SUSANNE MCCARTHY - No Place For Love

Well, he needn’t think she was going to stop and speak to him, after the way he had behaved last night! Ignoring him completely, she climbed the flight of steps to her front door on the first floor, irritated at her own uncharacteristic clumsiness as she struggled with her umbrella and her shopping and fumbled for her keys.

She heard him open the car door. ‘Miss Tyrell?’

Her umbrella was slipping, and instinctively she tried to catch it, succeeding only in dropping the bottle of milk. It smashed on the step, spilling broken glass and milk in the rain. ‘Oh...drat!’ she muttered, juggling with the tins of dog food as they too began to slip out of her hands.

He came quickly up the steps and took them from her before she dropped them.

‘Oh...Thank you,’ she responded, automatically polite, but instantly jumped back on to the defensive before he could think she was making any concessions. ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ she demanded, glowering up at him in undisguised suspicion.

Those dark eyes glinted, warning that he hadn’t come to apologise. ‘We need to talk,’ he answered tersely.

‘We have nothing to talk about,’ she insisted, trying to reach the lock with her key while still holding on to all the things she was carrying.

‘Unfortunately we do,’ he ground out, taking the key from her. ‘As you may be aware, the newspapers have discovered your relationship with my stepfather.’

‘I told you last night, I don’t have a relationship with your... Look out!’

He didn’t heed her warning, and as he pushed the door open he found himself mobbed by an overexcited bundle of fur, not sure whether to attack him or try to lick his face.

‘Khan—down!’ Lacey instructed sharply, afraid that if her dog ran to meet her he would cut his paws on the broken glass. She hurriedly shooed him back inside, catching her open umbrella on the door and muttering more impatient curses.

Jon calmly took it from her, shaking off the raindrops and closing it down as he followed her into the passage. ‘Sit,’ he instructed Khan imperiously.

To Lacey’s absolute astonishment, the delinquent hound immediately responded by plopping his back end down on the floor, his front paws neatly together, his whole expression conveying smug pride in his own uncharacteristic obedience.

‘Good lord—how on earth did you get him to do that?’ she queried, forgetting all her wariness in her surprise.

Just for a moment; a smile flickered at the corners of his hard mouth, and Lacey felt her heart give an odd little flutter; that smile was quite startlingly attractive. But she couldn’t afford to let herself think like that, she reminded herself sharply.

‘Well, you’d better come in,’ she remarked, the inflection of sarcasm in her voice acknowledging that he had already done so.

‘Thank you.’ He closed the front door behind him. Khan, evidently deciding he was a friend, was fawning at his feet, his rump in the air, his curly tail wagging wildly. ‘What exactly is this?’ he enquired, restraining the exuberant hound as he reared up to seal their relationship with his floppy pink tongue.

‘He’s an Afghan hound,’ she informed him, dumping the dog food on the kitchen table.

‘Is that a fact?’ He followed her into the kitchen. ‘I’d have taken him for a mobile hearthrug.’

Lacey had to suppress ruthlessly the inclination to feel that anyone who could win Khan’s adoration so swiftly couldn’t be all bad—she could hardly rely on that brainless mutt as a judge of character, she reminded herself with a flash of wry humour.

She slanted him a wary glance from beneath her lashes. The memory of last night was still all too vivid in her mind, and although nothing in his manner now suggested that he was planning a repetition, she wasn’t at all sure she should have let him across the threshold. She was going to have to handle the situation very carefully, avoid doing anything that he might take as further confirmation of the conclusion he had leapt to so readily last night; at least having her own clothes on should give her a little more confidence.

‘Take a seat,’ she invited stiffly.

‘No, thank you,’ he responded in clipped tones. ‘I won’t be staying more than a few moments.’

Biting back a sharp retort, she shrugged her slender shoulders in a gesture of pure indifference. ‘Suit yourself,’ she returned breezily. ‘But first I’m going to have to go and clear up that mess outside, before someone hurts themselves.’

Without waiting for him to answer, she took the dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the sink and, stepping briskly past him, went out to the step to sweep up the broken glass. The rain had already washed the milk away, and it was running down into the gutter in a long white stream. She was going to have to go out and get another bottle now, or there wouldn’t be enough for breakfast—thanks to that damned man.

But at least those few minutes had given her some valuable time to compose herself. When she went back inside, he was sitting at the kitchen table, and although she tried to ignore him she was conscious of those dark eyes following her as she carefully tipped the shards of glass into an empty cornflake packet so that the sharp edges wouldn’t be dangerous, before stowing them neatly in the dustbin, and putting the dustpan and brush away.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she offered, shrugging off her outdoor coat and tossing it across a chair.

He shook his head. ‘No, thank you.’

‘I could make you coffee instead?’ If he was going to be churlish, she would retaliate with an excess of good manners.

His eyes flickered with something that could almost have been amusement, and he conceded a terse nod. ‘Black, no sugar.’

She smiled sweetly, reflecting that he was fortunate she had no arsenic to put in it. She took her time about making the drinks, forcing herself to maintain that façade of cool indifference to his presence. It wasn’t easy; she was quite used to having the kitchen filled with handsome hunks of male—Hugo’s friends from the polytechnic, or the others in his all-male dance troupe. But there was something distinctly different about this man; he seemed to dominate his surroundings without any conscious effort.

The kettle boiled, and she made the drinks, bringing them over to the kitchen table, and sitting down opposite him. ‘So—what was it you wanted to talk about?’ she enquired, regarding him levelly across the table.

‘Have you spoken to any reporters from the Sunday Beacon?’ he demanded without preamble.

‘They’ve been here,’ she responded cautiously.

‘I see.’ His expression was grim. ‘And did you give them an interview?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

He eyed her with frank scepticism. ‘Did they offer you money?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact they did,’ she informed him loftily. ‘And I turned it down.’

That hard mouth curved into a faint sneer. ‘Not quite enough for you, was it?’ he taunted.

Her violet-blue eyes flashed with anger. ‘Just what do you think gives you the right to come round here insulting me?’ she exploded hotly. ‘Just because I’m not rich and powerful like you, that doesn’t mean you can treat me like a piece of dirt.’

‘You placed yourself in that position when you chose to begin an affair with my stepfather,’ he countered scathingly. ‘You can hardly expect me to treat you like a lady.’

She felt a sudden urgent desire to throw her hot tea in his face, and had to force herself to put down her cup, her hand shaking slightly. ‘Have you asked Clive about this so-called affair?’ she asked, her voice very controlled.

‘Naturally—and, like you, he denied it. Unfortunately, my stepfather’s denials tend to have a rather hollow ring after all these years. And if I had had any remaining trace of doubt,’ he added, letting his eyes drift down to the firm, round swell of her breasts and linger there with deliberate insolence, ‘it would have been very thoroughly eliminated last night.’