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Being a foster kid had made her sensitive—some might argue over-sensitive—to when people were asking questions out of a sense of obligation rather than any actual desire to hear the answer.
What she didn’t understand was why she wasn’t consequently shutting the conversation down with her usual practised efficiency. Why any part of her was actually considering opening up to Tak Basu, of all people. It was madness.
‘Who says I don’t already have someone to talk to?’ She twisted her mouth before catching herself. ‘If I need to, that is.’
‘Maybe you do.’ He shrugged. ‘But I think you’re too pent-up...too defensive. As though you’re trying to deal with too much all by yourself. A teenage girl comes complete with a wealth of complications. Trust me—I know.’
For a moment his eyes met hers, deep brown and filled with understanding, as if they were stealing her very soul. And it hurt simply to breathe.
Effie didn’t understand what was happening. Not inside this car, and certainly not inside her. She had the oddest sense of...connection. As if something was binding them and she didn’t understand what it was.
Then the vehicle stopped, and she realised they had arrived at the gala. Plastering a bright smile on her lips, she tore her gaze away and injected an upbeat note into her voice. ‘We’re here—shall we go in?’
He didn’t answer straight away, and the moment stretched out tautly between them until he finally inclined his head. ‘As you wish.’
And as the driver opened their doors to let them out Effie told herself that she was relieved.
CHAPTER FOUR
TAK WAS GRATEFUL to be released from that endless icy blue gaze of hers. The one which was flecked with shards of gold. The one which shot right through him to the deepest caverns of his chest, expanding and shattering all that it touched.
At least he told himself that he was grateful. He was pretty sure that what he actually felt was a damn sight closer to disappointed. Yet that made no sense at all.
Moving around the vehicle to walk Effie up the steps and into the imposing, architecturally spectacular old building, he couldn’t help himself placing his hand at the small of her back, and the jolt of awareness at the contact both took him by surprise and, simultaneously, did not.
It was a long, long time since any woman had sneaked under his skin the way this woman had. If ever. It was rather extraordinary. It made a part of him want to whisk her away from here, from these people and the crowds, and take her somewhere quiet where he might actually be able to talk to her. One on one.
A preposterous notion.
The problem was that he’d been entirely floored by her the moment he’d walked into that grotty lobby and seen her standing there, so startlingly beautiful, so elegant, looking so wholly incongruous to her surroundings.
He’d wanted to pick her up and carry her out of there, if only so that her feet didn’t have to tread a single step on that filthy stone floor. If there had been a puddle he might even have thrown down his cloak, or at least his jacket.
Then again, if he’d picked her up, taken her in his arms, he might have been in even more trouble than he was in now. Because if simply looking at that tantalising body was having such an effect on him, then what might touching it actually do?
That orange flight suit hadn’t even hinted at the glorious figure now poured into a dress which looked as though it had been hand-crafted just for Effie. All soft, lush, feminine curves, deliciously naughty, which drew the eye and yet had the brain filling in the gaps for all the other senses.
God, how he wanted to see what that body was like beneath those clothes. Feel it pressed against his. Lick every last inch of it...
Tak came back to his senses with a rude crash. What was he thinking? This wasn’t even a real date—it certainly wasn’t going to end up like that. Wasn’t that the whole point of them coming here together? To avoid such complications?
Whatever was going on here wasn’t in the script. It hadn’t been in the plan. The sooner he got tonight over with and took this bewitching woman back home, the better. In fact he should start by finding Hetti—after all, wasn’t she the one who had asked him to bring Effie here?
So why, instead, did
he find himself guiding her inside? Find his hand moving from a light touch on her back to something arguably more possessive in sliding around to her waist to draw her in closer as several male colleagues made no attempt to conceal their envy? And why did a sense of triumph pound through him when Effie seemed to lean in to him that little bit closer, as if seeking his protection?
Unexpectedly, a couple of women caught his arm on the way in, flirting with him without a single glance at the woman who had come in on his arm, and Effie disengaged herself lightly, discreetly, in order to step ahead.
His head was still stuck back in his earlier conversation with her, and he let her go. It hit him several seconds later, when it felt altogether too much like a loss. Suddenly Tak found himself quickening his pace just to catch up with her.
‘What are you doing?’
She blinked, as though she wasn’t quite sure of herself. ‘Giving you space.’
Something moved through him. Something hot and frustrated. Like temper, only not quite. ‘Do I need to remind you that the whole idea of us coming together was to be each other’s buffer?’
‘I know that.’ She tried to sound indignant, but couldn’t disguise the catch in her voice. ‘But you didn’t seem to want a buffer from those women.’
