by Susan Napier
Nora wasn’t interested in his murky antecedents, only his current personal status. ‘Does he have a girlfriend?’
The broker gave Nora’s pale, absorbed face a sidelong look. ‘You want to steer clear of the likes of him,’ she warned kindly. ‘He’s got a bad reputation with women—great in the sack, but an ice-man out of it. Acquires mistresses rather than lovers, and none of them last longer than a couple of months. “Use ’em and lose ’em” seems to be his motto.’
In other words, he was every bit as dangerous as he looked. Perfect!
‘He’s not your type, anyway, Nora,’ the other woman added as a parting shot. ‘His women are all interchangeably gorgeous—and definitely not the kind to take home to Mother, if you know what I mean….’
She meant that Nora wasn’t his type. No one had ever come even close to calling her gorgeous. The words that had haunted her all evening rang again in her ears:
I’m sorry, Nora, but you must know this was inevitable. I mean—you’ve been a good mate but, let’s face it, the sex between us has always been pretty pedestrian, hasn’t it? You take ages to get heated up and then you’re only lukewarm. I’m not blaming you—some women are like that—but I need someone who physically excites me….
As an apology it had been a slap in the face. So he wasn’t blaming her for being stodgy and undersexed—how kind of him! She’d been a virgin when she met Ryan, so how had she been supposed to know that ‘the sex’ was pedestrian? She had never looked upon it as having sex, anyway, she had quaintly imagined that they were making love, sharing more than just their bodies. And he had never given any indication that he was dissatisfied with her lovemaking…or her cooking, or her frequent ironing of his shirts and tidying of his apartment, or the amount of unpaid time she had spent after-hours at Maitlands Consulting, where they both worked, helping him meet his project deadlines.
Blake MacLeod might be a ‘user’ but at least he was open about it.
And he was ‘great in the sack’.
Nora was engulfed by a wave of heat. What she was contemplating was sheer madness, but she had earned the right to go a little crazy. She was tired of people pointing out her limitations. She had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
After all, what was the very worst that could happen if she went over and tried out her womanly wiles on Blake MacLeod? An embarrassing snub? Nora was living proof that no one ever died of humiliation.
On the other hand, in the wilder realms of possibility, if she actually succeeded…
Her imagination failed her, and Nora took a hasty gulp of her drink to bolster her courage. She could do this. She might not be beautiful but she was smart—smarter, in fact, than Ryan, although she had learnt to downplay the fact when they were in company.
If only he wasn’t standing next to a window….
‘Those who are about to die, salute you,’ she muttered, raising her glass in a fatalistic toast before forging her way through the crowd.
A passing waitress mistook her gesture for a request for another drink and Nora paused to accept her offer of a refill. She had a feeling that she might need it!
Progress in her spindly five-inch heels was slow, but given their inherent instability she didn’t dare hurry for fear of twisting an ankle.
The nearer she got to that lean imposing back, the greater the number of butterflies trapped inside her chest. Her palms went clammy and her breath shortened. With every step she became more aware of the vast expanse of glass beyond him, and the fact that at any moment the dizzying vista could open up beneath her feet. Only by focusing fiercely on the solid breadth of his shoulders could she block out the incipient panic, and by the time she fetched up behind him she was wound as tight as a drum.
At the last moment, with her hand reaching out to tap him on the shoulder and what she hoped was a mysterious Mona Lisa smile pinned to her lips, her nerve failed.
She jerked her hand back and wheeled away, but the sharp movement dislodged the clutch-bag wedged under her armpit and it thudded to the floor, the faulty catch springing open to disgorge the contents.
‘Oh, no!’ Nora sank down on her knees amongst the forest of legs, trying to hold her wineglass on an even keel as she started to rake her possessions back into the yawning maw of the capacious bag with her other hand. To her mortification a floral-wrapped tampon had rolled up against the swivelling toe of a highly polished masculine shoe. She swept it up in her palm and thrust it into the dark recesses of her bag as the shoe flexed and the owner came down in a crouch beside her.
