by Alison Kelly
Her face was flushed with anger and frustration, but he’d anticipated no less a reaction from her. Kirrily prided herself on being self-reliant and resented unsolicited help from anyone. She resented his help so completely that she never bothered to solicit it; others did so from time to time on her behalf, but since Ryan never revealed as much it was he whom she perceived to be interfering. So be it, he thought; this time her behaviour demanded his intervention whether she liked it or not!
‘It wasn’t your physical exhaustion which concerned me, K.C.,’ he said, matching her glare with one of his own. ‘You were an emotional mess when you got home this morning.’ He paused only long enough for his words to sink in. ‘I want to know why.’
‘Why? Why?’ she echoed in a way that made him suspect that she was searching for a plausible reason rather than the truthful one.
‘I’ll tell you why! Because you—’ she jabbed his chest ‘—jumped me in the dark and scared ten years off my life!’
‘Not good enough,’ he said. ‘That wasn’t a normal reaction to mild fright, K.C.; you were close to freaking out completely. Something else happened last night so don’t bother to deny it.’
She looked as if that was exactly what she was going to do, then her shoulders slumped as she drew in a deep, resigned breath.
‘OK, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll give you a blow-byblow account of the night. Satisfied?’
‘I’ll let you know when I hear it’
‘I was lonely, so I phoned around and arranged to have dinner and a few drinks with some of the guys at the club. There are some people,’ she said pointedly, ‘who aren’t embarrassed to be seen out with me!’
‘What guys?’ He knew that more than a few of K.C.’s old boyfriends still had the same one-track minds they’d had as teenagers.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Girl guys. Megan Tang, Crissie Webber and Jodie Peters. After dinner we all went back to Jodie’s; we had a few drinks, we laughed, we joked and we shared old times. But, you know, Ryan,’ she said, pausing as if the truth were only now dawning on her, ‘you’re absolutely right—it was a really traumatic experience. Yep, no doubt about it; I may never recover.’
He watched her, trying to decide if despite her facetious tone she was giving him the whole story. It was hard to credit that K.C.’s renowned fearlessness could be broken down so easily.
‘That’s it, Ryan,’ she stressed. ‘I know how your overprotective mind works, but the only unsolicited manhandling I fell victim to last night was yours.’
Blue eyes first flashed at her with anger, then, surprisingly, dulled with hurt. ‘You know damn well I’d never hurt you, K.C..’
‘Oh, I know that, but your trouble is you worry too much about me.’
The mirthless laugh he gave was uncharacteristic. ‘Tell me something I don’t know, K.C.,’ he said.
‘OK,’ she said, choosing to answer his rhetorical comment because it was easier than dwelling on the fact that he was so close that she could practically feel his body heat. ‘I’m no longer the naive sixteen-year-old you dragged out of the back of Rick Nichols’ car all those years ago.’
‘Glad to hear it. Though, judging from your recent boyfriends, your taste in men still leaves a lot to be desired.’
‘Maybe, but they’re my desires, not yours! You have to stop regarding me as some kind of brain-dead bimbo who can’t look after herself and is going to fall into the arms of the first smooth-talking male who comes on to her.’
‘What makes you think that’s how I see you?’ he asked with ill-concealed amusement.
‘Our past history. If you’d controlled my life any more, Ryan, I’d be in a convent this minute.’
He laughed. ‘Kiddo, the only habit you’d ever get into would be a bad one! Besides, you’re not Catholic.’
‘Honestly, Ryan, trying to have an adult conversation with you is impossible! You’re determined to treat me like a child, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t treat you like a child, K.C..’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Then perhaps you’d like to tell me why you felt it necessary to wait up until I came home, then?’
His face tensed. ‘Because, dammit, as I said last night, I was worried about you. It was late and you hadn’t left a note.’
‘But how did you know I wasn’t home? The car was in the garage.’
‘When I checked your room you—’
‘You checked my room?’
