by Lynne Graham
His smile was one hundred per cent predator and it raised her hackles. That brilliant, edged smile told her all she didn’t want to know. Modesty was not one of his virtues. He was fully aware of the effect he had on her sex. ‘She’s very much in need of your advice.’
‘But you must hate her!’ Chrissy protested in disbelief.
‘Is she worth that much emotion?’
Chrissy went white. A shiver of instinctive apprehension tautened her muscles. ‘If you encourage her…’
‘But I don’t need to encourage her,’ Blaze said softly.
‘You’ll wreck her marriage!’ Chrissy condemned.
‘This is turning into a very boring conversation.’ Jewelled sapphire eyes rested on her with diamond-cutting chill. ‘Stay out of what you don’t understand.’
Chrissy was shaking all over. ‘I understand you p-perfectly!’
‘Where have you been all my life?’ he drawled silkily. ‘What ghastly trick of fate has placed you beneath my roof? The desire to be understood by a woman has never been one of my priorities.’
‘You conceited t-toad!’ Without any warning whatsoever, she found her emotions exploding out of her control. ‘What w-would any intelligent woman want with you?’
‘Bad girl, bad Kissy!’ Rosie put in anxiously, abruptly recalling Chrissy to the fact of her presence and the knowledge that she was shouting. Stricken with guilt, she glanced down at Rosie’s distressed little face.
‘Relax, sweetheart,’ Blaze soothed silkily, stroking a calming hand across her small head.
The blind adoration in Rosie’s trusting gaze further outraged Chrissy. ‘Don’t touch her!’ she spat.
‘Mummy and I haven’t kissed and made up yet,’ Blaze murmured quietly, only the gleaming anger burnishing his eyes betraying his true mood.
‘It’ll be a cold d-day in hell—’ Chrissy began hotly, but a split-second later the power of speech was torn from her. A hand like a steel clamp curved round her narrow shoulder, forcing her forward. His mouth came down on hers with similar force. It was violent. It should have been utterly repellent. But it wasn’t. She flamed alive in an extraordinary surge of passion.
His tongue plundered the moist, sensitive interior of her mouth until every inch of her body was plastered to the hard, unyielding outlines of his. It was a flagrantly, ferociously sexual assault and it unleashed a tidal wave of response. She couldn’t get close enough to him…he couldn’t get close enough to her. He had her welded so tightly to him that she could barely breathe. Her hands sank into the thick luxuriance of his hair in an ecstasy of pleasure, tiny sounds ripping from her throat as long fingers knotted with painful thoroughness into the curling torrent of mahogany tumbling down her back. It was like being devoured…but it was a mutual feast.
Her every skin cell leapt with sensation. Her heartbeat thundered through her entire body. The blood in her veins raced and boiled. She wanted…dear lord, she craved…she needed…she had to have…this, this fierce, glorious intensity of feeling!
Abruptly, Blaze tore his mouth from hers. Two hard hands bit into her shoulders as he wrenched her back from him but retained his hold on her. A dark flush lay along the line of his carved cheekbones, his breath coming in tortured bursts as the stark brilliance of his astonishingly bright eyes focused on her hectically flushed face, arrowing down into glazed green, and later, much later, she would recall that for a tenth of a second he looked absolutely shattered.
And then dense black lashes veiled those unusually expressive eyes. ‘I’ll dump Rosie with Floss,’ he murmured thickly. ‘You chuck the builders out… Bloody hell, I’ll pay them to get out and stay out for the rest of the day! Warm up the bed for me…I’ll be as quick as I can.’
Her recovery time had been slower than his. Indeed, she had been so overwhelmed by the desire he had ignited inside her that she had been standing there with the docility of an accident victim. But the brutal candour he employed to state his intentions—indeed, his expectations not only shook her rigid, it shook her right back to normality.
‘You…y-you…animal!’ she gasped, pulling frantically free of his controlling hold. ‘I can’t believe you said that to me! How d-dare you? How dare you even think that I…that I would allow…that I would do something so utterly d-disgusting?’
