The Morning After

by Michelle Reid

  It all looked very cosy, very intimate, with Todd feeding Annie her favourite devilled prawns while she held a chicken drumstick up for him to bite into. But the conversation between them was far from cosy.

  ‘Well, did you get to speak to her?’ Annie asked him bluntly.

  ‘She collared me.’ Todd shrugged offhandedly. ‘It wasn’t the other way around.’

  ‘After waiting until I was safely out of the way, of course. Bite—you’ve missed a tasty bit there…’ He bit, sharp white teeth slicing easily into succulent chicken. ‘So, what did she have to say?’

  Another shrug. ‘Nothing worth repeating,’ he dismissed.

  Which meant, Annie surmised, that Susie had spent the time she’d had alone with him slaying Annie’s character. He fed her a mushroom-filled canapé and she chewed on it thoughtfully for a while, then said firmly, ‘All right, tell me what you said to her, then.’

  For a moment his eyes twinkled, wry amusement putting life into the pure blue irises. ‘Just like that,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘She could just have been enquiring about your health, you know.’

  ‘And we both know she was not,’ Annie drawled.

  He huffed out a short laugh. ‘Do you have any false illusions about yourself at all, Annie?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘None that I know of.’ She pouted, then, like him, shrugged a slender shoulder. ‘They wouldn’t be much use to me if I did have them, would they?’ She was referring to the fact that people believed what they were conditioned to believe, and the Alvarez affair had done the conditioning on her character four years ago.

  His blue eyes clouded at her candid honesty about herself, a grim kind of sympathy replacing the moment’s amusement. ‘I wish…’ he began, but she stopped him by placing sticky fingers over his lips.

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes suddenly dark and sombre. ‘No wishes. No heart-searching or self-recriminations. They serve no useful purpose. And we know what we are to each other, no matter what everyone else wants to believe.’

  ‘I love you,’ he murmured, and kissed the tips of her fingers where they lay lightly against his mouth.

  ‘Now that,’ she decided, ‘has just earned you the right to use me whenever you want to. Business or pleasure, my love. I am at your service!’

  A sudden movement on the very periphery of her vision had her bead twisting in that direction just in time to catch sight of her stranger turning away from them, and that odd feeling went chasing down her spine again.

  ‘Have you any idea who that man is?’ she asked Todd.

  ‘Which one?’ he prompted, glancing in the direction that she was looking, but already the stranger had disappeared through the door which led into the main function room.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ She turned back to face Todd. ‘He’s gone.’ And she made a play of cleaning her sticky fingers on the damp towels provided, aware that Todd was frowning at her, wondering why she’d felt driven to remark on the person at all. He knew that it wasn’t like her; she usually showed a distinct lack of interest in the male sex in general. So her sudden interest in one man in particular intrigued him. But just when he was going to quiz her further a colleague of his joined them, and the moment was lost.

  A fact for which Annie was thankful, because she didn’t think that she could give Todd a reason why the stranger was bothering her as much as he was. He was impertinent, certainly. The way he had been watching her all evening made him that. And arrogant too, because he didn’t even bother to look away when she caught him doing it!

  But…

  She had no answer to her ‘but’. And on a sudden burst of restlessness she excused herself from Todd and his companion with the excuse that she was going to the bathroom.

  She began threading her way through the crowd towards the main foyer, a tall, graceful mover with the kind of figure that was now back in fashion—slender but curvy, with high, firm breasts, a narrow waist and sensually rounded hips.

  Being so blonde meant that the white and gold combination of her outfit suited her, the silk clinging sensually as she walked, advertising the distinct lack of underwear beneath it. But although she was well aware of the admiring glances that she was receiving she acknowledged few of them, smiling only at people she knew but giving them no chance to waylay her.

