was young, maybe thirty; he and his wife could produce a lot more children all as enchanting as Liam. Flora, who had never been aware of any strong maternal instincts, felt a surge of envy and a deepening sense of dissatisfaction with where her life was going.
‘So am I.’
A nerve throbbed in Josh’s lean cheek. ‘That must make you all the more precious to your parents.’ His eyes were curiously intent on her face.
‘Father; my mum died five years ago.’
He touched her hand—hardly even a touch, more a brushing of her skin; the gesture seemed unpremeditated. Flora didn’t move. She continued to stare at the busy, happy child, aware all the time of an invisible web of nerve-endings she hadn’t even known existed surge to zinging life all over her body. Her skin felt so alive it hurt—pleasure bordering on pain. She found herself completely unprepared for this raw, sensual awakening.
The symptoms dissipated but didn’t vanish when his hand fell away. Way out of proportion or what? Her puffily exhaled breath turned white in the chill of the lengthening autumnal afternoon.
‘I better be going,’ she said, swallowing hard and stirring the loose ground with the toe of her casual flat shoe.
Josh noticed the replacement was just as expensive and exclusive as the one she’d worn earlier. Daddy’s indulged little girl…it didn’t work; his rage only responded sluggishly to the prod.
‘Thank you,’ she began with a frank, open smile. ‘For everything.’ If she drew this out much longer he was going to realise she felt reluctant to leave…it was quite absurd.
His mental preparations hadn’t prepared him for this. Making love to Flora Graham wasn’t something he was supposed to want to do. It was supposed to be a means to an end, a ‘close your eyes and think of revenge’ sort of situation! It was easy to exploit someone who obviously didn’t have a heart or feelings. This stupid woman didn’t only have them, she didn’t even keep them decently disguised.
This could be so easy; she’d been shaking like a nervous thoroughbred when he’d touched her. The sexual chemistry was a bonus to be exploited, he told himself. She trusted him, her father had just been publicly disgraced, her fiancé had dumped her, she was vulnerable, seduction would be a walk in the park. Telling her the truth would be a pleasure. All he had to do was go gently…
Nobody had ever accused Josh Prentice of taking the easy option!
He had a mouth which knew exactly what to do to reduce his victim to a state of helpless and humiliating cooperation. The searing onslaught of his clever tongue and lips went beyond the physical.
Flora staggered backwards when the pressure ceased and the big hands that had held her face fell away. She continued to stagger until her spine made contact with a convenient tree; the rough surface abraded her back through the thin, hooded top she now wore over a polo shirt. Breathing shallow and fast, she reached behind her to clutch the comforting solidity of the bark in what had become an almost surreal world.
‘Why,’ she asked in a voice which hovered on the brink of tremulous, ‘did you do that?’ Good, her voice was beginning to get back to normal.
Kissing her didn’t seem to have put him in a mellow frame of mind, although at the time it had seemed to her he’d been enjoying himself! She was humiliatingly aware of the ache in her taut, peaking breasts.
‘I had to see for myself if you were as stupid as you look!’ he snapped cuttingly.
The outrage on his voice made her blink. ‘And am I?’ she enquired in a dazed voice.
‘With bells on, woman!’ he raged. ‘Don’t you have any sense of self-preservation? I could have been anyone and you come out with all that airy-fairy crap about trust. Trust!’ He choked. ‘I could be Jack the bloody Ripper for all you know and all you can do is look at me as if I…’ With a snort of disgust he broke off. ‘Just because you like the way someone looks, it doesn’t make them all the things you want them to be.’ He was warning her, you couldn’t get fairer than that. Or more stupid, a quiet inner voice sighed.
Two spots of dark colour stained the soft contours of her pale cheeks. Was I really that obvious?
‘What makes you think,’ she snapped with cold precision, ‘that I like the way you look?’
He threw back his head and laughed; it was a bitter sound. ‘Like you don’t like the way I kiss?’ One dark, strongly delineated brow shot satirically upwards. ‘I noticed the way you hated that.’
Flora’s face was burning with mortification at his soft, derisive jibe—so what if she might have co-operated for a split second? ‘Most men wouldn’t be complaining,’ she said, glaring up at his hatefully handsome face. She bit her lips as she realised it was too late now to dispute the claim she’d in any way enjoyed being kissed by him. ‘But then you only kissed me out of the goodness of your heart to show me how foolishly trusting I was being…teach me a lesson…’
There was more than a grain of truth in her sarcastic jibe, but it wasn’t the entire story. He ran an exasperated hand through his dark hair. ‘I kissed you,’ he hissed in a driven voice, ‘because I wanted to.’ Abruptly he turned away from his contemplation of the trees; his deep-set eyes burned into her.
The air whooshed out of her lungs. ‘Oh!’ Her eyes searched his face. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t very flattering that he looked as if he were trying to digest something particularly bitter and unappetising.
She smiled distractedly at Liam, who opened his grubby little hand to offer her a smooth black stone. ‘Black,’ he explained patiently.
‘It’s his favourite colour,’ his father elaborated tersely.
‘Lovely, Liam.’ She smiled, pocketing the gift. ‘Thank you.’
She stiffened. Am I slow or what? How could I have forgotten a minor detail like the ring on his finger, especially when the physical proof of the wretched man’s unavailability is playing around my feet? What is wrong with me? I’ve had better kisses than that and not ended up with mush for a brain. It was a mistake to think about the kiss…stop hyperventilating, Flora.
‘Does your wife know you go around doing things because you want to?’ she enquired with icy derision. Her cold pose slipped. ‘I think you’re the most disgusting man I’ve ever met!’ she told him in a quivering voice.
The pain that swept across his face made Flora’s voice fade dramatically away. It occurred to her that she could never despise him half as much as he did himself.
‘My wife’s dead.’ His voice sounded the same way.
Flora didn’t know how to respond and he didn’t appear to expect her to.
‘I haven’t wanted to kiss a woman since…’ The harsh explanation emerged involuntarily.
Flora closed her eyes against a sudden rush of hot, emotional tears and wished he hadn’t told her that. She’d come out here to regain a bit of inner peace, not get mixed up with some moody, brooding type who was way too good-looking. He’d got a kid, and—hell!—even more unresolved angst than she had. He was the one that introduced the subject of self-preservation.
Flora’s heart ached
