her arms around his hard, masculine body. Of laying her cheek against the warm leather that spanned his back while the bike had throbbed and vibrated like a live thing beneath them.
‘Lean when I do!’ he shouted back above the engine’s sudden roar. ‘Don’t pull against me.’
Never in a million years! the young Grace sighed inwardly, utterly enthralled, though she kept her feelings to herself for the unusually lengthy journey home.
‘You took the long way round.’ She pretended to chastise him, stepping off the bike. Her legs felt like jelly and for more reasons than just the vibration, or the speed with which he had driven the powerful machine along a particularly fast stretch of road.
Something tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘Well, they do say a girl always remembers her first time.’
Her cheeks felt as though they were on fire as she took off her helmet and handed it back to him. ‘I will. It was truly unforgettable. Thanks.’ But her voice shook at the images his comment about a girl’s first time gave rise to. What would he say, she wondered, if he knew that there never had been a first time in that most basic of respects? That she was still a virgin? Would he lose interest in her? Because she was sure there was interest there. Or would he regard her as a challenge, like a lot of the men she’d dated had, backing off when they’d realised she wasn’t an easy lay?
He was looking at the impressive security gates, and the big house with its curving drive visible behind them, but as she moved to retrieve her purchases from the pannier he said, ‘Would you like a hand carrying those in?’
Setting the electric gates in motion, she laughed, saying, ‘I don’t think that’s really necessary, do you?’ But then, impelled by something outside her usually reserved nature, she was shocked to hear herself adding provocatively, ‘Or do you?’
It was a game she had been playing with him; she knew that now—in hindsight. Now that she had the benefit of maturity on her side. But she had wanted him, so badly, even while she’d known that a relationship with a man like Seth Mason was strictly taboo.
She cringed now as she thought about her behaviour at that time. Even so, she couldn’t stop the memories from spilling over into every nook and cranny of her consciousness, no matter how much she wanted to hold them at bay.
‘Exactly what do you want from me, Grace?’
She remembered those words like they’d been spoken yesterday as, helmet removed, he’d come round to the rear of the bike and helped recover the last of her bags.
She took it from him with a hooked finger, laughing, but nervously this time. ‘Who says I want anything from you?’
He studied her long and hard, those penetrating grey eyes so disquieting that she was the first one to break eye-contact. Distinctly she remembered now how vividly blue the sky had been behind his gleaming ebony head, and how the colours of the busy Lizzies in the borders along her grandparents’ drive had dazzled her eyes almost painfully with their brilliance as she averted her gaze from his unsettling regard.
‘You know where to find me,’ he drawled, turning away from her with almost marked indifference, so that she felt deflated as she moved along the drive.
The starting up of his bike was an explosion of sound that ripped through the air and which brought her round to see only the back of his arrogant figure as he shot off like an avenging angel down the long, steep hill. The roar of his engine seemed to stamp his personality on every brick and balcony of the quiet, prestigious neighbourhood, and seemed to linger long after he had gone.
She didn’t go down to the boatyard again. She couldn’t bring herself to be so totally brazen as to let him think she was actually chasing him, even though it was torture for her not to make some feeble excuse to her grandparents and sneak down into town to see him.
In fact it was completely by accident when she met him again. With her grandparents visiting friends farther afield for a couple of days, she was out walking alone, exploring the more secluded coves along the coast.
Climbing over a jutting promontory of rocks, she clambered down onto the shingle of a small deserted beach some way from the town. Deserted, except for Seth Mason.
On the opposite side of the beach, wearing a white T-shirt and cut-off jeans, he was crouching down, his back turned to her, doing something to the lowered sail of a small wooden dinghy.
Grace’s first instinct was to turn and head quickly and quietly back in the direction she had come from, but in her haste she slipped, and it was the crunch of her sandals on the shingle as she fought for her balance that succeeded in giving her away.
He looked round, getting to his feet, while she could only stand there taking in his muscular torso beneath the straining fabric of his T-shirt and the latent strength of his powerful, hair-covered limbs.
‘Are you going to join me?’ he called across to her, sounding unsurprised to see her there, as if he had been expecting her. ‘Or are you just a vision designed to lure unsuspecting sailors into the sea?’
She laughed then, moving towards him, her awkwardness easing. ‘Like Lorelei?’
‘Yes. Like Lorelei.’ He was watching her approach with studied appreciation. ‘Have you been sent here simply to bring about my destruction?’
She laughed again, but more self-consciously this time, because his masculine gaze was moving disconcertingly over the soft gold of her shoulders above her strapless red top, travelling all the way down to her long golden legs exposed by what she suddenly considered were far-too-short white shorts. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Didn’t she have a song so sweet it could make any man lose his course?’
She wondered if he was applying that analogy to her, and knew a small thrill in guessing that he probably was.
‘And do you have one, Seth Mason?’
He turned back to the dinghy perched on its trailer, and started to hoist the sail, checking something in the rigging. With a hand shielding her eyes from the sun, Grace watched the breeze tugging at the small orange triangle.
‘Do I have a what?’
Turning her attention to the bunching muscles in those powerful arms, she said, ‘A course.’
Solid and purposeful, his work taking all of his attention, he didn’t say anything until he’d drawn the small sail down again.
‘Why,’ he enquired suddenly, turning back to her, ‘does everything you say sound like a challenge?’
She remembered being puzzled by his remark. ‘Does it?’
‘And why do you answer every question with a question?’
‘Do I?’ she’d exclaimed, and then realised what she’d said and burst out laughing.
As he laughed with her it seemed to change his whole personality from one of dark, brooding excitement to one of devastating charm.
Caught in the snare of his masculinity, she could only gaze up at his tanned and rugged features; at the amusement in those sharp, discerning eyes; at those strong, white teeth and that wide, oh, so sexy mouth. Madly she wondered how that
