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‘Should you?’
He traced the shadows under her tear-puffed eyes with a light finger. The dawn had become day and the room was suffused with sunshine streaming in through the open curtains. They were lying face to face, their bodies still intertwined, and she could see every nuance of his expression. His deep satisfaction was underscored by a new aura of male confidence.
She sighed. ‘I would be if I had any energy left!’ She felt as weak as a newborn kitten, aware of a pleasant all-over ache mingled with a bitter-sweet sense of melancholy.
‘In that case I’d better do my best to maintain your current state of exhaustion,’ Luke murmured, with the unique brand of playful gravity that had first confused her into thinking he had no sense of humour. Now her confusion deepened. She was grateful that her absurd suspicions about Luke being a crazed stalker had been squelched, but his feelings and motivations were even more of a mystery than ever.
When she failed to respond with her usual pertness to the subtle sexual banter Luke discarded his muted playfulness, a dark determination entering his gaze as he realised that Rosalind was trying to ease herself away from his disruptive proximity. His arm tightened around her waist, pinning her to the bed, her thigh still sandwiched between his.
‘You can’t blame Jordan for grabbing the chance to increase the odds on you being safe. Most people are rank opportunists when it comes to protecting their families. People compromise their own personal integrity—take chances—do things for the sake of people they love that under normal circumstances they would consider completely unacceptable.’ His voice had hardened perceptibly, his eyes glittering with a restless fervency as he challenged, ‘Haven’t you ever done something you knew was wrong, for reasons that you believed were right?’
Rosalind thought of the time she had masqueraded as Olivia in order to qualify her twin for a portrait commission from the Pendragon Corporation. Olivia had been in a deep depression at the time and Rosalind hadn’t even thought twice about perpetrating the fraud in order to promote her sister’s stalled career. That Olivia had ended up with Jordan as well as the portrait commission had been sheer chance!
And now, too, there was Peggy Staines. She wasn’t family, but she had been in such desperate need that Rosalind had found it impossible to callously turn her back.
well, yes—I have...but the ends don’t always justify the means,‘ she said, troubled by his intensity. ’Sometimes the means are too painful, and who’s really to judge whether the ends are worthy of the hurt they cause?’
His mouth tightened. ‘As far as that goes we all have to make our own moral choices and decisions; ultimately—right or wrong—we have to face the consequences of our actions. All of us would like to believe that there is someone, somewhere, who would make the same sacrifices for us. You’re lucky; you obviously have plenty of people on your side. When he asked me to help, Jordan was only thinking of you—’
‘Oh, I can understand Jordan’s thinking,’ said Rosalind, her hair a brilliant splash against the white pillow as she turned her head to confront him at eye-level. ‘But what about you? Why on earth should you want to get involved? Especially after I’d given you the brush-off at the check-in counter...’
‘I was curious about you,’ he admitted bluntly, dashing her fond hopes. If he had told her he had fallen in love at first sight—or even second—she might have been willing to forgive him his secrets! ‘I knew who you were so I wasn’t surprised that you wanted to avoid any curious hangers-on, and when Jordan handed me a legitimate excuse to indulge my curiosity I couldn’t resist. Although I wasn’t quite sure how to go about the introduction—’
‘You could have tried the truth. You could have simply said you were a friend of Jordan’s and that he’d asked you to look me up on the trip,’ she pointed out sardonically. A curiosity—was that all she’d been to him?
His eyes narrowed at the jab. ‘Jordan said that if you knew, or even suspected, that he’d asked me to keep you out of trouble you’d lead me a hectic dance—deliberately try to make it as difficult as possible for me to keep my promise.’
Keep her out of trouble?
Rosalind gritted her teeth at the condescending phrase, but since she would probably have reacted exactly as he’d described she could hardly argue.
She was suddenly diverted by his last words. ‘You actually promised Jordan that you’d look after me?’ Rosalind, of all people, was aware of the importance—and the cost—of keeping rash promises.
One eyebrow flared quizzically at her surprisingly subdued reaction. ‘No, I don’t make promises if there’s a chance I won’t be able to keep them.’ Damn it, she had to respect him for that. ‘I simply promised him that I’d do my best.’
Her eyes kindled at the irony. ‘You’d do your best? You didn’t have to do anything. I practically presented myself to you on a plate!’
‘Dropped into my hands like a ripe peach,’ he agreed, for the shee
r pleasure of annoying her. Rosalind angry was much less mindful of her tongue.
‘And boy, did you take advantage of it!’ she accused.
She struggled free of his arm and this time he let her go, watching as she sat up and hugged the sheet while she fished around in the bed for her dress. He finally found it for her—a sadly crumpled ball stuffed under the pillows.
‘What are you so mad about, Roz?’ he said as she snatched it away from him. He watched her silently debate whether to put it straight on, obviously remembering what had happened last time she had worn it without underwear. He sat up, leaning on one strong arm, and goaded, ‘Are you afraid I only slept with you as a favour to your brother-in-law...to clip your flirty wings and keep you out of the beds of suspicious strangers?’
Rosalind pinkened with rage. She wasn’t going to let him get away with that outrageous lie. ‘The hell you did! Jordan’s not a pimp and you know damned well I’m not a gullible tramp willing to sleep with any sleaze-bag who shows an interest! The only suspicious stranger around here has been you...and the only favour you were doing last night was for yourself!’
‘And you, I hope,’ he said, with an incendiary coolness that made her realise that he had been deliberately baiting her. ‘So...I think we’ve established that you were curious about me too. The fact that it rapidly developed into something more complex was something neither of us could have foreseen. We both got more than we bargained for out of our curiosity, didn’t we? I agree, I had a hidden agenda to mine, but you were the one making the decisions about where and how far the relationship was going to go—’
‘Yes, but they weren’t fully informed decisions!’ she protested, clutching the balled-up dress to her chest to try to ease the tightness of her breathing. He didn’t sound like a man gloating over his one-night stand with a minor celebrity. Men who were only after sex talked about complexity and relationships before they got the woman into bed, never afterwards...
His eyes narrowed on her white knuckles before moving back up to her defiant face. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting I seduced you against your will. If anyone was seduced it was definitely me. After all, you were the one who crept into my room last night—’
‘Not because I wanted to seduce you,’ she protested hotly.
‘No?’ He smirked sceptically.
