that it was; he wasn’t so out of practice that he didn’t know when a woman was responding to him! ‘I won’t stop at kissing next time, Stephanie,’ he warned her. ‘Next time I’ll kiss and touch you until you’re so aching and wet for me that you’ll be begging me to make love to you!’
He spoke so forcefully, so graphically, that Stephanie had no trouble whatsoever in imagining them naked in bed together, skin moving on skin, their breathing ragged and their bodies entangled as they caressed and kissed each other to completion.
Just thinking of the possibility of it made Stephanie aroused all over again.
She had made her decision to stay on here when she was upstairs, well away from Jordan’s physically disturbing presence. Calmly. Coolly. But they weren’t emotions Stephanie could maintain when she was actually in his presence.
She raised her chin stubbornly to meet the mockery of his gaze head-on. ‘Just because the tabloids often scream out headlines about the “eligible and sexy Jordan Simpson” as he escorts his latest airhead somewhere, it doesn’t mean that every woman you meet is going to fall down adoringly at your feet. Or any other part of your anatomy, for that matter,’ she added scathingly.
He gave a hard smile. ‘No?’
‘No!’ Stephanie snapped as she heard the deliberate challenge in his tone.
‘Flattered as I am that you’ve bothered to read those tabloids—’
‘I didn’t say I had read them, only that I’d seen the headlines,’ she defended hotly.
He gave her a knowing look. ‘If you say so.’
‘I do!’
Jordan shrugged. ‘I’m not answerable for what the tabloids choose to print about me, Stephanie. Or to the women I’ve dated in the past.’
‘Don’t you mean currently?’ Stephanie accused. ‘That was Crista Moore who telephoned you this morning, wasn’t it?’
The name Crista really was too unusual for Jordan’s earlier caller to have been anyone else. Which meant he was probably still involved with the beautiful actress…
Which made letting him kiss her even more stupid on Stephanie’s part!
‘What if it was?’ he said.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe you should just stick to one airhead at a time!’
‘I wouldn’t put you in the airhead category, Stephanie,’ he teased.
‘We aren’t dating!’
‘We aren’t anything yet,’ Jordan accepted dryly. ‘But if you insist on staying on here we’re most definitely going to be something.’
Stephanie’s cheeks blushed hotly. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’
‘Would you like me to show you?’
‘You arrogant, overbearing, self—’
‘Sticks and stones, Stephanie…’
‘No, it’s the truth,’ she maintained forcefully. ‘You may have—may have caught me slightly off-guard this morning when you kissed me, but it won’t happen again.’
‘No?’ He moved closer to her.
Stephanie stood her ground. ‘No!’
His eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘You seem slightly—flustered…’
‘I’m getting rather annoyed, actually,’ she flared back at him.
Jordan narrowed shrewd eyes. ‘Just not annoyed enough to leave?’
‘No!’
‘Fine.’ His mouth firmed as he finally stepped away from her, making her sigh inwardly in relief. ‘Have it your own way. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
It sounded more like a threat to Stephanie than a warning.
A threat of intent.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I’M GOING back to my study to work.’ Jordan reached for his cane to stand up from the table where they had just sat in total silence eating the warming soup.
It had been an uncomfortable silence. A silence full of awareness. Mental. Emotional. But most of all physical.
Jordan still had no explanation at to why he was even attracted to the determined and difficult physiotherapist. He had never been attracted to green-eyed redheads of medium height and medium build before now. He had certainly never found argumentative women in the least appealing.
Stephanie McKinley was all those things and more.
The ‘more’ being her mulish stubbornness in refusing to leave Mulberry Hall!
Well, just because she wouldn’t leave there was no reason for Jordan to have to stay in the same room as her. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon, but you can come and get me when dinner’s ready,’ he said autocratically as Stephanie stood up to clear the table.
‘Yes, My Lord.’ She turned to give him a mocking curtsy. ‘Certainly, My Lord.’
Jordan drew in a sharp breath even as his gaze narrowed on her suspiciously. He had assumed earlier that she knew nothing about the history of the St Claire family. She had certainly given no indication when they’d talked earlier that she had connected Jordan’s family with the Dukes of Stourbridge, or that she knew he really was a lord in truth.
There was no indication of that knowledge in Stephanie’s mischievous expression now, either—only a glint of mocking laughter in those expressive green eyes to go with that curtsy she had just given him.
Jordan relaxed. ‘If I really were a lord, and this were a few hundred years ago, then I would have put you out onto the streets to starve by now for your insolence.’
She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘Then how lucky it is for me that the time of the feudal overlord is long gone.’
Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Jordan’s older brother? Lucan was no more inclined to use his title than Jordan and Gideon were, but there was still no doubting that Lucan was every bit as arrogant as their aristocratic ducal forebears were reputed to have been!
‘Yes, lucky for you,’ Jordan agreed dryly. ‘As for dinner—I believe you said that eating a healthy diet was a necessary part of my treatment?’ he reminded her.
She smiled slightly. ‘Do I take it from that comment that it’s your intention to agree to accept only the parts of that treatment which suit you?’
‘Of course.’ He looked at her down his gorgeous nose.
Stephanie had never met anyone quite like Jordan St Claire.
Never before had she wanted
