Sarah Mayberry – Romance In Paradise: Flirting with the Forbidden / Hot Island Nights / From Fling to Forever (страница 23)

‘Where did you grow up, Noah?’ Morgan asked.

Well, he’d cracked the door open... Noah sighed, thought about ducking her question, remembered that she’d shared her biggest secret with him and told himself not to be a jerk. ‘I grew up in Glasgow, in a bad part of town.’

Morgan kept her eyes on the field. ‘Did you have a tough childhood?’

‘Yeah.’

And that was all he was prepared to say. Besides, it was all such a long time ago. He was with a gorgeous girl at a fancy event and he didn’t want those memories to corrode his enjoyment of this stunning spring day.

‘So, tell me about your date for the wedding,’ he said casually.

Noah frowned as a tall, slim Spaniard in a white polo shirt and jodhpurs streaked with dirt leaned over the fence, placed his hands on Morgan’s shoulders, kissed her on both cheeks and then lightly on the mouth. Morgan laughed, patted his cheek, and conversed with him in passable Spanish. Their conversation ended with another flurry of cheek-kisses and, dammit, another brush of her mouth.

Noah resisted the urge to reach for his gun.

‘Friend of yours?’ Noah asked, unaware of the bite in his voice.

‘Juan Carlos. Playboy. Polo player. He taught me to tango,’ Morgan said in a dreamy voice.

‘That had better be all he taught you,’ Noah said in a low mutter.

Morgan’s mouth twitched. ‘A duchess never tells. Andrew—how are you?’

Kiss, kiss...flirt, flirt...

Noah looked at his water and wished he could ask for a whisky as she dived into conversation with yet another polo player who’d ambled up to greet her. She would drive any sane man to drink, Noah decided as a bead of sweat ran down his spine.

He wanted to remove his navy linen jacket but he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to raise questions about why he was wearing a sidearm to one of the most elite social events in the city. He was on constant alert at functions like these; there was no security, people came and went, and anything could happen.

Unfortunately no one was close to finding the kidnappers and the tensions at the mine remained unresolved; in fact they had just got worse, and they’d all been warned to be on high alert.

James had flown out to Colombia to try and resolve the dispute, and a posse of CFT personnel were guarding his back. That was why James wasn’t at the Polo Challenge and why Morgan would be handing out the prizes to the polo players—and no doubt kissing eight or more fit, rich, polo-playing numbskulls.

Oh, joy of joys.

Polo Boy number two walked away and Morgan pushed her glasses up into her hair and fanned her programme close to her face. ‘What were we talking about?’

‘Your date for the wedding.’

He caught the tiny wince. ‘Oh...him.’

‘Yeah, him. Want to come clean, Morgs?’ Noah asked, a smile hiking up the corner of his lips.

Morgan placed her champagne glass on a tall table and sighed. ‘I lied. I was trying to wind you up—’

‘You succeeded,’ Noah mumbled, thinking that it was the thought of her sleeping with someone else that had ignited his temper and led to the urge to kiss her, brand her, possess her. ‘So, he’s fictional?’

Morgan scuffed the grass with the tip of one of her apple-green wedges. ‘Mmm.’

Noah slowly pushed his shades up into his hair and looked down into her face, idly thinking that he loved the handful of freckles on her nose that make-up never quite seemed to cover. ‘Do you lie often?’

‘No. Only when I’m pushed beyond reason.’

‘I’m very reasonable.’ Noah protested.

‘Pfft.’ Morgan rolled her eyes.

Noah rested his forearms on the fence. ‘I’ve been thinking about something you said the other night at the art exhibition.’

‘What did I say?’

‘You said something about the cloak you’d like to drop...what did you mean by that?’

Morgan took a little while to answer. When she did her voice was softer, vulnerable. ‘Don’t we all have cloaks or armour that we drag on to protect us from the circumstances we find ourselves in? Something we do, or say, a way that we act to get us through whatever it is making us feel uncomfortable? A cloak that covers all our insecurities, the real us that we don’t want people to see?’

Noah gave her words some thought. ‘Your flirty, charming party-girl persona...that’s your cloak? The bright, bubbly, charming flirt? The real you is quieter, more introspective...dreamier.’