He looked as if he wanted to kill her. He looked as he had no right to look. He looked outraged but, most insultingly of all, he looked as if he just couldn’t believe that he was actually being turned down. One heated embrace and he expected her to spread herself on his bed without any further ado! She was the one, surely, with the right to look incredulous? If it hadn’t been for Rosie, she would have punched him in the face!
Staggeringly out of her depth, assailed by a hideous surge of unpleasant emotions and an outsize awareness that that abandoned clinch had had a large and interested audience, Chrissy fumbled for and found her little sister’s hand. When he touched her, the rest of the world just didn’t exist. When he touched her, her self-control, her self-knowledge splintered. When he touched her, there was nothing and nobody but him and the most terrifying, devastating desire for him to continue. And right now she felt savaged, brutalised, and shamed by the awareness that she could not control her own sexuality.
There was nothing more to say. She was cringingly aware of that fact. Indeed, she couldn’t make her escape quickly enough. How the heck could she continue to work for Blaze after this? The way she had responded to him…was it really any wonder that he had expected her to go to bed with him? She prided herself on her honesty. She had not given him any reason to believe that she was not willing to finish what he had begun. But he had shocked her, forced her to face the depth of her own ignorance.
Blaze lived on the fast track of a different world, unfettered by the inhibitions that haltered her. He had wanted to have sex with her. That was all. He hadn’t wanted anything else. Just an available body to slake a hot-blooded surge of male hormones. She drove that harsh truth home to herself hard. And doubtless he would not understand how unbearably offensive that truth was to her. She had no ambition to be used for an afternoon of light entertainment and then discarded like yesterday’s newspaper.
Dear heaven, how could she have allowed him to do that to her again? She blinked back hot tears of self-loathing. It seemed that she was more like her mother and Elaine than she had ever dreamt—lacking all control and pride, losing all judgement in the sheer heat of sexual desire. She had behaved like a tramp, she told herself fiercely, and it was hardly surprising that he had come to the same conclusion.
Hours later, when she was frantically trying to prevent the casserole she had prepared from drying up, Floss poked her head round the door and stared at the sight of the carefully laid table. ‘Haven’t you had lunch yet?’
‘I’m waiting for B-Blaze.’
‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Floss frowned in surprise. ‘He’s off to London.’
Chapter 5
Chrissy was ready to tear out her hair and scream. During the night a pipe had burst, flooding the kitchen. The builders had dealt efficiently with the problem, but they had had to rip up the ancient quarry tiles to complete the task. They had put the tiles down loose as a temporary surface and they were absolutely filthy. The sodden contents of the lower cupboards were spread out everywhere. And the newly installed central heating was airlocked and inactive.
Her head was splitting from the noise of the sanding machines being used on two of the reception-rooms. She was wet and exceedingly dirty and, to crown it all, Rosie was down on all fours on that filthy floor pretending to be a horse.
‘Get off that f-floor!’ she launched at her little sister.
‘Moo…moo.’ Rosie pawed stubbornly at the tiles. ‘Wanna carrot.’
‘You are not a horse!’ Chrissy practically screeched. She had never been so tired in her life. She had worked non-stop for a week and nowhere could she see results. Blaze hadn’t been in touch and, when she had finally steeled herself to ph
one his London apartment, some manic bimbo had screamed abuse down the line at her as soon as she’d given her name, telling her to leave Blaze alone.
Suddenly Rosie gave a shout of ecstasy and galloped across the floor still on her knees. In mute dismay, Chrissy focused on the tall, dark figure lounging in the doorway. He looked so clean. There he was, framed like some impossibly perfect being in a glossy magazine, polished leather boots leading up to skin-tight cream riding breeches, an Aran sweater and an Australian stockman’s full-length green coat, liberally spattered with crystalline raindrops. Extravagantly, sickeningly gorgeous, she acknowledged with gritted teeth and raw resentment.
‘Wosie wanna carrot. Moo!’ Rosie grinned up at him with eyes the size of saucers.
‘Cows eat grass…’
‘Horses eat carrot.’ Rosie pouted.
