by Kim Lawrence
His glance drifted over her face, heart-shaped, firm-chinned, her abundant warm-coloured hair springing from a high forehead. He liked his women well groomed and set the bar high, so it was surprising that, even now she was blotchy and tear-sodden, he still found much to please him about her.
He pondered the reason behind his fascination, and decided that the stubborn definition of her soft chin gave her face character and the generous defined line of her arched brows framed eyes that, when not bloodshot, were an almost unique shade of deep green. And of course the mouth that was fuelling his lust-filled fantasies… His wandering gaze stilled on the lush curves and he berated himself mentally after his first thought was about parting those soft pink lips and exploring their moist interior. At his side his long fingers flexed as he pictured himself tenderly brushing aside the curls that clustered around her face.
‘I’m fine.’ If being totally mortified counted as fine, she thought.
It was some comfort to Draco that she appeared to be gaining a semblance of control.
Maybe you should follow her example, suggested the sardonic voice in his head.
Hard to argue with when he was conscious of the heat pooling in his groin.
She struggled to pull in a deep breath as he continued to stare, making her skin prickle with heat. ‘Will you go away?’ She injected as much coldness into her voice as was possible while fighting another sob.
More accustomed to having women deliver responses designed to please rather than repel him, Draco took a few seconds to formulate a dignified response.
‘I would like nothing better.’ It ought to be true, but actually there were several things he would have preferred to do, though none of them was an option while his daughter was outside the door. ‘Look, you don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here—’
‘Then go away,’ she hurled, wiping her face on her forearm and wishing the floor would open up and swallow her when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind him. Mortifying enough to make a spectacle of herself but to do it with this man as a witness made it a million times worse.
‘My preferred option also,’ he bit back, losing his patience. The woman might have a supremely sexy mouth but there were limits to what he was prepared to tolerate to look at it. ‘My daughter came to me for help, and Josie retains a childlike belief in my ability to achieve the impossible. I struggle to keep the illusion alive.’
Dry-eyed now, she tilted her chin. ‘Odd, she looked like a bright girl.’
She had anticipated an angry response so the appreciative humour that deepened the lines radiating from his spectacular eyes threw her off balance.
‘That’s better,’ he approved. ‘So what’s the story?’
‘What story?’ She walked past him to the basin and turned on the water. ‘Shouldn’t you be going? Someone might come in and, as you see, I’m fine now.’
‘Don’t worry—Josie will give us some privacy.’
Privacy with this man was the last thing that Eve wanted! The thought sent a fresh flurry of prickles down her spine. ‘So what do you expect her to do if someone wants to come in?’
He gave an indifferent shrug. ‘She’s a very resourceful girl.’
Eve stared at him in the mirror and shook her head. She could hear the pride in his voice; indifference was obviously the last thing he felt when it came to his daughter.
‘And you’re a really weird sort of father, not that I know anything about fathers.’ Wishing the admission unsaid, she bent her head and splashed water on her blotchy face.
When she lifted her head again he was standing right there beside her, close enough for her to be conscious of the warmth of his hard, lean body, with one of the neatly folded individual hand towels that were stacked beside the linen basket in his hand.
She stared at it as though she’d never seen a towel before while the water from her hands dripped on the floor. She wasn’t conscious of lifting her gaze, but as her eyes drifted slowly over the hard angles of his face she was suddenly aware of the increased volume of a low static hum in her ears.
This close she could appreciate just how evenly textured his golden-toned skin was, shadowed now by a light dusting of dark stubble that almost hid the scar next to his mouth.
She felt a sudden and almost uncontrollable urge to lift her hand and touch the place where she knew it was and trace the line…
‘So, you don’t have a dad, then?’
Like a sleepwalker coming to, she started, her raised hand moving jerkily and snatching the towel from him without a word. Under cover of a glare, she fought a debilitating wave of trembling weakness.
‘What, is this research for your next book?’ she snapped.
‘Well, they do say everyone has one in them, but actually you just interest me.’
His comment whipped away her protective camouflage. Feeling horribly exposed and yet, more worryingly, excited, she dabbed her face with the towel. ‘I’m not at all interesting, Mr Morelli.’
His sable brows lifted. ‘You know my name.’
‘It came up in the conversation.’
‘Ah, yes, the conversation,’ he mused slowly. ‘So those charming friends of yours, what did they say that upset you so much?’
‘Not friends,’ she flashed, then, seeing his expression, she lowered her eyes and added more moderately, ‘We went to school together, the little village school, and then—’
‘Here, you missed a bit…’ He took a corner of the towel she still held and, leaning in to her, dabbed a spot beside her mouth. Then he dabbed it again…and again…
Eve, who had been standing like a small statue, her eyes trained straight ahead, while admiring his very nice ears, heard a whimper escape her lips and hastily turned it into a cough.
‘Secondary school,’ she finished faintly.
