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‘We had a fascinating conversation. Now where are they?’
‘W-who?’
‘Not who, what! And don’t bother running that doe-eyed-innocence routine past me; I don’t buy it. If you don’t start co-operating I’ll have you slapped behind bars so fast your head will spin!’
No need—it was spinning wildly already. Doe-eyed? No one had ever called her that before. If it hadn’t been yelled with such insulting emphasis she might have mistaken it for a compliment.
‘The police are perfectly satisfied that I had nothing to do with...to do with whatever trouble you’re in!’ Honor said stiffly, resisting the urge to shout back. She wished she knew what she was defending herself against. Exactly what she had been suspected of had never been precisely defined. All she knew was that it involved a serious threat, and that there would be dire consequences for herself if she so much as breathed a word of the case to anyone until cleared to do so by the police.
‘It’s not I that’s in the most trouble right now,’ he grated. ‘If you don’t produce those letters in the next five minutes I’ll tear this place apart myself.’
‘The letters?’ Honor almost wilted in relief. ‘What do you want them for?’
‘What do you think?’
He took a step towards her and Honor put a defensive hand against the front of her shirt and was disconcerted to feel bare skin. She looked down. To her horror Monty’s hind legs had done a very good job of dragging most of her buttons out of their worn buttonholes. Her faded shirt had parted over her breasts, revealing a similarly shabby bra, one she had hung on to long past its prime because it was so comfortable.
She gasped, and hastily began rebuttoning, freezing as Adam suddenly reached forward and pulled one side of her shirt out of her hand. While she stood, stiff with shock, he lifted his other hand and ran blunt square fingers over the tender flesh swelling above the frayed lace.
A sharp sting made her wince as his thumb dragged in the wake of his fingers.
‘It seems your pet is fairly indiscriminate in his victims—you’re bleeding as much as I am. You ought to get something on those scratches straight away; the skin on your breasts is a lot more delicate and susceptible to damage than the skin on exposed parts of the body.’
His lack of embarrassment only made Honor’s more acute as his hand slowly withdrew, leaving behind a tingling awareness of his touch.
Bewildered by such consideration in the midst of his raging fury, and guilty that she had suspected him, even for a moment, of carnal motives, Honor’s eyes flicked to the vivid, red-beaded line down the side of his face.
‘I-I have some antiseptic ointment in the bathroom if you want some...’ she offered, clutching the front of her shirt and nervously backing away.
Something feral gleamed deep in the golden eyes. ‘Good idea. Why don’t you go and get it and we can tend to each other’s wounds?’
Have him touch her breasts again with that strange, gentle insistence? Honor could feel her face heat up as she turned and fled for the bathroom. After all the trouble she had gone to to dress up nicely for him earlier, he had to walk in on her when she was clad in scruffy jeans and a shirt she had picked up in a jumble sale!
Only two of the four scratches she had sustained were seeping blood but Honor cleaned and applied the cream to all of them. She didn’t want to give Adam the excuse of demanding an inspection, and the ruthless satisfaction on his face when she had begun to blush had told her that he had instantly perceived her physical awareness of his masculinity as a weakness that could be exploited to his advantage.
Remember the letters, she told herself severely as she tucked her shirt firmly back into her jeans. Adam Blake is not really the snarling, aggressive, insulting bully he appears to be. He is a warm, charming, sensitive man who just happens to be justifiably confused at the moment. Grabbing the tube of ointment, she kept repeating the incantation as she went back to face him.
The warm, charming and sensitive man was sitting behind her desk rifling through the drawers. His concern had been merely a ploy to get her out of the room, she realised with an acute sense of betrayal.
‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’
He ignored her, bending in the chair to pull out another drawer, and tip out its contents on the floor. Realising that she had no hope of physically stopping him, Honor tried to use sweet reason.
‘Mr—Adam, if you want those letters back I’ll be happy to give them to you. I know you’re angry but truly, I had no idea that you thought you were writing to my sister—how could I? You wrote to this address and I’m the only H. Sheldon who lives here. I didn’t even know that you and Helen had met—I thought you just must have seen me at the ball and...and...’
His head lifted, his eyes chilly with contemptuous disbelief. ‘Found you so instantly and devastatingly attractive that I couldn’t forget you?’ Honor blushed painfully as her foolish fantasies were stripped to their unlikely origins. ‘Yes, I can see how often that must happen to you.’ His sarcasm was as glacial as his stare.
‘Perhaps that’s how you get your kicks—by enticing strange men to write to you under false pretences. Do you advertise in the personal columns, too, and send your gullible prospects a photograph of your beautiful sister to stimulate their interest? Are you so jealous of her that in some sick and twisted way you try to be her—?’
‘I’m perfectly happy being myself! You seem to be forgetting that you’re the one who made the approach to me,’ Honor flung at him, mortified by his interpretation of her character. ‘All I did was innocently answer a card that I received—’
‘You have an interesting interpretation of innocence,’ Adam rapped out. ‘The police tell a different version...the one about how you thought it was great fun to lead me on until you decided I was becoming too persistent, an embarrassing annoyance, and thought it was time to front up and deliver the punch line in person.’
Oh, damn! She knew that somehow her lies would return to haunt her.
‘I only said that because I was trying to keep Helen out of it. I didn’t want the police involving her in any awkward publicity—’ she protested.
‘But she is involved, isn’t she, right up to her beautiful neck?’ he cut in savagely. Honor could practically see his wounded male pride throbbing. ‘I suppose she was in on the joke, too?’