He was deliberately ignoring her, Chrissy decided.
‘I’ve actually been back a couple of hours,’ he volunteered in a careless aside. ‘I got changed and went out to check the yard. No problems there. Not quite so organised indoors from what I can see. Still, we all have our off days. Is lunch on the go?’
‘L-lunch?’ she practically whispered. He hadn’t even bothered to tell her that he was back. He simply strolled in and criticised her when she had been working eighteen-hour days! Floss had suggested that she make dinner every evening just in case he came home. So far, she had cooked and dumped the greater part of five stylish dinners, calculated to impress the most demanding bon viveur. And now he rolled up without warning when the kitchen was in a state of the most unspeakable squalor and expected to be fed.
Right now, he was actually coaching Rosie on the vocal difference between a cow and a horse. She couldn’t believe it. For a week she had tossed and turned in her bed and barely slept as she’d agonised over how he would behave and how she should behave when he finally reappeared. His air of careless insouciance made it patently clear that their clash a week ago had gone off him like water off a duck’s back.
‘There is no l-lunch,’ she admitted shakily, closing her hands tightly together.
‘Why not?’ Sapphire-blue eyes awash with apparent incredulity flicked in her direction.
‘Maybe Hamish would give you a bucket!’ Chrissy suddenly snapped in a shatteringly loud rush, powered by an uncontrollable surge of anger.
‘Excuse me for a moment.’ Blaze hauled Rosie up into his arms, strode out to the yard with her and dumped her into Hamish’s astonished grasp—Hamish who had clearly been hovering outside in the hope of hearing her get the sack.
‘Why did you do th-that?’ Chrissy almost shrieked.
‘You’re shouting. I don’t want her upset. A bucket, you were saying,’ he murmured, silkily sardonic.
‘There’s no water! And Hamish w-wouldn’t let me have water from the yard because he says I spook the horses! And the electricity will be off again in ten minutes! Stuff your bloody lunch, you chauvinist dinosaur…who do you think I am? S-Superwoman?’ she raged.
He spread a derisive glance round the chaos. ‘Superwoman?’ he said softly. ‘Evidently not.’
And that was when she lost her head. She had been struggling to cope single-handedly with a squad of workmen ripping up floors and gouging holes in walls in umpteen different locations. They walked plaster all over the place. They didn’t bother to cover the furniture. Dust lay an inch thick everywhere and he didn’t even possess a vacuum cleaner!
She had the feeling that for all of his adult life women had been falling over themselves to do things for him. Not just in bed but out of it as well. He probably hadn’t had to ask or demand. Boring, time-consuming things had been taken care of well out of his sight and hearing.
‘While you were partying with your k-killer bimbo down in London, I have been working my ass off!’ Her eyes were flaming emeralds in her hectically flushed face. ‘You didn’t keep in touch! You didn’t leave me any money! You don’t h-have a vacuum cleaner! You don’t even h-have a washing machine! Two ceilings have come down since you l-left and today the kitchen flooded— ‘
‘God, this is my worst nightmare come true,’ Blaze whispered. ‘This feels like being married—’
‘You sh-should be so lucky! You’re the most self-centred, egotistical, impractical, s-s-s-sel—sel—’
‘Selfish?’ he threw in helpfully, one-hundred-megawatt attention fully attuned to her now.
‘A-and,’ she sobbed, tears taking over, ‘I’m dirty and I’ve g-got no clean clothes!’
Silence fell, broken solely by the embarrassing sobs that had overcome her. Collapsing down on a chair, she buried her contorted face in her hands and fought unsuccessfully to stop crying.
‘I can see that the mention of lunch was unfortunate,’ Blaze conceded thoughtfully.
He scooped her out of the chair without warning. She didn’t even fight. He was going to throw them out. He wasn’t used to hearing home truths. He had probably never been so grossly insulted in his spoilt-rotten, selfish, hedonistic life.
But he didn’t dump her on the doorstep. He stuffed her into the front of the Ferrari. ‘W-where…?’ she managed on the back of another sob.
‘I’m taking you down to the pub. I’ll take a room and you can have a bath.’
