to the challenge of his interference.
Just what the hell did he think he was doing? Star asked herself wrathfully. She had a deeply rooted resentment of other people trying to make her decisions for her, to control her life for her, especially her sex life, and if he thought for one moment that if she’d really been interested in Clay she would have allowed him or that theatrical piece of byplay of his to stop her...
Frowning, she started to turn away, shrugging aside her irritation.
It wasn’t like her to let anyone get under her skin so easily, especially a male anyone...and especially a male anyone whom she didn’t even know and with whom she had barely exchanged more than one assessing glance.
Her frown deepening at the realization that she’d let herself waste time thinking about a man whom she was hardly likely to see again, Star was startled when the subject of her thoughts suddenly appeared in front of her, blocking her path.
Star focused cool aquamarine eyes on him without smiling.
‘We haven’t been introduced yet,’ he began, smiling at her.
His teeth, Star was surprised to see, did not possess the uniform perfection that she had grown used to seeing in American adults. In fact, one of the front ones had a small but very definite chip in it. His smile was slightly lopsided as well, making him look vaguely boyish—something which might appeal to those members of her sex who enjoyed having someone to mother, Star decided scathingly, but she personally preferred her men to be totally and uncompromisingly adult, thank you very much.
‘No, we haven’t, have we?’ she agreed in answer to his comment, with a pointed and wholly unfriendly baring of her teeth, but as she made to sidestep him he stepped with her, still blocking her path.
Star stepped the other way and again he followed her.
‘You’re in my way,’ she told him sharply.
‘Your glass is empty,’ he commented, ignoring both her comment and her hauteur. ‘Let me get you another drink.’
‘Thank you, I can get my own drinks and anything else I feel I might need,’ Star told him evenly.
To her surprise, instead of being offended, he laughed.
‘Ah, you’re annoyed with me over Clay,’ he said, knowingly shaking his head as he added, ‘I’m sorry about that, but you would have been rather disappointed. He isn’t—’
‘Really? You certainly are a very perceptive man,’ Star marvelled sarcastically, ‘if one look is all it takes for you to know immediately exactly what another person wants.’
‘He’s a married man,’ he returned quietly, the good humour dying from his eyes. His eyes were a very deep, dense blue, shaded by thick dark blunt lashes which, for some odd reason, Star felt compulsively tempted to reach out and touch to see if they felt as soft as they looked.
‘Yes, I rather assumed he was,’ Star agreed. ‘Which was what attracted me to him in the first place,’ she added with blithe disregard for the truth. No one, but no one had the right to make her decisions for her and she was determined to make sure that this interfering would-be knight in shining armour was made aware of that fact.
‘Married men make by far the best lovers,’ she went on in deliberate provocation. ‘They’re normally so grateful to have a receptive, responsive woman in their bed after being frozen out sexually by their wives that they’ re only too willing to please, and, of course, once the fun is over you can send them home.’
‘Fun? You think of sex as fun—something recreational like baseball?’ he questioned sharply.
‘Yes,’ Star agreed, pleased to have pierced the armour of quiet self-assurance that he seemed to wear so easily and so irritatingly.
‘Don’t you?’ she challenged him mockingly.
‘No,’ he retorted immediately, ‘I don’t. So far as I am concerned, sex without emotion, without love, without all the things that bond two people together, is like a flower without perfume, initially appealing but on closer inspection a disappointment.’
‘That depends, surely, on your outlook?’ Star argued, adding when he looked questioningly at her, ‘On whether or not you want your flower to be perfumed. Some people don’t; some people are allergic to perfume.’
Trust her, she was thinking ruefully. Outwardly this man, whoever he was, had all the male attributes that most appealed to her. Pity that he’d had to go and spoil it all by opening his mouth and voicing his opinions. An amusing thought suddenly occurred to her, making her eyes sparkle warningly. He deserved to be punished a little for his interference and his high-handed, moralistic manner and she certainly deserved to have a little fun.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had devoted her energy to anything other than her work. Her last relationship had been over for—Oh... She was startled to realise that it was almost two years since she had told Jean Paul that their long distance affair was over.
She had been celibate for two years! Amazing... Oh, yes, it was high time she had some fun.
So he didn’t believe in sex without emotion, did he? Well, she didn’t believe him. No doubt he found it a good line with which to blind other women to the truth, but she was not like other women. No man really wanted commitment... No man really wanted a woman’s lifelong love. Oh, he might tell you he did at the start of a relationship, but sooner or later- he would revert to type—to want the challenge of someone fresh, someone new. Star had seen it happen so many, many times.
Yes, it would be amusing to teach this man a lesson, to let him believe that he had deceived her with his insincerity, and even more amusing to bring him to the point where he was forced to admit just how good sex could be—for its own sake—and she would make him admit it; Star was determined on that point.
‘It’s normally my sex who express those particular views,’ she told him, letting her voice soften and become slightly husky, her eyes sending deliberately sensual messages to his as she played with her empty glass. Then she breathed, ‘Perhaps I will have that drink after all.’
It never mattered how blatant you were or how insincere, Star reflected grimly as he fell into step beside her, guiding her through the crowd to a hovering waiter with a full tray of freshly poured cocktails. Men fell for it every time, greedily swallowing bait that surely in reality should have choked them.
There hadn’t been a man born yet whose sexual ego didn’t outweigh his brains, she decided as she accepted the full glass he was handing to her..
As she took the brimming glass from him a few drops fell onto her skin. Laughing provocatively, she made to lick them off, and then, looking straight into his eyes, offered him her wrist instead and whispered suggestively, ‘You do it...’
To her chagrin, instead of taking up her sensual invitation, he produced a large white handkerchief and carefully dried her skin, telling her quietly, ‘I’m afraid it’s going to stay slightly sticky. Did any spill on your dress? It might—’
‘No, my dress is fine,’ Star told him angrily, snatching her wrist away from him, her skin burning slightly with an emotion that she realised with shock was humiliation.
No man...no man had ever reacted to her like that...rejected her
