the tone of his voice he was clearly enjoying winding her up, and she kicked herself for allowing him to make her so jittery. Putting her fingers back into his hair, she pulled it harder this time, in an attempt to show him who was in charge.
He chuckled: a low, seductive sound that made her mouth water.
Flipping heck, Josie, pull it together.
After taking a first tentative snip—and finding it actually seemed to look okay—she worked her way around his head, cutting the top first, to reveal the smooth, darker underside of his hair.
Heat rose from his scalp as she worked and her stiff fingers warmed up, allowing her to cut faster. She pictured her own hairdresser, Lenny, and focused on what he did when cutting her hair, working her way carefully.
It felt odd not to talk while she worked, and the silence lay thick and heavy in the large kitchen. What the hell was she supposed to talk about? What would Lenny do?
Make small talk. You can do that, right? Just say something, Josie. Anything.
‘You know, you look nothing like I expected,’ she said.
‘No?’ His voice was infused with amusement.
‘You’re so...’ She willed her addled brain to come up with any word except the one fighting to get out.
She lost.
‘Big.’
He turned to catch her eye and she looked away quickly, so as not to get sucked into flirty banter with him—not when she was so close she could inhale the minty aroma of his toothpaste and the dark undertones of whatever product he used on his body that made him smell so—what was the word? Appetising...
Thank God for the soothing action of lifting and snipping at his hair. Mercifully, it helped her maintain focus, although her cool was shot to pieces.
‘Judging by your complexion and the size of your frame I’m guessing there’s some Scandinavian blood in there somewhere?’ she barrelled on.
‘Icelandic.’
‘I’d never have guessed that from your sister—she’s so dark. Hair and complexion.’ Okay, this was good. Well, better. Sort of...
‘She got the French blood.’
‘On your mother’s side?’ Lift, pull, snip.
‘Yeah, my paternal grandmother was French. This was her home. She left it to me and Abi when she died.’
There was a change in his posture and a new tension in his jaw that made her wonder what he’d omitted from that statement. A memory of Abi telling her their grandmother was the only person Connor had ever cared about swam into her mind.
She paused, not quite sure how to frame her next question. ‘Abi says she hasn’t seen you in a long time?’
His head moved up a notch as his shoulders stiffened. ‘No.’
She waited for him to elucidate but the silence stretched on.
‘I think she’d like to see you sometime.’
‘Hmm...’
She’d hit a conversational roadblock. Another approach, maybe? ‘So what keeps you so busy?’
‘I travel a lot.’ His tone was dismissive, as if he were closing down this conversation too.
Don’t give up, Josie.
‘You’ve just got back from somewhere?’
‘South America. I’m leaving for India in a few days.’
Abi hadn’t told her much about Connor—only that he was always on the move and never came to England to see her. They’d been on a rare night out and three cocktails down when she’d talked about him. There had been a heavy sadness to her tone, and an unhappy resignation to his snubbing of her. His name hadn’t been mentioned since and Josie had tactfully avoided mentioning him again.
From Abi’s description of him she’d expected a self-aggrandising playboy with power issues—not this challenging, provocative giant of a man.
Moving round to the front of him, she made sure to keep looking only at the long fringe of hair left to cut. The heat of his gaze burned her skin as she shuffled between his spread thighs to get close enough to reach in. With shaking hands she took hold of the front of it, the backs of her fingers gently brushing the warm skin of his forehead. His heat invaded her and she experienced a whole body flush which concentrated into a core of molten lava in the depths of her pelvis. She wished her hair wasn’t pulled back so severely so she could hide her fiery face in the safety of its protective curtain.
After snipping at the length of hair until she was satisfied, she took a step back away from his weird vortexlike pull and dropped the scissors onto the kitchen table.
‘You’re done.’
He was looking at her with a curious expression. ‘You know, there’s something very familiar about you.’
Dammit. Just when she’d thought she’d got away with it. She really didn’t want to talk about her sister right now.
She shrugged. ‘I have one of those faces. You’ve never met me before.’ He seemed satisfied with this answer, thank goodness, and threw her a quick nod.
Pulling off the towel, he dropped it onto the floor. ‘How does it look?’
Meeting his gaze, she willed her cheeks to deflame. ‘Actually, it looks pretty good.’ She was oddly pleased with how successful a cut it was, considering she’d never done it before in her life.
He nodded, releasing his slow grin, then turned abruptly and walked out of the room and up the stairs—she guessed to check his new haircut for himself.
Grateful for this small reprieve, she grabbed a dustpan and brush from under the sink and swept up the hair that had landed on the floor, her body humming with alien sensations. She hoped to goodness her face would return to some kind of normal colour by the time he got back.
She’d cleared up every bit of hair and made herself another drink by the time he returned, his face now scrupulously clean-shaven.
What a transformation. All her blood dashed south to pulse wildly between her thighs as she took in his new, clean-cut appearance. He’d pulled his shorn hair into messy spikes, and now his bristles weren’t obscuring it his bone structure seemed ridiculously and beautifully chiselled. He was the picture of pure, healthy, brute strength.
‘Okay. So we’re good here,’ he said, apparently unaware of the catastrophic effect he was having on her. ‘You’ve earned your right to stay.’
Sucking in a deep breath, she attempted to jump-start her brain into functioning. ‘So that’s it? Negotiation over? You’re leaving?’
He laughed and stepped closer to her. She took half a step back before checking herself.
Hold steady there, Josie.
