nearly told him the truth, but that might get the charmless Hamish into trouble. If there was the smallest chance that she could work here...and she couldn’t afford not to fight for that chance...it wouldn’t be a good idea to get on the wrong side of Blaze’s other employees. ‘I didn’t want to bother them,’ she muttered. ‘I think he was busy.’
‘I pay him to be busy at what I tell him to be busy at.’ It was chillingly cold and she suppressed a shiver. ‘Why don’t you put on the kettle? I could do with something warm...considering that the something that was warming me up appears to be out of bounds.’
‘K-kettle?’ she echoed jerkily, naïvely unbalanced by that softly added double entendre.
‘The object with the spout and the flex.’
Mercifully she espied it on the top of the fridge. She filled it although she felt more like throwing it at him. ‘W-why didn’t you tell me that I’d be working for you?’
‘I didn’t want you to turn it down without thinking it through,’ he murmured flatly. ‘You weren’t going to get a second chance. I need a housekeeper without a lot of fancy ideas and you need a job. Basically, that’s all there was to it.’
But she sensed something more. Biting at her lower lip, she glanced across at him. His shirt hung open, framing the muscular brown breadth of his chest and the curling black hair hazing his pectorals before it arrowed down over his flat stomach. In the act of staring, she caught herself up and shut her eyes on an aching sense of chagrin and confusion. Was she becoming like all the rest? Couldn’t she take her eyes off him? Or was it that much harder now since that night all those years ago when he had touched her and the whole world had vanished as though he had pressed a destruct button somewhere deep down inside her?
And if that was true, how did she feel after tonight? She did not feel equal to meeting those fiercely intelligent eyes of his. She might have believed she was dreaming, but she had responded wildly to those intimacies. She had never felt like that before, but then she hadn’t had much opportunity to experiment, she reminded herself. Maybe any experienced male could make a woman feel like that...but only if the chemistry was right.
That shook her rigid. How could she continue to deny that she found him physically attractive? She had melted in his arms. She had been electrified by his touch. And if that was so obvious to her, how much more obvious was it to him? All of a sudden, she knew she couldn’t bear to stay in this house and work for him.
‘The kettle’s boiling.’
He was so cool now. What had happened in that bed might almost have existed only in her imagination. ‘I don’t think I can stay after—’
He expelled a long, laconic sigh. ‘After what? I didn’t know you were there. I turned over and found a female body and reacted on instinct...’
Chrissy was mortified. ‘That’s s-so disgusting.’
Blaze raised a winged brow. ‘You talk like a teenage virgin, but you didn’t find Rosie under any gooseberry bush—’
‘I don’t w-want to talk about it!’ In her distress, her back was rigidly presented to him.
‘You must concede that I have some grounds for curiosity. Did you love Rosie’s father?’
She spun round. ‘No!’ she rebutted with sharp distaste and then abruptly she remembered that she was talking for her mother, not herself. Reddening, she muttered, ‘I thought I did but, when it came down to it, it was j-just an infatuation.’
‘Are you in touch with him...?’ Unusually he hesitated. ‘I mean, do you visit him?’
‘No.’
‘Are you waiting for him?’
Feeling foolish, she shook her head, refusing to look at him.
‘That would appear to bring us back to what happened between us—’
‘Leave it alone!’ she broke in fiercely.
‘Why should I?’ Blaze traded. ‘Another few minutes and I’d have had you—’
Chrissy shuddered. ‘No!’
With veiled eyes, he surveyed her appearance in the sloppy sweater that did little to conceal the slender length of her perfect legs. Tousled dark hair with brighter streaks the shade of autumn leaves cascaded round her triangular face, highlighting luminous green eyes and a wide, generous mouth. ‘You’re incredibly sexy,’ he breathed in a different tone of voice altogether, an almost predatory purr deepening his vowel sounds.
It was like being touched. With difficulty, she dredged her stunned scrutiny from him and doggedly asked, ‘D-do you take milk and sugar?’
There was a pin-dropping silence. She pretended not to notice it. He hadn’t meant what he had said; of course he hadn’t. It was just that certain dangerous boundaries had been breached between them. It was just that it was second nature to him to lapse into that incredibly physical intensity with a woman. Or maybe, having sunk low enough to touch her, even half asleep, he felt he had to justify that intimacy by exaggerating her attractions. Whatever, if she ignored it, it would go away, and sooner or later she would stop squirming with embarrassment.
‘Blaze...’ she had to prompt shakily
‘One sugar, no milk.’
The raw tension visible in her slim shoulders eased. She set a cup and saucer down about a foot from him.
‘I only bite after midnight on request,’ he said softly. ‘Join me.’
It wasn’t an invitation, it was a command. She tensed and it really sunk in then that she was utterly dependent on his goodwill. In a series of stiff movements, she made herself a coffee and sat down awkwardly at the table with him.
‘You don’t like me. Relax,’ he urged as her head jerked up in dismay. ‘It really doesn’t bother me.’
Involuntarily she meshed with those astonishingly blue eyes.
‘It does have a certain novelty value,’ he pointed out smoothly.
‘Good,’ she managed, and hurriedly smothered a yawn.
An odd slanting smile curved his expressive mouth. ‘Start worrying if the novelty value starts to pall,’ he advised.
It was three in the morning. Word games were beyond her. She propped her chin on her hand. ‘Where do I sleep?’
‘Go back upstairs. I’ll stay down here for a while.’
At the door she hesitated. ‘A while?’
He groaned impatiently. ‘Look, I refuse to knock Hamish and Floss up in the middle of the night. That’s a big bed up there. I shall lie down fully clothed on my half—’
‘You can’t!’ Chrissy was livid at the very idea.
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