Morgan cocked her thumb and extended her index finger. ‘There you go. And you only know that because we’ve been living in each other’s pockets. And your implacable and remote face that discourages all conversation is yours. Your can’t-touch-me mask is supposed to discourage anyone from wanting to dig deeper, to get to know you a bit better.’

Noah couldn’t help wincing. He did do that—did keep everyone at an emotional distance.

He rubbed his hand across his face. ‘You’ve come closer than anyone—ever.’ He caught the flash of fear in her eyes, saw her take the tiniest step backwards. ‘And that makes you uncomfortable,’ he added.

‘Wary.’ Morgan looked out at the busy field. ‘We can hurt each other... No, let me rephrase that. You can hurt me...if we ever change from friends to lovers.’

‘If we change—and I’ll try not to, Morgan—you have to know that I wouldn’t be able to promise you for ever. All I can say is that I would be monogamous, that I’d treat you well as long as it lasted—be it a week or months. But at some point our paths would split and I’d be back in London, doing what I do.’

‘I know.’

‘If you want more from me than a fun time in bed then maybe we should just quit while we’re ahead. Stay as Duchess and Soldier.’ Noah folded his arms and hoped she couldn’t see how much he hoped that she didn’t choose option B. Because that would, well...suck. ‘So, what’s it to be?’

Morgan played with the emerald and diamond studs in her ears. ‘I’m probably going to regret this, but we do have unfinished business between us.’ She sent him a coy look and the humour was back in her eyes. ‘By the way, are you into threesomes?’

If he’d had anything in his mouth he would have sprayed her, or choked. As it was, he felt he had to pick his jaw up from the floor. ‘What the...? Who? What? Are you being serious?’

‘Well, by the time this situation is resolved my friend Sophie from the gallery will be sharing my bedroom. I thought I should warn you.’

Noah felt his heart slow down to a gallop as her words started to make sense. ‘Morgan, you nearly gave me a heart attack! You bought Johnno Davie’s painting?’

‘I did.’ Morgan smiled. ‘It’ll be delivered when the exhibition is over.’

They turned as someone called her name.

‘Ooh, I’m being summoned. I need to go and hand out the prizes and flirt with the players.’

Noah couldn’t help the possessive hand he put on her back, the growl in his voice. ‘Keep it to a minimum, sweetheart. Remember that I’m armed and dangerous. I’d hate to have to shoot one of them.’

Morgan touched her lips to his cheek and whispered in his ear. ‘Just to be clear, soldier, Sophie is the closest you are ever going to get to a threesome that involves me.’

He could live with that. Heck, he was happy fantasising about a ‘onesome’ with her.

* * *

A few days later Noah heard the lobby phone chime and got up from the dining table where he had been working on staff scheduling—his normal Auterlochie work hadn’t stopped, so he worked from Morgan’s dining room table or the MI conference room. He picked up the phone.

‘Hey, Patrick.’

He’d become good friends with the doormen—both ex-cops, with excellent service records—and Patrick’s voice boomed in his ear.

‘I have Miss Riley here, plus two guys carrying mannequins and stuff. Can I send them up?’

‘What? Hold on, let me take a look.’ Noah walked backed to his laptop and pulled up the live feed from the lobby. Patching into the apartment building’s security feed had been his first task when he’d moved into the apartment weeks ago. True enough, there was Riley, chatting to two young guys holding two life-size mannequins.

Why was Riley bringing mannequins up to the apartment? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He went back to the phone and thought for a minute. The situation in Colombia had descended into near anarchy and threats were flying. Hannah and Jedd were still not allowed to leave their house in the Cayman Islands. He’d spent twenty minutes on the phone with James earlier that day and they’d agreed that Morgan should curtail her social obligations. So now he had to try and keep her in the apartment as much as possible...which would be a butt-pain, because resisting the urge to haul her off to bed was now on a par with him splitting the atom.

‘Put Riley, the mannequins and the bags into the lifts and send the men home. I’ll help her unload on this side,’ Noah told Patrick, and went back to his laptop.

When the doors had closed on Riley and her plastic companions, he called to Morgan.

‘Hey, Riley will be here in twenty seconds with some life-size dolls. Why?’

‘Yay!’ Morgan said, coming from the bedroom and towel-drying her wet hair. She draped her towel over the back of the couch and Noah fought the urge to ask her to put it back in the bathroom. He was obsessively neat, courtesy of the army, and she was a slob. Her untidiness drove him nuts.