Lucy King – The Crown Affair (страница 5)

Bully for him. ‘I’m so glad,’ she said witheringly, hauling her camera back on her shoulder and shooting him a cool glance. ‘So why would you think I was a journalist?’

‘Experience of binoculars.’

‘Are you really that newsworthy?’

His mouth twisted into a wry smile. ‘I have been.’

She racked her brains to place his face, but drew a blank. He probably dated supermodels or something. Poor old supermodels. ‘Who are you?’

‘Ever read the papers?’

Laura shook her head. ‘Not often. Too much doom and gloom. Unless you’ve appeared in Architecture Tomorrow, I’m unlikely to have heard of you.’ So there.

‘How refreshing.’

Now she was naïve as well as everything else? Wow, he really knew how to make women feel special.

‘How patronising,’ she fired back, before she could remind herself that he still held all the cards and she was supposed to be being charming and polite.

Matt didn’t say anything. Just looked at her steadily with those dark eyes of his until the urge to kick herself became almost impossible to contain.

Rats. Had she gone too far? Been too demanding, and blown it? Laura caught her lip and frowned. Damn, that assertiveness course had a lot to answer for.

Then the glimmer of a smile hovered at his mouth and the tension that she hadn’t realised she’d been feeling fled her body. ‘It appears I owe you an apology.’

Phew. Thank God for that. She hadn’t blown it. ‘It appears you owe me an apology?’ she said, her eyebrows lifting a fraction as she gave him a broad smile.

He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘More than one probably. You’ll have to bear with me, though, I’m a little rusty.’

That was the understatement of the century. ‘An apology would be good,’ Laura said, deciding to capitalise on his obvious unease and press home her advantage. ‘An invitation to take a look around your house would be better.’

Invite her to take a look round his house?

The faint smile tugging at Matt’s lips vanished.

That was absolutely out of the question.

Apart from the invasion of his privacy, with his judgement so skewed and his behaviour so unpredictable, who knew what might happen once she was inside his house and within stumbling distance of a bed?

Matt frowned as his mind raced. He was usually so measured. So careful in his decisions. He never went off the rails. Never made mistakes. So why now?

Maybe the memories the house held were more unsettling than he’d thought. Maybe the stress of the past six months had got too much. Maybe he was cracking up.

Because why else would he have leapt to the wrong conclusion and rushed over here? Why else would he have completely overreacted and lashed out at her? And why else would he be finding it so hard to keep his hands off her?

The flush of colour in her cheeks, the flashing of her eyes and the heaving of her breasts made him want to behave in the kind of prehistoric way that he doubted would go down well with a twenty-first-century woman. Even when he’d thought she was a journalist and had been burning with fury, he’d still wanted to throw her over his shoulder and cart her off to the nearest bedroom.

Which was never going to happen. Even if he’d wanted to explore the attraction that sizzled between them he didn’t have the time and really didn’t need the complication.

Ignoring the sliver of regret that pierced his chest, Matt set his jaw and pulled himself together. A tower of strength, that was him. Rock hard. Implacable.

Above all, he was absolutely not cracking up and it was about time he proved it. Giving Laura a polite smile, he hardened his heart. ‘I’m afraid that’s completely out of the question.’

Oh.

Laura’s smile faded and her shoulders sagged a little at Matt’s flatly delivered response. A flood of disappointment washed through her and a lump formed in her throat. Dammit, she could have sworn he’d been about to agree to her request. She’d thought she’d had it so in the bag.

But as she stared up at him, taking in the rigid expression on his face and his unyielding stance, it was blindingly obvious that Matt had made his decision, and it was equally clear that nothing she said would make him change his mind. He looked unforgiving, unbending and as immovable as granite.

She swallowed back the lump and inwardly shrugged. Ah, well. She’d tried. That was the main thing.

She’d given it her best shot and been defeated. Matt clearly valued his privacy and definitely wanted to be left alone. He’d made his decision and she’d respect that. So her curiosity would remain unsatisfied, but that didn’t matter. There were plenty of other equally interesting houses she could visit if she felt like it. It really was no big deal.

