dark shapely brows moved towards his equally dark and at that moment damp hairline. ‘I haven’t forgotten why I’m here.’
Megan’s lips tightened. His dismissive attitude really got under her skin. ‘So ignoring me and spending the entire evening talking to someone else’s cleavage is your idea of seeming interested? Interesting technique,’ she admired with heavy sarcasm.
The memory of his humiliating fascination with the actress’s breasts increased the angry tightness in her aching throat. She’d probably hear that woman’s awful laugh in her sleep tonight, she decided, thinking of the shrill, jarring sound. Why was it that every single time men went for obvious…?
Not, of course, that she gave a damn if he fancied the redhead—after all, that hardly placed him in a unique category. Hilary was the sort of woman who demanded and got male attention. No, Megan’s legitimate grouch was the fact he wasn’t fulfilling his end of the bargain. Her acting as an introduction agent for him, a fact she had every intention of pointing out, was not part of the deal.
For a moment her angry eyes met his before her lashes swept downwards and she turned and backed away.
‘Calm down, chérie’ He laughed, catching her arm and swinging her back.
Her shrill, ‘I am calm!’ made him laugh again.
‘Not so as you’d notice.’ The first time he’d seen her he’d wondered what she would look like without her upper-crust reserve intact and he had had ample opportunity to find out today. ‘Unreasonable and ratty is actually not a bad look for you.’
Something in his voice brought Megan’s eyes back to his face. ‘I am neither unreasonable nor ratty!’ She regarded him with simmering dislike. ‘I just don’t like wasting my time,’ she enunciated clearly.
‘I haven’t been wasting anything.’
His patronising tone made her teeth clench. ‘Certainly no opportunity to chat up anything in a low-cut top.’ And if he thought that cleavage was natural he was in for a nasty shock.
‘What we’ve established tonight is that you mind me showing an interest in another woman.’
His smugness made Megan want to scream.
‘Your reaction was perfect,’ he commended calmly.
‘I didn’t react,’ she told him frigidly. Actually, now that she reviewed her behaviour during the interminable dinner, she had to concede that maybe her conduct hadn’t been quite as adult as it might have been, but, in her defence, she had had a lot of provocation.
‘God, and to think I thought you had no sense of humour. Everyone there was aware of the friction.’
Megan inhaled deeply. ‘Friction…?’ she parroted.
Her cheeks turned a deeper pink as she looked significantly at the long brown fingers still curled over her bare upper arm. The fingers stayed where they were. God, but he had to be the most insensitive, thick-skinned man she had ever had the misfortune to encounter! The idea of respecting personal space was obviously a foreign concept to him.
Megan decided to bravely rise above it all. Rather than participate in an unseemly struggle, she forced herself to stand there passively even though his fingers felt like a white-hot brand against her skin.
‘You would have said black if I had said white. In fact I’m not sure you didn’t!’ he added wryly. ‘But don’t worry—like I said, that’s no problem. We’re going to have a turbulent relationship—a classic case of opposites attracting. I predict a lot of really epic rows in public and some epic making up too.’
‘If you try to make up with me you’ll end up in traction,’ she promised. ‘And actually opposites don’t attract, they end up making each other miserable. And just for the record,’ she added grimly, ‘I realise that you think you’re God’s gift, but, trust me—the only thing I minded tonight was not being given value for money.’
‘Well, let me remind you, chérie, that you haven’t bought me.’ His narrowed gaze suddenly turned molten silver as he scanned her angry upturned features. ‘You’re giving me something I want and I’m giving you something you want…or I could if you let me.’
The suggestive drawl in his deep, musical voice sent a surge of heat through Megan’s rigid frame.
‘That remains to be seen,’ she gulped. Unable to bear the contact for another moment without crawling clear out of her skin, she tugged her arm free of his clasp. ‘And don’t keep calling me chérie! I am not your darling and I have a name,’ she said, standing there rubbing the invisible imprint of his fingers on her flesh.
‘And claws…’ he observed in a soft, sibilant voice that made the invisible downy hairs on her skin stand erect.
Luc’s silvered glance touched her small hands, which now hung tensely at her sides, balled tightly into fists. Her incredible eyes, shadowed in the fading light, were fixed on his face and her body language screamed hostility.
Against all the odds he experienced a surge of protective warmth. The reaction was inexplicable, but amazingly strong.
‘Chemistry, like ours, usually produces a few sparks…a lot if you’re lucky,’ he added as an amused afterthought.
‘Not for me it doesn’t,’ Megan rebutted firmly. She frowned. She hoped he wasn’t forgetting this was all make believe. It would be very embarrassing if she had to remind him.
Her frown deepened.
‘You don’t like sparks…?’
She didn’t smile in response to his teasing tone, but looking at him standing there, so incredibly gorgeous, made her more conscious of the curious little ache, actually not so little, inside her. If she was honest not so curious considering he was just about just about the most attractive man on the planet.
‘I’m not a combustible person,’ she told him before consulting the slim watch on her wrist. She had no intention of apologising just because she wasn’t some sort of smouldering sex bomb like Hilary. ‘We ought to be heading back, people will be wondering where we’ve got to.’
He smiled thinly. ‘They’re meant to wonder what we’re up to. It’s all part of my master plan.’
‘Don’t you think under the circumstances you ought to consult me about your master plan?’ she queried tartly.
‘What, and lose the advantage of surprise?’
‘Surprise?’ she repeated, a groove appearing above the bridge of her nose as she worriedly pondered his meaning.
‘You’re really not a very good actress.’
‘That’s because deceit doesn’t come as easily to me as it does to you,’ she retorted. ‘And,’ she added, ‘I don’t think I want to be surprised…actually, I know I don’t want to be surprised, especially by you.’ Fortunately Luc didn’t appear to have registered her unwise addition.
‘Don’t worry, I can think on my feet. I’m actually thought to be quite good at improvising.’
