‘Yes,’ she breathed raggedly.
He thrust a hand through his wet hair. ‘I suggest we both go back to the gatehouse now, and get out of these wet clothes before taking a shower.’
‘Before I leave?’
‘I think that would be the best thing for both of us,’ he confirmed heavily.
‘Just as well I didn’t unpack completely last night, isn’t it?’ Stephanie muttered dully as she stood up, giving Jordan a clear view of how the yellow T-shirt clung to the fullness of her bare breasts, clearly outlining the hard, berry-pink nipples he hadn’t quite got around to touching earlier.
He glanced away, but not quickly enough to stop his own arousal from throbbing anew. ‘Are you coming back to the house or not?’ he bit out, with a return of his impatience.
‘I’m coming.’ Stephanie picked up her jacket and slowly followed him outside.
She continued to inwardly bombard herself with self-recriminations as they walked back to the gatehouse in complete and uncomfortable silence. No matter how many times she went over the incident in her mind—whether she’d encouraged him or not—Stephanie knew that she shouldn’t have allowed that kiss with Jordan to happen. It didn’t really matter that she hadn’t planned it. Or that it still made her go hot all over just thinking about it!
The heat had completely dissipated by the time they had walked the half-mile or so back to the gatehouse, with the cold wind blowing through her wet clothing, and Stephanie’s teeth were literally chattering. Her face felt blue with the cold by the time Jordan unlocked the back door and allowed her to precede him into the warm and delicious-smelling kitchen.
‘You need to go upstairs and take a shower and put on some dry clothes,’ Jordan said again, as he saw how cold Stephanie was.
‘I—yes. Fine.’ She turned away to hang her coat on the back of one of the chairs. ‘You should do the same.’
‘I know what I need to do, Stephanie,’ Jordan scowled. ‘When you come back we’ll sit down and eat the soup you’ve made.’
She turned, her eyes wide. ‘But I thought you wanted me to leave.’
His mouth firmed. ‘Not before you’ve eaten something warm. I would hate for you to get back to London only to be admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia,’ he explained as she frowned.
Stephanie looked at him searchingly before nodding slowly. ‘Some hot soup would be nice.’
‘Fine,’ he said tersely. ‘Well?’ he added a second later, as she made no effort to leave.
She swallowed hard. ‘I—I just want you to know that I really didn’t do anything deliberate to make us both fall into the swimming pool,’ she told him, one last time before leaving to go up the stairs.
Jordan drew in a deep breath once he was alone, his hands clenched at his sides, his expression bleak, knowing that his accident had obviously robbed him of his sense of humour as well as the mobility in his right leg. At any other time he would have found it funny that the two of them had fallen into the swimming pool.
Stephanie was the first woman he had even attempted to make love to since his accident six months ago. Attempted being an accurate description of the fiasco it had turned into!
Stephanie’s sensuously lush mouth had been so delicious to kiss. Her body so responsive as it had moulded against his own. Jordan had been totally aroused as he’d kissed her—so aroused, in fact, that he had forgotten everything else. Including the weakness of his right hip and leg.
Jordan knew without a doubt that Stephanie wasn’t the one responsible for making the two of them lose their balance and fall into the pool. He was only too aware of why it had happened, and exactly why he had been so angry afterwards. He had unthinkingly put his weight onto his right hip, and it had just collapsed beneath him and toppled them both into the water.
It all went to prove that he couldn’t even kiss a woman any more without the embarrassment and utter humiliation of having his leg give way. It was more than a man could stand!
‘I’ve decided I’m not leaving, after all,’ Stephanie announced when she returned down the stairs half an hour later. She stood her ground determinedly in the kitchen doorway as Jordan turned to frown at her from where he stood in front of the Aga, stirring the soup.
He had obviously taken advantage of her absence to shower and change into dry jeans and a thin black cashmere sweater. The overlong darkness of his hair looked almost dry too, although there was a grim set to his mouth to add to his icy expression—an expression that Stephanie refused to be cowed by as much as she refused to leave.
