in that case. To enable you to have the capital to play with.’ Mattie pretended to muse on the conundrum of this.
Dominic gave her a long, narrowed look which she met with widely innocent eyes. ‘I’ve always had a fair amount of money at my disposal.’
‘Ah.’ Of course he would have. He was a man born into money. It sat on his shoulders like an invisible cloak. And she had wanted him to say it. Out loud. So that she could remind herself of yet another reason why she should get out of this place and fast, before his sexy face and ability to listen and smooth-talking charm got the better of her caution.
‘So…what did your parents do?’
‘Is this really relevant?’
‘It is to me.’
‘My father is in shipping.’
‘Builds them, you mean?’
‘You know exactly what I mean.’
‘My mum was a cleaner. She died ten years ago. My dad was a carpenter, except not many people seem to want handmade things these days. He lives in Bournemouth now. He still makes bits and pieces for himself, but his full-time job is supervisor at a furniture factory.’ Mattie stood up and smiled politely.
She felt disproportionately hurt at the fact that she would never see him again, but she had had to do it. Had to make him see the one difference between them that would always be there.
‘Well, thanks for the coffee. No, please, I can get a taxi home myself.’ She just couldn’t face the underground just now. And before he could say another word she was hurrying out of the door, up the stairs and through the chic foyer that looked as though it had stepped straight out of a magazine.
CHAPTER THREE
‘OH, NO, you don’t.’
Mattie heard the rapid footsteps behind her at the same time as she heard his voice, which was just as he gripped her arm and swung her around to face him.
‘You are not going to sling this in my face and then run away before I have time to refute it.’
‘I’m not running away from anything. I’m going home, if it’s all the same to you!’
‘No, well, as a matter of fact, it’s not.’
Her heart was beating a mile a minute, racing inside her like a roller coaster that had gone wildly out of control, and his hand on her arm was like a vice grip, but one that was doing crazy things to her stomach, just the sort of crazy things she didn’t want to happen.
‘Well, tough!’
‘Not good enough, Mattie.’ He reached out one hand to hail a taxi and kept the other one firmly on her arm. ‘Where do you live? I’ll drop you home. We can talk on the way.’
‘No!’
Drop her home? And what if Frankie just happened to be up and moving around? Unlikely, but not a possibility she could rule out. Frankie, after a few bottles of beer, couldn’t be relied on to behave in a predictable manner and go to sleep. And the thought of him storming out of the house and confronting Dominic Drecos was enough to make her blood curdle. She knew who would be the loser and it wouldn’t be the man opening the door of the taxi now for her to step past him.
‘Why not?’ Dominic demanded, leaning forward, invading her space and noticing that she was leaning forward too, not shrinking away from him like a scared rabbit.
‘Because…’
‘Because what?’
‘Because…’ Because she didn’t want Frankie, if he happened to be up, to see her with him? To get the wrong idea? Because even after all they had been through, she still didn’t have it in her to hurt him like that? Or was it, she wondered uneasily, because she didn’t want this man to know that a boyfriend existed?
‘Because I don’t reveal my address to strangers, especially when those strangers happen to have been a customer in the nightclub where I work!’
Dominic grimaced, seeing her point of view but knowing that the last thing he would do would be to take advantage of her. He had covered some distance, he thought with another grimace to himself, since he had first set eyes on her and concluded that he wanted her. Now, along with those signals that she sent out, that had every masculine pore in his body rearing into full-blooded life, were other, more complex ones. He wanted to get to know her, against all his better judgement, and in order to do that he would have to take his time.
‘In which case, I suggest we go back to my apartment.’
Mattie almost laughed at the suggestion, even though a treacherous part of her stirred at the thought of it.
‘Over my dead body.’
‘Where there is a very comfortable sitting area downstairs. We can finish our conversation.’ He gave his address to the taxi driver and was aware of her staring at him for having removed the decision from her hands.
‘You really have got a nerve! How dare you?’
‘Stop running from me,’ he drawled softly. ‘I always catch the things I want, Mattie.’
‘And you want me.’
‘And I want you.’
He wasn’t touching her, but God, she felt her body burn as if he were.
‘You want a good-looking waitress in a nightclub. You don’t want me. You don’t even know me.’
‘Is that a plea from the heart?’ he drawled.
‘It’s a matter-of-fact statement, actually,’ Mattie snapped in return. ‘You may have spent your life with women tripping behind you in your wake, wondering if they might be the lucky little thing to get the ring on her finger, but, buddy, where I come from I can see straight through men like you! You’re a taker, Mr Drecos.’
‘But you don’t even know me.’
Mattie uttered the strangled sound of someone whose impeccable reason has been neatly lobbed right back at them, and decided that she wouldn’t dignify his comment with a reply. Not that she could think of anything to say to his barbed piece of verbal cleverness.
But she didn’t like the fact that she was sitting in a taxi with him and being transported to wherever his apartment was, even though that gut feeling she had had three evenings before was back with her. A deep knowing that he was a man who didn’t lie. If he said that there would be somewhere downstairs where they could talk, then there would be.
The problem was that she didn’t want to talk.
No, she amended truthfully to herself, the problem was that she was a little too tempted to talk for her own good.
She felt as though her emotions had been put on hold forever, building up behind a dam which was beginning to strain at the weight put against it.
She wanted to talk, but why him? He had already told her
