your room or …’ she swallowed and gulped ‘… bed? I don’t even know you.’
‘Look, I’m willing to humour you and pretend if that is what you wish—we’ve never met before, OK.’ The scornful smile that twisted his lips vanished as he added, ‘But I’m not willing to let you die of hypothermia, not after all the effort to get you out of the loch.’
Rose swallowed. He really did have the hardest eyes she had ever seen. ‘I think you must have mistaken me for someone else.’ She struggled not to show her concern.
Had she just got into a car with a dangerous lunatic? It was starting to seem like a strong possibility.
A hissing sound of exasperation escaped his white, clenched teeth. ‘Look, if you want to pretend you did not bribe your way into my hotel room, that is fine by me, and I’m not suggesting for a moment that you don’t do this gushing, sweet, innocent act very well,’ he conceded nastily. ‘But it might be more productive if you save it for a man who hasn’t seen you naked.’
‘What? Naked?’ Her hands came up in a protective gesture across her breasts. It would take a woman who was either very brave, or very beautiful, to parade naked in front of a man as physically perfect as this man.
And she was not that woman.
‘You have never seen me naked.’ It didn’t matter how many near-death experiences she had, that was something she would not have forgotten.
‘Well, if you’re going to be pedantic I wasn’t counting the stockings and stilettos.’
The visual image in her head that accompanied his husky concession sent the mortified blood rushing to her cold cheeks. ‘Look at me.’ Her shrill invitation was unnecessary because he already was and not in a way she liked. ‘I’ve never worn stockings in my life, not even hold-ups …’ He’s accusing you of being a predatory tart and you take the time to tackle the stockings issue—sure, that makes perfect sense, Rose.
‘I do not forget a face or a body,’ he added, his eyes dropping to the upper slopes of her full creamy breasts. ‘Your body has … ripened,’ he admitted. ‘And the blush is a new addition to your repertoire … it’s good.’
‘I do not have a repertoire.’ The smouldering sexual insolence in his bold stare started a chain reaction that began low in her belly. In a matter of seconds her entire body was involved. If she hadn’t been sitting down her legs would have folded under her. She couldn’t believe that she had reacted this way to a casually lecherous stare.
‘The weight suits you.’ The woman in his bed at the hotel had possessed the lean, angular, borderline androgynous build that models aspired to. It had crossed his mind at the time that she would have undoubtedly looked more attractive with her clothes on.
The same could not be said now.
‘Look, you’ve had your joke, but enough is enough,’ she said, even though one look at his expression made it clear he hadn’t. It seemed probable, going on what she had seen of him so far, that he wouldn’t know a joke if he fell over it.
‘We’ve never met, I promise you.’
‘I’ve encountered a lot of groupies but you stood out.’
‘Groupie …’ Best to treat this all as a joke. Co-operate, keep him happy and the quicker she’d be back at Dornie House, and after that she’d never have to see this man again.
She wasn’t getting very far with denial so she tried a different tack. ‘Sure, I eat men like you before breakfast.’ Her mocking grin slipped as an erotic image flashed into her head.
A man, his face hidden by the curtain of hair of the woman who sat astride him, lying naked on the tumbled silken bedclothes of a vast bed. His fingers were wound into the bars of a metal headboard and entwined with those of the woman. Deep fractured moans were issuing from his throat as the bed creaked under their combined weight. The woman’s hair fell back and.
Rose sucked in a sharp breath. Oxygen starvation, that was the only explanation she could think of for the lurid erotic fantasy that had crawled out of her subconscious.
‘But you’ll be pleased to hear that drowning has had a dampening effect on my libido.’
Mathieu, dragging his eyes from the heaving outline of her breasts, swallowed. It was a pity he could not say the same for his own libido. He could only assume it was the adrenaline that was still circulating in his blood now the danger was past … though adrenaline caused a flight-or-fight reaction and he felt no compelling urge to do either.
‘It’s put me right off my daily diet of reluctant men. So you’re quite safe.’
He gave a triumphant smile. ‘So you admit that you are that woman.’
She clamped her lips together. ‘No, I damned well don’t.’
‘There’s no need to yell. Your secret is safe with me. Relax.’
Was he mad? ‘Would you relax if someone suggested you were their rejected one-night stand?’
‘What do you object to—the one-night-stand tag or the rejection? And for the record I do not do one-night stands.’
She saw the spark of anger in his eyes and thought, Great, it’s all right for him to take offence. ‘That’s what I’m saying, neither do I. I don’t …’ She stopped, remaining immobile as he bent forward and unzipped her jacket.
He lifted his head and their eyes connected. Without a word he slid it off her shoulders.
‘Lift up your arms.’
Without thinking Rose obeyed his command this time and her sodden sweater was peeled away. Brushing a heavy hank of water-darkened caramel-blonde hair from her eyes, she looked at the sweater as it fell onto the floor of the Land Rover. The tee shirt she had worn underneath had come away with it.
She was sitting there stripped to the waist in nothing but what felt like acres of bare goose-pimpled flesh and her pink lace bra that had definitely seen better days. She saw his eyes drop and like a tide the hot, mortified colour washed over her skin.
Mathieu’s gaze slid upwards over her body. By the time he reached her heavy breasts encased in a light lacy bra through which the dark circles of her nipples were clearly visible the dull throb of blood in his temples had become a pounding roar.
Every instinct Rose possessed made her want to cover herself but that would be as good as saying she was not comfortable with her own body, that she had something to be ashamed of, whereas it was him, the sleaze, she thought wrathfully, who should feel guilty for ogling.
‘I thought you’d seen it all before,’ she snapped when the moment of paralysing embarrassment had passed.
His head came up with a jerk. Rose registered the dark colour scoring the crests of his sculpted cheekbones and then their eyes connected.
His smoky stare sent a fresh quiver of sexual awareness through her body. This had to be about the near-death experience; she didn’t react like this to men … not even Steven. And they had worked in close proximity most days.
Very close sometimes, which was part of the reason she had left.
