had parted softly. ‘A few hours of my time to do the dolphins. Then a commitment to spend a lot more of my time working out how to do it on the cheap. Then you triggered my natural competitiveness and got me to buy in even further. And now we’re sitting on a freighter getting ready to go to another country.’
‘All because you let me into your house?’ she breathed.
‘All because you got me to commit a tiny part of myself to this quest. And the moment I made the mental shift there was no turning back.’
‘I didn’t mean to do any of that.’ Heat rushed up her cheeks.
‘Yes, you did, you just didn’t name it. No one does.’ He shrugged. ‘I’ve made my business out of naming it.’
Out of selling his soul. For top dollar.
She watched him steadily. Read him correctly. ‘So why do you still do it?’
The million-dollar question. The answer would be worth that if anyone could give it to him.
‘Because I can?’
‘Is that a good enough reason?’ she murmured. ‘Just because you can?’
‘And because someone else would if not me.’
‘Why don’t you just leave them to it?’
‘Because they won’t do it as well as me.’ He’d chosen that profession and he was good at it. The best. It was about the only validation he got these days.
Her curious green eyes dug deep. Trying to figure him out. There was more he could say, things that would only add to her confusion. But he didn’t because they would only smack of justification.
‘Anyway. That’s how it’s done. In life. In love. In everything.’
‘Not love—surely?’
‘Love isn’t special. Or different. You just have to find the in-point. Something small.’
‘That makes it sound very calculated.’
He shrugged. ‘What is seduction if not entirely calculated?’
‘We were talking about love, not seduction.’
‘What’s the difference?’ Then it hit him. ‘You don’t believe that love is something that just happens without effort?’
She frowned and colour pricked at her cheeks.
‘How can Shiloh operate on the sharp edge of the sword when it comes to every other aspect of contemporary life, yet still buy into the whole romantic love myth?’
‘You don’t believe in falling in love?’ she bristled.
‘That implies some kind of uncontrolled accident of fate. Love is a steady, intentional climb towards a goal.’
‘You speak from experience?’
‘I speak from centuries of experience.’ Other people’s experience. Myriad lives across time.
She lifted one brow. ‘And the centuries tell you that seduction and love are the same thing?’
‘They’re symbiotic. Seduction is the best part of love.’
‘Spoken like a true man,’ she grunted. ‘Somehow, I thought you’d be a devotee of the meeting of intellects being the purest form of love.’
He looked down on her. ‘You think Plato or Socrates didn’t consider mental sparring as a kind of seduction?’ She wanted to deny it—he could see it in her troubled expression.
‘Surely there has to be a physical attraction?’ she pressed.
‘It’s a bonus but not essential.’
Keen green eyes fixed on him and he could see her sharp brain taking hold exactly as it had at the dolphins. Her mind was engaged. Great, he could work with minds.
‘So how would you start a seduction of a complete stranger?’ she asked. ‘If I brought the question to Molon Labe as a business hurdle?’
He folded his arms and pretended to consider it. He didn’t need to. This stuff came so naturally to him after all this time. In fact, even before that, human nature had always been so very obvious to him. The links between people, their motivations and drivers. It had taken him years to realise the rest of the world was more or less oblivious to that.
‘You have to start with the ultimate goal. Do you want to feel desired? Get married? Be loved?’ He locked his eyes on hers. ‘Or do you just want to scratch that itch that burns like fire-ants under your skin?’
She swallowed hard, but her pupils grew bigger. ‘Let’s keep this tasteful. Let’s say married.’
So Shirley Marr blushed like a schoolgirl at the thought of sharing a room with him and wanted to be desired and loved but wasn’t saying so.
Interesting.
He thought about it for a few moments, for effect. ‘Marriage is a commitment. So your first step is to find a way to get a man to commit to the idea of commitment itself.’
‘How?’
He searched the air for ideas. A hundred came to him immediately. ‘Start a project together. Travel. Buy a puppy. Put a vegetable patch in. Get him to give you a space for your toothbrush at his place. Anything that requires him to lock a part of himself into something.’
The dark hair mounded on her head tipped as she considered that.
‘Once he’s made the mental shift towards commitment, then it’s just a series of incremental rises until he’s totally on-board with the idea of a permanent commitment.’
She stared at him. ‘No wonder you’re so cynical. If that’s what you believe people do.’
‘I’m not saying it’s conscious, necessarily.’
‘Surely being aware of it means it wouldn’t work?’
He laughed. ‘You wanted me to commit to the list and I did. Knowing what was happening didn’t stop it from working.’
She chewed her lip. Suddenly two hundred per cent of his focus centred there.
‘A demonstration, perhaps?’ he murmured.
Her eyes darkened and widened within their kohl smudges as she stared up at him warily.
‘I find myself very interested in the shape and taste of your lips,’ he said theatrically. ‘And I’m declaring that to you so you’re aware of the direction of my thoughts and so you can plan to resist when the moment comes.’
And because success will be so much more satisfying that way.
He reached down and pulled her to her feet. She rose to stand before him.
Shirley
