by Anne Mather
‘And what about your parents when all this was happening?’
Megan briefly closed her eyes and let out a long slow breath. ‘My father left when I was two. My mother remarried and emigrated to Australia when I left to go to college. We’re not what you might call close, and we don’t keep in touch.’
Rain started to fall—softly at first, blown in on the breeze, then descending with distinctly more purpose. Without glancing at her companion, Megan gathered up her sketchbook and walking cane, then started to manoeuvre herself into a standing position. Her leg throbbed a little, and it wasn’t easy to be entirely graceful when she had an audience.
‘Let me help you.’ Kyle was on his feet in an instant, one hand circling her waist while the other took her walking cane and steadied her arm.
‘I can manage. I don’t need help!’ Feeling desolate, she tried to shrug him away—faintly surprised when he completely ignored her mini-tantrum and proceeded to help her anyway.
‘We need to get you home out of this rain. You’re hardly dressed for a downpour.’ His speech terse, Kyle refused to return her walking cane, instead tucking it securely under his arm. Then, before she could give him an argument, he swept her peremptorily off her feet as though her weight was nothing to him.
His breath gliding off her cheek, her body held tightly against his hard male warmth, Megan found herself carried without further preamble across the grass, all the way down the gravel path that swept around the park, back to where Kyle had left his car. Ignoring the interested glances of passers-by rushing past in the rain, he was unmistakably a man on a mission. By the time he’d deposited her into the luxurious cream leather of the sedan’s passenger seat Megan felt more tense than a sprinter waiting for the sound of the starting pistol. She definitely sensed a storm brewing. She loved the rain, but storms were a big phobia with her. When the thunder crashed and lightning lit up the sky she was usually to be found praying under a table somewhere. But the storm she feared right now was not an elemental one.
Risking a brief glance at Kyle as he dropped down into the driver’s seat, she saw that the expression on his darkly handsome face was warningly terse. As if he might snap at any second if she said another thing. So, biting her lip, trying desperately hard not to cry, Megan stared stoically out of the window, just praying for them to reach the flat as soon as possible so she could say thank you and goodbye and escape just as soon as it was polite.
It was clear from her companion’s body language that for some reason he was furious with her. If only he hadn’t asked her about her sketches. If only it hadn’t rained and they could have stayed companionably on the grass, whiling away the afternoon like the friends Megan thought they might be becoming…But now it was all spoilt. And it was all her fault.
‘Are you cold?’
Kyle switched on the heating as he drove, glancing across at her with a brief flash of concern in his hazel eyes. His gaze absorbed not just her profile but the red silk top that, since becoming damp, was clinging provocatively, the impression of her nipples clearly in evidence as they pushed against the softly sensuous material with no discernible help from their owner.
Scorching heat slammed deep into his groin, making him bite back a healthy curse. Lord have mercy! How the hell was he supposed to think about anything else but ravishing her when she was sitting there looking gorgeous and dewy-eyed and just about the most desirable woman he’d ever clapped eyes on? For evermore he would associate the colour red with Megan, because he couldn’t think of one other woman who suited it more, but what on earth had possessed her to wear that sexy little top this afternoon?
Was she trying to test his resistance, or what? Because, if so, she’d chosen the one test he was bound to fail. At the end of the day he was a healthy red-blooded male, with the same needs, desires and instincts as the next man—maybe more, given his personal proclivity for passion.
He wanted to help her, God knew he did, but first—somehow—he had to get his raging hormones under tighter control. He shifted in his seat as he drove, manfully trying to accommodate his discomfort, resisting the suddenly fierce urge to blaspheme out loud.
Megan, caught in a disconsolate paroxysm of her own, suddenly snapped to—faintly shocked that they were pulling into the smart Notting Hill street where Kyle lived. So he wasn’t taking her home first. Perhaps she should have made it clear to him that that was where she wanted to go? Her fingers clutching the sketchbook on her lap, she frowned as he glided the car to a halt in a space just a couple of houses away from his own.
