Human interaction at its most basic. It couldn’t be denied and it couldn’t be resisted.
That was what blazed between them. What had sparked in her senses in the first moment she had set eyes on this man when she had walked into the room.
And it was clear that he too had felt that same shock of carnal recognition, the body-blow to the soul that said, I want this person. I want them so much that I feel I will die if I never have them. It dried her throat and made her heart pound. Her clenched hands were damp with sweat, her lips parched, but she didn’t dare do anything to ease either physical sensation. To do so would be to reveal to those watchful, hunting hawk’s eyes that she was light years away from being as calm as she wanted to pretend.
‘I…’
She opened her mouth to deny the accusation of cowardice, but the knowledge of the truth dried the protest on her tongue and turned it into a raw, embarrassing croak.
‘You…?’ he encouraged softly, the single, husky word a seduction in itself. And the spot where his fingertip still rested on her cheek was a burning focus, a concentration of all the sensations he aroused in her.
It seemed obscene to be at the mercy of such primitive feelings in such public, impersonal surroundings. All around her was the hushed murmur of voices in desultory conversation. Other passengers lounged in the comfortable chairs, turning the pages of newspapers and magazines, or frowned into laptop computers, occasionally leaning forward to touch a key. No one even spared them as much as a curious glance.
And yet Lydia had the feeling that the awareness that pulsed between her and this man—a man whose name she didn’t even know—must have enclosed them in a glowing, burning haze that swirled in the air and coiled round them like smoke. Her heart was beating a frantic tattoo, and she was sure that the hard, strong finger must feel the race of the blood in her veins and know what had caused it.
‘You…?’ he prompted again, but her tongue seemed too thick, too frozen to speak, and she could only shake her head in numb confusion.
His reaction was brusque and startling, making her flinch in a moment of shocked panic. The long forefinger was snatched away with a swiftly muttered imprecation in some language she didn’t know, the words too harsh and swift to catch. Then his hand came down in a violent, slashing movement between their two bodies as if he were cutting off all communication between them.
‘Enough!’ he declared in a voice that rang with cold anger. ‘I do not have time for this…’
And before she could register exactly what he had in mind he had spun on his heel and was clearly about to march away from her, dismissing her totally from his mind.
‘I…’
Lydia struggled with the tangle of feelings that had knotted high up in her throat, choking off speech.
‘I…’ she tried again, her voice croaking rawly. ‘I… Oh, please! Wait!’
In her mind, the last word was a wild, desperate cry, one that would have brought confused, irritated, and just plain curious looks her way from every other waiting passenger. But what actually came out was a weak, uncertain whisper, one that broke in the middle.
And one that she was sure he couldn’t have heard. It seemed that way at first because for the space of several jolting heartbeats he didn’t seem to react. He certainly didn’t pause, and the impetus of his anger was such that the force of his movement took him well away from her, almost into the middle of the room, before he came to an abrupt halt and slowly, very, very slowly, turned back to face her again.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said…’
Lydia swallowed hard because she wanted this to sound so very different from that first, frantic call.
‘I said, please wait. Please don’t go.’
One jet-black brow lifted in sardonic interrogation and his handsome head inclined slightly to one side in apparent thoughtful consideration of the situation.
‘You’ve changed your mind?’
‘I—changed my mind.’
Better to let him think that. Better to let him believe that she had had second thoughts than to let him know what she had known all along. That there was no way she could have let him just walk out of her life as suddenly as he had walked into it.
But it had been only when he had actually moved away from her and her heart had cried out in distress at being abandoned like this that she had realised how much she had wanted him to stay.
‘You changed your mind—and you want—what?’
‘I’d like you to stay. And talk…’
Still he didn’t move.
‘And perhaps have that drink you suggested. After all…’
She tried for an airy tone, waved a hand in the direction of the windows against which the snow now swirled in wild, blustering eddies, the view of the runways, the waiting planes totally obliterated from sight.
‘Clearly neither of us is going anywhere soon. We might as well spend the time here together as apart. The hours always drag so much when you’re waiting.’
Her voice faltered, going up and down embarrassingly as she stared into his stony, set face and met no response.
Was the man waiting for her to beg? She wouldn’t! She had more pride! And yet if he turned away again…
‘Please won’t you join me?’
Still he waited one more nicely calculated minute. Just long enough to stretch out her screaming nerves even more, to twist them into hard, painful knots of tension. Then as suddenly as he had turned away he swung back, covering the short distance between them in a few swift, confident strides.
It was like seeing a sleek black panther coming towards her, Lydia thought, struggling to push away uneasy visions of herself as the prey and this man very definitely in the role of predator.
But then he turned on her a smile of such supercharged charm that it would have melted an iceberg. One that left her feeling as if the weak, ineffectual barriers she had been trying to build up against him had shattered into splinters, falling hopelessly at her feet.
‘I’m glad you changed your mind,’ he said, the unexpected warmth of his tone so unlike the icy harshness of moments before that it rocked her sense of reality, making her wonder for a second if she was even talking to the same man. ‘I hate waiting. I have no patience at all.’
‘Me too,’ Lydia admitted. ‘I was bored out of my head already. And it looks as if we’re in for a long delay. Do you think any of those planes are going anywhere today?’
The glance he turned in the direction she indicated was brief to the point of indifference and her heart jumped on a thrill of delighted confusion as his ebony gaze came back to her face and fastened on it fixedly.
‘I doubt it.’
His shrug dismissed the matter from his thoughts, his obvious lack of concern intensely gratifying to her uncertain
