she wanted? What had happened to her longheld belief that she would need to be in love before she could enjoy sex with a man? Why did she suddenly want nothing more from Ryan than his body?
Shaking her head, she began to make her way back along the hallway which would carry her to the front of the house, and the stairs.
The sound of muffled male laughter met her ears as she passed the door of the billiard room. Clearly, Uncle Bill was back and Ryan had followed Cynthia’s suggestion that they have a game of billiards. They sounded like they were enjoying themselves. Laura could see that Ryan would get along well with Uncle Bill, who was a man’s man. No doubt Ryan would know exactly how to act in her uncle’s company. He was clever that way, she could see. He had more social skills than herself, no doubt a product of running his sports-management company. She often put her foot in her mouth, whereas Ryan seemed to know exactly what to say to please everyone.
Except her, she thought with sudden mutiny. He hadn’t said what she wanted to hear down at the creek. Hadn’t done what she’d wanted him to do, either. How dared he kiss her like that and then reject her?
Okay, so he probably thought he was being cruel to be kind, not sharing her bed tonight. Clearly, he thought she was way too vulnerable a female to cope with an affair with the likes of him. Added to that was his own wariness at sleeping with people he worked with. Both reasons did show Ryan as a man of surprising character but, damn it all, couldn’t he see that he’d already gone too far? Nothing was ever going to be the same again anyway. She could not possibly show up at his office every Friday, feeling like this. So she might as well do her best to seduce him tonight and be damned with the consequences!
‘LAURA! For God’s sake!’ Ryan exclaimed as he rapped sharply on the bathroom door. ‘What’s taking you so long in there?’
He’d returned to the bedroom around six-thirty to find Laura sitting cross-legged in the middle of the four-poster bed in the corner, talking to someone on the phone. Given she was giggling, he assumed it was her girlfriend, Alison something-or-other. Nothing annoyed Ryan more than the furtiveness of females when they talked to each other on the phone. If only women could be as straightforward as men, then the world would be an easier place to live in and life wouldn’t get so damned complicated.
Laura did interrupt her conversation briefly to tell him to use the bathroom first to get ready for the dinner, so he had, all the while perversely peeved by her lack of attention to him. He should have been pleased that she’d stopped looking at him like he was her favourite dessert. And he should have been proud of himself for resisting the temptation to take advantage of the sexual frustration that she claimed she’d have to be suffering from to fancy him all of a sudden.
Instead, he’d gone about showering and shaving in quite a foul mood, even nicking himself once with his razor, which he hadn’t done for years. He’d also forgotten to take his clothes in with him, forcing him to come out of the bathroom with nothing on but a towel wrapped around his hips. Now, Ryan knew he had a good body, but what had Laura done? Nothing; not a single stare in his direction. Instead, she’d nonchalantly gathered up her clothes and sashayed past him into the bathroom without giving his bare chest a second glance.
Ryan’s considerable male ego had been severely dented, so much so that he almost decided then and there to abandon his resolve to keep his hands—and his mouth—well away from her. He spent ten gratifying minutes fantasising about what he was going to do when she emerged. First he would kiss her until she started moaning again. Then, when she had totally melted against him he would lift her up and carry her onto that incredibly sexy bed where he would show her that, even if she didn’t truly fancy him yet, she sure would soon.
Unfortunately the passage of time had a way of ruining perfectly good fantasies, and at the same time of increasing one’s level of frustration. Which was why, after Laura had been in that infernal bathroom for forty minutes, an extremely irritated Ryan started banging on the bathroom door.
‘Cynthia said to be down in the front lounge at seven-thirty for pre-dinner drinks,’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘I’m having a bit of trouble with my hair,’ she replied airily. ‘Why don’t you go down and make my apologies? I’ll join you as soon as I can.’
‘Fine,’ Ryan bit out, thinking that maybe a drink or two would soothe his ill temper.
Laura sighed with relief when she heard the bedroom door open, then close. She wasn’t really having trouble with her hair, or her make-up. She’d surprised herself by doing both very well indeed. The fact was she’d been ready for some minutes but just hadn’t been able to find the courage to leave the bathroom and face Ryan, looking the way she did in her new dress and shoes.
Which was crazy. It was what she wanted, wasn’t it—to see his eyes darken with desire for her? To drive him mad with how sexy she looked?
And she did. Oh yes, she very definitely did!
Alison had given her strict instructions over the phone as to how to present herself if she wanted to get laid that night: hair down and curled lightly around her face. Lots of dark eye-liner and mascara. The reddest of red lipsticks. And she wasn’t even to consider putting some silly pin into the neckline of the dress to hide her cleavage.
Laura had gone along with everything she had suggested and the result was wicked! She could hardly believe it was her staring back. She could also hardly believe that Alison had been so eager to have her succeed in going to bed with a man like Ryan.
When Laura had first told her what had happened so far, Alison had been genuinely shocked—not by Ryan making a pass but by his backing off.
‘I don’t understand it!’ Alison had exclaimed. ‘Not if he’s already got rid of the girlfriend. It just doesn’t make sense.’
Laura explained that he had this life rule about not dating anyone he worked with. She didn’t tell Alison about his near-disastrous fling with a client, as she felt that had been a confidential confession.
‘But you don’t want him to date you,’ Alison had shot back, exasperation in her voice. ‘You just want him to bonk you silly all night. Isn’t that right?’
‘Er … yes,’ Laura had admitted, her throat drying at the thought.
‘In that case, this is what you must do …’ At which point Alison had relayed a long list of instructions as to how Laura was to look. And to act—especially after they returned to the bedroom at the end of the evening.
Laura had been laughing over her outrageous suggestion in that regard when Ryan had walked back into the room. Suddenly, she had realised it was one thing to talk about seduction techniques over the phone and quite another to go through with them; just having him in the same room made her hyperventilate with nerves. But she knew she would only have this one chance. So she’d hurriedly shunted him off into the bathroom, putting some calming distance between herself and the object of this insanely powerful desire. Then later, when he’d emerged—wearing no more than a towel, for pity’s sake!—she’d kept her eyes rigidly averted from his breathtakingly beautiful male body and followed Alison’s advice to act cool and indifferent to his charms.
‘Your gran was right,’ Alison had said earlier. ‘Playing hard to get is the way to go. If I’m any judge at all of the male sex, then once he sees
