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‘No! Because I wanted to check out your computer files again. Because I thought you might be Peter and I wanted to see if I could find any evidence to prove things either way!’ she flung at him.
His smirk turned to shocked outrage. ‘You what?’
‘Well, what was I supposed to think?’ she yelled. defensively. ‘I didn’t know you were bosom buddies with my brother-in-law. I didn’t know you were playing amateur bodyguard! I was just going to hack into your system to see if there was proof one way or the other—’
‘You were going to mess around on my hard disk?’ he howled. He seemed more affronted at the thought of his computer being tampered with than he was at the idea of being suspected as a psychotic stalker of women.
‘I brought back the floppy I took,’ she said, lifting her dainty chin aggressively. ‘I was going to reread it, but I dropped it on the floor in the dark. And then you woke up and...and—’
‘And you realised your suspicions were completely unfounded and utterly ridiculous!’
‘Well...you took me by surprise and...uh...’
He read between the lines of her inarticulate stammer and swore with startling fluency.
‘So you thought I might be dangerous, but you fluttered up to the flame anyway? Damn it, Roz, don’t you have any sense of self-preservation?’ Each sentence worked him into an even quieter fury. ‘No wonder Jordan was worried! Do you realise what could have happened?’
‘I thought it had,’ she reminded him, with a trace of her old insouciance.
He stamped on it grimly. ‘You know how strong I am. If I had been your stalker I could have hurt you, abused you in some perverted way to feed my sick obsession, killed you even,’ he emphasised viciously. He took her by the arms, giving her an urgent little shake. ‘You may act tough but sophistication is no protection against violence. You don’t have the strength to fight a man who thinks he has nothing to lose—’
‘P-Peter’s dead, for goodness’ sake!’ she stuttered, her heart hammering at the fierceness of his reaction.
‘You didn’t know that last night! Just what the hell were you thinking, to take such a stupid risk?’
‘I refuse to answer on the grounds it might incriminate me!’
His eyes sharpened. Too late Rosalind remembered the frighteningly perceptive observation amongst his diary of notes that she had a habit of resorting to flippancy whenever her emotions were in danger of being too deeply engaged. It was a self-protective mechanism that she had used a lot where Luke was concerned.
‘Roz?’
His fingers sank deeper into the soft flesh of her upper arms and she dropped her dress, pushing against his chest to no avail. Unattended, the sheet across her breasts sagged, but Luke didn’t take his eyes off her face as he pursued her with silken tenacity.
‘Maybe you weren’t thinking at all. Maybe you were operating on pure instinct. Your logic told you not to trust me until you’d checked me out, but you’ve never been guided by logic, have you? You invariably act from the heart. What was your heart saying to you last night, Rosalind?’
She shook her head slightly, her eyes flashing like rare jewels in the streaks of sunlight that lanced through the room. ‘That I was crazy,’ she said breathlessly.
‘I know the feeling,’ he murmured, vagueness suddenly blanking off his expression.
Was that a declaration? An admission? Why did she feel that she had disappointed him in some way? What did he expect from her?
‘I keep discovering things about you that put a whole new spin on your character,’ she blurted out in frustration. ‘How can I trust the real you if I don’t know who that is? What other secrets have you been keeping from me...?’
‘Only one.’ His eyes were hooded. ‘But it’s the most important one. Are you going to ask me to tell you what it is...?’ His hands fell away, setting her free, as he lazed back down in the bed, tension evident in every muscle and sinew. Experiencing a strong premonition of danger, Rosalind drew the sheet back up over her breasts in an unconsciously symbolic gesture of concealment. ‘You want us to be totally honest about ourselves?’
‘Yes...of course I do,’ she faltered.
Luke’s lowered lashes flickered as he revealed the hook in his tantalising bait. ‘Well, if you want to talk secrets, Rosalind, I’m quite willing... as long as it’s mutual. Are you ready for that yet, do you think? Are you ready to bare the deepest, darkest, most important secrets of your soul on the strength of a one-night stand?’
Her whole being revolted at his brutal definition of their night together, even though she knew he had used it deliberately to provoke just such a reaction. ‘That isn’t how it was—’
‘No.’ He cut her off smoothly. ‘I agree. So let’s say we’re lovers, then. And lovers are supposed to confide in each other, aren’t they, Roz? To share their joys, their sorrows, their guilty secrets...’
Rosalind moistened her lips, knowing what was coming next, as he went on with insidious calm, ‘So that must mean that you’re going to tell me all about you and Peggy Staines and what led up to her having a heart attack in your room. Maybe you’re going to tell me the rumours about blackmail were true...?’
Rosalind threw back her head proudly. ‘I wasn’t blackmailing her—’
‘Then she was blackmailing you?’