She had run herself a bath rather than taking the suggested shower, deciding she needed to immerse herself fully in hot water in order to soak the chill from her bones. She’d had time to think once she had sunk her shoulders beneath the hot and scented bubble bath.
Okay, so she accepted that she shouldn’t have let Jordan kiss her. Nor should she have responded to that kiss. She also accepted that those things made continuing to stay on here awkward, to say the least. But awkward in a personal way, not a professional one.
She had no intention of allowing Lucan to actually pay her a wage until Jordan let her work with him professionally. Which meant that technically Jordan wasn’t her patient yet. He wouldn’t become so until Stephanie actually did something professional for or to him. Her constant arguments with him about his need for treatment really didn’t count. Neither did making him a nourishing soup for lunch.
If Stephanie left now then she would be admitting professional defeat. She was guilty of nothing of a personal nature except finding the ‘magnetically handsome’ Jordan Simpson magnetically handsome! Something that any woman with an ounce of red blood in her veins would have to admit to, surely?
She would be admitting that professionally she was as incapable of getting anywhere with the stubbornly determined actor as all the other physiotherapists who had tried to work with him these last six months. That sort of defeat had never been an option as far as Stephanie was concerned. She wouldn’t accept it now with Jordan, either.
She entered the kitchen fully. ‘I said—’
‘I heard what you said,’ Jordan drawled as he considered her through lowered lids. ‘I’m just surprised that you still think it’s your decision to make.’
‘Actually, it’s your brother’s,’ she acknowledged lightly. ‘Once I start working for him. Which I’m not doing at the moment,’ she added sweetly.
Those gold-coloured eyes glittered icily. ‘And you don’t believe that attempting to drown his brother is reason enough for Lucan to want to dispense with your services altogether?’
‘Attempting to drown—?’ Stephanie gave a disbelieving shake of her head, her gaze incredulous. ‘Don’t you think that’s a slight exaggeration?’
‘Perhaps. Except you couldn’t have known whether or not I could actually swim when you pushed me into the water.’ He arched challenging brows.
‘I did not push you in.’
‘Prove it.’
Her cheeks were flushed with temper. ‘I can no more prove that than you can prove otherwise!’
Jordan shrugged. ‘All of that aside, you must know as well as I do that the two of us staying here together is even less feasible now than it was before.’
‘I’m not leaving,’ she repeated stubbornly.
Impasse, Jordan acknowledged in sheer frustration. Stephanie was refusing to leave, and this morning had certainly proved that he sure as hell couldn’t make her! At least, not physically.
Jordan deliberately crossed the kitchen so that he stood only inches away from her. Close enough to feel the heat of her body in the close-fitting green jumper and blue jeans she had changed into. ‘If you stay on here then I guarantee that what happened between us this morning will happen again,’ he warned her huskily.
Those green eyes widened in alarm even as her cheeks warmed with colour. Evidence that she wasn’t as self-possessed about what had happened earlier as she wished to appear, he thought smugly.
; She shook her head. ‘Not if I don’t want it to.’
‘But you do want it to, Stephanie.’ Jordan held her gaze with his as he curved his hand about one of those over-heated cheeks. He saw with satisfaction the way the blood pulsed at her temples. His gaze moved down and he watched the way she moistened her lips nervously. He glanced even lower and saw the unmistakable signs of her nipples pressing against the soft wool of her sweater. ‘Don’t you?’ he murmured knowingly.
There was a look of panic in her eyes now. ‘No, I—’
‘Yes, Stephanie,’ Jordan insisted gently as he ran the pad of his thumb lightly across the soft pout of her lips and felt the way they quivered beneath his caress. ‘Your response to my touch clearly says yes.’
She swallowed hard. ‘You’re still trying to force me into leaving.’
