And maybe it was?
That less than subtle threat to Colin’s job aside, didn’t Andy want to accept Darius’s invitation? Hadn’t the curiosity she felt, for and about him, only increased after the passionate kiss they had just shared? So much so that Andy now wanted to see him again on Saturday evening?
The ache of her breasts and the dampness between her thighs said that she did. Even so...
‘Don’t think, just because I’m agreeing to go with you to this dinner on Saturday, that I’ll allow you to blackmail me into doing anything else,’ she warned challengingly. ‘I love my brother-in-law dearly, but this is most definitely a one-off thing!’
Darius raised teasing brows. ‘Maybe I won’t need to use blackmail in order to get you to do anything else?’
Andy’s lips thinned at his mockery.
‘I’m afraid you’ll never know—because I have no intention of seeing you again after Saturday night,’ she countered with insincere sweetness.
Only to then catch her breath in her throat as Darius laughed. It was a slightly gruff sound, as if he really were out of practice. At the same time as he looked just as good as Andy had suspected he might...
His eyes glowed a deep, molten gold, laughter lines fanning out from beside them, those attractive grooves in the hardness of his cheeks making another appearance, his teeth very white and straight against those chiselled lips.
Darius was breathtaking when he laughed.
It was a laughter that faded, all too quickly for Andy’s liking, to a derisive smile that became mocking. ‘Maybe after Saturday night I won’t need to blackmail you into seeing me again.’
‘And maybe after Saturday night you won’t want to see me again!’ Andy ignored the innuendo as she answered him challengingly.
Darius became very still as he saw as well as heard that challenge, in the deep green of Miranda’s eyes and her defiant stance. ‘I would advise that you don’t deliberately do or say anything to embarrass me on Saturday evening.’
She raised innocent brows. ‘I don’t know you well enough to know what would embarrass you!’
‘I can’t think of anything offhand,’ Darius drawled dismissively.
‘That’s what I thought,’ she came back pertly. ‘I live in the apartment above here. But then you already know that, don’t you?’ she stated impatiently as he raised a knowing eyebrow. ‘Okay. Fine. Seven-thirty on Saturday evening.’
Darius might not have experienced it for a long, long time—if at all!—but he nevertheless knew when he was being dismissed.
Still, it was a dismissal he was prepared to allow for the moment, when he knew that staying here any longer would put him in serious jeopardy of forgetting his earlier decision to wait until Saturday before making love to Miranda.
‘Saturday.’ He lightly cupped her cheek as he bent and brushed a light kiss across her slightly parted lips. ‘I’m looking forward to it already,’ he murmured as he gazed down at her intently.
‘I’m not!’ Green eyes returned that gaze defiantly.
Darius found himself laughing again as he straightened before turning to leave. ‘Don’t forget to lock up after me,’ he instructed as he reached the doorway, closing the door quietly behind him as he left.
He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him laugh, let alone at the same time as his body was hard and throbbing with the desire to make love to her.
He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him laugh at all.
In truth, he couldn’t remember the last time he had genuinely laughed at anything...
‘JUST SMILE AND leave the talking to me,’ Darius advised Andy softly on Saturday evening as the two of them moved steadily down the greeting line with the other glamorously clothed and bejewelled guests arriving at the London Midas Hotel for the charity dinner.
‘Is that all your women are usually required to do?’ Andy responded with brittle sweetness.
He raised dark brows. ‘I’m going to ignore that remark, and put it down to nervousness on your part.’
Andy was nervous. And that nervousness was increasing the closer they came to where Darius’s mother and stepfather, and presumably other members of the charity’s committee, were personally greeting all the guests as they arrived.
She had spent most of the last forty-eight hours having second, third and fourth thoughts about the wisdom of seeing Darius again, when she so obviously had such a visceral response to him.
It was an uncharacteristic physical response, to any man, let alone one as dangerous as she considered Darius to be.
And considering her lack of experience in regard to men, she should probably have just dipped her toes gently in the water first, rather than jumping straight into the shark tank.
Especially when Darius was looking so tall, dark, and elegantly intimidating this evening, in his perfectly tailored black dinner jacket.
So much so that he had taken Andy’s breath away when she’d opened the door of her apartment to him earlier.
Once again she had forgotten, or tried to forget in the last couple of days, just how immediate he was; so tall that he towered over her, his shoulders so broad they almost filled the doorway, his hair shorter than when she had last seen him, but still as tousled, as if he had been running his hands through it earlier.
Perhaps an indication that he was as nervous about seeing her again this evening as she was about seeing him?
Although Andy somehow doubted that!
Darius was always supremely confident, of himself, and other people’s reaction to him.
Andy had hoped she hadn’t given any indication of her nervousness earlier at her apartment as she’d calmly collected her jacket and clutch bag before following him outside, her fingers shaking slightly as she locked the door behind her.
The luxury car parked outside was a bit of a shock, but Andy felt she had behaved with poise when Darius had opened the door for her to get in before closing the door and moving round the car to sit behind the wheel.
She had also been quite proud of the fact that she had managed to keep up a light, impersonal conversation on the drive to the hotel. Despite the fact that she was so totally aware of the man seated beside her; of the lean strength of Darius’s body, and the heady smell of healthy male and a lemon-based cologne.
But now that she was actually at the hotel where the charity dinner was being held, surrounded by the laughing and chattering rich and the famous, Andy knew she should have given more thought to how she was going to feel when she got here, rather than just focusing on seeing and being with
