Fiancee By Mistake
Just the thought was enough to drive everything else from his mind. The heated sensations of a moment earlier subsided so quickly that it was as if he had just opened a window, letting in a blast of the arctic air outside.
‘I spent a lot of money on this car. I have no desire to see it nose-down in a ditch!’
‘Under normal conditions I am a careful and perfectly competent driver.’ Her tone was icy enough to lower the temperature in the car by several degrees. ‘But this—’ one slim hand gestured towards the swirling blanket of snow that surrounded them ‘—can hardly be described as “normal”.’
‘And anyone who deserved the accolade of “careful” driver would have thought more than twice about setting out in weather like this in the first place.’
She hadn’t liked that. Her breath hissed through her teeth in fury.
‘That has to be the most blatant case of a particularly grubby pot calling a kettle black I’ve heard in a long time! Might I point out to you that you were on the road too? And, as you were clearly nowhere near as far away from home as I was, you would have had the advantage of being able to judge the weather more accurately before you left. It wasn’t even snowing when I set out!’
‘Nor was it when I left the house!’ Sean returned sharply. ‘Though I have to admit that I wish it had been. That way I would have had the perfect excuse not to venture out.’
And the perfect excuse to refuse Pete’s request. The perfect reason not to go out on what he firmly believed was a wild-goose chase. He had never held out any real hope that his brother’s ex-fiancée would put in an appearance at the Night Owl, let alone that he would recognise her, be able to strike up a conversation and persuade her to come back home with him.
In fact he had been so convinced of the impossibility of the task that he hadn’t even bothered to order a meal, opting instead for just a pot of delicious coffee. It had barely been delivered to his table when the gathering darkness outside, the grey, lowering skies, had alerted him to the advent of the wild winter storm that had persisted ever since.
If Annie Elliot had any sense she would never try to travel in this, he had decided, paying his bill hastily and setting out for home while it was safe to drive. He had still not worked out whether it had been good luck or bad that had resulted in his coming on the silver Renault as he had.
But fate had decided that he would, and that there at the wheel, tall, dark and every bit as beautiful as his lovelorn brother had described her, was Miss Heartbreaker Elliot herself, dazed and off balance and only too willing to be befriended and taken to his home.
‘And of course then you wouldn’t have had to lumber yourself with me!’ The girl’s indignant voice dragged his thoughts back to the present.
‘I never said—’
‘You didn’t have to say anything! But you’ve made it blatantly obvious that you would have been a lot happier if someone else had come along and rescued me so that you wouldn’t have been obliged to do it. Well, you needn’t worry! I don’t want to be stuck with you any more than you do with me.’
‘I couldn’t agree more.’
It was expelled on a sigh of exasperation. Damn Pete for getting him involved in all this, and damn her too…
For what? For being so beautiful that any man would want her? So lovely that he only had to look at her to burn with desire?
And she knew it, damn her! She had only just left his brother, having tossed his ring back in his face, and she already had a new man lined up. And yet she hadn’t been able to resist trying it on with him in the first five minutes.
She had set out to entice him like some little alley cat, displaying her body in the clinging dress, writhing so seductively against him. And he knew why.
She’d recognised him, hadn’t she? Even used his name as familiarly as if they were old friends. It happened so often now that he’d become inured to it. People saw not the real man but a myth created by the medium in which he worked. To the public at large he was simply a face on a TV screen, a glossy photograph in a magazine—that hated thing, a ‘pin-up’.
‘Well, the best thing is for you to let me use your phone as soon as we get inside. I’ll call the garage and—’
‘I think not.’ Cold, controlled rage turned his voice into a blade of ice slashing through her words.
Forget Pete, and keeping her here until his brother could come and plead with her to take him back! She wasn’t worth it. She’d take the poor kid’s heart and use it as a toy until she was tired of it, and then she’d snap it in two and toss it aside without even bothering to look where it landed.
Women like this one were just predatory spiders, waiting for the next poor sucker of a fly who foolishly wandered into their carefully spun webs. Marnie had been a mistress of the art as well. But Marnie was out of his life now, thank God. Out of his life and flaunting her brand-new wedding ring and the rich husband to go with it.