  The foyer was almost as busy as the function rooms, with people milling about or just standing in small groups chatting, and Annie paused by the doorway, her blue gaze searching for the direction of the ladies’ room. She spied it way across on the other side of the thickly carpeted foyer, but had barely taken a small step in that direction when she caught a flashing glimpse of flamered hair and sighed when she realised that Susie was going in the same direction.

  In no mood for a cat-fight in the Ladies, she watched Susie disappear from view, then turned, feeling a bit at a loss as to what to do next and wondering if she dared just walk out of here without telling Todd.

  She’d had enough now and wanted to go home. The tall dark stranger had unsettled her. And the fact that Todd had already had his confrontation with Susie, and that Susie was completely aware of whom Todd was here with, made her reasons for being here at all redundant.

  And, to be honest, her bed beckoned. In her line of business early nights were a fact of life, and her body clock was telling her that she was usually tucked up and fast asleep by now.

  Quite how it happened she didn’t know, but all of a sudden a noisy group came bursting out of the room she’d just left, forcing her to take a quick step back out of their way—which brought her hard up against the person standing behind her.

  She turned quickly to apologise—only to stiffen on a fiercely indrawn breath as something icy cold and very wet landed against her chest…!

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘OH…!’ she gasped out shrilly.

  ‘Damn,’ a deep voice muttered. ‘My apologies.’

  But Annie was too busy trying to catch her breath to listen to any apology as she watched what looked like the full contents of a tall, fluted glass of champagne drip down the honeyed slopes of her breasts. Ice-cold bubbles were fizzing against her heated skin, the chilled liquid soaking into the thin white silk of her bodice.

  The fabric darkened, then turned transparent before her very eyes, plastering itself so tightly to her breasts that anyone within a vicinity of ten feet would now know that she was definitely not wearing a bra! And to top that humiliating exposure her nipples, always so annoyingly sensitive to quick changes in temperature, burst into tight, prominent buds, pushing against the wet fabric in sheer, affronted surprise!

  ‘Hell,’ the culprit muttered, making her wretchedly aware that he was seeing exactly what she was seeing—and from a better vantage point than anyone else, including herself. In a delayed act of modesty she snapped her arms across her breasts at the same time as her head came up to receive the second stunning shock in as many seconds.

  It was the man who had been watching her all evening—the same man who had filled her with such strange, unsettling feelings—and she just stared at him blankly, her lovely mouth parted while her body quivered badly enough for anyone to see that she was suffering from a severe state of shock.

  Then flash bulbs began to pop, and the next thing she knew a male chest of a rock-like substance was blocking her off from view as a strong arm whipped around her waist to pull her hard up against his muscle-packed frame.

  ‘Pretend you know me!’ he muttered urgently. And before she could begin to think what he meant his mouth took fierce possession of her own.

  Annie froze, this shock invasion, coming on top of all the other shocks she had just received, holding her so stiff and still that she simply let him get away with it!

  But the shock did not stop her from being intensely aware of the way his mouth seemed to burn against her own, or the way he was holding her so tightly that her wet breasts were being crushed against the silky fabric of his dinner jacket. And she could feel his breath warm against her cheek
, smell the slightly spicy scent of him that teased her stammering senses.

  She was panting for breath by the time he drew away, giving only enough space between their lips so he could speak to her softly and swiftly. ‘At the moment only you and I know about the champagne.’ His voice held the finest hint of an accent—American tinged with something else…‘Keep up the pretence of knowing me and those greedy cameras will merely believe that Annie Lacey has just been greeted by one of her many lovers. You understand?’

  Many lovers? She blinked, still too shocked, too bewildered by a mad set of events to begin to think clearly.

  Then more flash bulbs popped, and she closed her eyes as tomorrow’s headlines played their acid taunt across the inside of her lids: ANNIE LACEY BARES ALL IN CHAMPAGNE CLASH!

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered shakily.

  He shifted slightly, accepting her response as acknowledgement of his advice, a large band splaying across the base of her spine to ease her more closely to him. ‘Smile,’ he instructed brusquely.