‘Allow me…’ Blake MacLeod’s amused grey eyes met her horrified ones as he picked up a pair of low-heeled black velvet shoes wedged one inside the other, and handed them to her.
‘You carry an extra pair of shoes in your handbag?’ he said, under cover of the party noise which buzzed uninterrupted over their heads.
His voice was a deep, soft drawl that sent sensual ripples across Nora’s exposed nerves.
‘They’re for driving,’ she said quickly, avoiding his gaze as she stuffed them awkwardly into the bag. Thank goodness he had politely ignored the tampon!
‘Really?’
Sensitised by her agonised embarrassment, she was quick to detect the lilt of scepticism. God, she was such a terrible liar. Why did she even bother?
‘No, not really,’ she confessed helplessly, sinking down on her folded legs. ‘I—that is, I bought the ones I’m wearing on the way to the party.’ She couldn’t believe that he had actually stooped to help her. Was this fate’s reward, or punishment, for her moment of cowardice? ‘At the hotel boutique downstairs. I was passing and saw them in the window and, well…’
He tipped his head to look down at her feet, tucked beneath her bottom, and blinked, his hard mouth kicking up, revealing the unexpected fullness of his lower lip. ‘Let me guess—you just had to have them….’
He made her sound wickedly self-indulgent, used to the instant gratification of her impulsive desires.
‘Something like that,’ she agreed vaguely.
Because Ryan was slightly shorter than her five-foot-nine, and unduly sensitive about it, Nora hadn’t possessed any high heels…until tonight. She had been wandering through the complex, following the signs from the underground car park to the Sky Tower lifts, when she had spotted the frivolous, tall strappy pair she was now wearing in the glitzy boutique window…shoes that would have made Ryan look like a tiny insignificant speck beside her. She had immediately marched in and bought them. Only a vestige of her normal thrift had restrained her from binning her low-heeled pumps.
‘I admire a woman who knows exactly what she wants…and goes after it,’ he murmured, rescuing more of her scattered possessions from under passing feet.
She was perversely annoyed by his approval, the rage simmering just beneath the surface of her skin unconsciously seeking an outlet.
‘Instead of expecting a man to get it for her, you mean?’ she challenged, startled to hear that her voice was husky with suppressed temper. Heavens! She actually sounded provocative.
‘Something like that.’ He smiled, tossing her own phrase back at her, and she was swamped by a hot bloom of physical awareness. His eyes drifted lower, to the ginger-flecked expanse of skin that rose above the flattened curve of her bodice, and the speculative gleam that she glimpsed through his thick lashes made her nervously check the security of her dress with a discreet upward tug under one arm. His white teeth flashed as he innocently returned his gaze to her rosy countenance.
The fully fledged smile did fascinating things to his sullen face, warming the cold angles and austere planes and lending his mouth a sensuous softness. Close up, she could see the smooth grain of his olive skin, darkened further by the kiss of summer sun and the blue-black shadow on his chin and upper lip. She discovered that his deep-set eyes had tiny chips of green in them, hidden gems embedded in the grey sheetrock, flecks of emerald fire that sparked in her a sudden lust for precious stones. When she inhaled she found t
hat she was breathing in the spicy scent of his body, not an artificially astringent cologne, expensive and anonymous, but his own unique natural fragrance—musky and unmistakably male….
‘You certainly seem to have the knack of acquiring things,’ he was saying, helping her to gather up her notebook and calculator, wallet, eye-make-up compact, tissues, vial of perfume, keys, pen-knife, a card of fuse-wire, mini-torch, nail file, comb, travel toothbrush, hotel sewing kit and tube of breath mints amongst sundry other bits and pieces. Pivoting from his splayed crouch he had the greater reach, occasionally stretching across her, the sleeve of his jacket brushing goose-pimples along Nora’s bare arm.