But he could use his own experience to teach this lady a much needed lesson. He’d play along with her for now, let her think she had him hooked, and then, just as she enjoyed her triumph, he’d show her that she couldn’t play fast and loose with people’s feelings.
‘You’re not going to get away that easily.’
“‘Get away”?’ For the first time it seemed that her confidence had slipped. A seam of anxiety ran through her repetition of his words.
He’d better take things more carefully. It would do no good at all to frighten her off right at the start. Far better to lull her into a false sense of security at first, and only reveal his hand when she had no hope of escape.
So he turned a wide smile in her direction and concentrated on making his tone light and friendly.
‘See sense, sweetheart! If the garage tow-truck would have found it difficult to reach you earlier, it will be damn near impossible now. They’d need a snow-plough to get through this. We’re grounded—stuck together for the duration—so we’ll have to make the best of it.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘WE’RE here.’
Leah registered Sean’s comment, and the fact that the car had slowed, only vaguely. She was grateful for the fact that the nightmare of a journey was over, but only now was it beginning to dawn on her that the tension that had gripped her had more to do with the man beside her than the more obvious danger of the blizzard raging outside.
Her nerves felt stretched tight, as if some cruel hand had gripped them and twisted them hard. Was she imagining things, or had Sean’s words been laced with a dark element of threat?
Certainly his declaration that ‘You’re not going to get away that easily’ had sounded ominous. But when she’d queried it he had dismissed her concern with an easy answer and an even easier smile. Though that smile had failed to convince, she admitted, drawing in a sharp, uncomfortable breath.
‘You don’t look very impressed.’
The lightness of his tone made a nonsense of her feelings.
‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ With an effort she forced herself to focus on the house before her, or at least on the little she could see through the thickly whirling snow. ‘It’s just it’s not exactly what I was expecting.’
That much was true at least. Small and square, with its grey stone blending in with the wintry surroundings to give it an almost ethereal quality, the cottage was far more basic, more workmanlike than she had anticipated.
‘It’s not very Sean Gallagher, is it?’ her nervousness pushed her to ask.
Immediately all the light vanished from his face, his smile fading and his lips compressing to a cold, thin slash in his face.
‘You shouldn’t equate the publicity I get with the reality,’ he declared, each word cold and clipped, and in a sudden rush of inspiration she suddenly realised just what was wrong.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you were like the part you play.’
A dismissive shrug lifted the powerful shoulders under the fine wool of his jacket.
‘It’s a common mistake. People see me in a role every week and they tend to assume that role is me.’
And he didn’t like that assumption one little bit. It was stamped into every line on his face. Which was why he had seemed so prickly, so downright hostile at moments during their journey.
She had made it plain that she had recognised him from the first; she had been in no state to hide anything from him. And, being used to people reacting to his screen persona rather than the real one, he had written her off as one of his lovesick fans who would do anything for a single glance from their idol’s brilliant blue eyes.
But while her blood seemed to curdle in her veins at the thought of being so carelessly pigeonholed, a part of Leah’s mind recognised that this fact could actually be her salvation. If Sean saw her simply as an empty-headed worshipper, he would assume that her actions earlier had been the result of excitement at coming face to face with him so unexpectedly.
So, while she couldn’t explain, even to herself, just what had possessed her to kiss him, perhaps it was better that way. She couldn’t face the prospect of him probing deeper into matters that had already severely rocked her sense of mental balance.
‘Well, are we going to make a move, or do you intend to sit here all night until we end up deep-frozen? Here’s the key…’
He tossed it at her as she gathered up her handbag, already pushing his own door open.
‘Leave the door open. I’ll be right behind you when I’ve got your case.’
The freezing blast of icy air in her face was enough to put wings on Leah’s feet. Slipping and sliding, she dashed for the cottage porch, grateful for even the minimal shelter it provided.
Ramming the key into the lock, she turned it with frantic haste, pushing open the door and stumbling into the stone-flagged hallway with a sigh of relief.
