wanted to wave her hand but instead she held the duvet to her chest. ‘Your eyes, they are the exact shade known as British racing green,’ she said, blushing and ducking her head into the mattress again. She sounded like such a twit; she’d snuck into his bed—naked—and she was wittering on about his eyes.
They were beautiful but…really?
Oh, fudge. Her face flared and she hoped he didn’t notice. There was only one way to get out of this situation and that was to brazen her way through it. She wasn’t in PR for nothing, she decided, and had plenty of practice.
Taking all her courage in both hands, Tori kept the duvet firmly in place and wiggled her way up so that she was sitting upright, the duvet tucked under her arms.
‘Hello,’ he said, his mobile mouth quirking up in a half-smile.
‘Um…hi.’ Tori pushed her hair out of her face and straightened her shoulders. ‘Sorry about this.’
‘I got to see a gorgeous naked girl. No need to apologise.’
Ignoring the flare of heat that she knew was still staining her cheekbones, Tori pushed her hand through her hair and smiled her patented I’m-a-girl-of-the-world smile. He didn’t need to know that she was feeling anything but and her spirit was, well, not broken…cracked, dented, bruised? Bruised. That was the perfect word for how she was feeling…along with battered, drained and a healthy dose of smarting.
But since she had many years of practice of hiding her feelings she just kept that stupid smile on her face and carried on bluffing. ‘So, I guess the question is, who are you and what are you doing in Iz’s bed?’
‘Matt Cross and I’m renting the room for the month while Isaac is away. And that raises the question, what are you doing in Izzy’s, Isaac’s, temporarily my bed?’
‘I heard there was a good-looking guy in it and thought I’d check you out.’ Tori regretted the words before they even left her mouth.
‘If that was true then you wouldn’t have spent the first five minutes burrowing under the covers whimpering with embarrassment,’ Matt calmly stated.
So the guy wasn’t afraid to call BS. Good to know.
‘So, give me another explanation,’ Matt asked, after bunching up a pillow and placing it between his head and Iz’s iron headboard.
‘I’ve just had a really bad day and I wanted a decent night’s sleep. The bed in the boxroom is a torture device and I knew that Isaac was away so here I am.’
‘Here you are,’ Matt agreed. ‘So, I’m presuming you’re Tori of the bad boyfriend and the Frantic Fairy story of earlier?’
‘How on earth do you know about that?’ Tori demanded.
‘I was in the hall when you were concocting the story for Izzy and Poppy. That has got to hurt like hell.’
Concocting? That was an interesting, very truthful, turn of phrase. Tori cursed silently and bit her lip. She was sitting in bed, naked, with the hottest man she’d—literally—stumbled across in her life and he knew that her boyfriend had brought home another woman for a threesome. And he was sympathising with her…
Could this evening, possibly, get any worse? ‘Oh, I was about to kick him into touch anyway so I don’t really care,’ she said, lying her head off. She did not need his sympathy or, worse, his pity. God.
‘You have piggy eyes from crying. And your words and body are stiff with tension. Oh, yeah, you talk a good game but it hurts. How can it not?’
Tori sighed. She was not one of those women who cried well…She didn’t have gentle tears that rolled out in perfect droplets and didn’t wreck her make-up. She gushed and she was obviously violently allergic to her own tears because her eyes swelled up and turned blood red, her face blotched and Rudolf envied her nose. As a result, she generally avoided meeting flame-hot men until she looked normal again. No wonder Green Eyes was looking at her as if she were an alien species…not generally the reaction she normally got when she found herself naked in a man’s bed. She’d never been particularly vain but she knew that men generally found her attractive. It was mortifying to be the object of pity, of concern, of zero sexual interest.
Focus, Tori, and start thinking of a way that you can get out of here with your dignity and pride intact. Actually, she’d settle for just getting out; pride and dignity were on their own.
I could seduce him…
Whoa, whoa, what? The words popped into her head and her eyes widened. Bad, bad idea, terrible idea, are you nuts?
He’s a good-looking guy…
He’s every gorgeous male celebrity wrapped up in one delicious package but that doesn’t mean that you should make a play for him. You’re upset, feeling emotionally beaten up and you never make good decisions when you’re in this frame of mind…so keep your big mouth shut! Dear God, you are a basket case, Phillips.
Great sex—he looked the type who knew what he was doing in the sack—and a soft bed, a body to curl up around afterwards…
‘Down, Tiger.’ That dark-chocolate voice broke into her chaotic thoughts and she bristled at the undisguised amusement she saw in his eyes, in the tilt of that sexy mouth.
‘Excuse me?’
‘That mind of yours is working the angles; flipping through your options.’
Tori licked her lips and looked for and found her coolest expression. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘You know exactly what I’m talking about,’ he drawled. ‘But, okay, let’s spell it out…you’re running through scenarios; you’re not happy that I know that you had a horrid experience at the hands of a man who, frankly, needs someone to teach him how to treat a woman. I’d be happy to oblige. You’re also telling yourself that you don’t want to go back to that bed or, if you were honest, admitting that you don’t want to be alone.’
He’d be happy to beat Mark up for her? Now there was an idea…concentrate Tori! As nice as his statement made her feel, he was still looking past her breeziness to the truth below and she didn’t like it and she wanted him to stop. She scowled at him. ‘Nonsense.’
‘Honey, if you weren’t scared of being on your own you wouldn’t still be in this bed, you would’ve hightailed it out of here the minute you realised you made a mistake. Instead, you’re lying there looking like a wet dream thinking about making a play for me, thinking about whether you could seduce me or not.’
Dammit, this guy was perceptive.
‘You probably could; I’m a man and you’re…’ his eyes flicked up and down her body ‘…you’re seriously hot.’
Dark blue eyes collided with green and that lightning rod of attraction arced between them. Tori could see herself writhing over that body, her hair trailing along his chest, across his stomach. As if he knew what she was thinking, his Mr Get It On tented the bedclothes. Oh…oh, wow.
‘You need to stop looking at me like that or else you’re going to be flat on your back