‘I—Really, you’ve helped enough. I can manage the rest myself,’ she protested, trying to distract his fascinated attention from the embarrassing amount of personal clutter. She saw him flipping through a small folder of family photos and snatched it away as he reached the image of herself as a plump, fuzzy-haired teenager.
‘That was taken when I was sixteen,’ she couldn’t help saying.
‘You don’t look much older than that now.’
‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
‘Most women enjoy giving the impression they’re younger than their years,’ he said, making her feel unutterably gauche.
‘It’s the freckles,’ she sighed. ‘They make me look like a perpetual schoolgirl.’
He picked up her blood donor card. By the time he had finished ‘helping’ her, Nora thought, she would be totally stripped of all mystery. ‘Please, don’t let me keep you from your conversation with your friends—’
‘This is much more interesting,’ he drawled, with the teasing inflection which made her feel hot and edgy. ‘And I always finish what I start. It’s sort of a trademark of mine. Besides, they’re acquaintances, not friends. My friends know better than to bore me.’
‘What happens when you’re bored?’ she dared to ask.
‘I behave like a complete boor,’ he said languidly.
‘Oh…Oh!’ A hiccup of startled laughter erupted from Nora as she belatedly recognised his pun, her eyes crinkling into merry crescents. ‘The insensitive and ill-mannered person, or the male pig?’ she asked with pretended confusion.
‘Actually a boar is an uncastrated male pig.’ He corrected her second option, and watched her eyelashes flutter and her freckles fight against a rising tide of pink. ‘I feel that’s an important distinction, since my answer is…yes to both.’
‘Really?’ She wasn’t about to let a man get the better of her—not tonight. ‘Then you must have a lot of very tolerant friends.’
He laughed. ‘Or a few very interesting ones.’ He held aloft a yellow-handled tool and shot her a compelling lift of his dark eyebrows. ‘A screwdriver?’
‘I like to be prepared for every eventuality,’ she told him, plucking it out of his hand, noticing that his fingers were long and supple and his nails beautifully manicured.
‘So I see,’ he murmured, as he spied the last stray item, almost hidden by a fold of her dress flaring away from her knee. He handed her the small foil package with grave ceremony.
She stared at it lying on the palm of her hand, stricken by a chilling thought. Thank God she was unable to take oral contraceptives and therefore had had to insist that Ryan always used a condom. What if Kelly wasn’t the first woman he had slept with during the year that their relationship had been sexually intimate? She would have been forced to wonder whether her health was at risk.
With a jolt she realised that it had been ages since she and Ryan had actually made love…. He had been away on business, then he had gone on a skiing trip to Colorado with his rugby mates, and after he got back he had been busy with work, or she had, and their social life had got busier. There had always seemed to be a ready enough reason not to make love, and Nora admitted that she had barely noticed their extended bout of celibacy—on her side at least!
‘It is yours, isn’t it?’ he said, intrigued by the parade of expressions across her abstracted face.
‘What? Oh…yes.’ She blushed, dropping it hurriedly into her bag. ‘But don’t let it lead you to jump to any hasty conclusions about me,’ she added, putting her drink down carefully on the carpet while she fished about to find the fuse-wire and quickly wound a 15-amp strand in a figure of eight around the worn clasp.
‘The only conclusion I’ve come to is that you’re probably a highly organised person in a disorganised kind of way,’ he said wryly, watching her complete the makeshift repair with a deft twist of the fragile wire. ‘Shall we rejoin the party before people start wondering what we’re getting up to down here?’ He rose smoothly to his feet, showing no signs of stiffness from his prolonged crouch, whisking away her bag and wineglass and placing them on the edge of the window table behind him, next to his own drink, before stooping to offer both his hands to Nora.
His palms were slightly rough, the friction of his skin sliding against hers producing sparks of heat that fanned hotter as his fingers tightened, totally encompassing her slender hands, making her momentarily feel trapped and helpless and alarmingly vulnerable. A quick flex of his legs and he hauled her upright in one fluid, easy movement. Alarm turned to a rush of unexpected excitement, the sparks leaping from the point of contact to sizzle up Nora’s arms and razzle-dazzle around her body with electrifying speed, making it difficult to breathe, let alone coordinate her movements. The force of her forward momentum plastered her against his shirt front and she flailed on her precarious heels to find her balance, gasping when she felt an ominous downward drag on her breasts.
