Ким Лоренс – A Secret Seduction: A Secret Until Now / A Sinful Seduction / Secrets of a Shy Socialite (страница 18)
‘It’s not that bad.’
She slung him a gloomy look and continued to walk. ‘It is that bad if you have lights and a camera pointed at your face. There’s only so much even the best make-up and lighting can disguise.’
And even less could she disguise her growing feeling of confusion around him. Life had been simpler before she’d had any insight into the man who had for six years been the focus of her anger. Not a shiny, perfect hero—although he did have a habit of being in the right place to snatch her from the jaws of, if not death, definitely discomfort—but not, it turned out, a serial seducer. He was a man with a family and a history that had left him with his share of emotional scars and even, it seemed, the odd moral value.
Struggling to lift his eyes from the long, sinuous curves of her sleek brown body, his gaze drawn to the tiny slice of paler skin where her bikini bottom had slipped down over the angle of her hip bone, he shrugged.
‘Can they not film around your scenes?’
Angel laughed. She could not imagine that this would be the response from the team when she appeared looking this way. ‘This is an advert, not a blockbuster. I’m in all the scenes and, as they keep telling me, time is money.’
‘No, time is a luxury.’
They had reached the point where the trees thinned and the hotel came into view.
‘A luxury I don’t have.’ She expelled a deep sigh. ‘Ah, well, I’d better face the music.’ She turned to him. ‘I might not have said it. In fact, I know I didn’t, but thank you for fishing me out of the drink. I really am grateful.’
He looked down at her with an odd expression. ‘I do not want your thanks—I want this!’
Without warning, he bent his head and covered her mouth with his. A primitive thrill shot through her and she moaned into his mouth, responding to the hunger of his lips, melting against him as she was carried along on a dizzy tide of raw need. Not fighting it, not questioning, just sinking into all the warm darkness that only he seemed able to tap into and going with it. The relief...the release, it was incredible! She had stopped being the person she tried so hard to be and let herself be the person she was—with him.... Why him?
As abruptly as it had begun, it ended.
They stood there staring at each other. Angel saw wariness in his blue eyes then, with a muttered imprecation, he turned away.
She remained where she was, her eyes wide, her hand to her mouth as he stalked away back along the path they had just walked along.
AFTER HER FACE had been viewed from all angles and all light conditions by all interested parties, including the dermatologist who had been shipped in when Clive had developed a spot, it was decided that the situation was not as bad as originally feared. In three days’ time the swelling would be gone and the bruises that make-up didn’t disguise could be airbrushed away.
Three days was not long enough to fly home and see Jas, but long enough to miss her like hell. With nothing to fill her day, Angel found sheer boredom set in very quickly. Sunbathing on a beach might be many people’s idea of bliss, but Angel had never been good at sitting still doing nothing.
With no other suggestions after she had been banned from doing anything that might injure her and delay the schedule further, she ended up armed with a pair of knitting needles, a ball of bright blue wool and instructions from Clive, who assured her a child could do it. He predicted she’d be amazed at how relaxing it was so she sat beneath a palm tree and set about being creative.
Half an hour later, her teeth aching with tension, she grabbed the tangled lot and flung it across the beach. She knew she was acting like a spoiled child, if you discounted the adult expletive that accompanied the action. She knew it wasn’t the minor frustration that made her want to yell and stamp her feet, it was everything that had gone before and what was to come. Her teeth ached with the tension that was tying her body in knots. Not thinking was exhausting. If she could have rid herself of the decisions she had to make in the same way she had that damned wool—the colour reminded her of his eyes—she might have been able to enjoy a moment’s peace.
Before the voice, the prickling on the back of her neck had warned her she wasn’t alone. Even so, she flinched when he spoke.
‘It’s an instant fine for littering here.’
How long had he been watching her?
She turned her head in the direction of the mocking drawl but sat rigidly, watching as he gathered up her rejected knitting and walked back towards her. It was just her luck. Miles of beach and he had to walk along the stretch that she had chosen. Ashamed of the ache of longing that made her throat dry, she followed his progress across the sand.