True to his word, Sean was close behind her. Dumping her case on the floor, he slammed the door shut behind him as soon as he was over the threshold.
Like Leah, he had already acquired a fine coating of snow on his head and shoulders, the white flakes brilliant and delicate against the darkness. They even, with hearts-topping effect, clung to the thick black lashes that framed his stunning sapphire eyes.
‘The kitchen’s through there…’
He waved a hand towards the end of the hall as he stamped his feet to clear the snow from his shoes, shaking himself like some large, powerful animal, spattering her with the cold drops of moisture that spun from his hair.
‘The stove will still be banked down, so it should be warm, and you’ll need…’
The words trailed off into silence as his eyes met her widened gaze, caught and held.
Why couldn’t she move? Leah berated herself. She must look so foolish—and so disgustingly vulnerable—staring at him like this. Why couldn’t she just pull off her coat and head in the direction he had indicated?
But it seemed as if her feet were rooted to the spot. She felt as if every cell in her body, every nerve-ending, was sharply attuned to some elemental magnetism that emanated from the man at her side. Any awareness of the rest of her surroundings seemed to have blurred and faded from her sight, so that there was only him and that potent tug of need which had formed in the deepest, most primitive part of her being.
If he had looked big and strong outside, in the space of the countryside, then now he appeared impossibly so—dark and powerful, the confines of the small hallway dominated by the height and breadth of him. His lean, strong body seemed too vital, too forceful to be restricted by its narrow space, its cosy domesticity.
He was more at one with the wild elements outside, as untamed as the wind that buffeted the stone walls of the cottage and came howling down the chimneys.
Because her attention was so firmly fixed on him, she knew the exact moment that the change began. She saw how his long body stiffened, freezing in the act of shrugging out of his coat. She saw the sudden darkening of his eyes, the burning black obliterating the rich blue. With her hearing made acute by heightened sensitivity, she caught the change in his breathing, the faint sound as he swallowed deeply.
‘This is the first time I’ve seen you in the light,’ he said, and his voice was strangely husky, raw-edged, as if it had not been used for some time. ‘Your eyes—they’re almost purple, the colour of pansies.’
‘They’re like Elizabeth Taylor’s, everyone always says,’ Leah responded, hearing the words and yet feeling unaware of having actually produced them. ‘But of course I don’t really look like her. My hair isn’t black, for one thing.’
Her lips felt disturbingly dry, and she wet them nervously with the tip of her tongue, then froze as she saw his dark gaze drop to follow the tiny, betraying movement. The intensity of his stare made her heart kick in her chest. Suddenly she saw the gesture from his point of view, realising the unconscious provocation it had offered.
‘I prefer your hair colour,’ he murmured. ‘That sort of sable-brown is much softer. Though right now it’s dark enough to pass for black.’
His hand came out to stroke one of the sodden strands that lay over her shoulder. His touch was very gentle, but with every cell in her body hypersensitive to the pull of his physical appeal Leah had to fight the instinctive reaction that almost had her jumping away like a nervous cat.
‘Liz Taylor is regarded as one of the world’s greatest beauties.’
‘Fishing for compliments?’
A slow smile, its sensual appeal lethal to her composure, curled the corners of that beautiful mouth.
‘Believe me, you don’t need to. You must know that you are an exceptionally lovely woman, the sort any man would be proud to have on his arm. Or…’ the smooth voice deepened deliberately ‘…in his bed.’
Those vivid eyes held Leah’s hypnotically, sapphire locked with violet in spellbound isolation from which she was totally unable to break free. She no longer saw the flawed beauty of the damaged side of his face, the raw, red marks that marred the sculpted line of his bones, the plane of his cheek. She was aware only of the glossy darkness of his hair, the unexpected softness of his mouth—and, above and beyond anything else, the burning, mesmeric force of his gaze.
‘I…’
It was all she could manage before her voice failed her completely. Twice she swallowed deeply, opened her mouth, but each time no sound came out, her ability to speak having deserted her.