  Obediently she fixed a tight, bright smile to her throbbing lips.

  ‘Now reach up and kiss me in return.’

  Her eyes widened, then darkened in dumb refusal. He read it, and his own eyes flashed a warning. Green, she realised quite out of context. His eyes were green.

  ‘Do it!’ he commanded harshly. ‘Do it, you fool, if you want this to look natural!’

  More flash bulbs popped, congealing the horror in her shock-paralysed throat when she realised that her choices were few. She either complied with this frightening man’s instructions or she faced the humiliation that she would receive at the hands of the gutter Press.

  It was no contest really, she decided bleakly. The Press would be cruel—too cruel. This man—this frightening stranger—could never hurt her as deeply as a ruthless Press could do.

  So with a dizzy sense of unreality washing numbly through her, her eyes clinging like confused prisoners to the glinting urgency in his, her tense fingers began sliding up his chest and over his broad shoulders, and her slender body stretched up along the ungiving length of his as she went slowly up on tiptoe to bring her reluctant mouth into contact with his.

  Only, her mouth never made it as she received yet another shock—a shock which made her wet breasts heave against his hard chest in surprise, and sent her blue eyes wider, her quivering mouth too—when her fingers made accidental contact with something at his nape.

  His hair was so long that he had it tied back with a thin velvet ribbon!

  He gave a soft laugh deep in his throat, white teeth flashing between beautifully moulded lips, sardonically smiling in amusement at her shock.

  Then he wasn’t smiling, his green eyes darkening into something that stung her with a hot, dark sense of her own femininity and had her body stiffening in rejection even as he arched her up against him and closed the gap between their mouths.

  She stopped breathing. Her fingers coiled tensely around that long, sleek tail of dark, silken hair as fine, pulsing jets of stinging, hot awareness sprayed heat across her trembling flesh.

  For all her carefully nurtured reputation, for all the juicy rumours about her personal life, Annie rarely allowed herself to be properly kissed, rarely let any man close enough to try—though those who wished to would rather have died than admit such a thing to anyone, which was why her image as a man-killer stayed so perfectly intact.

  So to have this man kiss her—not superficially but with enough sensual drive to have her own lips part to welcome him—seemed to throw her into a deeper state of shock, holding her completely still in his arms as she felt her response like a lick of fire burning from mouth to breasts then, worse, to the very core of her sex. Her muscles contracted fiercely in reaction, her lips quivering on yet another helpless gasp.

  Then, thankfully, she was free—thankfully because in all her life she had never experienced a response like that! And the fact that she had done so with this perfect stranger both frightened and bewildered her.

  ‘Right,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  Crazily she found herself leaning weakly against him, sponge-kneed and dizzy with the strange cacophony of reactions taking place inside her. Her mouth was throbbing, her heart trembling and her damp breasts quivering where they were being pressed tightly against his chest.

  Inside she was fainting—it was the only way her muzzy head could think of describing that odd, dragging feeling that seemed to be trying to sink her like liquid to the ground. Even the roots of her hair reacted stingingly as his chin brushed across the top of her head when he moved to glance around them.

  He shifted her beneath the crook of his powerful arm, and he was big—big enough to fit her easily beneath his shoulder, even though she was no small thing herself. Her hand slid from the long lock of his hair to flutter delicately down his back to his lean, tight waist, her other pressing against the front of his white dress shirt where she was made forcefully aware of the accelerated pounding of his heart beneath the sticky dampness where her wetness had transferred itself to him.

  The whole scene must have looked powerfully emotional to anyone watching all of this take place—the notorious Annie Lacey meeting, throwing herself upon and leaving hurriedly with a man who could only be an old and very intimate friend by the way he held her clasped so possessively to him. But, huddled against him as she was, at that moment she could only be glad of his powerful bulk because it helped to hide what had happened to her from all those curious eyes.

