Carole Mortimer - His Scandalous Mistress

She avoided that probing gaze. ‘I thought you preferred not to talk?’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

‘Unfortunately for you, so have I!’

‘Humour me, Elizabeth, hmm?’ he encouraged softly.

Elizabeth didn’t want to humour this man. In fact, she wished they had never started this conversation! Especially as she did find his smile sexy—as did every other woman who so much as looked at him!

Her chin rose defensively. ‘If you must know, I prefer brain over brawn.’

He became very still. Watchfully, dangerously so. ‘You think I’m just muscle and no brain?’

‘I didn’t say that—’

‘As good as,’ he bit out. ‘What constitutes an intelligent man to you, Elizabeth?’

She grimaced. ‘I didn’t mean to sound insulting—’

‘Oh, I think that you did,’ Rogan grated harshly. ‘Does a first-class degree in Computer Science and a doctorate in Computer Analysis pass as intelligent in your book?’

Elizabeth swallowed hard. ‘I thought you had been in the army for most of the last fifteen years.’

‘Where, if you’re so inclined, they teach you to use your brain as well as how to shoot guns!’ he assured her.

There was no mistaking the anger in Rogan’s tone now. And rightly so. Somehow in the last fifteen years this man had achieved a first-class degree and a doctorate, for goodness’ sake. Giving him the same right as Elizabeth to use the title of doctor if he so chose.

She gave an awkward grimace. ‘I apologise if I sounded rude. But—’

‘Let’s just leave it at the apology, hmm, Elizabeth?’ he advised in an off-hand manner. ‘Any more insults from you and I’m likely to lose my appetite!’

Elizabeth already had lost her appetite. Completely. And it wasn’t all due to the last verbal exchange with Rogan. Some of it was due to the fascination of watching the lean strength of his hands as he ate his meal with silent efficiency, as if he needed the fuel it would provide rather than obtaining any real enjoyment from the food itself.

This was a man totally beyond Elizabeth’s experience. An enigma, in fact. He looked rough, tough and quite frankly dangerous. But his degree and doctorate also proclaimed him to be a man of high intelligence. Something she should perhaps have realised before she insulted him…

She swallowed hard. ‘I really am sorry if I sounded less than polite just now, Mr Sullivan.’

So he was back to being ‘Mr Sullivan’, was he? Rogan mused cynically. ‘Don’t give it another thought, Elizabeth,’ he replied. ‘You obviously can’t help being insulting,’ he added challengingly.

Her cheeks coloured attractively, making her hair appear redder and spikier. ‘Now who’s being rude?’

Rogan chuckled softly. ‘It must be catching! Most people consider me something of a pussycat,’ he teased.

‘The lethal type that stalks in a jungle, perhaps?’ Elizabeth said dryly.

‘Perhaps,’ he dismissed evenly; until he’d left the military five years ago, she would have been closer than she realised!

‘So,’ she went on. ‘What is it you do, exactly, with your degree in Computer Science and your doctorate in Computer Analysis?’

‘Analyse… ?’

She gave a pained frown. ‘I’m trying to make polite conversation, Mr Sullivan; you might at least try to reciprocate!’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s what people do!’

‘Is it?’ Rogan murmured. ‘Perhaps if you were to start calling me Rogue instead of Mr Sullivan I might feel more inclined to reciprocate?’

She shifted uncomfortably. ‘I agreed to use the name Rogan.’

‘But not Rogue?’ he taunted.

‘No.’ She grimaced.

‘Fair enough.’ Rogan leant back against the bench seat to look across at her through narrowed lids. ‘You haven’t eaten very much.’ He frowned at her almost untouched plate.

‘I told you, I’m not hungry.’ She gave up any pretence of eating and pushed her plate away. ‘I forgot to ask earlier how your hand is today,’ she added politely.

‘Are you offering to kiss it better?’ Rogan responded mockingly, after glancing down at the already healing nick on the palm of his right hand. He had several scars on other parts of his body that would no doubt make this self-contained woman scream in horror at the thought of the violence behind them!

‘I’m not your mother, Rogan!’ Her eyes flashed with temper.

A temper Rogan was pretty sure this controlled woman was usually at pains to conceal. Interesting… ‘No, I can definitely vouch for that,’ he said dryly; the primly correct Elizabeth Brown was absolutely nothing like his gregarious Irish mother.

‘Are you like her?’ Elizabeth’s curiosity had obviously got the better of her.

Rogan’s mouth tightened. ‘In colouring, yes. But I don’t have her tolerance for the weakness of human nature. Or her belief in the ultimate good to be found in others,’Rogan added. ‘My father was a prime example of that particular myth!’

The frown deepened between Elizabeth’s eyes. ‘I found him an easy man to work for and get along with during the week I knew him… ’

‘Next you’ll be telling me he spoke lovingly of his wife and son!’ Rogan said in disbelief. ‘When in reality it must have been difficult to know Brad had even had a wife, let alone a son, when there isn’t a single family photograph in the house.’

Elizabeth wasn’t a woman for a lot of clutter herself, but even she had several photographs of her mother on show in her apartment in London. Something that was definitely noticeably lacking at Sullivan House…

‘My father had all the photographs removed and put away after my mother died,’ Rogan explained grimly, a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw.

Elizabeth’s face softened in sympathy. ‘Perhaps it was just too painful for him to see reminders of your mother around the house every day?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure that must have been very painful,’ Rogan bit out. ‘I’m not sure I would want a daily visual reminder of someone I’d killed, either!’

Someone he’d killed?

Was Rogan really saying that Brad Sullivan had killed his wife?

‘YOU can’t possibly believe that?’ Elizabeth gasped incredulously, when she could finally speak at all, her cheeks pale and her eyes wide as she stared across the width of the table at Rogan.

Not surprising, really, Rogan accepted grimly. It couldn’t be every day she heard a man accuse his own father of being responsible for killing his mother!

He stood up abruptly. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he rasped.

Elizabeth Brown continued to stare at him as she rose unsteadily to her feet, belatedly turning back to pick up her shoulder bag at she realised she had forgotten it in her obvious shock at his statement.

‘Rogan?’ she prompted shakily once they were outside on the pavement.

Rogan’s fingers curled about the top of her arm, his face stern as he walked across the square to where Elizabeth had parked the car. ‘Brad wasn’t standing behind my mother pushing her when she fell off the cliff to her death,’ he explained. ‘But the adulterous snake might just as well have been!’ he added coldly.

Elizabeth’s head was buzzing with the things Rogan had just said about his parents. But not so much that she wasn‘t completely aware of the touch of those lean fingers wrapped strongly about her upper arm… ‘I—I don’t know what to say… ’

Rogan’s mouth twisted derisively as he watched her fumbling in her shoulder bag for her car keys. ‘That must make you unique amongst your sex!’

Elizabeth was aware that Rogan was probably being flippant as a means of alleviating the intensity of their conversation, but that didn’t make his deliberate taunt any less insulting. ‘You really are a male chauvinist, aren’t you?’ she muttered as she finally found her keys and unlocked the doors.