She was on the point of turning on her heel and leaving when her conscience suddenly decided to wake up and demand to know what the hell she thought she was doing.

Hang on a minute. She froze as her head began to pound. Was she really going to give in just like that? After all she’d been through? After all the self-analysis she’d done? After all the money and energy she’d spent on that course?

What was she? A wimp or a warrior?

Feeling determination begin to course through her, Laura stiffened her resolve. Hadn’t she vowed to banish her inner wimp and embrace her inner warrior?

She had. At length. So no way was she going to let the wimp win.

This wasn’t about the house any more. This was about her, and the promise she’d made to herself to shuck off the old Laura and embrace the new.

Matt might be standing there like Everest, but he was still a man, flesh and blood just like anyone else. Well, not quite like anyone else, she thought, letting her gaze roam over him and feeling her temperature rocket, but he was bound to have an Achilles heel somewhere. All she had to do was find it.

She’d get what she came for. By whatever means possible.

Why wasn’t she spinning on her heel and going?

Matt watched the emotions play across Laura’s face and his frown deepened. He’d made it perfectly clear his answer was no, so why was she still hovering there?

More to the point, why was he still hovering there? Just because she was running her gaze over him didn’t mean he had to stay until she’d finished, did it?

‘Oh,’ she said, her teeth catching on her lower lip as she finally lifted her face and batted her eyelids up at him.

Oh, no, Matt thought, steeling himself against the nugget of guilt that suddenly started tugging at his conscience. He was not going to be swayed by the disappointment swimming in the big blue eyes shimmering up at him. Or distracted by the wet red pout of her mouth.

No way. The guilt and the desire could get lost. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and dragged them through his hair. Dammit, this was precisely why he should have been the one to leave.

‘Please,’ she said, looking up at him from beneath her lashes, the pout curving into an enticing smile.

Matt’s gaze dropped to her mouth before he could stop it and he was thwacked by a vision of those lips roaming over his body, her hair fanning out and tickling his skin as she moved down him, her hands stroking everywhere. At the force of the desire that slammed through him his mouth went dry and his head swam.

And for the life of him he couldn’t remember why letting her loose in his house was a bad idea.

‘OK,’ he heard himself say. ‘Sure. Why not?’

‘Great,’ she said, the disappointment vanishing from her eyes and her smile switching from enticing to strangely triumphant. ‘Lead the way.’

Why not? Why not? God. He was definitely cracking up. Wishing he could give himself a good slap, Matt muttered a ‘Follow me,’ turned on his heel and marched off.

CHAPTER THREE

WELL, that had been something of a surprise, thought Laura, resisting the urge to punch the air and setting off in Matt’s wake instead. Having never employed such wily tactics before, she hadn’t really expected the pout and the eyelash flutter to work. But while she might be faintly stunned that they had, Matt, judging by the merciless pace he set as he stalked along the path, was fuming.

By the time they reached the front door of the house Laura was hot, panting and, without doubt, hideously red in the face. Matt, on the other hand, hadn’t broken a sweat.

If she was being brutally honest, her current breathlessness wasn’t entirely due to the unexpected exercise. She’d trotted along behind him, her gaze fixed to his lithe muscular frame as if magnetised, and her body had begun to hum with something other than adrenalin. The easy way he moved and the purposefulness of his stride had her thinking about all the other things he might do purposefully and easily, and her head had gone all fuzzy. She’d scraped her hair back into a messy ponytail in the faint hope it might cool her down but it hadn’t worked.

‘Where would you like to start?’ he snapped, dropping his keys onto the console table and whipping round to face her.

With the removal of his T-shirt ideally, Laura decided, totally distracted by the rippling muscles in his forearms as he crossed them over his chest. First she’d slide her hands beneath it and draw it over his head. Once she’d dealt with that she’d run her hands down his torso and tackle his belt. Then she’d undo the buttons of his jeans, hook her hands over the waistband and ease them down over his hips before pushing him down onto a deep soft sofa that was bound to be lurking somewhere around the place. And then she’d sink to her knees and—