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‘Didn’t it?’
He was circling around her, and she turned to keep him within her night-blurred sight. She could hear her pulse in her ears, could feel but not see his eyes boring into her, and experienced the tingling of her scalp that usually presaged a severe attack of stage fright. Oh, God, if he was Peter she mustn’t let him paralyse her in real life as she had let him do to her on stage.
‘No!’
‘Then why are you spitting at me like a cornered vixen? Could it be that you feel threatened by how much you enjoyed those few laughs...?’
It was such an apt description of her feelings that she recoiled. ‘Damn you!’
His voice oozed with heavy satisfaction as he continued to pad softly around her, increasing his speed so that her head began to whirl as she tried to keep up with him, the hem of her halter-necked slip-dress flaring around her knees. ‘No, damn you Roz. You started this game; we’re not going to stop now, just because you’ve discovered that you don’t get to make all the rules.’
She lifted her hands in a fierce warding-off gesture, some words from Shakespeare sliding unbidden into her mind. ‘He was furnished like a hunter/O, ominous! he comes to kill my heart.’
‘What game?’ she said desperately. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about—’
His soft laugh was grim with determination.
‘I’m talking about this...’
His mouth was as warm and exciting as she remembered, his body as hard, and once more her passionate nature was hostage to his fervent enthusiasm. She stopped struggling, her fear dissolving in the heat of a seductive yearning. What Luke lacked in finesse he certainly made up for in zeal. How could she be afraid of someone who made her feel so beautiful, so powerful, so desirable and, uniquely in her recent experience, so utterly complete?
Her trapped hands fluttered briefly against his lean flanks before her fingers curled into the rough linen weave of his softly gathered trousers, not tugging him closer, but not pushing him away either. Like her dress, Luke’s shirt was made of silk, and the two whisper-thin surfaces were slippery against each other, generating a slick friction which, with every movement, every wild breath and ripple of muscle, made parts of Rosalind ache for a similar caress.
His mouth suddenly broke away and Luke leaned his forehead against hers, resting it there while his arms fell loosely to her hips, cradling them against his fierce arousal.
‘You’re right—however it started this isn’t a game for us any more,’ he panted raggedly. ‘Let’s stop teasing each other...to hell with all the rest. Come to bed with me, Roz...please... I won’t hurt you, I’ll protect you... Come back with me now and dazzle me with your splendour...’
The hunter was disarming himself before his captive prey.
‘Come...dazzle me with your splendour...’
How could any woman resist such a poetic, impassioned plea?
Hours later Rosalind was still reliving the pleasure of that exquisite moment, and cursing the self-doubt which had smothered her impulse to accept his invitation. She had wanted to fling herself headlong into the reckless glory of loving Luke, but for the first time in her life her steadfast optimism had failed her. She had been afraid to trust her instincts, afraid that her judgement was warped by her feelings.
Rosalind Marlow, the wild child of tabloid journalism, afraid to take a risk. What a laugh!
Rosalind paced back and forth in her bedroom, her heart aching for the man she had deserted under the casuarina tree. Had he been hurt by the fierceness of her rejection? Maybe she had gone overboard in her attempt to sound as if she was still angry with him. Luke hadn’t even tried to follow her...surely if he was obsessed with her he wouldn’t have let her just walk away?
She stopped and pressed her ear against the wall. Still not a single sound or vibration from the next chalet. She rested her hot cheek against the cool paintwork and closed her eyes. Damn it, where was he? Why the hell wasn?
?t he knocking at her door, pestering her to change her mind?
Because he wasn’t Peter, that was why, her guilty conscience whispered. Luke was simply an honest man who had got out of his depth with a witchy woman who blew inexplicably hot and cold and acted mortally insulted when he paid her the supreme compliment of trying to understand her.
Where on earth could he have gone? To the bar, to drown his humiliation in vodka? Or...more likely from what she knew of Luke...had he gone for a long, solitary walk to brood over his sorrows?
Rosalind jerked upright. What if Luke fell victim to the dreaded ricochet effect? What if, in his wanderings, he encountered some shameless, man-eating hussy who offered him the opportunity to soothe his wounded male ego with some mindless sex? Her blood boiled with jealousy at the idea. She felt sick at the thought of him with any other woman.
Her green eyes narrowed grimly as she made up her mind. Luke had stopped short of making any emotional declarations but she sensed that he had strong feelings for her, otherwise he wouldn’t be in such a turmoil.
This definitely wasn’t just a physical attraction. If Rosalind loved him she couldn’t keep running away from the responsibility, but nor could she blind herself to her suspicions, as she had done with Justin. The Justin she had thought she was in love with had been a flawless young god who had turned out to have feet of clay. Luke was a flesh-and-blood man who had attracted her because of his flaws, rather than in spite of them.
Still, this time she had much more to lose than her girlish dreams and Rosalind had to be certain with her heart and her head that she was doing the right thing for Luke as well as for herself. If she couldn’t bring herself to take him on trust, well, she would have to take him without, and hope to make up for her lack of faith later...
First, and most important of all, she needed to reread what he had written about her—properly, from start to finish this time, instead of relying on the few jumbled extracts that had leapt at her from the screen that morning. She wanted to know just how much of his own feelings and motives he had recorded in his so-called ‘diary’.
Grabbing the small computer disk from her bedside table, Rosalind went out onto the balcony and peered around the edge of the lattice screen at his darkened bedroom. She knew Luke would have locked the front door of his chalet when he’d gone out, but, as she had hoped, he had left his balcony sliding door slightly open.
