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He noticed the way she pressed her knees tightly together as he handed her the glass. Did she always do this? he wondered. Send out such beguiling and conflicting messages? She had agreed very quickly—too quickly—to come home with him, and there was a not-so-subtle subtext to deals like that. If you didn’t want a man to make a pass at you, then you did not go back to his apartment late at night on a first date.
Darian was used to knowing the score. To women quickly and blatantly letting him know that they wanted him. It happened so frequently that it was just par for the course, as natural as breathing for him—he had never had to fight for a woman in his life, though sometimes he had idly wondered what it might be like to have to do so.
He was instinctive enough to know that the attraction between he and Lara was mutual, but only up to a point. Because now there was a wariness about her, almost a shyness, which seemed to contradict her innate sensuality. And mystery and contradictions were always fascinating, he acknowledged with a slow ache of awareness as he sat down on the sofa—just far enough away not to threaten her, but close enough to smell the soft scent of lilac which drifted from her pale skin. Close enough to touch…
Lara sipped her drink, but her throat felt tight and she had to force down a mouthful of the smooth, rich wine. ‘Lovely,’ she remarked politely.
‘So where were we?’ He put his glass down on the coffee table and half turned to look at her, a small smile playing around the edges of his mouth. ‘Ah, yes, your tender heart was melting at the thought of my underprivileged upbringing.’
With a shaky hand she put her glass down next to his. ‘Don’t make fun of me.’
‘Is that what I was doing?’ he murmured.
‘That or patronising me,’ she answered quietly. ‘You don’t have to talk about your childhood if you don’t want to.’
Liar! Liar! But her words had exactly the desired effect. By telling him he didn’t have to talk, he immediately began to relax—although had she known that on some deep, gut-level? That here was a man who would not be forced into telling anything about himself—and the only way to get information about him was to appear not to care?
‘And poor doesn’t mean unhappy,’ she continued coaxingly.
He gave a low, mocking laugh. ‘That’s the fairytale version, spoken with the voice of someone who has absolutely no idea what material deprivation is like.’
‘You can’t know that!’ she protested.
‘True,’ he agreed. ‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’ The golden eyes flickered over her lazily. ‘Let me guess—you grew up in the country? A stable family life with brothers and sisters? Fresh air and exercise and three meals a day? A pony in the stable and dogs barking when you came home from school?’
Lara froze, then swallowed, and the tiptoeing of fear began to shiver its way down her spine. ‘That’s…that’s bizarre. Well, except for the brothers bit—I have two sisters and they are much older. And my father was away a lot. But the rest is correct.’ Her blue eyes were as big as saucers as she looked at him. ‘How could you possibly have known?’
‘About the country?’ Some things you didn’t need to be told. He reached his hand out and lightly touched her cheek. ‘It’s written all over you. Skin like this wasn’t made in a city.’
Was that a trace of wistfulness in his voice, or was she imagining it? ‘W-wasn’t it?’
‘No.’ He let one of his fingers drift over skin that felt like satin. ‘You’re a real milk and honey girl!’
Lara found the compliment shockingly satisfying—almost as gratifying as the all too brief contact when he had touched her, making her want him to touch her again. She shook her head slightly, trying to remember why she was here.
‘Very good. Ten out of ten,’ she said lightly. ‘Your turn now.’
‘Isn’t this supposed to be a guessing game?’ he mocked.
‘Well, I know you grew up in the city.’ Lara drew a deep breath and decided to go for broke. ‘I’d say that you are an only child and that your parents were…separated.’
There was an odd pause. ‘Is it really that obvious?’ he questioned, and a slightly bitter note came into his voice. ‘Do I have one-parent family written all over me?’
Lara felt guilty, but she managed not to show it. ‘Not at all,’ she said hastily. ‘It’s more a case of working things out from the information available. Putting bits in, like a jigsaw. The area you mentioned doesn’t really conjure up a cosy family scene, with roses round the door.’
‘As opposed to the image of a mother who was hard-pressed to put food into her hungry child’s mouth?’
‘Is that what it was like?’ she whispered, horrified.
‘Not quite,’ he commented sarcastically. ‘But I should hate to puncture the little bubble-picture you’ve invented in your head!’
‘Now you are making fun of me.’
‘I thought that all women liked to be teased?’
He was making her feel gauche and unsophisticated. And she didn’t like his constant references to what ‘women’ liked—it made her feel one in an endless line of them—which, when she stopped to think about it, she probably was. But this isn’t about you, Lara, she reminded herself—it’s about him. And Maraban. ‘But you were poor?’ she questioned bluntly.
His eyes grew flinty. ‘Do you want me to give you a breakdown of our weekly finances?’