‘That cough sounds bad.’ Draco was happy to go along with the pretence for now, but was curious why it apparently bothered her so much that there was such a dramatic level of sexual chemistry between them. Unless… A furrow indented his brow as he realised that just because she had no partner here did not necessarily mean there wasn’t one somewhere in the background.
The possibility she was unavailable dragged the corners of his mouth downwards in a brooding, dissatisfied curve.
Her eyes slid away from his. ‘A tickle in my throat.’ It sounded less inflammatory than ‘a starburst in my belly’.
‘Relax,’ he ordered.
Eve bit back a laugh.
‘You might as well tell me what they said, you know, because otherwise Josie will, and if my daughter has been traumatised I’d like to know up front.’
‘Traumatised!’ She was shocked by the suggestion and then it dawned on her that his interest arose from parental anxiety and not, as she had thought… Well, what did you think, Evie—that he found you fascinating? That he wanted to know what made you tick or just that he wanted to get in your pants?
In your dreams. She sighed and then thought wryly that was probably the only way he’d ever appear in her bed! It was ridiculous to try and pretend that this man hadn’t awoken some dormant responses in her or that he wasn’t the domineering, controlling type that she was never going to get involved with. He might make an appearance in her fantasies but in real life—no way! He might make a lousy lover but at least he seemed to be a good and concerned father.
‘Your daugh… Josie wasn’t involved… I wasn’t involved in what just happened in here.’ Eve was horrified that he seemed to suspect that his daughter had witnessed some sort of slanging match. Or maybe even a brawl. ‘Really,’ she assured him earnestly. ‘They didn’t even know I was here and I didn’t know your daughter was here either. It was just a case of eavesdroppers hearing bad things about themselves… We didn’t get on at school either.’
�
�They look a lot older than you…’
He caught her look and added, ‘Josie pointed them out when she was dragging me in here. Why would their jealousy of you make you cry?’
God, why didn’t Josie come and drag him out again—right now? Eve glanced at the doorway, willing the girl to appear, but it remained empty. She sighed again. The quickest way to get him out of here seemed to be to satisfy his curiosity and go three seconds without breaking down like some sort of neurotic basket case.
‘That had nothing to do with them. It was just a combination of champagne, jet lag and…’ She stopped, an arrested expression appearing on her face as she belatedly processed his comment. ‘They aren’t jealous.’ Spiteful and insensitive, granted… ‘Why would you think they were jealous of me?’
He looked amused by the question. ‘Let me see. You are a success and you are beautiful and they are…’ His lips twisted into a grimace of contempt as he recalled the blonde with the unlikely orange tan who had thrust her chest in his face and written her number on his hand, embarrassing all those who had witnessed the action.
Draco had not been embarrassed but he had been offended and annoyed.
‘Not.’
He thought she was beautiful?
‘And you did not drink any champagne.’
Her accusing green stare settled on his face; it was nice just for once to be the one on the offensive. ‘How do you know?’
‘I’m an observant man.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘You were watching me!’ she flung, quivering with a combination of outrage and excitement that tied her stomach in knots and brought a flush to her pale skin.
‘And you knew I was.’ His retort was unanswerable for someone who was not a good liar. ‘It is the game men and women play, cara,’ he drawled.
Eve felt as if she had just stepped out of the training pool into the deep end. She struggled to fight her way through the panic that was closing in on her and remain calm and in control. ‘I’m not playing games.’
He looked at her for a long moment, acknowledging a flicker of uncertainty as the extraordinary possibility that she was telling the truth occurred to him. She could not be that inexperienced, surely? But looking deep into those big emerald eyes, he saw she wasn’t trying to hide anything—or perhaps she didn’t know how…?
A word popped into his head: innocence.
He straightened up, pulling away from her in more than the physical sense. He had thought they were on the same page but he had been wrong; he had seen that sultry mouth but not the emotional baggage that came with it. It was a good thing he had discovered his error now, before things had gone too far, he told himself.
She was high maintenance, and he was a bastard who had no intention of changing. Always better in his experience to call a spade a spade.
‘Will you do something for me?’ he asked.
He was not about to make an indecent proposal with his daughter just outside the door but even so her heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. ‘That depends.’
‘Smile and try not to look so tragic.’
She stiffened, her spine snapping to attention. ‘Pardon me?’
‘I’d like to stay a hero for as long as I can in my daughter’s eyes, so I’d be grateful if you could suck it up and look like I waved my magic wand and made everything better. It’s not as if you’re the only one who doesn’t like weddings. I suspect with me it’s that they remind me too much of my own,’ he admitted with a frankness she was beginning to find disturbing.
It was a day he was able to think about with a degree of objectivity now, but for a long time it hadn’t been that way. Now he was able to admit that he had known halfway through exchanging his vows that he was making the biggest mistake of his life, and it was doubtful it would even have got that far if his parents hadn’t been so against it, and delivered an ultimatum.
He had been twenty and had thought he knew everything. Their parental disapproval had been like a red rag to a bull, and what better way to display his maturity than to get married against their wishes and show them how wrong they were?
