to come and see you this morning.’
She blinked. ‘Why?’
‘Stop changing the subject, Miranda,’ he bit out impatiently. ‘I didn’t get the impression at the dinner last Saturday evening that you and Tia were exactly friends, so what was she doing here just now? And, more to the point, why did she think she had the right to tell you not to dance at my mother’s gala?’ He frowned.
Andy avoided meeting his probing gaze. ‘It was nothing.’
‘It was most definitely something, to have reduced you to tears; you are the least weepy woman I know!’
Andy drew in a shuddering breath; how was she even supposed to think straight when she was sitting on Darius’s muscled thighs?
When her senses were all reacting to his warmth and the sensuously earthy smell of his body that was uniquely and arousingly Darius, as well as that insidious lemon and spice aroma of his aftershave?
‘Thank you—I think.’ She grimaced. ‘Look, I’ve just taken a class, and I’m feeling hot and sticky, so could we go upstairs before we continue with this conversation? That way I can shower and change before making us both some coffee.’
‘I would rather we stayed exactly where we are,’ Darius rasped.
Andy looked up at him guardedly. ‘You would?’
He nodded. ‘I have this unrelenting fantasy of making love to you in front of all these mirrors,’ he said throatily even as his arms tightened about her.
Andy’s eyes widened. ‘You do?’
‘Oh, yes!’ Darius breathed huskily.
Andy wasn’t sure she was capable of even standing up after that comment, let alone walking up the stairs to her apartment.
Darius had fantasised about making love to her in this room? Since when? An unrelenting fantasy? He had only come into the dance studio itself once before today, when he’d invited her to the charity dinner with him, so did that mean he had been fantasising about making love to her in here since then?
The heat in his gaze as he looked down at her seemed to say that he had!
Andy was suddenly aware of how little she was actually wearing, just a white leotard and tights, all of which clung to every curve of her body.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘That sounds...intriguing.’
‘It does?’
‘Um...yes...’ What was the point of her even trying to deny her response to the suggestion, when Darius must be able to feel the sudden warmth between her thighs as she sat on the muscled hardness of his lap. And he couldn’t miss that her nipples were aroused and pressed against the thin material of her leotard!
His arms tightened about her as he gave a husky laugh. ‘Does that mean you’ve forgiven me for not contacting you since last Sunday?’
‘It means I’m thinking about it,’ she came back pertly.
‘Dependent on...?’
Andy moved back slightly so that she could look at him, her heart melting at just how devastatingly handsome he looked when he smiled in that relaxed way. ‘Dependent upon whether you didn’t call me because you didn’t want to, or you didn’t call me because you wanted to but made yourself not do so.’
The moment of truth, Darius realised, wondering if he was ready for this. Wondering if he would ever be ready for this.
He had spent the past twenty years building up the emotional barriers that had protected him from allowing anyone close to him, apart from his twin, as a shield against other people, and the pain of the distance that had so suddenly sprung into existence between himself and his mother.
A distance that, this past week, while still not completely resolved, was no longer that painful mystery to him.
A distance that he had to discuss with Miranda, before he could even begin to answer any other question. Although, after overhearing part of his conversation with Xander at the hospital the previous week, perhaps some of it wouldn’t come as such a shock to her?
‘Perhaps we should go upstairs to your apartment for coffee, after all.’ He now set her lightly on her feet as he stood up, his expression deliberately non-committal as Miranda looked up at him searchingly.
Andy had no idea what to make of Darius’s behaviour: flirtatious one moment, distant and almost businesslike the next.
Disappointed as she was that he obviously no longer intended making love to her right here and right now, she regretted even more that something she had said meant that Darius was no longer relaxed and smiling.
‘Fine.’ She nodded, leading the way out of the studio, locking the front door to the building before preceding Darius up the stairs to her apartment. Still totally aware of him walking behind her. ‘Feel free to put some music on while I take a shower.’ She indicated the sound system once they were in her apartment, not meeting his gaze again before turning to go up the short staircase to her bedroom and bathroom.
‘Miranda?’
She turned, her expression guarded. ‘Yes?’
‘I— We...’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘You’re the only woman I’ve ever known who has been able to render me verbally incompetent!’ He ran a frustrated hand through the already tousled darkness of his hair.
Some of Andy’s tension left her as she grinned. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment!’
Darius gave a grimace. ‘Oh, it’s so much more than that.’
Yes, it was, Andy realised; Darius wasn’t a man who enjoyed admitting to having any sort of weakness, least of all when it came to a woman; no doubt a legacy of his mother’s reserve towards him. But she had succeeded in rendering him verbally incompetent.
‘Make yourself at home while I take a shower,’ she invited warmly as she ran lightly up the rest of the stairs to collect some clean clothes before disappearing into the bathroom.
Darius scrolled through her music selection, selecting a random album to play. He removed his jacket and tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt before commencing to pace the apartment restlessly.
Half of him wanted to go and join Miranda in the shower—if she would let him—and the more sensible half of him knew they needed to talk about several things before that was even a possibility.
Firstly, he had every intention of discovering the real reason for Tia Bellamy’s visit to Miranda. And secondly, he wanted Miranda to know all of the history, not just part of it, of the reason for the estrangement between himself and his mother, and the subsequent effect that history had, and was still having, on Xander.
What happened after that was anyone’s guess; Darius knew he was too involved, too emotionally involved, to be able to approach the subject of a possible future for himself and Miranda with any of his usual cold logic.
It was—
‘How’s