‘I look in every night to—’
‘To what?’ she demanded. ‘Tuck me in? Check that I’ve brushed my teeth and said my prayers? Make sure I’m not entertaining men in my room? For God’s sake, Ryan, I’m twenty-four years old! Surely I’m entitled to some privacy even if I am living under your roof?’
‘Are you quite finished now?’
‘Not by a long shot, buster!’
‘Well, too bad, because I’ve got a few things I’d like to say!’
‘Nothing I want to hear!’
Pivoting sharply, she started towards the door, but Ryan whipped an arm out to bar her way, at the same time shifting his position, effectively trapping her between him and the cupboards. She told herself that anger was the only reason her blood was shooting around her body at the speed of light and she tried to hang onto that thought as Ryan’s firm male fingers lifted her chin to hold her eyes level with his. His face was only centimetres from hers. She could see the pores in his skin, and the temptation to compare the texture of the tanned smoothness of his forehead with the unshaven masculinity of his jaw had her clenching her hands.
‘The only reason I stuck my head in your room, as I do every evening, was to say goodnight, nothing more!’
Ryan silently cursed the fact that K.C.’s temper was such a physical thing; every time she so much as sighed impatiently the slinky robe she wore slipped to reveal even more of her small, high breasts.
‘Rest assured,’ he said drily, ‘I’m well aware you’re old enough to tuck yourself in and decide whether or not you pray. I’m equally certain your pearly whites are pampered beyond even a dentist’s highest standards on a daily basis, and nor do I wish to encroach on either your precious privacy or your love life.’
‘Can I have that in writing?’
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘However, I do have strict house rules about you bringing men home.’
‘Oh, goody, more rules! And they are?’
Ryan marvelled that his hands only found their way to her shoulders, despite his inclination to wrap them around her slender, elegant neck. Discussions about sex were the last thing he wanted to get into with K.C., especially when she was clothed only by virtue of a robe and a self-discipline he hadn’t known he possessed.
‘You don’t bring them into my home. You get it?’
‘Not, apparently, while I’m living here,’ she retorted. ‘Unless you have some in-house deal I haven’t heard about.’
‘What the hell kind of crack was that?’ His eyes scorched her.
‘Ryan, I was kidding. I—’
‘Kidding, K.C.?’ He was furious that she could be so naive. So blasé! Did she think he was made of stone? Hell! His heart was going like a jackhammer and all efforts to shut down the images her remark evoked were being sabotaged by the fact that he was close enough to feel every curve she possessed! He wanted to shake her! Worse, he wanted to step closer, to slide his hand behind her head and guide her delectable little smart-alec mouth of hers under his!
Do it! Do it! his libido urged. Just once. Just taste her once.
‘Kidding, K.C.!’ he repeated, in the hope of keeping his mouth functioning in safer directions until his common sense checked in again. ‘You think it’s funny to casually offer your body around, do you? How funny do you think it would be if some guy took you up on the offer? I ought to belt the backside off you!’
‘Pass,’ she said, starting to turn away. ‘That way’s too kinky even for me.’
That did it! Tel
ling himself he’d teach her a lesson she’d never forget, Ryan brought his mouth down onto hers. Unfortunately for him, he discovered that K.C. was every teacher’s ideal pupil—co-operative, a quick learner and very responsive…
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE was only a split second between Kirrily thinking, Oh, God, he’s going to kiss me! and the reality of Ryan’s lips against hers. In that minuscule time-lapse she assumed that the action would be flavoured with the taste of his anger; she was wrong.
Though surprise had parted her mouth slightly, unlike most men of Kirrily’s experience, Ryan was in no hurry to plunge into its depths. Instead his lips moved over hers with soft, individual kisses that were so gentle and tentative that she was expecting every one to be the last and him to step away.
The notion hit her like a sledgehammer and instinctively she rose onto her toes, lifting her arms to his neck to stave off his anticipated retreat. She had no intention of having a kiss she’d imagined for eight long years end after only eight seconds! Spurred on by the electric excitement coiling in her stomach, and the knowledge that with Ryan she always got as good as she gave, Kirrily put everything into her response.