‘Is it working?’ Jordan taunted. He knew damn well that it was; he wasn’t so out of practice that he didn’t know when a woman was responding to him! ‘I won’t stop at kissing next time, Stephanie,’ he warned her. ‘Next time I’ll kiss and touch you until you’re so aching and wet for me that you’ll be begging me to make love to you!’
He spoke so forcefully, so graphically, that Stephanie had no trouble whatsoever in imagining them naked in bed together, skin moving on skin, their breathing ragged and their bodies entangled as they caressed and kissed each other to completion.
Just thinking of the possibility of it made Stephanie aroused all over again.
She had made her decision to stay on here when she was upstairs, well away from Jordan’s physically disturbing presence. Calmly. Coolly. But they weren’t emotions Stephanie could maintain when she was actually in his presence.
She raised her chin stubbornly to meet the mockery of his gaze head-on. ‘Just because the tabloids often scream out headlines about the “eligible and sexy Jordan Simpson” as he escorts his latest airhead somewhere, it doesn’t mean that every woman you meet is going to fall down adoringly at your feet. Or any other part of your anatomy, for that matter,’ she added scathingly.
He gave a hard smile. ‘No?’
‘No!’ Stephanie snapped as she heard the deliberate challenge in his tone.
‘Flattered as I am that you’ve bothered to read those tabloids—’
‘I didn’t say I had read them, only that I’d seen the headlines,’ she defended hotly.
He gave her a knowing look. ‘If you say so.’
‘I do!’
Jordan shrugged. ‘I’m not answerable for what the tabloids choose to print about me, Stephanie. Or to the women I’ve dated in the past.’
‘Don’t you mean currently?’ Stephanie accused. ‘That was Crista Moore who telephoned you this morning, wasn’t it?’
The name Crista really was too unusual for Jordan’s earlier caller to have been anyone else. Which meant he was probably still involved with the beautiful actress.
Which made letting him kiss her even more stupid on Stephanie’s part!
‘What if it was?’ he said.
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe you should just stick to one airhead at a time!’
‘I wouldn’t put you in the airhead category, Stephanie,’ he teased.
‘We aren’t dating!’
‘We aren’t anything yet,’ Jordan accepted dryly. ‘But if you insist on staying on here we’re most definitely going to be something.’
Stephanie’s cheeks blushed hotly. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’
‘Would you like me to show you?’
‘You arrogant, overbearing, self—’
‘Sticks and stones, Stephanie …’
‘No, it’s the truth,’ she maintained forcefully. ‘You may have—may have caught me slightly off-guard this morning when you kissed me, but it won’t happen again.’
‘No?’ He moved closer to her.
Stephanie stood her ground. ‘No!’
His eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘You seem slightly—flustered.’
‘I’m getting rather annoyed, actually,’ she flared back at him.
Jordan narrowed shrewd eyes. ‘Just not annoyed enough to leave?’
‘No!’
‘Fine.’ His mouth firmed as he finally stepped away from her, making her sigh inwardly in relief. ‘Have it your own way. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’
It sounded more like a threat to Stephanie than a warning.
A threat of intent.
CHAPTER SIX
‘I’M GOING back to my study to work.’ Jordan reached for his cane to stand up from the table where they had just sat in total silence eating the warming soup.
It had been an uncomfortable silence. A silence full of awareness. Mental. Emotional. But most of all physical.
Jordan still had no explanation at to why he was even attracted to the determined and difficult physiotherapist. He had never been attracted to green-eyed redheads of medium height and medium build before now. He had certainly never found argumentative women in the least appealing.
Stephanie McKinley was all those things and more.
The ‘more’ being her mulish stubbornness in refusing to leave Mulberry Hall!
Well, just because she wouldn’t leave there was no reason for Jordan to have to stay in the same room as her. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon, but you can come and get me when dinner’s ready,’ he said autocratically as Stephanie stood up to clear the table.
