didn’t understand that look. It was something he had no hope of understanding and neither, he thought, did she.
Loneliness? Fear? Desperation?
He knew it was none of those things, but maybe it was an emotion born of all three.
It was an emotion he’d never met before, but he couldn’t question it, for there was no time here or space for asking questions. There was only this woman, looking up at him.
‘Allie, I care,’ he said and it was as if someone else was talking.
‘How can you care?’
He had no answer. He only knew that he did.
He only knew that it felt as if a part of him was being wrenched out of place. He was a banker, for heaven’s sake. He shouldn’t feel a client’s pain.
But this was Allie’s pain. Allie, a woman he’d known for less than a day. A woman he was holding, with comfort, but something more. He looked down at her and she looked straight back up at him and he knew that now, for this moment, he wasn’t her banker.
In a fraction of a moment, things had changed, and he knew what he had to do. He knew for now, for this moment in time, what was inevitable, and she did, too.
He cupped her face in his hand, he tilted her chin—and he stooped to kiss her.
One minute she was feeling sick and sorry and bereft. The next she was being kissed by one of the most gorgeous males she’d ever met.
The most gorgeous male she’d ever met. Her banker.
Her ringmaster?
It had been an appalling day. She was emotionally gutted and he was taking advantage.
But, right now, she wasn’t arguing and he actually wasn’t taking advantage. Or if he was, she wanted him to take advantage. If taking advantage felt like this …
It did feel like this. It felt like … It felt like …
It felt like she should stop thinking and just feel. For this moment she could stop being lonely and fearful and bereft and block every single thought out with the feel of this man’s body.
His mouth was strong, warm, possessive. Persuasive. Seductive? Yes! She was being seduced and that was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to let go. She wanted to forget, and melt into this man’s body with a primeval need.
For there was no fear or loneliness or bereavement in this kiss. Instead she could feel a slow burn, starting at her mouth and spreading. There was another burn starting in her toes and spreading upward, and another in her brain, spreading downward.
In her heart and spreading outward?
She’d gone too long between kisses. In a travelling circus, the opportunities for romance were few and far between. How else to explain this reaction?
But did she need to explain? Stop thinking, she told herself frantically. This is here, this is now and there’s no harm. For now simply open your lips and savour.
And she had no choice, for her mouth seemed to be opening all by itself, welding to his, feeling the heat and returning fire with fire.
Her arms were wrapping round his gorgeous coat, tugging him closer, closer still. Sense had deserted her. For now all she needed was him. All she wanted was him.
Mathew.
His big hands held her, tight, hard and wonderful. Her breasts were moulding to his chest.
She could feel the faint rasp of stubble. She could smell the sheer masculine scent of him.
She could feel the beating of his heart.
She wanted … She wanted …
She didn’t know what she wanted, but what she got was a camel, shoving its nose right between them and braying like an offended … camel?
This was a kiss that needed power to break, but there was something about a camel that made even the most wondrous kiss break off mid-stride.
They broke apart. Allie staggered and Mathew gripped her shoulders and held—but Pharaoh was still between them, his great head looped over their arms, moving in, an impermeable barrier between them.
She heard herself laugh—sort of—or maybe it was more of a sob. At the end of a nightmare day, this had been quite a moment. It was a moment that had lifted her out of dreary and desolate into somewhere she hadn’t known existed. It had warmed her from the inside out. It had made her think …
Or not think. Just feel. That was what she’d wanted, she thought almost hysterically. It had been a miracle all by itself. For a moment she hadn’t thought at all.
But what now? Pharaoh had broken Mathew’s hold on her shoulders. She looked past the big camel and saw Mathew’s face and she thought, he’s as confused as I am.
Not possible. She was so confused she was practically a knot inside.
Or maybe she wasn’t confused. Maybe what she wanted—desperately—was to shove this great lump of a camel aside and will this guy to pick her up and carry her to her caravan. Or not her caravan—that was far too pedestrian for what she was feeling now. What about a five-star hotel, with champagne and strawberries on the side?
Um … not? Sense was sweeping back and she could have wept. She didn’t want sense. She wanted the fantasy. James Bond and the trimmings …
Not James Bond. Mathew Bond, banker.
‘Maybe … maybe that was a bit unwise,’ the banker said, in a voice that was none too steady. ‘I don’t make love to clients.’
And with that, any thought of luxury hotels and vast beds and champagne went right out of the window. Client.
‘And I don’t make love to staff,’ she managed.
‘Staff?’
‘With Grandpa in hospital, I’m in charge of the circus and you’re ringmaster. Staff,’ she snapped and saw a glint of laughter deep in those dark eyes.
Pharaoh nudged forward as if he anticipated the need to intervene again, and Allie leaned against the camel and shoved, so both of them backed a little away from Mathew. To a safer distance.
‘But the ringmaster has the whip,’ Mathew said softly and, to her amazement, he was grinning.
She gasped, half astonished, half propelled to laughter. But she was grateful, she conceded. He was making light of it. She needed to keep it light.
‘There’s a new prop edict as of tomorrow,’ she managed. ‘Whips are off the agenda.’
‘I guess they need to be,’ he said a trifle ruefully. ‘Allie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.’
It needed only that. An apology.
‘I don’t