Ryan felt the remnants of his good intentions burn to a crisp as K.C.’s body pressed into his and her teeth nipped at his bottom lip. In weaker moments he’d fantasised about what it would feel like to have K.C.’s active little tongue tracing his mouth, but he’d never expected it to feel as if he was being scorched by a lightning bolt, to feel as if his nervous system had been numb for the past thirty-six years of his life. It was as if she’d found a switch to his emotions, had flicked it from ‘off to ‘overdrive’ and he was hurtling out of control. The moment of impact came when his tongue touched K.C.’s…
Her legs were going to buckle! Kirrily knew it as surely as she knew that Ryan Talbot was systematically shutting down every one of her vital organs. And, dear God, he was only kissing her! She’d been kissed hundreds of times, both personally and professionally, yet nothing had prepared her for the full-scale chaos that her senses were experiencing at Ryan’s hands; except he wasn’t even using his hands! He was driving her crazy with his mouth and tongue, making her want and ache in the most feminine places, and his hands hadn’t yet left her shoulders. It was like being tortured in heaven, simultaneously feeling bliss beyond her dreams and unbearable pain.
She wanted him to touch her—touch her skin, her breasts, her nipples, which felt as if they were going to burst. Her scrambled brain imagined his fingers in a dozen different places all at once and finally, through some miracle of telepathy, they lifted from her shoulders. Desire blazed through her as she anticipated where they would next settle.
When he abandoned her mouth, she moaned in protest, instinctively tightening her arms, confusion and residual sensations of pleasure making her slow to register that no longer was she being embraced but pushed away. But when she opened her eyes the words of puzzlement she’d formed in her mind died a shameful death before they ever left her lips.
‘Let go, K.C..’
It wasn’t the tone of the command that secured Kirrily’s immediate obedience but the look of consummate disgust on Ryan’s face; it chilled her as effectively as an Antarctic wind.
‘You might think practice makes perfect, K.C., but I’m not into training apprentices. I like my women old enough to know where they were when Elvis died.’
A thousand witty comebacks surfaced in her brain, but Kirrily couldn’t voice one of them. All she could do was stare at the man whose breathing was as ragged as her own but whose eyes looked as if they were made from ice. She wanted to fly at him and punch him until her hands bled. She wanted to rage at him with the force of a hundred cyclones and still, more than anything else, she wanted to know what it would be like to have him make love to her, to have him so deep inside her that all she felt was him.
Given what he’d just said, the realisation of how she felt should have sickened her, but instead it lifted her body temperature to a level that on the plus side at least gave her the motivation to salvage her pride.
‘You started that, Ryan, so don’t blame me! And, furthermore, maybe it’s about time you did start an apprenticeship scheme,’ she said, pleased to see that the suggestion startled him. ‘After all, given your supposed lay average of six point two five per week, you must’ve just about exhausted the supply of women old enough to remember what they were doing on August the sixteenth, 1977!’
‘I was joking about the condoms and you know it!’ he snapped.
‘Ah, so it’s OK for you to joke about sex, but not me, huh? Well, you can take your double standards, Ryan Talbot, and shove them!’
The familiar sound of Jayne’s car coming into the drive told Ryan that K.C. was home—an hour later than she should have been.
Cursing, he bench-pressed the weight above his head for the twelfth time, held it longer than he should have, then, gritting his teeth against the ache in his arms, settled it back on the rack above him. He’d acted like an A-grade jerk, not just in kissing her but in the pathetic way he’d carried on afterwards. But what made him feel even worse was that it was only his ‘post kiss’ behaviour he felt any genuine regret for, not the kiss itself! All day he’d caught himself replaying the scene in his mind and speculating on the possibilities of what would have happened had he not ended it.
