Rachael Thomas – Red-Hot Affairs: The Crown Affair / Craving Her Enemy's Touch / A Lone Star Love Affair (страница 6)

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—

‘Laura?’

Laura blinked and hurtled back to reality. God. She was doing it again. At the heat that rushed through her, her cheeks began to burn even more fiercely.

For the first time since she’d decided to become an architect she thanked God for the eighteenth century window tax that had bricked up thousands of windows and ultimately led to dark halls across the country. Including, to her eternal gratitude, this one.

‘Yes. Sorry.’ She blinked and swallowed and gathered her scattered wits. The house. He was talking about the house. Of course. ‘The—ah—attic, I think,’ she said. As far away from Matt and his disturbing effect on her equilibrium as possible.

‘I’ll take you to it,’ he said, heading for the stairs.

What? Alarm knotted her stomach. He was planning to accompany her? Laura shivered at the thought. With him watching her every move she’d never get anything done.

‘No,’ she blurted out.

Matt stopped, turned and stared at her in surprise. As well he might.

‘I mean, it’s fine,’ she added hastily with a quick smile. ‘I’m sure you have things to be getting on with and I should be able to find the attic. Top of the house, right?’

‘Where else?’

He stared at her, his eyes narrowing as if trying to work out if she was entirely trustworthy, and, what with the unorthodox methods she’d employed to inveigle her way inside his house, she couldn’t entirely blame him.

‘Well, quite.’ Laura swallowed hard and tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear. ‘Look, Matt,’ she said, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, ‘I really do work better alone. And I promise not to run off with the silver.’

Matt frowned and then shrugged. ‘Fine. I’ll be in the library if you need anything.’

Oh, for God’s sake, Matt thought, scowling down at the report into Sassania’s fishing quotas that he’d been trying to work on and shoving it aside. How long did getting a few photos take? The house wasn’t that big, but Laura had been up there for an hour at least. She couldn’t have found that much of architectural interest, could she?

Something banged right above his head and Matt winced. Perhaps she had. Judging by the sounds of scraping furniture and the hammering on walls that had been coming from various parts of the house, Laura was taking the whole place apart.

While part of him reluctantly admired her thoroughness and determination, another, more persistent part of him had spent the past hour wondering whether her enthusiasm and passion for her work carried over into other areas of life. Like sex.

An image of her lying on his bed, naked, her hair spilling all over his pillows, her long tanned limbs tangled in his sheets, her eyes all slumberous and inviting, slammed into his head yet again and his body stiffened painfully.

Matt shoved his hands through his hair and ground his teeth in frustration. This was ridiculous. He was a sensible rational man of thirty-three, not a hormone-ridden adolescent. So why was he finding it so hard to concentrate? Why had he spent the past ten minutes reading the same page of that damned report with still no idea of what it was about?

It hadn’t been that long since he’d had sex, had it? He cast his mind back and tried to remember the last time he’d had a woman in his bed. Was it six months ago? A year? Surely it couldn’t be longer than that, could it?

Matt frowned. Even if it was, there was no need to panic. He’d been busy. That was all. And it wasn’t as if he needed sex. He’d gone far longer without it and had survived perfectly well.

Footsteps echoed down the stairs. His blood rushed to his head and he pushed himself away from his desk and leapt to his feet. He needed to get out, before he did something really rash like bundle her back upstairs and demand she show him the architectural features of his bedroom.

He’d go and chop what was left of those logs. The release of hard physical work after spending months in stifling meeting rooms had worked earlier. It would work now. Just to be on the safe side he’d stay out there until she’d finished. If he ran out of logs, he’d fire up the lawnmower.

And there was another benefit of his strategy, he thought, identifying the sound of a camera clicking coming from the drawing room and striding across the hall. Laura could let herself out. Once he’d told her where he was going he need never lay eyes on her ever again. And then maybe, just maybe, his body would stop twitching and aching and straining, and he’d regain some sort of equilibrium.

Good. Excellent. It was a brilliant plan. With every step he took he could feel his head clearing and his sanity returning.

Until he got to the doorway. Where he stopped dead.

As he’d figured, Laura was in the drawing room. What he hadn’t allowed for was that she’d be investigating the fireplace. With her back to him, on her knees. With her legs spread and her bottom in the air.