The silence in the small house was so profound that his breathing seemed unnaturally loud. She could almost sense each exhalation as a warm caress across her skin, raising goosebumps of reaction all over her body.
‘I…?’ said Sean softly, lifting the single syllable on a questioning note.
His smile, the light in his eyes, seemed to say that he knew exactly what she was thinking and that he shared those thoughts. Shared the shivering sense of awareness, the heightened sensitivity to everything around them. With infinite slowness his head tilted, came nearer.
The tiny movement was enough to have Leah closing her eyes in panic, but only for a second. Suddenly fearful that he might interpret her reaction as an invitation to kiss her, she forced them open again, focusing determinedly on a single dark lock that had broken free from the sleeked back smoothness of his snow-soaked hair so that it fell forward over one straight black eyebrow.
‘Sean…’
As she spoke a single drop of molten snow slid, hung, and finally fell from his hair onto his skin, trailing slowly down towards the corner of his eye. Acting purely instinctively, Leah reached out and stopped it with a gentle fingertip, slowly retracing its path to wipe the cold dampness from his skin.
‘Don’t!’
Sharp and hard, it was a rough command that stilled the movement at once. Her eyes flew to his in a look of stunned confusion.
‘But it would have gone into your eye!’
Almost all the blue had disappeared from his iris, she realised. In its place was just a pool of black, with the tiniest rim of colour at its outer edge.
‘It might have stung.’
‘And you would hate to see me suffer even the slightest distress?’
The mockery in his voice was at odds with the heavy-lidded sensuality of his gaze, the warmth that softened his mouth.
As Leah watched with disbelieving fascination that smile grew, and with a slow, indolent movement he turned his head slightly into the hand that still rested against his face. She felt the heat of his skin, warm satin underneath her fingertips, but rougher lower down, where the day’s growth of beard abraded her palm.
She couldn’t hold back a soft murmur of response, a murmur that turned into a choking cry as she felt the new warmth of his lips against her palm. His soft kiss sent a burning reaction like a wild electric shock crackling through every nerve in her arm.
Drawing in a sharp breath, she snatched her hand away, cradling it against her breasts as if it had actually been scorched. Above it, her eyes were wide and dark as pansies in shocked reaction.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Why?’ he echoed thickly. ‘Because I wanted to. Because it felt right, and I enjoyed it. And because…’
Blue eyes smoky with unconcealed desire, he took a step closer, then another. He reached out for her hand, lifting it once more to his lips.
‘Because…’
With his dark eyes still on her face, he traced the shape of her palm in soft, brief kisses, adding the touch of his tongue as he moved up her index finger. He planted a final kiss right on its tip before turning it towards her, letting it rest on her parted mouth as if to deliver the caress back to her. Leah shuddered faintly as she tasted the mixture of herself and Sean on her own skin.
‘Because you wanted it too, didn’t you?’
‘Oh, God!’ She choked the words out, unable to respond to his soft-voiced question.
‘Didn’t you?’
She could deny it, but what would be the point? She knew he was right, and he knew it too. He could read it in her eyes, in their darkness that matched the intensity of his own, in the heightened breathing that brought hot colour to her cheeks and to the creamy breasts that rose and fell rapidly under the tight-fitting bodice of her dress.
‘Yes…’
It was a sigh of resignation, of defeat, but as soon as she had spoken she felt strangely liberated, as if some great weight had dropped from her shoulders.
‘Yes,’ she repeated more firmly, conviction lifting her voice. ‘Yes! Oh, yes!’
‘I knew it.’
A soft thud as the coat he had been in the process of removing finally hit the floor was the last thing Leah was aware of as Sean reached for her, his arms closing round her and hauling her hard up against the lean length of his body. Rough hands in her hair pulled her head back, lifting her face to his, and her mouth was captured in a wild, bruising kiss. With a tiny moan she opened her lips to him, her tongue tangling with his in instant response.
Her groan was matched by an identical one from Sean himself, and then he was kissing her again, but very differently this time. He took her lips hotly, greedily, snatching at her mouth, her face, her neck, like a man who had been starved for a long, long time and was now presented with such an array of dishes that he didn’t know which one to taste first.
