of party girl who allowed herself to be picked up by men like him, then he was in for a disappointment.
‘Wouldn’t that be rather rude to Susan and Leo?’ she retorted critically.
‘Are they our host and hostess?’ he asked with an uninterested glance in their direction as they stood further down the hallway greeting yet more guests. ‘I don’t know them and they don’t know me; why should it bother me what they think?’
Why, indeed? In fact, from what she had heard of this man, he tended to be a law unto himself, was reputed to be an uncompromising film director, an inflexible head of his family of two younger brothers and a sister, his relationships with women, be they beautiful actresses or otherwise, always short-lived.
In fact, he wasn’t Jinx’s type at all. If she had a type. It had been so long since there had been anyone in her life in a romantic way that she had forgotten!
She gave a shrug of slender shoulders. ‘Because they were gracious enough to extend their hospitality to you on very short notice might be one way of looking at it, don’t you think?’ she rebuked.
He gave a mocking inclination of his head. ‘I stand corrected,’ he drawled, grey eyes warm as he smiled down at her.
That genuine smile, when it came, was well worth waiting for. In fact, Jinx felt slightly breathless and not a little shaky at the knees. Not a very sensible response given the circumstances!
‘Good,’ she bit out with more force than she had intended, deliberately turning away from him as she took a step back, once again widening the distance between them. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, Mr Prince—’ She broke off abruptly as he reached out a hand to lightly grasp her arm, his fingers long and strong, their warmth seeming to penetrate her silky skin.
‘You obviously know my name, but I don’t know yours,’ he said huskily as she looked up at him enquiringly.
Jinx felt shaken by the effect of his touch, a surge like electricity having coursed through her. Her breathing suddenly became shallow and uneven, and her eyes widened with surprise at her own response.
Nik Prince tilted his head to one side. ‘Let’s see…You don’t look like a Joan. Or a Cynthia. Or a—’
‘Tell me, does this chat-up line usually work?’ Jinx cut in, having finally come to her senses enough to know that this man was dangerous—with a capital D!
Nik Prince didn’t look too put out by her mockery; in fact, he was standing far too close again, those grey eyes gleaming with laughter. ‘Believe it or not, I don’t usually need a chat-up line.’
Oh, she believed it, all right. She was sure this man usually had women lining up to be with him rather than his having to pursue them. ‘Perhaps that’s as well,’ she told him dryly.
Grey eyes warmed as he smiled his appreciation of her deliberate put-down. ‘You’ll have to excuse me; it’s been a while,’ he conceded wryly.
Jinx wasn’t in the least interested in how long it had been. ‘If you wouldn’t mind releasing my arm…?’ she prompted, having made several unsuccessful attempts to do so herself.
‘But I do mind,’ he murmured throatily, his thumb moving in a rhythmic caress against her inner wrist now.
‘But so do I,’ she snapped. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me…? I must just go over and say hello to Susan’s parents.’ Thank goodness she had just spotted their familiar faces across the room.
Nik Prince moved his hand, but only to take a proprietorial hold of her elbow instead. ‘How about you introduce me? I can say hello to them too, and then I’ll finally know your name.’
She met his gaze unblinkingly. ‘My name is Juliet.’
His eyes widened momentarily, as if that wasn’t quite what he had expected to hear—as, indeed, it probably wasn’t!—and then his considerable acting skills took over and he gave an acknowledging inclination of his head. ‘Now that’s more like it.’
‘That hardly makes you my Romeo, Mr Prince.’
‘Pity,’ he drawled. ‘And it’s Nik.’
‘Nik,’ she accepted shortly.
‘Okay.’ He smiled his satisfaction with her compliance. ‘And what do you do, Juliet?’
‘Do?’ she delayed warily.
‘Careerwise. Or have I committed some sort of social gaffe and you don’t do anything?’
The amusement in his tone annoyed her intensely. ‘What I do, Mr—Nik,’ she corrected irritably as he gave her a reproving look, ‘is teach. History. At Cambridge University.’ She tried to keep that slight tone of pride out of her voice when she said the latter, knowing she had failed miserably as his firmly sculptured mouth twisted mockingly. ‘Although I’m in the middle of taking a year’s sabbatical at the moment,’ she enlarged.
‘And does that make you a Dr Something?’
‘It does. Now if you will excuse me? I know I may have arrived on my own this evening, but that really doesn’t mean that I am on my own,’ she pointed out.
‘Well, of course you aren’t—I’m here now.’
Jinx gave him an exasperated frown. ‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it!’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes,’ she easily dismissed his too-innocent expression.
‘I see.’ He glanced around the room. ‘And which one of the twenty or so men here tonight is going to come over and claim you?’
Jinx felt the colour warm her cheeks. No one was going to ‘come over and claim her’, because at twenty-eight she was single, had never been married, and probably never would be.
She straightened her shoulders, at the same time shrugging off his hand under her elbow. ‘I really don’t think that is any of your concern, Mr Prince,’ she told him quietly, stepping completely away from him now as she turned and walked across the room.
But she was totally aware, with every step that she took, that Nik Prince was watching the sensuous sway of her hips!
* * *
Nik stood and watched the redhead’s departure with narrowed, enigmatic eyes.
Damn. He hadn’t made too good a job of that, now had he? He really must be rusty when it came to the art of seduction. Because Juliet ‘Jinx’ Nixon certainly hadn’t been seduced!
He’d had to wait days for the man he had hired to watch the post office box to confirm that a girl came to collect the mail at twelve-thirty every day. Nik had then taken over himself, only to realize, on closer inspection, when she had arrived, that she wasn’t a girl at all, just a very petite woman. The denims, tee shirt and baseball cap she’d worn had served to disguise her age. Deliberately so? He had thought so.
In fact he’d been totally convinced of it when she’d gone outside to the adjacent car park, unlocked a Volkswagen Golf, and thrown her mail in the