‘I didn’t know we were coming back here.’ She was so nervous her lips were numb when she tried to speak.
‘You said you had no other plans for the afternoon.’ Having switched off the engine, Kyle turned slightly in his seat, and Megan got an instant charge from the sheer raw unrestrained power of the man. Energy and heat vibrated off him with the unsettling ferocity of some wild thing, making her spine tense so stiffly it could have been made of steel.
There was something unsaid in his voice, in the way he looked at her—those riveting golden eyes with their long dark lashes almost challenging her to look away—to deny whatever it was that was going on between them…if she dared. Megan’s gaze moved helplessly down over his hard honed body, her mouth going dry when she saw the evidence of his desire straining against the taut denim of his jeans.
‘I—I know I said that, but—’
‘But nothing,’ Kyle said harshly, releasing the catch on the driver’s door. ‘You’re coming inside and I’m not taking no for an answer.’
Megan heard the distinct slam of the front door as she ventured anxiously into his living room, silently berating herself for not insisting he drove her straight home. Then she realised what a slim possibility that would have been, because she couldn’t imagine insisting for a second that Kyle do anything he didn’t want to do. She had no idea why he wanted her to stay with him—her mind deliberately avoided the scary, most obvious reason, because the subject had been such a contentious issue in her marriage that, truth to tell, she was too damn frightened to pursue it further.
Her ex-husband had called her a tease when in fact she’d been nothing of the sort as far as he was concerned. ‘Cold as the grave’ was another taunt he’d tormented her with. ‘I’d get more response from a corpse,’ he’d said disgustedly when yet again she hadn’t been able to satisfy him in the way that he’d wanted. After that she’d convinced herself that when it came to seduction—she just didn’t have what it took to please a man.
Forlornly, her gaze settled on the little glass vase of freesias on the coffee table, her nostrils twitching at their much loved fresh peppery scent—and she remembered her surprise at seeing them there when she’d returned with Kyle earlier on in the day and waited while he washed and shaved. They were her favourite flowers. It had touched her in a strange kind of way that such an earthy, virile man should like them, too.
He swept into the room right then, and propped her walking cane carefully against the wall. Straightening, he speared his fingers through his damply waving hair, jerking his head almost curtly towards her clothes.
‘You’d better get out of those wet things before you catch pneumonia. Come into the bedroom.’
When he turned his back Megan ran her hands up and down both arms, shivering as she did so, but more from an attack of nerves than damp or cold.
‘I’m—I’m all right. They’ll dry in no time.’
Kyle pivoted, his mouth thinning to a harsh grim line. ‘What the hell is going on with you?’
‘What—what do you mean?’ Megan stared wide-eyed, her heart beating like a demented tom-tom as she struggled to understand his sudden hostility.
‘I’m not your ex-husband. I’m not the bad guy, Megan. I want to help you, but I can’t do that if you keep insisting on shutting me out.’
Megan looked everywhere but at him: at the beguiling prints on the wall that she longed to linger over, at the smoothed-out bumps in th
e cool oak floor beneath her sandalled feet. She could cope with anything but kindness. People’s kindness just undid her. Right now, her insides were just melting over and over at the care and concern in Kyle’s deeply sensual voice.
‘I’m not very good at accepting help. I appreciate it, I really do, but you’re already doing enough in giving me the opportunity to paint again. If you just let me use your phone I can call a cab to take me home…’
‘What if I said I didn’t want you to go?’ He crossed his arms in front of a chest that somehow seemed perfectly designed for maidens in distress to lay their heads on; his biceps, hard and sleek, glistened bronze beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt, his body primed as his eyes burned across the distance into hers. Megan tried to swallow but couldn’t. Instead, she pressed her cold trembling hand to the vee of her top, as if by doing so she could somehow still the sudden crazy hammering of her heart.