  But when she felt the cooling freshness of the summer night air hit her body she at last made an effort to pull her befuddled brain together.

  ‘Wait a minute!’ she gasped, pulling to a dead stop in front of the row of waiting black cabs. ‘I—’

  ‘Just get in,’ he instructed, transferring his grip to her elbow and quite forcefully propelling her inside the nearest cab.

  Annie landed with less than her usual grace on the cheap, cracked leather seat.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she exclaimed with shrill indignity as he climbed right in behind her.

  He didn’t bother to answer, but instead, and to her horror, began stripping off his black silk evening jacket!

  Annie made an ungainly scramble into the furthest corner of the seat, blue eyes revealing the real alarm she was now beginning to feel.

  ‘Where to, mate?’

  ‘Tell the guy,’ the man beside her commanded. ‘Then put that on—’ the jacket landed on her trembling lap ‘—before his eyes pop out of his head.’

  Annie glanced sharply at the cabby to find his eyes fixed on her breasts so shockingly outlined against the sodden fabric of her dress. Dark heat stung along her cheeks as hurriedly she dragged the jacket around her slender shoulders and clutched possessively at its black satin lapels.

  ‘Your address,’ her accoster prompted, after having watched sardonically her rush to cover herself up.

  Annie flashed him a fulminating look, frustratedly aware that she had no choice but to comply. Well, she did have a choice, she acknowledged bitterly. She could toss this alarming man back his jacket, climb out of the cab and walk back into the hotel to face all those eagerly speculative eyes while she went in search of Todd.

  But the very idea of doing that made her feel slightly sick. All those eyes with their amused, knowing looks, and sly sniggers from people who would see the whole thing as yet another Annie Lacey sensation.

  Reluctantly she muttered her address, then subsided stiffly into her corner of the cab while he leaned forward to repeat it to the cabby.

  Annie followed the lithe movement of his long body with her eyes.

  Who is he? she wondered tensely. Though he sounded American there was an added hint of a foreign accent in his deep, gravelly voice that she couldn’t quite place. And his skin wore a rich, smooth olive tint that suggested foreign climes—like the colour of his raven-black hair with its outrageous pony-tail lying smoothly along the p
ure silk of his bright white dress shirt between well-muscled shoulderblades.

  What is he? Even in profile his face showed a hard-boned toughness of character that somehow did not go with the flamboyant style of his hair.

  He gave a conflict of impressions, she realised, and wondered if it was a deliberately erected facade aimed to put people off the track where his true personality was concerned.

  And why did she think that? Because she did it herself and therefore could recognise the same trait in others.

  Instruction to the cabby completed, he slid the partitioning window shut then sat back to look at her.

  Instantly those strange sparks of awareness prickled along the surface of her skin—an awareness of his firm, sculptured mouth that had so shockingly claimed her own, of lips that made hers tingle in memory, made her throat go dry as they stretched into a smooth, mocking smile.

  ‘A novel way of meeting, don’t you think?’ he drawled.

  Not gravel but velvet. She found herself correcting her description of the liquid tones of his voice. And laced with a hint of—what? Contempt? Sarcasm? Or just simple, wry amusement at the whole situation? Annie flicked her wary glance up to his eyes. Strange eyes. Green. Green eyes that again did not go with the dark Latin rest of him, and were certainly alight with something that kept her senses alert to the threat of danger.

  Danger?

  ‘You were watching me earlier,’ she said half-accusingly. ‘And you know my name.’

  He smiled at that, the wry—yes, it was wry—amusement deepening in his eyes. ‘But you are a very beautiful woman, Miss Lacey,’ he pointed out. ‘Your face and your body can be seen plastered on billboards all over the world. Of course I know your name.’ He gave a small shrug of those wide, white-clad shoulders. ‘I would expect every red-blooded man alive to recognise you on sight.’

  ‘Except that all those other men do not make a point of stalking me all evening,’ she pointed out.