‘Yes, My Lord.’ She turned to give him a mocking curtsy. ‘Certainly, My Lord.’
Jordan drew in a sharp breath even as his gaze narrowed on her suspiciously. He had assumed earlier that she knew nothing about the history of the St Claire family. She had certainly given no indication when they’d talked earlier that she had connected Jordan’s family with the Dukes of Stourbridge, or that she knew he really was a lord in truth.
There was no indication of that knowledge in Stephanie’s mischievous expression now, either—only a glint of mocking laughter in those expressive green eyes to go with that curtsy she had just given him.
Jordan relaxed. ‘If I really were a lord, and this were a few hundred years ago, then I would have put you out onto the streets to starve by now for your insolence.’
She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘Then how lucky it is for me that the time of the feudal overlord is long gone.’
Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Jordan’s older brother? Lucan was no more inclined to use his title than Jordan and Gideon were, but there was still no doubting that Lucan was every bit as arrogant as their aristocratic ducal forebears were reputed to have been!
‘Yes, lucky for you,’ Jordan agreed dryly. ‘As for dinner—I believe you said that eating a healthy diet was a necessary part of my treatment?’ he reminded her.
She smiled slightly. ‘Do I take it from that comment that it’s your intention to agree to accept only the parts of that treatment which suit you?’
‘Of course.’ He looked at her down his gorgeous nose.
Stephanie had never met anyone quite like Jordan St Claire.
Never before had she wanted to slap a man at the same time as she so desperately wanted to experience the passion of his kisses!
She sighed. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.’
‘You aren’t afraid at all, Stephanie,’ he contradicted her flatly.
He had no idea! ‘What work are you doing in your study?’
‘None of your damned business,’ Jordan said evenly.
So much for trying to change the subject to something less controversial!
The real problem for Stephanie was that even when they weren’t engaged in one of these irritating conversations she was still aware of everything about him. Even sitting down and eating lunch with him had been something of an ordeal in self-restraint.
She had found herself looking at Jordan’s hands far too often as he ate, easily able to remember those hands caressing her back earlier. Igniting that fire of longing inside her.
> Oh, God! she thought, almost groaning aloud. Maybe she should just leave here, after all? Admit defeat and just go. Before she was tempted into doing something she would most definitely regret.
No, she couldn’t leave.
Between the two of them, Richard and Rosalind Newman had been making Stephanie’s life in London a living hell. She simply refused to let her awareness of Jordan force her into returning until Joey could assure her that particular nightmare was over.
‘Is there anything you want me to pass on to Lucan when I speak to him later this afternoon?’ She arched challenging brows.
Jordan scowled back at her. ‘I very much doubt that my big brother expects you to give him an hour-by-hour report on my progress.’
‘Or otherwise,’ she shot back.
‘Or otherwise,’ he confirmed
‘No, probably not,’ Stephanie accepted lightly. ‘But as I have nothing else to do this afternoon …’
Jordan knew the little minx was challenging him. Attempting to hold the threat of Lucan’s displeasure over him. A totally useless threat as far as Jordan was concerned. ‘I ceased being in awe of my brother the moment I realised that he has to go to the bathroom like the rest of humanity.’
She grimaced. ‘I really didn’t need that image, thank you very much!’
Jordan shrugged. ‘Believe me, it’s a good leveller in almost any circumstances.’
‘In Lucan’s case, it’s one I could well do without.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Jordan drawled. ‘I usually like to eat dinner about seven.’
‘When you bother to eat at all.’
He gave a mocking smile. ‘As you’ve insisted on staying here, I expect to eat regularly and often.’
Stephanie wasn’t totally sure which appetite Jordan was referring to, but she had her suspicions.
She had worked with dozens of patients over the last three years. Young. Old. Female as well as male. Some of them had been extremely difficult to work with, yes—those were the cases she specialised in, after all—but none of them had been as impossible as the man standing in front of her now.
Jordan St Claire: Dark and Dangerous Page 6