‘You mean you—’ She couldn’t finish the sentence because her limbs suddenly felt drained of strength, as if all the life force had been sucked out of them with a straw.
‘I’m asking you to spend the night with me, Megan. I can’t spell it out more clearly than that.’
‘It’s impossible.’
‘Oh?’ His mouth quirked in a disbelieving grin, adding to her confusion and embarrassment. ‘May I ask why?’
‘Because…because I don’t know how to satisfy a man.’
Chapter Seven
HIS answering chuckle was deeply sensual. Like warm syrup being poured over a lush moist waffle…sinful. If she had an ounce of common sense she’d run for cover now, because if she stayed she wouldn’t stand a chance.
‘I don’t believe that for a second…but what about you, Megan? Has any man satisfied you?’
Not in ten long years…She didn’t say the words out loud. She didn’t dare. All she knew was that the ground she was standing on was suddenly as insubstantial as a cloud and she was sinking fast. Drowning in the molten tawny gaze of a man who could make her want and yearn and beg him to love her—with just a glance.
‘I don’t—I mean—I’d like to use your bathroom, if I may?’ She took a couple of unsteady steps towards him, privately cursing the limp that robbed her of even the simplest dignities.
It didn’t make sense that he desired her. A man like him could probably have any woman he wanted. When it came to assets, Kyle had all the aces. Not just good looks, a great body, intelligence and talent, but clearly wealth as well. There was no reason for him to waste his time with Megan. What could she give him but a body that was physically impaired and a disillusioned, emotionally damaged heart?
A moment ago her whole being had glowed in the fierce heat of his all-consuming regard, but suddenly she felt a chill settling in across her bare arms and back that made her long to be warm and dry and safe again—because right now she felt anything but.
‘Sure. I’ll show you where it is.’
Before she could shut the door to his stylish monochrome bathroom, with its sexy masculine smells of soap and cologne, behind her, Kyle stayed her hand.
‘Just wait a second. You’ll need some dry clothes.’
His jaw clenched; his glance swept helplessly over her figure with barely disguised longing—so much so that Megan actually found herself holding her breath. But in less than a second he’d turned away, abruptly breaking the spell like a thunderclap at the end of a perfect summer’s day.
Releasing a sigh that was more like a rasp, Megan leant her hand against the cool black and white tiles on the wall for support.
He was back in no time at all, handing her a folded clean bundle consisting of a dove-grey T-shirt and black sweats, the look in his eyes no less hot but now with a kind of controlled detachment that hadn’t been in evidence before.
Megan took the clothes with a polite ‘thank you,’ then gently closed the door on his retreating back.
Limbs quaking, she limped across to a black wicker basket chair, dropping down into it with relief. Laying the clothes carefully on top of the lidded laundry basket beside her, she reached for a huge fluffy white bathsheet from the heated chrome towel rail, and started to pat herself dry.
All she could think about was the fact that he’d asked her to spend the night with him. Nothing had ever seemed so tempting yet so terrifying at the same time. Pressing her hands either side of her temples, she let the soft warm towel rest idly on her lap, then briefly closed her eyes.
When she opened them again it was to find herself staring at a rather beautiful water-colour on the wall that she hadn’t noticed when she’d first come into the room. It was of a voluptuous young woman stepping out of an old-fashioned claw-tooth bath, tousled blonde hair cascading in soft tendrils around her pink apple-cheeked face, a towel clutched loosely to her breast. There was something very sensual and highly erotic about the picture that almost made Megan feel like a voyeur.
Her distracted mind wondered vaguely who had painted it, at the same time acknowledging that it was really quite exquisite. Was Kyle the artist? And, if so, who was the voluptuous young model? A lover? Maybe the same lover who’d bought him Turkish Delight? And, if so, where was she now?
