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He gave her his patented, menacing, ice-chip stare. ‘Not if it was something I really, really wanted.’
As he really, really wanted her out of his uncle’s life?
‘I bet you were fun in the playground,’ she muttered.
‘I always fought fair.’
‘You only punch your own weight?’ she shot swiftly back. ‘That’s good to know.’
His gaze sank down to the tee shirt shrouding her slightly over-abundant curves and lingered, as if he was mentally weighing her breasts. She felt them tingle in response to the mocking male scrutiny and hurriedly folded her arms, crushing the burgeoning tips into obedient submission. His eyes merely moved on to the ripe swell of her hips below the hem of her tee shirt and the straining side-seams of her jeans.
Her arms tightened, fists clenching against the sides of her breasts, unconsciously plumping them forward as she smouldered impotently under his inspection. Beneath his broad shoulders he was lean and slim-hipped, but, damn it, he was at least six feet two—he had to weigh more than she did!
‘Women naturally have more body-fat than men,’ she heard herself blurting out. ‘But muscle is heavier.’
One muscle in particular. The wayward thought popped into her head as his eyes rose back to her face, and she only just stopped herself looking down at the front of his light grey trousers. What was it about the man that made her want to act like the brazen hussy he thought her to be?
‘I guess size is relative, isn’t it?’ he responded. ‘Experience is the great leveller. Size doesn’t always succeed over rat-cunning.’
‘Especially if the rat is over six feet tall,’ Emily agreed sweetly.
‘Brute force backed with intelligence is always a winner,’ he purred.
Peter’s head had been going back and forth. ‘What are you two talking about?’ he said in confusion.
‘We’re reminiscing,’ his nephew said.
‘About the party? Where was it, anyway?’ Peter asked.
‘Your friends, the Webbers’.’
‘Not friends—acquaintances. Sean Webber just happened to go to some of the same auctions as Rose. I suppose that’s why you were there, Emily. You did a bit of work on a few of Sean’s Chinese pieces a few years ago, didn’t you? On Rose’s recommendation…’
This was dangerous ground. ‘Quest Restorations did,’ said Emily carefully, aware of Ethan West’s sudden alertness.
Fortunately, Peter was already rolling on: ‘I never took to Sean. A real snob. Thought the fact he inherited his money made him better than those of us who earned it by honest graft,’ growled Peter. ‘He sucked up to Rose though. Knew she came from an aristocratic background. Didn’t matter to Sean that her parents cut her out of their lives when she ran away to marry someone whose alcoholic mother cleaned toilets for a living. In fact Sean probably approved!’
He shook his head. ‘I didn’t think you liked him either, Ethan. He oiled up to your father in the same way, and yet Malcolm was just as much persona non grata with the Wests as Rose when he decided to follow in his big sister’s footsteps. I shouldn’t have thought you’d give any invitation of Sean’s a second look.’
‘It was his son’s party—and I wasn’t there by choice,’ Ethan said tersely.
You and me both, thought Emily.
‘I was trying to find Dylan.’ He shrugged. ‘He was doing PR back then for some show Michael was selling. Not that it panned out, after the party trashed the house that night and Michael was hauled off in the police raid. The Webbers had to slam him in three-month rehab to keep it out of the press and try to buy him off some serious drug charges—’
He broke off as he saw Emily gaping at him, her azure-blue eyes wide within their natural frame of mink-brown lashes.
‘You didn’t get scooped up in that raid, too, did you, Emily?’ he said smoothly.
‘I-I left early.’ She gulped, going hot and cold at the thought of what would have happened if she’d been arrested and had her bag searched. The flask was the last commission that Quests had executed for Sean Webber, and Emily hadn’t wanted to invite trouble by encouraging any further contact.
‘So you were safely tucked between the sheets when the main action went down?’ From his silky tone it was clear that he thought she was more likely to have been tucked between some man’s thighs.
Her eyelids drooped, veiling the fury in her eyes as she recalled the painful reality of the rest of that night, and the anxious days and nights that had followed: the caffeine-and-sugar-fuelled hours of intense concentration she had spent hunched over a magnifying glass in the studio, stripping the flask repair back to its original break and beginning the delicate, painstaking process of cleaning and rebonding.
‘Something like that,’ she said, absently massaging the muscles at the back of her neck where tension tended to gather after prolonged close work.
‘Good God!’ said Peter. ‘You young people do live exciting lives—’
