told you, my being here is a mistake—’
‘Dressed like that? I don’t think so,’ he said with that same awful, quiet certainty. ‘You came here to see me, didn’t you? And you came in the persona of Eve, because Eve isn’t as vulnerable as Regan.’
She whirled around, her back flat against the barrier to her freedom. ‘What do you know?’ she scorned proudly.
But his eyes weren’t gloating or triumphant, they were beautifully solemn. ‘About you? Not enough, it seems. About me? Not as much as I thought I did. I thought I had everything under control, including myself. I was wrong. Quite spectacularly wrong.’
He approached her soft-footed, holding her captive with that hypnotic gaze. ‘By the way, you might be interested to learn that I’m not marrying Carolyn.’
‘I know, I saw her this morning—’ She broke off, biting her lip as she saw his eyes light up at the nugget of information. Now he was really locking himself into the mindsetthat she had come rushing over here to grovel for his attention.
‘I’m a cynical swine,’ he continued, on his original course. ‘Experience has taught me that it’s safer to expect the worst of people instead of trusting to the best—’
‘Is this an apology?’ Regan cut him off stonily. All she could think was: He didn’t invite you here. He thought she had come crawling back to him.
He met her aggression with a soft answer. ‘Oh, I think you’ll find it’s much more than that. Won’t you come in and sit down? You may as well accept that I have no intention of unlocking that door—even if I did know where Pierre kept his keys.’
He held out his hand again, but she ignored it as she stalked past him down the stairs. He allowed her to evade him until they reached the level of the sunken lounge, then his fingers curled around her elbow as he turned her to face him.
She tried to jerk it away. ‘Don’t touch me!’
‘I can’t help it,’ he said, cupping her other elbow and drawing her towards him. ‘It’s a compulsion. Since the first time I met you I can’t be near you without wanting to have my hands on you. You churn me up, and in the beginning I wasn’t sure I liked that; I wasn’t prepared for it—it interfered with my plans. I wanted to be able to push what I felt for you aside until I was ready to deal with it. But do you know what I’ve found that I don’t like even more, Regan…?’
What I feel for you? She shook her head, dazed with feverish apprehension, her eyes huge in her face, unable to believe that this was real and not just a figment of her reckless imagination.
‘I don’t like you being away from me. I don’t like not having you around to churn me up—to intrigue me, infuriate me, comfort me, excite me and, yes—to enrage me.
Even when I’m furious with you I still want you near me…’
She began to tremble and he eased himself into contact, his trousers brushing her legs. ‘I don’t like knowing that I hurt you. That I prated on about family responsibility and honour and then failed to respect that you felt a duty to protect yours. I’m so used to people expecting me to handle their problems for them that I didn’t know how to act when I ran up against someone who was so determined not to demand anything of me. I should have admired you for having the courage of your convictions and for your stubborn loyalty. Instead I was furious that you’d continued to squander it on that crooked bastard you married rather than transferring it to me, even though I’d done nothing to earn it! I knew I couldn’t afford to make another mistake with you, so I’ve spent the last few days racking my brains to think of a logical reason I might use to persuade you to see me again.’
His fingers tightened and his voice roughened. ‘But it isn’t logic you want from me, is it, Regan? You can’t imagine how I felt when I saw you just now, when I realised that you’d been willing to sacrifice your pride to reach out to me, even after the contemptible way I treated you, that your desire to be with me was so strong that it conquered all your fears—’
‘Don’t!’ she choked, her fierce elation tempered by the knowledge she was a fraud.
His tender smile was a kiss upon her sight. ‘You’re going to stop me now? When I’m humbling myself for you?’
‘It’s not necessary—’
‘But it is. For me, it is. You’ve done your bit, now it’s my turn to do the risking.’
Much as she longed to let him do just that, she had to put him right before he went any further! ‘Joshua—’
She turned her head, searching for the right words, and suddenly caught sight of the frozen picture on the bigscreen television behind him. ‘What’s that?’
Joshua let her go and quickly scooped up the video remote control from the arm of a chair, pointing it at the machine.
‘Wait a minute.’ Regan snatched it out of his hand as she looked at the freeze-frame. ‘That’s me!’
She moved around for a better look and swallowed a fuzzy feeling in her throat as she pressed the ‘pause’ button and her screen self began to move. ‘That’s the security video from the night I was here!’ she whispered as she watched herself tentatively step out of the apartment building lift.
Joshua sighed. ‘It’s the only picture I have of you,’ he said simply, and her eyes stung as he turned his brooding gaze back at the screen. ‘You look a little nervous here, don’t you?’ he murmured. ‘I’ve watched it over and over, and I definitely think the lady is having some second thoughts, but look there—see—she squares her shoulders and decides: What the hell! I’m going to go for it…’
He was watching the screen, but Regan was watching his softened face. She imagined him sitting here all alone, surrounded by every luxury money could buy, replaying those same few seconds of videotape over and over again, studying her every move and trying to analyse her thoughts, and her heart surrendered itself for ever into his keeping.
‘Oh, Josh…’ She wrapped her arms around him, wanting to protect him from ever being lonely again. Whatever he felt for her, she loved him enough for the both of them.
‘Now you know how I recognised Ryan had a crush on you,’ he said wryly, tipping her face up to meet his. ‘I felt the same way—only mine was the fully-fledged adult version. After that first night I was going to find out who you really were, and make arrangements to see you again,’ he confessed. ‘But then Carolyn called and events overtook me. But you still haunted the back of my mind. So much so that I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw you out the window at Hazel’s.’
She told him about Ryan and the tree, and he laughed. ‘No wonder he took to you so quickly. Hide-and-go-seek used to be one of his favourite games.
‘And speaking of favourite games…’ He leaned forward and whispered teasingly into her ear, ‘Are you wearing anything under that dress?’
Regan went utterly scarlet and he stilled, his eyes widening with stunned admiration as he realised the daring wickedness with which she had hoped to seduce him.
‘You’re not?’ he guessed, erupting into more, very sexy laughter as she shook her head and hid her scalding face in the
