into tears, but unfortunately crying was another thing she’d given up, along with believing in fate and letting her emotions completely get the better of her.
Well, she’d certainly slipped up there. Big style. Her emotions had just had a field day, and all because of a dark-eyed glance from a good-looking man.
Except it hadn’t been just a glance, had it? It had been an open challenge, a direct invitation, an intimate caress. Remembering it now made the skin on the back of her neck tingle as every tiny hair rose and shivered. She thought of those eyes, the measuring way they had lingered on her face, assessing her, then their speculative swoop over her body. She had felt more alive in that moment than in all the dead days of the past five empty months put together.
Life had felt full of excitement and possibility again.
She squeezed her eyes tight shut, trying to summon up that damned white sandy beach as a vortex of unwelcome emotion opened up in front of her. Instead she saw dark eyes, a full, beautiful mouth. With a harsh sound of frustration she opened up her eyes again.
The image remained. Only now it was even more disturbing for being real.
‘Don’t tell me—you’re trying to remember where you left this?’
The man from the auction room was standing a few feet away from her, a smile of sardonic amusement on his face, her jacket held in his outstretched hand. Bella’s cheeks flamed. How long had he been watching her standing in the middle of the street with her eyes closed? He must think she was a complete headcase.
Which was something she usually preferred to conceal…
Hiding her embarrassment behind a screen of chilly hauteur, she snatched the jacket. ‘I see. Not content with taking my painting, you also want my clothes now?’
It was a ridiculous thing to say. Ridiculous. What Miles would call ‘a Bella classic’. The man laughed.
‘That depends. Were you thinking of taking anything else off?’
Hot, treacherous, forbidden desire instantly shot through the shame, dissolving the carefully assembled shreds of Bella’s self-control like Cinderella’s dress on the stroke of midnight. She opened her mouth to make a stinging retort, but for a split second found herself speechless with resentment that he had managed so effortlessly to disturb her careful equilibrium. And then, of course, sense reasserted itself and she knew that any kind of emotional response would be a mistake.
Waves… White sandy beach…
With a huge effort she swallowed back the tide of wonderful, terrible words that threatened to flood from her and hid them behind a small, cold smile.
‘Of course not. Thank you for picking it up. Now, if you don’t mind I’m late and I have to hurry…’
Without looking up at him again she made to turn and walk away, wanting only to distance herself physically from the disturbing, charismatic pull of his presence and reassemble her defences, regain her comfortable numbness. But as she did so he reached out and took her arm, and the sensation of his fingers against her bare skin was like an electric shock. It ricocheted through her, making her flinch.
‘Wait,’ he said quietly. ‘You said “my painting”. In what way is that painting yours?’
Rigid with discomfort, his fingers still clasped around her arm, Bella looked down. ‘It isn’t,’ she said stiffly. ‘I’m sorry, that was a stupid thing to say. The painting’s yours now. I know that.’
‘But you’re not happy about it, are you?’
She didn’t reply. His voice was very low and, even standing in the middle of the street with traffic roaring past them along Piccadilly, disturbingly intimate. He shifted his position slightly, so that he was standing right in front of her, and she could see nothing but the solid wall of his chest. It was hard. Broad. Real. Very real. His fingers were still clasped around her arm; not too tightly, but she felt powerless to break away.
‘You wanted it very much,’ he said quietly. It was a statement, not a question.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Why?’
‘It’s…nice,’ Bella said tonelessly, thinking of calm, neutral things. Not thinking of his mouth, or how it would feel to kiss it.
‘Nice?’ Letting go of her arm, he took a step backwards and made a sharp expression of disgust. ‘The hell it is.’
‘I beg your pardon?
Olivier looked at her narrowly. Close up she had the kind of flawless, upmarket beauty that left him cold: short, glossy hair the colour of cherished old mahogany, skin like vanilla ice cream. Earlier on, in the auction room, he had thought he sensed a rawness and a passion in her which intrigued and excited him, but now he saw he’d been wrong. There was nothing but good breeding and good bones.
‘You don’t have to be an art expert to see that it’s rubbish,’ he said brutally. ‘It’s not worth a quarter of the hugely inflated price I just paid for it.’
That seemed to ignite some spark within her again. ‘Then why did you bother?’ she flared. ‘Whycouldn’tyoujust let me have it? I’m not remotely interested in what it’s worth or how collectable it is. I wanted it for reasons that have nothing to do with money.’
‘Meaning?’
Her chin rose an inch. ‘My grandmother grew up in the house in the picture. That’s why I wanted it.’
The sky had darkened, and a warm breeze shivered through the leaves of the trees in the park opposite as the first drops of rain splashed onto the hot pavement. Everything was suddenly very still, as if the regular spin of the world had faltered for a second or two. Olivier almost wanted to reach out to hold on to something to steady himself as for the briefest moment the iron self-control, the bedrock of his being, shivered and shifted.
He took a slow breath in and summoned a bland smile to his stiff face. It felt like ice cracking on a frozen lake.
‘Really? And your name is…?
‘Bella. Bella Lawrence.’
Lawrence. Hearing the name was like a shot of adrenalin: painful, sickening, but exhilarating. He gritted his teeth, scrutinizing her. ‘Well, Bella, what a…coincidence that you found a picture of it. You must have been thrilled.’
If she noticed the acid in his tone she didn’t react. Nothing disturbed the blankness of that porcelain-pretty face. ‘Yes,’ she said sweetly, ‘particularly since it’s her birthday tomorrow and it would have been a perfect present.’ She flashed him a saccharine smile. ‘Obviously I didn’t bargain on some millionaire city boy coming in at the last minute and paying silly money for it, so I’ll just have to think again.’
Millionaire city boy? She’d underestimated him considerably. And because she was a Lawrence that stung.
She turned to go, but he had no intention of letting her disappear yet.
‘What makes you think I’m a millionaire city boy?’
He
