, anchoring her to the spot.

‘Relax,’ he said, still sounding amused. ‘You’re not going anywhere until I get to say what I wanna say.’

‘Fine.’ She folded her arms across her chest, disturbed by the long slow pull of arousal as his large hands drifted down to bracket her hips. ‘You have my undivided attention. But I’m not sure what else there is to say.’

‘That’s because you’ve had your say.’ He had the cheek to chuckle again. ‘Now you get to listen.’

‘Okay then, speak,’ she snapped. They did not need to be standing this close, but short of putting on a show for the rest of the bar’s inhabitants, who were already taking more of an interest in their conversation than she would have liked, she didn’t appear to have much of a choice.

‘I can see you’re as quick-tempered as you ever were.’

She sent him a bland look. ‘Is that what you wanted to say?’

He barked out another laugh. ‘Point taken. I’ll get on with it. I sure wouldn’t want to bore you.’

One muscled thigh touched her hip and she shifted away from it, only to get trapped against the other one. Bored wasn’t the word that was first and foremost in her mind at the minute.

‘First off, you can shove your apology in one of those sweet places where the sun doesn’t shine.’

She sucked in a breath, shocked by his crudity. ‘That’s nice, I must—’

‘Hush, I’m still talking here.’

She shut her mouth.

Well, really. What had happened to those genteel manners?

‘Second of all. You might have been my first, but I wasn’t that much of a sap. You didn’t take me, I took you.’

Heat cascaded through her at the seductive growl, which made her even more aware of the muscled thigh pressing against her hip.

‘And thirdly, I screwed up my marriage all on my own, with no help from you.’

‘I fail to see how you can say that, when I seduced you two weeks before your wedding day,’ she argued, getting a little miffed at the lecturing tone. Where did he get off talking to her as if she were a two-year-old? ‘I knew you were engaged and yet I set out to seduce you, deliberately, without a thought to your fiancée or anything else.’