He was utterly crazy. He couldn’t be serious. But he was.
He raked to a halt at the rear of the Pheasant, angled an assessing glance over her tear-swollen profile, and sighed. ‘When you cry, you really cry, don’t you? You look like a battered pixie. We’ll use the tradesman’s entrance. Percy won’t mind.’
He had to drag her from the car. She felt really stupid, mortified by her breakdown. He draped his coat round her quivering shoulders and the hem trailed on the tarmac.
‘You’ll feel a whole lot more human once you get a couple of stiff drinks inside you,’ Blaze asserted.
‘I d-don’t drink…’
‘Trust me, it’ll transform your view of the world.’ He left her huddled by the coats in the tiny back hall and disappeared. Two minutes later, he returned, swinging a key, and urged her upstairs.
‘This is a-absolutely mad!’ She hovered in the centre of the cosily furnished bedroom in a state of extreme discomfiture.
‘You take life too seriously. I’ll run your bath.’ He strode into the adjoining en suite.
Tiny little shudders were still rattling through her. She wondered why she was letting him take control. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘It’ll make me feel better.’
An unsteady laugh escaped her. At least he was honest. ‘There’s too much work for me to do in that house,’ she admitted shakily. ‘It’s too big. I c-can’t keep up with the workmen…’
‘No problem. I’ll bring in a cleaning agency. All I ever expected you to do was cook and oversee the builders—’
‘And arrange your furniture and decide where your sockets and radiators go, and your clothes, and choose your kitchen and your tiles and your wallpaper and…’
Lean hands reached down and slowly undraped the coat. As it fell in a pool round her paralysed feet, her voice ran out. Dazedly, drained by sheer exhaustion, she just stood there. Long brown fingers reached for the buttons on her shirt and abruptly she jerked away. ‘I can manage…’
She was peeling off her clothes in the bathroom when Blaze opened the door six inches and set a balloon glass of brandy down on the floor. She surveyed it uncertainly, wondering whether it would settle the nausea in her stomach. Stepping into the bath, she downed it in one, choking as the unfamiliar alcohol burned her unprepared throat.
The hot water was bliss. The bubbles made her giggle. She felt like a five-year-old being coaxed out of the sulks. Yes, she reflected ruefully, he was truly in his element with a woman, and right now he was probably down in the restaurant perusing the menu for his lunch.
The door opened again just a little, not enough to panic her but enough to make her tense in dismay.
‘Do you want another drink?’
‘You c-can’t come in and I’m too lazy to come out.’
‘You really are the most amazing prude.’ He rolled the bottle across the floor.
Chrissy giggled and reached for it with a ‘what the hell?’ feeling of decadence. Pouring herself another generous measure, she sank back into the scented water, literally feeling all the stress draining away.
‘Who is the killer bimbo?’
She told him about the unproductive phone call. ‘She was a m-maniac.’
Absolute silence.
‘Are they all that intellectually challenged?’ she couldn’t resist asking.
‘I don’t sit them down to a Mensa test before I bed them,’ he conceded reflectively.
‘You sound very close,’ she accused with sudden tension.
‘I’m lying on the bed. Can’t see a thing.’ A pause. ‘I only ever have one woman at a time. I don’t sleep around.’
‘You could lie your way round a lynch mob,’ she murmured blithely, unconvinced. ‘I feel so sorry for you—’
‘And I just know you’re about to tell me why.’
‘Emotionally you’re stunted—’
‘Physically you’re repressed.’
The brandy she was aiming at her lips missed and trickled down her throat into the water instead. She stopped breathing and then took another deep gulp of brandy.
‘There’s just something about you. I don’t know what it is,’ Blaze drawled with a silken relaxation that was positively predatory. ‘But whatever it is…it’s staggeringly sexual and it is creating problems. I want to make love to you. It would get it out of the way. Curiosity killed, we could then forget it ever happened.’
Silence stretched. Finally, he breathed, ‘No comment?’
‘To think I thought you’d be the last word in seduction!’ Chrissy sighed in a tone of rampant disillusionment.