‘Suck it up?’ she repeated in a low, dangerous voice. ‘Suck it up? What the hell do you think I’ve been doing all d-d-day? As for your marriage, I…I…spare me the details.’ She glared at him, daring him to comment on her stutter. These days it rarely surfaced but she was always conscious that it could at any moment—and it was his fault that it just had.
Eve felt something snap inside her. ‘You think you don’t like weddings, let me tell you,’ she huffed, ‘about my day!’ She reached inside the bodice of her dress and after a grunt produced a wad of tissues, which she waved at him. ‘Did you have to stuff your bra full of tissues to keep your dress up? Did you have to watch your mother, who is the best, totally best person you know, marry a man who is so far beneath her in every way?’ Eve’s voice dropped a husky octave but shook with the strength of the emotion that gripped her as she concluded, ‘And it wouldn’t even be happening now if the scumbag hadn’t got her pregnant!’
For about three seconds she felt the intense relief of getting it off her chest…and then she looked at the tissues in her hand and gulped quite literally. The wave of horror that followed made her want to vanish… What had she been thinking of, telling a total stranger such private things?
Her green eyes lifted to his face, her insides churning sickly. ‘If you tell anyone I’ll—’
‘Be forced to have me killed. Don’t worry—your secret is safe with me,’ Eve heard him drawl with teeth-clenching sarcasm.
‘The idea is growing on me,’ she declared grimly.
Forgetting the cold shoulder he had intended to present to her, he grinned. ‘I’m curious—have you got any more tissues down there or is what remains all you?’
She pressed her hand to the neckline of her strapless gown; without the extra padding to fill it he had a view all the way down to her waist and he was certainly looking.
‘You’re hateful!’ Eve looked at the wad of tissues and threw them at him.
Laughing, he reached out and caught them. ‘Seriously.’ Actually he had been seriously impressed by the view of her small but perfect breasts like plump little apples in their lacy covering. He could just imagine them filling his hand—only they wouldn’t because she was high maintenance. She was an innocent… Mmm, how innocent, exactly…?
He didn’t want to know. All right, maybe he did—virgins of her age were a bit like unicorns: the things of fables.
‘So what have you got against Charlie Latimer?’ The guy was successful, solvent and as far as he knew had no major vices like drink, drugs or gambling, yet her animosity had been toxic in its intensity.
‘So you don’t know he’s been having an affair with my mum for years? That makes you something of a rarity.’ Could you sound any more bitter, Eve?
‘I don’t listen to gossip, but I do know that relationships are complex and it’s hard to judge what makes one work from the outside.’
‘They didn’t have a relationship. She was his bit on the side. She doesn’t have to marry anyone, let alone him! I’d have looked after her. I wanted to look after her.’
‘You’re very possessive.’
‘Protective,’ she flashed back, angry at the inference and his sardonic expression.
‘Don’t you think that maybe your mother has earned the right to make her own decisions and her own mistakes…?’
She cast a simmering glance up at his lean face. ‘What business is it of yours anyway?’
‘None at all. I thought you wanted my input.’
‘Well, I don’t!’
‘I stand corrected.’
She pulled herself up to her full height and, bristling with dignity, looked pointedly at the route to the door he was blocking. ‘If you don’t mind…? And don’t worry.�
� She flashed him a wide insincere smile, her eyes shooting daggers. ‘I will smile, but I’d prefer not to be seen coming out of the ladies’ room with you.’
‘It might make the world look at you in a different light.’
She narrowed her eyes and said with fierce distaste, ‘You mean people will see me as a tart.’
‘No, I mean they might think you actually have a life.’
She sucked in a breath of outrage. ‘I have a perfectly good life already and I don’t give a damn what people think.’
‘If that were true you wouldn’t give a damn what people think if we walk out that door together.’
Teeth clenched in sheer frustration, she glared up at him. He couldn’t have looked smugger if…if… No, he simply couldn’t have looked smugger. ‘Just wait here.’
‘Shall I count to a hundred?’
Responding to this with a disdainful sniff, she tossed her head and pushed through the doorway, pausing only to fling a ‘Thank you!’ over her shoulder.
He didn’t count to a hundred. Instead he thought about what had just happened. Running the scene through his head, little snippets of the conversation making him frown, others smile. It had clearly hurt her to say thank you, and Draco felt a faint twinge of guilt as he knew he didn’t deserve it. The only cry of help he’d responded to was his daughter’s. He’d only come in here for Josie, because he wanted her to think he was a good guy, but in truth he wasn’t. If he had seen an hysterical woman crying in the bathroom, his instinct would not have been to wade in and help, it would have been to walk in the opposite direction very fast.
He had his life streamlined so that he could focus on what was important—he did not get involved.
The women standing outside reading the ‘out of order’ sign that was pinned to the door looked at him wide-eyed when he emerged.
Ignoring their astonished stares, he unpinned the sign written in the pink lipstick his daughter was wearing and nodded.
‘Everything is back to normal.’
