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'I'd better go and change.' As her eyes focused on his she saw a dark heat in their grey depths that reminded her that she had hardly anything on. 'I won't be a minute.'
'Relax, Miriam.' His voice was lazy and confident and she didn't like the way it sent overt little shivers flickering down her spine. 'You're more than decent and I have been with women who were far less clothed without leaping on them. Make us both a drink and then I'll fix some toast while you get changed, OK?'
'You will?' She didn't hide her astonishment quickly enough.
'I will,' he reiterated, with that elusive smile that was so devastating because of its rarity. 'I can actually make toast.' He eyed her sardonically. 'I do quite a mean breakfast, as it happens.'
The wicked gleam in the silver eyes told her that he had set her up for the thought that immediately followed and she flushed hotly as she busied herself filling the kettle and spooning coffee into two china mugs. She just bet he could do breakfast, she thought with bitter jealousy as she wondered how often he had cooked for the woman of the moment. If there was one meal he would be an expert at it would be that one. She filled the mugs savagely.
'I think that's melted.' His dark voice brought her back to the present with a little jolt and she realised that she had been stirring the coffee furiously for a good thirty seconds.
'Sugar and milk?' She glanced at him obliquely, keeping her face and voice bland.
'No, thanks.' He laughed softly, his face sardonic. 'And do go and change if my presence makes you so nervous.'
Nervous? He thought that she was nervous? She wasn't sure if relief dominated the rage his easy assurance produced. Half of her was unutterably thankful that he hadn't guessed her true feelings and the other was furious that he seemed so unmoved when she was a quivering wreck. She drew herself up icily to her full five feet eight inches and fixed him with a cold, blank stare.
'Don't flatter yourself,' she said tightly as the black brows rose mordantly at her coolness. 'I'm just not used to entertaining men in my nightclothes at seven-thirty in the morning, that's all.' She gathered up her clothes and make-up bag in one swoop and marched purposefully to the door. 'Unlike the ladies you normally associate with,' she added for good measure as she banged the door shut behind her and escaped to the bathroom at the end of the corridor on winged feet.
By the time she had showered and changed she was feeling a little more in control. She dressed quickly in jeans and a warm jumper before looping her shiny, silky hair into a high pony-tail at the back of her head and applying a brief touch of mascara to her long dark lashes. There. She glanced at herself in the ancient, misty mirror before leaving the bathroom. If he wanted a glamour puss he could go and find Sharon, but as far as she was concerned this was Miriam Bennett—the original 'what you see is what you get'. She squinted unhappily at the frowning reflection. Or didn't, in his case.
'Scrambled eggs on toast all right?' He turned as she entered the room and her senses went into hyper-drive. He had discarded his coat and jacket and was standing at her minute stove in his shirt-sleeves, stirring the saucepan full of egg while keeping an eye on the toast.
The domestic picture was more than her beleaguered nerves could take and the fact that he looked more gorgeous than any man had the right to at eight o'clock in the morning didn't help. He was doing this on purpose.
She eyed the masculine back suspiciously as she deposited her make-up bag on a shelf. She had agreed— with hindsight, foolishly—that she was physically attracted to him, and this was his way of emphasising what she was missing by sticking to the principles he found so ridiculous.
'Stop frowning,' he said darkly without turning round.
'I wasn't—' She stopped abruptly. She was.
'Honest to the last.' She heard him sigh deeply before whisking the saucepan off the stove, buttering several slices of toast and depositing the lot onto two plates that he had warming on the grill. 'Come and eat this before you explode with self-righteous wrath,' he said mildly as he pushed a plate towards her before seating himself on one of the two stools at the tiny breakfast bar that served as her dining room. 'I have no ulterior motive in being here beyond not wanting you to end up under a lorry,' he added drily as she gingerly took the plate he'd offered. 'Will you please believe that and let us eat this meal in harmony?'
'All right.' She loved him too much to care one way or the other, she thought suddenly as she gave him a radiant smile before she realised what she was doing and seated herself on the other stool. He froze for a long moment before letting the breath out through his teeth in a long hiss and applying himself to the meal.
'Having said that, the situation could alter rapidly if you look at me like that again,' he warned mildly as he glanced at her from under sardonic brows.
He smelt delicious. And he had never been more dangerous than now in this strange mood. 'Like what?' she asked with careful blandness. 'It's OK to smile occasionally, isn't it?' He was too close, far, far too close, perched as they were on these ridiculous stools, she thought helplessly as he turned to face her, grey eyes narrowed, but she couldn't think of an acceptable excuse to move away.
'You smile a lot, don't you?' he drawled lazily as he reached for his coffee-cup and took a long drink, surveying her over the steaming mug thoughtfully. 'Do you really view life with such pleasure?'
'Pleasure?'
Careful, Miriam, careful, she thought weakly as a fierce dart of pain pierced her heart, stopping her breath for a moment. There had been more pain than pleasure lately and it was all down to him.
'I'm not some sort of wind-up doll that bleats happy phrases with a painted smile if that's what you mean,' she said quietly as she reached for her own cup, stirring the dark liquid again to give her hands something to do. 'I've had my share of heartache but I don't believe in wallowing in self-pity; it doesn't help anyone and it's self-destructive.'
Are you listening to this, Miriam? she asked herself with bitter irony as she glanced up. You're going to have to remember this conversation when the final goodbye is over.
'I asked you once if you'd ever loved someone—a man,' he said softly as she looked down into the swirling coffee again. 'And you never did give me a straight answer.'
'Didn't I?' She drew a long, shuddering breath as her mind raced. What could she say to him? How could she answer this? In the end the truth seemed simpler than trying to lie. 'I've been in love,' she said briefly. 'Unfortunately it wasn't returned so that was the end of the story.'
'Wasn't returned?' She dared not look at his face but his voice was odd, tight and strained. 'The guy must have been mad.'
He is, she thought blindly as she forced herself to pick up her knife and fork as though her world wasn't falling apart around her ears and eat the scrambled eggs on toast calmly, pushing the food painfully through the massive lump in her throat. Mad and wonderful and hateful and everything I want. She shrugged lightly but said nothing.
'And that experience didn't make you bitter, even for a time?' he asked after a long moment. 'If you thought you loved him—'
