dark, bottomless eyes. ‘You’re all in one piece,’ he said in a soft, husky growl, ‘all the appropriate bumps in the right places——’
‘István!’ she protested, knowing she must be pillar-box red by now. Her blushes had even heated through to her loins and that had never happened before. But then no other man had ever shaken her out of her comfortable, ordered world. ‘Don’t talk like that!’ she said crossly.
‘I’m trying to wake you up to the truth as gently as possible,’ he said mildly.
‘No,’ she said stubbornly. ‘You’ve got to be my brother. Stop tormenting me like this——’
They turned down the long landing and István put an arm around her shoulders. As she shrugged it off irritably, she saw a flutter of a guest’s white skirt as a door ahead shut abruptly.
‘You’re looking a little flushed,’ he crooned.
‘I’m angry,’ she seethed.
‘Anger, is it? I thought I might have reached some…soft centre, some responsive core of that gorgeous body.’
She gasped. ‘Stop it!’ she grated.
‘When I do,’ he said softly, ‘you’ll wish I were still talking.’
She stumbled. The evidence was increasingly stacked against the fact that István was her brother. ‘Don’t touch me!’ she snapped, when his warm hand steadied her. Her pulses had started a riot all of their own. Some of them had decided to throb in her throat, where he could see them. So she clenched her jaw together and tried desperately not to think of István’s beautiful, wicked mouth.
‘You’ll grind down to the gums if you don’t give your feelings some release,’ he murmured.
Her almond eyes slanted viciously at his laughing face and away again, hastily. He was too darn handsome! Too arrogant. Too…impossible! ‘I don’t think so,’ she said frostily, determined to stop him trying to dent her armour with sly insinuations and outrageous teasing. ‘For your information, there’s a core of steel all the way through me.’
‘Malleable stuff, steel,’ he ruminated, nodding towards a medieval breast-plate on the tapestry-hung wall to illustrate his words. ‘It’s strong and cold to the touch, of course. But build up a fire hot enough underneath it, and when it reaches melting point…’ His eyes glimmered. ‘Now there’s a thought!’ he exclaimed. ‘Some man could come along and mould you to any shape he wants!’
Irritated by the way he twisted things to his own purpose, she gave a derisive laugh. ‘I’m well aware that’s what you’re trying to do to all of us,’ she snapped. ‘But this time we’re wise to you. If you’ve come——’
‘Maybe I’m a reformed character, come to make my peace,’ he said quietly, with a sideways glance at her grim profile.
Her astonished glance caught his and was momentarily trapped before she summoned up enough willpower to look.away, unable to withstand the alarmingly intense message of warmth there.
She gave her head a little shake, frantic to dispel the terrible thoughts that crowded her head. Her eyes skimmed the dauntingly broad shoulders, the swell of his chest with its bunched muscles, the narrow hips
‘I ride,’ he said suddenly.
Tanya jumped, startled. ‘Should I be interested?’ she retorted guiltily.
‘You were staring at my body,’ he said, deceptively as mild as milk. ‘I thought you were wondering how I kept fit. Am I mistaken? Were you staring because you feel attracted to me?’ he suggested wickedly.
‘Of course not!’ she cried, hot and bothered by the mere idea. Questions hovered on her lips—were almost blurted out. But a fear held her back. She was afraid to learn that her parents had lived a lie, that her father in particular had betrayed his strict adherence to truth and honesty.
‘Well, then.’ He smiled and paused, still smiling. If he were a woman, she thought in exasperation, she’d call it a full Mona Lisa effort. An ‘I have plans for you’ smile. ‘As my clothes aren’t special enough to fascinate you for the prolonged assessment you were giving me, and since you strenuously deny a sexual interest, your…intent scrutiny,’ he said insolently, ‘must be because you’re wondering if I’m a fitness freak. The answer is that I indulge myself in almost every sport I can,’ he told her in a conversational tone. ‘I like to keep supple because I need strength and stamina. Perhaps I’d better not tell you what for.’
‘No. I’d rather you didn’t,’ she agreed with enough frost injected in her voice to burn peach-blossom.
Strength, suppleness, stamina. She thought of the ease with which he’d lifted her when they’d met outside the castle and then more wistfully of the occasions in the past when he’d tossed her in the air to banish her tears. He’d barely tolerated her following him on his lonely walks like a devoted puppy. Yet if ever she got stuck in a bog on the moorland or fell into the river he’d always be there, whisking her up, tending to her injuries and heaving her on his shoulder with a half-irritated, half-amused sigh and bearing her back to where her sisters played together, oblivious to her adventures.
But she’d been younger then and it was before his domination of the Evans family had begun in earnest. Which reminded her.
‘Are you here to make trouble?’ she persisted, while he jiggled a heavy iron key in the brass lock of a room labelled ‘Madách’.
‘Of course!’ he said airily, as if that went without saying. ‘Ring a few bells, expose old wounds to the air——’
‘Break a heart or two,’ she ventured apprehensively.
He paused and thought for a moment. ‘Break into one, perhaps,’ he acknowledged slowly and she felt her spine become a pillar of ice at the thought of the vulnerable Lisa and her dear, lovesick brother. ‘You’re honoured. I have a feeling this is one of the best rooms in the hotel,’ István went on in a conversational tone and opening the door, ‘because it’s named after a famous writer——’
‘Whose heart?’ she said huskily, not interested in a lecture on Hungarian notables.
There was a brief silence while he appeared to be considering his words. In placing her cases on the rack provided a raven lock of hair fell on to his high, smooth forehead. Tanya almost reached out to lift it back in an affectionate, sisterly gesture but clenched her fist instead, recognising angrily that he was deliberately spinning out his answer to torment her.
Nervously she strolled around the spacious room, pretending to be admiring the period furniture: the heavy four-poster bed with its fairy-tale stack of duvets and outsize pillows, fit for any Princess and the Pea illustration; the polished floorboards; the expensive white silk drapes at the high floor-length windows. Lavish was the only word that described it all. John’s prospects would be wonderful if it weren’t for István.
‘Whose heart?’ she repeated harshly, unable to bear the wait any longer. This was like pulling teeth!
‘That rather depends on how many bells I get to ring. Some people,’ said István in a voice so rich with sensuality that she was forced to grip the swagged bed-curtains to stop herself from turning around, ‘hide their feelings with such success that
