KIM LAWRENCE - A Seductive Revenge

Flora glared. Was it such a revolutionary notion? Hadn’t he decorated a bedroom before? Anyone would think she’d said something funny. She hadn’t expected or wanted gratitude but he looked as though he was about to fall about laughing.

Maybe it was a male pride thing, she pondered. He might not like people, especially a woman, to know he was strapped for cash. She tried to see it from his point of view and had to concede it was possible she was coming over a bit lady bountiful.

‘If you’re too busy…’

‘Aren’t you afraid I’ll kiss you again?’

She didn’t see the question coming until it hit her dead centre; it completely threw her off balance. Aren’t you more afraid he won’t? the sly inner voice silkily suggested.

Taking a deep breath, she made emergency repairs on her shattered poise. Her slender shoulders lifted casually. ‘I hardly think that’s likely,’ she scoffed laughingly. ‘I’m aware it was just a…’

One dark brow quirked enquiringly as she searched for words. Flora flushed.

‘A momentary impulse,’ she choked resentfully.

‘Aberration, even,’ he agreed soothingly.

She frowned at him with irritation; she knew deliberate provocation when she heard it. She needed to knock this kissing thing on the head once and for all.

‘For your information, I’ve just broken up with my fiancé kissing isn’t on my agenda.’

‘Why did you do that?’

Flora looked at him blankly.

‘Break up with your fiancé, that is.’

Flora glared at him. ‘None of your damned business,’ she declared hotly.

‘Sorry,’ he sympathised with a patently false sincerity that set her teeth on edge. ‘Sensitive subject.’

‘Not at all sensitive!’ she snapped immediately. ‘Paul asked me to make a choice and I didn’t make the one he expected.’ Paul had been astonished when she had failed to see how imperative it was for her to distance herself from her disgraced father. His astonishment had eventually turned to anger at what he perceived as her selfishness. ‘Also,’ she added with feeling, ‘he was a prize prat!’

‘In fact,’ Josh drawled, his eyes on her mutinous, flushed face, ‘it was a normal, mutually amicable parting.’

‘I’m just trying to explain why kissing isn’t high on my agenda just now, so you can rest easy,’ she told him, regretting her outburst.

She couldn’t help recalling that kissing her had not exactly made him happy the first time, so he probably wouldn’t want to again. She remembered the bleak expression in his eyes as he’d made that extraordinary statement. If he really hadn’t kissed anyone for some time that meant he had a whole lot of sexual frustration to get rid of. She didn’t want to be his therapy. Although, she conceded, letting her eyes roam at will for one self-indulgent moment over his sleekly powerful body, there would be fringe benefits! It was almost enough to make a girl sorry she wasn’t into shallow and superficial relationships.

‘Ah, you’re afraid of the rebound thing…?’

Her teeth clenched. Was he jumping to all the wrong conclusions deliberately? She met his eyes—you bet he was, she concluded instantly. There was no mistaking the fact he was enjoying her discomfiture. He’d probably taken delight in depriving flies of their wings when he was a little boy.

‘There’s absolutely no prospect of me rebounding in your direction!’

‘You mean you don’t encourage the hired help to take liberties. This isn’t actually about being off men in general, just a particular category of men, for which read those without the fancy cars, fancy clothes and fancy salaries to match.’ His voice was coldly derisive.

He made her feel so guiltily defensive that she almost began searching her conscience until she realised that, whatever other faults she had, she had never judged people by their bank balances, although she knew plenty of people that did.

‘Are you implying I’m a snob?’

He considered the heated accusation. ‘I don’t know you well enough to imply anything—yet,’ he qualified.

Flora didn’t like that little contemplative smile that accompanied the qualification one little bit. For starters it made her pulse-rate do slightly scary things.

‘Do you want the job?’ she snapped, already regretting her silly altruism. The man had got by before she’d come along; it wasn’t as though he looked malnourished or anything—far from it!

Josh looped his thumbs in the loops of his waistband and looked thoughtful. ‘What’s it pay?’

‘Pay!’ she echoed in a startled voice.

‘You didn’t expect me to do it for free, did you?’

Her lips tightened at the sarcasm; he really did have a knack of making her feel embarrassed and just ever so slightly stupid. If anything, she normally played down her intellect in front of men; for some reason this one made her feel positively inadequate!

‘Of course I didn’t. I just hadn’t thought…’ God, what happened to detached and businesslike? I sound like a real pea brain! She cleared her throat and tried to retrieve the situation. ‘What’s the going rate?’ she enquired briskly.

He named a figure and she nodded sagely.

‘That sounds fair,’ she agreed gravely. She didn’t know what she was talking about and she suspected he knew it. If he was trying to rip her off she’d have to make up the excess from her own pocket; she couldn’t make Claire suffer financially because she wasn’t prepared to admit her ignorance in front of this man.

‘That’s a deal, then.’ He approached her, hand extended.

Flora stared at the strong hand as if it were a snake. As she tentatively placed her own in his the scent of his warm body reached her nostrils. She tried not breathing but the faint musky smell still made her stomach muscles twang like the entire string section of an orchestra. The unseasonally hot day wasn’t entirely responsible for the sweat that trickled slowly down between her breasts.

He didn’t shake her hand, instead he raised it to his lips in a gesture that should have been absurd, only she felt no desire to laugh at all…melt, well, yes…that was another thing entirely!

He lifted his head and looked directly into her eyes; the expression in those silvery depths was explicitly sensual. It was at that second that she knew exactly how big a mistake she’d made in virtually inviting the man into her home!

Calm down, Flora, she told herself firmly as her heart-rate rocketed. Think worst scenario: you bump into him—not literally, of course—occasionally. She stubbornly worked around images that wouldn’t quite clear from her head of several interesting varieties of collisions she could have with Josh Prentice. She bit back a horrified whimper.

Cope, of course she could cope! She hadn’t reached her advanced years without being able to survive mentally and emotionally intact the odd bit of sexual craving. She could cope with anything. She was going to fill her lungs with gallons of fresh country air! Wholesome, emotionally untaxing pursuits like walking the hills and talking to the odd sheep were going to fill her days, not steamy daydreams.

‘If you have other commitments,’ she began hopefully, putting her tingling hand behind her back and rubbing it against the soft wool of her sweater. ‘It might be more convenient for you to decorate the nursery after I’ve left.’

‘And when would that be?’

‘I’m not entirely sure yet.’ Dad didn’t want her to visit while he was in the programme.

‘You must have very understanding bosses.’

Flora smiled vaguely and didn’t explain that since she’d been made a partner last year she was one of the bosses. Actually her colleagues had been incredibly supportive throughout the ordeal of the trial.