Alex was in no hurry, but as he got closer her heart rate became more erratic. Pressing a hand to her chest, she lowered her gaze and trained her eyes on his bare feet. It seemed a relatively safe part of his anatomy to focus on until, unable to stop herself, she lifted her gaze up over his hair-roughened calves and muscular thighs. The khaki shorts he wore were belted low over his narrow hips and his short-sleeved shirt hung open, revealing his lean ribbed brown torso.
‘So are you here to arrest me?’ She extended her hands, wrists crossed for imaginary cuffs. ‘I’ll come quietly.’
‘Now that I find hard to believe.’ The idea of her giving up without a fight brought a grim smile to his face as he dropped her knitting needles onto her lap. ‘Actually I’m here to save you.’
The comment drew a sardonic laugh from Angel. The only thing she needed saving from was standing right there, sending her entire nervous system into a state of chaos, with his long, greyhound-lean limbs, oozing sex from every perfect pore.
‘From death by boredom.’
‘Who says I’m bored?’
He reached down and picked off a fibre of bright blue wool that clung to his shorts. He arched a sardonic brow and let the fibre blow away. ‘You’re bored.’ And unless he was totally out in his assessment, as eaten up with burning frustration as he was.
Bored...much worse, thought Angel. She was hopelessly aroused—just looking at him made her nerve endings tingle. She pressed a hand across her middle to ease the heavy dragging sensation low in her pelvis. There was no place to hide except behind the big floppy hat she wore and the sunglasses that hid her eyes from him.
She produced a scowl. ‘Isn’t that littering or are you a special case?’
His white teeth flashed. ‘I like to think so.’
She stroked a restless hand up and down her smooth calf. ‘I’m not good at sitting still.’ Catching the direction of his gaze, she stopped stroking and pushed her sunglasses back up on her nose.
The admission did not come as a surprise. She was not exactly what could be termed a restful woman: stubborn, aggressive, confrontational... As he mentally made a list of her less desirable qualities his eyes followed her hand to her face. All that was visible was her firm, rounded chin and her mouth, and there was nothing at all restful about those plump, luscious lips. An unfocused glaze drifted into his eyes as he struggled and failed to suppress the memory of those lips parting beneath his.
The silence stretched and he stood there looming over her like a statue until she could bear it no more.
‘I think you’re the one that’s bored.’ She aimed for cool and haughty but achieved something more akin to sulky.
In response he flopped down on the sand beside her, intensifying her cowardly impulse to run. His shoulder was an inch from hers. If she could have figured out a way of widening that gap without being obvious she would have.
Maybe what people said was right: that you could run but you couldn’t hide...? On the other hand you could try, at least when it came to examining your own feelings.
Angel jammed the tangled mess from her lap into the massive holdall, managing to jab one of the needles into her leg. ‘Ouch!’
‘Been for a swim?’ He could see the outline of her bikini under the thin thigh-length cover-up she wore.
‘I’m not allowed. In fact I’m banned from pretty much everything apart from breathing and I’m in everybody’s bad books.’
‘They can’t blame you for saving a kid’s life.’
‘Why not?’ she countered. ‘You did...and saving his life is a bit of an exaggeration.’ She jammed her unread paperback on top of the knitting and clicked the clasp of the big raffia bag closed.
‘Ever modest.’ And ever a temptation. He stared at her mouth, wanting to slide his tongue between those beautiful, provocative lips. The need was so strong that for the space of several heartbeats he lost track of his real objective.
She sniffed and pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose, flashing a small, tense smile. ‘That’s me...it’s just a shame I’m not the creative type.’ She nodded at the bag.
He adopted an expression of innocent surprise. ‘Really? I thought you went to art school.’
‘I didn’t finish the course—’ Her expression tensed as she flashed a suspicious look his way. ‘How did you know that?’ she demanded, whisking her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms protectively around her calves.