A deep throb of jealousy reverberated through her insides. Why did things have to be so complicated? Why was she so screwed up and scared when someone like Kyle’s young model could confidently strip off, make love, and have her picture painted by her lover as if it was the most natural thing in the world? All right, so it might all be conjecture—Kyle might not have even painted the picture—but the feelings it triggered off in Megan would not be stemmed. Not in the light of the proposition he had made to her just now…
But, oh, the freedom and joy of being able to paint whenever she wanted to! There wasn’t one thing she wanted more—well, apart from peace of mind…and maybe one sinful night with the man who had come to her rescue on the strength of one late-night phone call. The same man who had carried her out of the park in the rain, who’d held her close into his wonderful chest, as if it mattered to him that she might not be up to walking after spending a practically sleepless night in pain.
But she was kidding herself if she imagined that one night with Kyle would be enough, and if her heart got involved—what then? Everything came with a price, didn’t it? And she’d paid a hell of a price when she’d got involved with Nick. Make a choice and you change the future. Right now, changing her future seemed more than a little dicey, considering her past, and she didn’t even know if she had the courage to go through with such a thing.
The problem was she’d only ever slept with Nick, and Nick had taunted her with less than flattering accusations of being frigid and cold. When you heard those words that often, eventually you began to believe them…
‘Megan? Are you all right in there?’
At the sound of his gruffly concerned voice outside the door, Megan sat bolt upright, flicked her hair self-consciously over her shoulder and strove to articulate a calm reply—no easy feat when she could barely hear her own voice over the heavy throb of her heartbeat.
‘I’m fine, thanks. Won’t be a minute.’
‘I’ll be in the kitchen, making some coffee. Come and find me.’
Oh, yeah. ‘Okay.’ Twisting a corner of the towel tightly around her fingers, Megan blew out a soft low breath. She felt like a new addition to the Sheihk’s harem, who’d just been invited for the first time into his private quarters.
She knew she should move, finish drying, strip off her cold, damp clothing and dress herself in the warm freshly laundered clothes Kyle had handed her, but somehow she couldn’t. Somehow she was caught in a paroxysm of anticipation and fear that she could no longer hide. Kyle would see it for sure. Would it amuse him, or perhaps irritate him, that a twenty-eight-year-old long-married woman was acting like some uptight virgin on the brink of her first sexual experience? He was surely used to much more worldly women than that?
Glancing sideways at her reflection in the big Art Deco ‘nowhere to hide’ m
irror, Megan could hardly believe how wild her dewy-eyed gaze was, how scared, yet at the same time how needy. It had been so long since she’d truly felt desire, so long that all she could attribute to it was a distant cloudy memory that was so ephemeral and unreal she might have imagined it.
So, could she satisfy a man like Kyle? The answer clearly had to be no. Psychologically she was damaged goods. Why would a man like him want to involve himself with such an unstable proposition as that? No. She wouldn’t inflict that on him—no matter how attracted she might feel towards him. She would finish drying, dress herself, and calmly tell him she was declining his offer to spend the night. He would understand. A man like him would probably shrug, put it down to experience, and get on with his life. There’d never be any shortage of more willing, worldly-wise women to help him get on with it either. Megan was certain about that.
‘Hi.’
Kyle swung round at her greeting. He’d been chopping up peppers for an omelette, the radio playing softly in the background—something classical—Schubert, maybe. He didn’t have time to really consider it, because one look at the distracting picture Megan made in his too-large T-shirt and sweats wiped all coherent thought clean out of his head.
He let the knife clatter noisily onto the chopping board, picked up a chequered teatowel to dry his hands, then threw it carelessly down on the counter.
The clothes she wore might be too big by a mile, but the shape inside them was far too female to be totally concealed. It was easy to detect that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She couldn’t have been anyway, because she’d been wearing that sexy little halter top that declared as much to the world, and now her full pert breasts were straining against the voluminous material of his shirt, making him hard just looking at her. So hard and aroused that it was damn near agony to stand there and act as if nothing were amiss.