Lindsay Armstrong - A Question Of Marriage

But, it suddenly occurred to her and she clasped her hands together tightly, if that was all he had to go on, a similar sense of déjà vu, then he didn’t have a leg to stand on…

‘I think I know what’s going through your head, my pretty,’ he drawled as her lashes flew up. ‘How do I know it was you at the top of the stairs the last time you tried to rob me? I’ll tell you. Same height, same petite figure, same…’ he paused and looked wry ‘…athleticism but, above all, same unique—as you told me yourself—perfume.’ His dark eyes glinted sardonically.

Aurora’s lips parted and her eyes widened. Then she closed them again and barely stopped herself from saying caustically that, for a man groggy with some kind of virus, he’d taken in an awful lot about her and no one would buy it anyway!

But he spoke again, and this time there was a grim warning underlying his words that caused her to tremble inwardly. ‘Of course, finding you creeping around my bedroom, when there’s a clear sign downstairs directing people to a downstairs bathroom, adds a lot more weight to my evidence, don’t you agree?’

Aurora looked around properly for the first time. It had never occurred to her that the new owner would not use the master bedroom, but that was exactly what Luke Kirwan appeared to have done. Her old bedroom was now definitely, although luxuriously, furnished for a man.

‘I preferred the view from this room,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts.

Damn, she thought again, and forcibly prevented herself from wiping her face.

‘Well, Mr Kirwan,’ she said after a moment’s thought, ‘I am sorry for inadvertently invading your bedroom but you’re mistaken. I didn’t see the sign downstairs so it couldn’t have been so very clear. As for all the rest of it, whatever it is, I…’ she tilted her chin and gazed at him imperiously ‘…I’m happy to forget about it if you would be so kind as to direct me to a bathroom. I’ll even leave your party then, since you cherish these amazing suspicions about me. In fact, nothing would induce me to stay,’ she finished proudly.

He laughed softly as he took in the hauteur of her expression, the set of her small chin, her very straight back and the outraged bearing of her slender figure—even seated on a bed. ‘You’re a rather brilliant actress, aren’t you?’ he commented. ‘But the only thing that’s going to get you out of here is telling me who you are and why you’re here—’

‘I’ve told you that!’ she interrupted.

‘So you have. It doesn’t wash, though.’ He studied her comprehensively, right through her clothes again, in fact, so that she started to boil beneath that dark, insolently intimate gaze. ‘What is beginning to wash is something a little different,’ he continued leisurely. ‘Could you even be a groupie, señorita, who devised a rather novel way of getting through my secretary’s net?’

Aurora’s mouth fell open. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about!’

‘No?’ The scepticism in his expression was chilling. ‘Never heard of student groupies? Girls? Believe me, it’s an occupation for some of them; it would appear to be the only reason they’re at university in the first place,’ he said with damning scorn.

Several things suddenly came clear to Aurora, including his secretary’s manner and why he never answered the phone himself, but the shock of it all rendered her speechless.

Giving him the opportunity to continue with lethal satire, ‘Why, yes. Heaven alone knows what bizarre scheme you’d concocted the other night—looking for something to steal from me to blackmail me into bed with you, perhaps?’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘But your actions tonight have been loud and clear—coyly refusing to tell me your name, being a seductively mysterious guest—and so on,’ he finished flatly.

To be thought of as a coy, student groupie throwing herself at his feet in a rather ‘novel’ manner caused Aurora to lose her temper completely. ‘Look here—’ she bounced off the bed ‘—I’ve had enough of this. Will you get out of my way before I scream the place down?’

‘Scream away,’ he invited. ‘The only thing that will achieve is to have me call the police.’

‘What?’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘In fact, you have a choice. I’ll leave you here for a period of sober reflection. When I come back, either you tell me the truth or I do get the police.’

‘If you think I have any intention of staying here,’ she spat at him, ‘you’re mistaken!’

‘No, I’m not. I propose to lock you in, you see.’

Aurora flew at him, prepared to scratch his eyes out, only to find herself caught in a grip of steel. ‘Let me go!’ she gasped through pale lips.

‘I’d rather let an enraged tigress go.’ He pinioned her hands behind her back. ‘I’ve also got something of a score to settle with you, Miss Spain. Let’s see if you kiss as well as you do—other things.’

‘I never kiss under these circumstances. I’m perfectly capable of biting, however,’ she warned through her teeth.

He smiled crookedly. ‘What circumstances do you kiss under?’

‘I need to be in love or on the way to it, like any normal girl,’ she replied scathingly. ‘The last thing I can imagine with you, Professor. For one thing, you’re too old for me, for another the mere thought of doing it under duress turns me right off!’ Her green eyes were proud and defiant.

‘OK.’ He released her pinioned hands but transferred his hands to her waist. ‘In exchange for no duress, could I get a promise that you’ll keep your fists to yourself?’

‘I’m not promising anything!’

‘Then how about…’ there was the glint of wicked amusement in his dark eyes although he spoke gravely ‘…proving to me that I am too old for you?’

‘You must think I’m still in my cradle,’ Aurora retorted, ‘to fall for that old line!’

‘On the contrary, before I discovered you sneaking around my bedroom, I thought you were gorgeous, certainly of the age of consent—’ his gaze roamed up and down her figure ‘—and quite stunning.’

Aurora’s lips parted and, before she could think of a suitable rejoinder, he drew her into his arms. She breathed once, jerkily, but, to her horror, the spell of Luke Kirwan once again began to weave itself around her. And no twelve-year age difference was going to save her, she realised—not that she’d said it as anything but a crushing, heat-of-the-moment snub.

To make things worse, she also realized from the smile twisting his lips that her thought processes were about as easy for him to read as an open book. ‘Look,’ she began uneasily, ‘this is insane! You can’t just do it…’

‘I can and I’m going to, so save your breath,’ he recommended. ‘Don’t tell me there isn’t the slightest curiosity on your side?’

He moved his hands on her hips and she went to say something, stopped with her lips parted as all sorts of sensations started to run through her—and not only physical. Knowing that part of the dangerous attraction of this man for her was that she was playing with fire, for example. See if you can be unaffected by this, Little Miss Spain, she mimicked in her mind, because she had no doubt that was the gauntlet Luke Kirwan was throwing down. But it would be madness to take it up…

He did it for her. He took advantage of her confusion to withdraw his hands from her hips and cup her face lightly at the same time as he captured her green gaze so that she was unable to look away. ‘Small, neat and stylish—whatever else it is you are, my would-be robber, and, I suspect, delicious. Let’s see.’ He lowered his head.

Aurora trembled as his lips touched hers, but he said against the corner of her mouth, ‘I was right: sweet as a peach, señorita.’ And started to kiss her properly.