One strong hand held the back of her head, keeping her face imprisoned against his, while the other tugged at her already loosened coat, wrenching it from her body and discarding it carelessly beside his own. Inserting one powerful thigh between both of hers, he pushed her backwards until she came hard up against the wall, trapped by the strength of his body.
The heat of his skin reached her through the fine velvet of her dress, and even the heavy denim of his jeans could not conceal the burning evidence of his desire for her as he crushed it against the cradle of her hips. He inched her legs further apart and she yielded willingly, sighing aloud once more as the pressure at the juncture of her legs inflamed the heated need his caresses had created there.
‘Sean…’
His name was a moan of yearning, of hunger, and his raw-edged, shaky laughter in response told her that he recognised the craving that had her in its grip. Recognised it and shared it in every way.
‘I don’t know how this happened.’ It was a rough mutter, thick and raw against her skin. ‘I only know there was no way of avoiding it. That it was inevitable from the moment I first set eyes on you. When— Dear God!’
A shudder ran through his long body.
‘I thought you were dead, or badly hurt! I thought—’
‘Sean!’ Hungry impatience made her break into his words. ‘Will you shut up and kiss me?’
‘With the greatest pleasure!’
He did more than kiss her. His mouth seemed to have turned into a finely tuned instrument of pleasure, touching, caressing, nibbling, occasionally administering tiny, sharp, demanding bites down her throat and on to the creamy skin exposed by the neckline of her dress.
And all the time his hands were busy too, moving over her body, cupping and holding her breasts. His thumbs circled the shape of her nipples, rubbing softly, bringing them into tight, excited life beneath the clinging fabric.
Leah’s head was thrown back, her eyes closed. She was on fire, every inch of her body burning up, every cell ablaze with need. Her urgent fingers pushed aside the navy sweater, sliding over the broad leather belt at his waist, a choking cry of delight escaping her as her fingertips encountered the heated softness of his skin.
Fingers spread wide, she smoothed her hands outwards and upwards over the strong lines of his chest, feeling the powerful muscles bunch and jerk under her caress. Her sensuous exploration found the rasp of body hair, the tiny, hard buds of his male nipples, and delighted in all the differences between his physique and her own.
Beneath her touch she sensed the heavy pounding of his heart, and with a deliberately sinuous, almost feline movement she slid her hips against the hardness of his arousal. Her smile was one of triumph as she sensed his heartbeat accelerate dramatically.
‘I think we’d be more comfortable in another room,’ Sean muttered against her cheek, having dragged his mouth from hers with obvious reluctance.
‘You have a point.’
Her words were almost unintelligible, but the undercurrent of shaken laughter told its own story.
With her arms linked around his neck, he half carried, half walked her towards the nearest room, kicking open the door before manoeuvring her inside. Leah had a brief glimpse of a Victorian-style tiled fireplace and large, squashy chairs covered in a rich bronze velvet before she was swung off her feet and deposited on the softness of the settee, Sean coming down on top of her.
‘Better?’ he enquired unevenly, his breathing as ragged as if he had just completed a marathon.
‘Much better,’ Leah assured him with a lazy smile, writhing languorously beneath his imprisoning weight.
‘Now perhaps I can kiss you properly.’
When Leah opened her mouth to demand to know precisely what he had been doing before, if not kissing her ‘properly’, he promptly took the opportunity to prove exactly what he meant. The thrust and movement of his tongue was a deliberate attempt to tease and tantalise her with the promise of how a more intimate invasion of her body would feel.
The hunger that had built with each touch, each caress, was now raging out of control. It pulsed through every nerve-end, making her twist violently beneath him. She needed to touch him more intimately, wanted to feel his hot skin against hers, wanted his hands on her own body.
‘You’re wearing too many clothes,’ she muttered in mock petulance, tugging at the navy sweater with impatient fingers.
‘I could say the same about you.’
‘Mmm, so you could.’ Leah moved her hips provocatively. ‘And this dress is far too tight.’