his tongue probed the sensitive interior of her mouth she moaned out loud, as if the action had been a more intimate invasion. She couldn’t control her instinctive response to the arrow of need that sliced through her, making her writhe in an uncontrolled movement that drew a low growl from deep in Sean’s throat. It seemed as if some wild, electric charge had passed through every inch of her body, setting it alight with burning, tingling excitement.
She had no awareness of the darkness around them. She didn’t feel the stinging sensation of the whirling snow as it fell against her face, nor the icy drifts that pooled around her feet in the well-worn shoes. There was only herself and this man and the blazing electrical storm they had lit between them. Leah whimpered in blind delight as rough hands pushed under her coat, finding and closing over the sensitised swell of her breasts under the scarlet velvet.
With shocking suddenness Sean broke the intimate contact, wrenching his mouth away from hers with a violent imprecation. She was his brother’s fiancée! For several seconds more he swore with savage and unnerving eloquence, pushing her away from him with such force that she slid dangerously on the treacherous road surface.
‘And what was all that about?’ The blazing fury in his voice could be heard even above the wild cacophony of the howling wind. ‘Just what did you think you were doing?’
How could she answer that? Leah didn’t dare to even look into his face, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground as she tried to impose some order on her wildly confused thoughts.
What had she been doing? What had possessed her to throw herself at a man she had never met in her life before? A man she knew nothing about other than the stories in the tabloids and the fact that his face and form appeared on her television set once a week?
‘I—didn’t think.’
‘You didn’t think!’ he echoed scathingly. ‘Oh, I can believe that! But it wasn’t your mind that was driving you, was it, Miss Elliot?’
That brought Leah’s head up in a rush, wide, shocked eyes going to his face. How did he know her name? Where…?
But as her gaze focused on his strongly carved features the question in her mind never got past her lips. Instead it was stopped by her own hand, her fingers coming up to cover her mouth, the shock that kept her silent turning her eyes dark as pansies.
It was only now that she realised he had kept part of his face turned away from her. When he had opened the car door, and again when he had held out a hand to help her, she had only seen his right profile, the left staying hidden by the darkness. The rest of the time she hadn’t been looking at him and—hot colour flamed in her cheeks—she had kept her eyes closed when he had kissed her.
‘Sean!’
Now, for the first time, she could see all of his face, and the sight made her breath catch harshly in her throat. In spite of the darkness, there was no mistaking the devastating effect of the raw, jagged line that ran down his face from the corner of one eye, angling away from his mouth to end just on the strong, forceful jaw.
The barely healed scar was obviously recent, clearly the result of some dreadful accident. The handsome looks that had won Sean Gallagher so many fans were ruined; the face that adorned thousands of publicity photographs was destroyed for ever.
Watching her intently, Sean had seen the direction of her gaze, the response she couldn’t disguise.
‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ His cynicism was brutal.
‘Oh, Sean!’
Shock and sympathy drove every other thought from her mind. Reacting purely instinctively, she moved forward impetuously, only realising as he flinched back, away from her, that she had actually lifted a hand as if to touch his damaged face.
‘No way, lady!’ he warned roughly. ‘I don’t fall for that trick twice in a row.’
‘It was no trick!’
Furious at the way he had misinterpreted her gesture of concern, Leah actually stamped her foot hard, regretting her impulsive act instantly as it sent a spray of freezing snow over her feet and legs.
‘What sort of person do you think I am?’
‘The sort of female…’ deliberately he emphasised his use of a different noun ‘…who throws herself at any available man without a thought for the one she’s left behind.’
The arrogance of the man! He actually believed that just because he was a TV star any and every woman must be crazy about him, available solely for his pleasure! But then the exact words Sean had used hit home with a worrying clarity.
‘What do you know about any men in my life?’
She just managed to get the words out before the truth exploded inside her head with a force that made her head reel.
It didn’t matter how Sean Gallagher knew about Andy—if in fact he knew anything, and wasn’t just making a lucky guess. What mattered was that she hadn’t spared the other man a thought at all, not since Sean had appeared so unexpectedly.
Leah bit down hard on her bottom lip as her conscience reproached her bitterly. For the shock of the accident to have temporarily driven all thought of the man who had asked her to marry him from her head was one thing. But to discover that the man she had parted from only that evening had been completely wiped from her mind was quite another. How could she be so foolish—so shallow?
Sean’s smile in response to her question was cold, dangerous.
‘I get the impression that you’re the sort of woman who uses her undeniable charms to entrap poor, weak fools, only to chew them up and spit them out when you’re done with them.’
‘And on what evidence do you base this outrageous attack on my character? You don’t know—’
‘I don’t need to know.’ Sean’s icy response slashed through her indignant protest. ‘I have eyes to see.’
A contemptuous wave of his hand and the downward flick of his eyes made Leah suddenly aware of just how she must look.
Her long dark hair had fallen from its elegant coil and now tumbled in wild disarray around her face. Her skirt seemed to have stuck high up on her thighs, still revealing the lacy stocking tops, and her coat now hung wide open, exposing the smooth white curves of her breasts above the clinging, low-cut bodice. The wind had whipped up a hectic colour in her cheeks, making her eyes unnaturally bright above them.
Unable to bear Sean’s cold-eyed scrutiny, Leah pulled her flapping coat closely round herself like a defensive shield, tugging the belt tight at her waist.
‘I was at a party, for God’s sake! It is Christmas—peace and goodwill and all that!’
‘Goodwill to all men!’ he flung back at her. ‘Or just a select few?’
‘Now look here—’ Leah began, purple eyes flashing fire.
But the full effect of her anger was ruined by the way that her teeth chattered against each other, and the fact that she was shaken by a sudden, convulsive shiver. The snow was still falling steadily, now coming down thicker than ever, and in the thin-soled shoes her feet were like blocks of ice. With a grimace of distress, she shifted uncomfortably, trying to
