silky brows.
Susie laughed, as if she had known him for years rather than merely minutes. ‘I know, I know—three’s a crowd. I guess I’ll see you later then...much later!’
Jennifer pushed at the glass which had been used to gag her as Susie scampered away. ‘Take it away! I don’t want a drink.’
Trust Jordan to have suborned her ally while she was unconscious. As a former male model, and former editor of a raunchy men’s magazine, he was no doubt used to women falling over themselves to be friendly.
There was no smile for her. Just a probing look. ‘Too bad. You need extra fluids to counteract shock—and don’t tell me you’re not shocked to see me. Drink!’
The glass clinked against her resistant teeth, forcing her head back against the arm of the couch, and, knowing his stubbornness, she took a single swallow, defiantly tiny.
‘Again,’ he insisted.
Another, even tinier sip. ‘Bully,’ she muttered, wondering if she dared spit it in his face.
‘Cheat. Gold-digger,’ he retaliated softly. ‘Thief.’
At the heavy significance placed on the last insult she almost choked on the small mouthful, the blood surging up into her face.
‘Good. You’ve got a little of your colour back,’ he said, studying her clinically. The simmering violence with which he had confronted her in the bedroom was gone, superceded by an implacable air of purpose that was even more threatening. He had taken advantage of her unconsciousness to firmly establish himself in her household, leaving her no option but to fight a rear-guard action.
Close up, his lightly tanned face revealed the imprint of thirty-three years rich with experience, fine lines fanning out from the corners of his knowing eyes and cynical curves bracketing the corners of his sensual mouth. The slight stubble softening the hard line of his jaw sparkled like gold glitter on a Christmas card, and the short, spiky tufts of deep blonde hair, sun-bleached almost white at the tips, created an improbable halo above the narrow temples. However, apart from his name, any similarity to an angel was purely illusory—no angel possessed Raphael Jordan’s decadent past!
‘More?’
He tilted the glass, ignoring her sullen resistance, and a trickle of water repelled by the compressed seam of her lips skated down from the corner of her mouth.
To her intense shock Rafe bent his head and licked the droplets off her chin before they could drip into the cowl-neck of her angora jumper.
‘Stop it!’ she gasped, wiping the back of her hand over the spot where his moist tongue had lashed her tender skin with fire. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
She gulped as he lifted his head, just enough for her to see the sexual taunting in his emerald eyes.
‘Just my husbandly duty, Mrs Jordan...’
She hated the ease with which he could disrupt her senses. From the first time Sebastian had introduced her to his son she had been deeply aware of the dangerous undercurrents, and was secretly grateful for the strained relationship between the two men which had kept their association to a minimum.
‘You said you told Susie the truth,’ she said, her voice ragged with the effort of controlling her fear.
He placed the barely touched glass on the beechwood coffee table without releasing her from his tormenting gaze. ‘Actually, she didn’t give me the chance,’ he admitted with a cool lack of remorse for the fright he had given her. ‘I told her my name and before I could say that I was looking for my father’s wife—’
‘His widow!’ It was a distinction that was vital to Jennifer’s bruised sensibilities.
He inclined his head, his eyes glinting as if her fierce correction had accorded him some kind of important victory.
‘Whatever... As soon as I said I was Raphael Jordan, she began talking as if I was your husband. She seemed so certain that your husband’s name was Rafe, and so positive that you’d be over the moon to see me that I thought it best not to argue with her romantic delusions.’
Best? He meant most useful to his own purposes!
Jennifer clenched her hands at her sides, hating the helplessness of her position but knowing she would be no match for Rafe in a physical tussle. He clearly had no intention of letting her up until she was intimidated into giving him some answers.
She would have to rely on her wits to extricate herself and somehow persuade him to leave before he encountered loose-tongued Susie again, or—God forbid—her mother!
‘It seems funny that she should get so mixed up,’ he mused perilously, ‘because she seemed otherwise a fairly intelligent and switched-on young woman. Could it be, dear stepmama, that you’ve been purposely vague about the whereabouts of your husband? Haven’t you let on that he’s no longer in the land of the living? Been keeping your widow’s mite secret from your impecunious friends and relatives?’
Her stomach roiled at his clever guess. But not clever enough!
‘Don’t call me that! And how can you be so flippant about the death of your own father? I know you two didn’t get on, but you might at least have some respect for his memory—’
‘If you’d bothered to hang around for the funeral you would have seen me paying my respects,’ he ripped at her. ‘I even shed a few tears for the stiff-necked old bastard. But don’t expect me to elevate him to sainthood just because he’s dead. He was a good doctor and a brilliant businessman, but he was a poor husband and a rotten father; his ambitions always got in the way of his relationships and he never stopped trying to force me into his own mould. So don’t preach to me about my filial duty, Stepmama—’
Worms of horror squirmed across her skin. ‘Stop calling me that!’
‘Why, isn’t that what you became when you married my father?’
‘Because it’s—it’s...’
His eyes followed the inarticulate workings of her crooked mouth.
‘Ridiculous? Distasteful?’ A lethal pause before he leaned forward and added insinuatingly, ‘Obscene?’
He was close, too frighteningly close. She steadied herself and got her tongue to shape her choppy breath into a crisp, ‘Definitely ridiculous.’
‘But technically correct. And Sebastian was always big on getting the technicalities right, wasn’t he? That’s how he was able to create such a truly unique inheritance for us to share...’
She could feel the warmth of his breath swirling around her face, causing the blood to sing in her cheeks. Hadn’t she read somewhere about a predator which breathed on its trapped prey before tearing it to pieces? The animal version of a ritual act of gloating possession...
‘I didn’t expect Sebastian to leave me anything in his will—he told me he wouldn’t,’ she said, in the desperate hope that he was referring to the money. She silently cursed Sebastian for breaking his promise. His God complex at work again. Even from the grave he couldn’t resist trying to get his own way! If he had stuck to their original agreement