‘Oh, stop! Don’t move!’ she hissed at him as she realised what was happening. ‘I think I’ve caught one of my heels in the hem of my dress!’ she groaned, hopping on one wobbly foot like a drunken stork.
He uttered a smothered curse, threaded with laughter, obediently freezing in position.
‘This isn’t funny!’ she whispered fiercely into his ear. ‘I’ll be topless in a moment if we’re not careful.’
‘And this would be a bad thing?’ he chuckled softly, his breath stirring the silky curls that feathered her cheek. The deep vibration in his chest resonated against her squashed breasts and Nora was mortified to feel them begin to tingle, the nipples budding against the sheer fabric of her strapless bra, the top edge of which was now peeking above the satin band of her bodice.
‘Yes!’ Her chin was level with his shoulder, his tanned throat a tempting few inches from her mouth.
‘For goodness’ sake, stop laughing at me and try doing something helpful,’ she gritted. She pulled her hands from his loosening grasp and looked down over her shoulder, arching back to try and unhook her spiked heel from the looped thread, but the twisting motion jerked her awkwardly bent leg and she gave a little squeak as she felt herself begin to pop free from the top of her dress.
Her squeak turned to a breathless gasp as his hands whipped to her sides, palms clamping around the front of her ribs with almost painful force, splayed fingers digging into her back, anchoring the straining fabric firmly in place, her dignity still intact. ‘It’s all right. I’ve got you. Now try,’ he advised.
Nora was aware that she was teetering on the brink of social disaster. She licked her dry lips, her heart still pounding with fright, scarcely able to draw breath against the fierce compression of his grip. She stared up at the man holding her, her eyes wide and dark with doubt, her teeth sinking painfully into her bottom lip. She had already been betrayed by one man tonight. She had picked Blake MacLeod out as a dangerous man…what if it was an element of cruelty in his nature which gave him the dark aura she had found so appealing? What if he was setting her up for fresh humiliation?
‘Go ahead—I won’t let go.’ There wasn’t a trace of his previous mockery in his quiet voice and cool gaze. ‘Trust me.’
His calmness and the continuing steady pressure around her ribs curbed her fears. In any case, trussed up as she was, she really didn’t have any choice but to trust him.
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It took her several flustered seconds to untangle the transparent thread from her snagged heel, and when she was finally standing on two feet again she uttered a ragged sigh of relief. She was grateful that he had drawn her slightly away from the group he had been talking to, sparing her the embarrassment of introductions. ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure….’
The silky mockery was back and as their eyes met she was even more aware of his hands still firmly caging her ribs, his thumbs sloping up under her breasts so that with every exhaled breath she stroked herself against him. All he had to do was to alter the angle of his thumbs and he would find the stiff crests which pushed against the shiny satin, she thought hectically. She could feel the long muscles of his thighs bunching as they tensed against hers, the hard thrust of his hips still bracing the centre of her slender body, generating a primitive response that filled her with a furious elation. The social buzz around them faded from her consciousness, her breathing quickening in response to the sultry recognition that darkened his grey eyes. Her heart jumped inside her chest, throbbing against the warm pad of his thumb, and her sensitised skin crackled with energy.
‘We haven’t even been introduced,’ she murmured faintly, having difficulty shaping the words on her thickened tongue.
‘It’s a little late to be formal. I’m Blake MacLeod.’
‘I know.’ She saw his eyelids give a wary flicker. ‘After I saw you across the room, I wondered who you were, so I asked someone…’
‘I see.’ The brackets around his mouth relaxed. ‘And?’
He obviously sensed there had been more to it than a simple identification. ‘She said that you had a bad reputation with women and I should avoid you like the plague.’