Michelle Reid - The Morning After

‘Because I love you and don’t mind showing it?’ she questioned innocently.

‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘Because you love me one way but enjoy presenting it in another. Now, stop laying it on with a trowel and go and talk to Lissa.’

He gave her a light tap on her rear to send her on her way and she fluttered her lashes at him as she went, his laughter following behind her.

The sound was like manna from heaven to Annie, who hadn’t heard him laugh like that in days. And she decided it was worth all the speculative looks that she was now receiving from those around them who had witnessed their little staged scene just to know that he had got his sense of humour back.

And that included the dark, brooding look that she was receiving from one man in particular, she noted on a sudden return of that hot breathlessness.

He was now standing on the other side of the room—though how he’d got there that quickly through this crush Annie didn’t know.

Her heart skipped a beat.

That look was very proprietorial.

Who did he think he was, looking at her like that?

Her chin came up, her famous, cool blue eyes challenging him outright.

He smiled, his chiselled mouth twisting wryly, and he gave a small shrug of one broad shoulder as if to say, I have no right but—what the hell?

Arrogant devil! With a toss of her beautiful hair she spun away and went to join her agent. But right through the next half-hour she was acutely aware of him, what he was doing and who he was talking to.

And even more acutely aware of every time his glance came her way.

It was weird, oddly threatening yet disturbingly intimate.

Todd joined her, and after a short while they moved off through the crush, eyes with varying expressions following their slow progress as they paused several times to speak to people they knew. Some envied Todd Hanson the delicious woman curved to his side, and some envied her the attractive man she was with. But few could deny that they complemented each other perfectly—she with her long, softly rounded, very feminine body, he with his tightly packed, muscled frame, both with their fair-skinned, blond-haired, aggravatingly spectacular looks.

They ended up in another room where a buffet had been laid out. It was the usual kind of spread expected at these functions—finger food, high on calories and low on appetite satisfaction. Todd loaded up a plate with Annie’s help, then they found a spot against a wall to share their spread, the plate full of food balanced between them on the flat of Todd’s palm.

It all looked very cosy, very intimate, with Todd feeding Annie her favourite devilled prawns while she held a chicken drumstick up for him to bite into. But the conversation between them was far from cosy.

‘Well, did you get to speak to her?’ Annie asked him bluntly.

‘She collared me.’ Todd shrugged offhandedly. ‘It wasn’t the other way around.’

‘After waiting until I was safely out of the way, of course. Bite—you’ve missed a tasty bit there…’ He bit, sharp white teeth slicing easily into succulent chicken. ‘So, what did she have to say?’

Another shrug. ‘Nothing worth repeating,’ he dismissed.

Which meant, Annie surmised, that Susie had spent the time she’d had alone with him slaying Annie’s character. He fed her a mushroom-filled canapé and she chewed on it thoughtfully for a while, then said firmly, ‘All right, tell me what you said to her, then.’

For a moment his eyes twinkled, wry amusement putting life into the pure blue irises. ‘Just like that,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘She could just have been enquiring about your health, you know.’

‘And we both know she was not,’ Annie drawled.

He huffed out a short laugh. ‘Do you have any false illusions about yourself at all, Annie?’ he asked curiously.

‘None that I know of.’ She pouted, then, like him, shrugged a slender shoulder. ‘They wouldn’t be much use to me if I did have them, would they?’ She was referring to the fact that people believed what they were conditioned to believe, and the Alvarez affair had done the conditioning on her character four years ago.

His blue eyes clouded at her candid honesty about herself, a grim kind of sympathy replacing the moment’s amusement. ‘I wish…’ he began, but she stopped him by placing sticky fingers over his lips.

‘No,’ she said, her eyes suddenly dark and sombre. ‘No wishes. No heart-searching or self-recriminations. They serve no useful purpose. And we know what we are to each other, no matter what everyone else wants to believe.’

‘I love you,’ he murmured, and kissed the tips of her fingers where they lay lightly against his mouth.

‘Now that,’ she decided, ‘has just earned you the right to use me whenever you want to. Business or pleasure, my love. I am at your service!’

A sudden movement on the very periphery of her vision had her bead twisting in that direction just in time to catch sight of her stranger turning away from them, and that odd feeling went chasing down her spine again.

‘Have you any idea who that man is?’ she asked Todd.

‘Which one?’ he prompted, glancing in the direction that she was looking, but already the stranger had disappeared through the door which led into the main function room.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She turned back to face Todd. ‘He’s gone.’ And she made a play of cleaning her sticky fingers on the damp towels provided, aware that Todd was frowning at her, wondering why she’d felt driven to remark on the person at all. He knew that it wasn’t like her; she usually showed a distinct lack of interest in the male sex in general. So her sudden interest in one man in particular intrigued him. But just when he was going to quiz her further a colleague of his joined them, and the moment was lost.

A fact for which Annie was thankful, because she didn’t think that she could give Todd a reason why the stranger was bothering her as much as he was. He was impertinent, certainly. The way he had been watching her all evening made him that. And arrogant too, because he didn’t even bother to look away when she caught him doing it!

But…

She had no answer to her ‘but’. And on a sudden burst of restlessness she excused herself from Todd and his companion with the excuse that she was going to the bathroom.

She began threading her way through the crowd towards the main foyer, a tall, graceful mover with the kind of figure that was now back in fashion—slender but curvy, with high, firm breasts, a narrow waist and sensually rounded hips.

Being so blonde meant that the white and gold combination of her outfit suited her, the silk clinging sensually as she walked, advertising the distinct lack of underwear beneath it. But although she was well aware of the admiring glances that she was receiving she acknowledged few of them, smiling only at people she knew but giving them no chance to waylay her.

The foyer was almost as busy as the function rooms, with people milling about or just standing in small groups chatting, and Annie paused by the doorway, her blue gaze searching for the direction of the ladies’ room. She spied it way across on the other side of the thickly carpeted foyer, but had barely taken a small step in that direction when she caught a flashing glimpse of flamered hair and sighed when she realised that Susie was going in the same direction.

In no mood for a cat-fight in the Ladies, she watched Susie disappear from view, then turned, feeling a bit at a loss as to what to do next and wondering if she dared just walk out of here without telling Todd.

She’d had enough now and wanted to go home. The tall dark stranger had unsettled her. And the fact that Todd had already had his confrontation with Susie, and that Susie was completely aware of whom Todd was here with, made her reasons for being here at all redundant.