‘Nice job, Talbot!’ he muttered, once again hoisting the weight. ‘Don’t learn from your…mistakes…embellish the-em with worse…ones!’
Clang!
As the weight dropped into its rack Ryan let his arms flop over the sides of the bench he was lying on. He was exhausted, physically wrung out beyond anything he’d ever felt before, and still he didn’t trust himself to walk into the same room as K.C. and not pull her into his arms with the sole purpose of ravishing her. So much for the theory of out of sight, out of mind!
When he’d realised that K.C. was determined to go to the office, he’d decided to work at home so that he could concentrate on the job he was costing and have a final figure to give to the builder. It had been a good plan, except the only figure his brain had been capable of arriving at had been K.C.’s! After two hours of fruitlessly berating his calculator, he’d gone out with the intention of taking a short run to clear his head of her image and his conscience of guilt. Except the jog had ended up as a marathon before he’d admitted the futility of it and resorted to weights. Not that the last four hours in his room working out with those had been much help either. At this rate, if he didn’t get his feelings for K.C. under some kind of control it’d be a three-way tie as to what claimed his life first: libido overload, guilt, or heart failure due to extreme physical penance.
He sighed. He owed her an apology. Hell, he owed her his head on a platter with his heart on a stake as an entrée!
‘C’mon, Talbot,’ he grumbled, getting to his feet. ‘It’s time to bite the bullet and face the lady.’
Ah! Now there was something he hadn’t considered…K.C. might be armed, which would present a fourth possible cause of his demise—justifiable homicide!
Kirrily let herself into the house and headed directly for the kitchen. Having slept through breakfast, worked through lunch and kept her focus firmly on invoices all afternoon, she was in immediate, desperate need of both food and caffeine.
Sleep was another commodity she’d have welcomed with open arms, along with an assurance that she’d not have to set eyes on Ryan Talbot until the next life or beyond. Regrettably she was staying in the same house as he was, which was why she’d be going out tonight rather than immediately crawling into her bed. There was no way she was going to spend any more time in his presence than was absolutely unavoidable. In theory that was a sound plan; in reality it stank: he was in the kitchen!
The criminal returns to the scene of the crime, was her first thought The second was that he’d obviously been working out and that the sheen of perspiration coating his muscles and making his singlet cling to him made him look a
s sexy as all get out Remembering her decision to limit herself to one humiliating experience per day, she turned to leave.
‘K.C….wait’
‘I don’t have time. I—’
‘Make time. Please… This won’t take long.’
She knew that if she kept walking he’d interpret it as running away. Which would be right. One thing she couldn’t stand was proving Ryan Talbot right! Fixing a bored expression on her face, she slowly turned, determined to brazen out whatever he had planned.
‘K.C., I’m sorry about what happened this morning. I acted like a complete ass. I was way out of line kissing you and…let’s be frank, a total bastard for saying what I did afterwards.’
‘Look, Ryan, there’s no need to beat yourself up over it. It just happened; let’s leave it at that.’
‘Yeah, but the trouble is, it shouldn’t have happened.
Not like that—not at all!’ he amended hastily when K.C.’s head jerked up. ‘Ryan,’ she said, ‘I have been kissed before.’
‘I know that,’ he said curtly. ‘As you pointed out last night, it was me who saved you from Mr Nichols’ amorous advances.’
‘If you expect my belated thanks, forget it! That was probably the most embarrassing moment of my life.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Not only did you split Rick’s lip open and scar him for life but for two years no guy was game enough to speak to me, much less make a pass!’
Ryan struggled with a grin. ‘Yeah? Well, be grateful it was me and not your father chaperoning that party or they’d still be scraping Nichols’ oversexed hide off the road!’ The look K.C. gave him was filled with anything but gratitude. Damn! The last thing he wanted was to get into another fight with her. ‘Look,’ he said, determined to change the subject, ‘how about I order some Chinese for dinner and—?’
‘Thanks anyway, but I’m going out for dinner.’
