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Moonlight fell on Connel's face, carving strange, shifting patterns across the familiar angles of cheeks and nose, mouth and temples, making his black hair silver, glittering in his eyes.
Breathless and weak with excitement, Zoe clutched the windowsill for support.
'Are you naked?' Connel asked, shattering her mood in an instant.
'No, I'm not!' she crossly denied. Not quite, anyway. 'I was i
n bed, as it happens. What are you doing here at this hour?'
'I just got back from London so I came to see how you are.'
'I was fine until you woke me up!'
'Sorry, I expected you to be up because I could see lights on downstairs in your kitchen.'
'Lights? I didn't put any lights on. I wonder if Sancha has come round?' Zoe turned and Connel urgently called out to her.
'Wait! Don't go down there; you could have burglars. If it was Sancha I'd see her car out here, and I don't. It could be your ex-boyfriend and we know he's violent. Chuck me down your key and I'll let myself in and deal with whoever it is.'
Zoe hesitated, but it was common sense to do as he said, so she looked in her handbag, found her front door key and threw it down. As Connel began to open the door she hurried to dress in her jeans and sweater, pulled a hairbrush over her hair, and was on the small landing at the turn of the stairs when she met Connel coming up.
'Where are you going?' she sharply asked as he ran an all-seeing gaze over her.
'To check the upstairs rooms—there was nobody on the ground floor.' He looked up into her eyes. 'You got dressed.'
Ignoring the comment, pink and suspicious, she demanded, 'How do I know there were lights on in the kitchen before you got into the cottage? I didn't see them, I only have your word for it, and as I came home in daylight I certainly didn't switch on any lights.'
Coolly, he told her, 'There's a note from your sister propped up on the table—she came round at six, found you asleep and tiptoed off again. Now, let me pass and I'll just look in the rooms up here. There's no point in not making sure nobody has got in, is there?'
She stepped sideways, squashing herself against the wall to let him pass. As he joined her on the narrow landing their bodies almost touched; Zoe was abruptly deafened by the violent racing of her blood in her ears and her pulses everywhere else, in her throat, at her wrists, deep inside her body. She had never been so physically aware of anyone in her life and it scared her, scared her senseless.
She couldn't meet his eyes, looked downwards, but through her drooping lashes watched him, taller than ever in black jeans and a dark grey silky cashmere sweater which clung to his strong chest His was an intensely physical presence, making her body clamour and her senses burn.
He made no move to go on up the stairs. Instead, he leaned slowly towards her, as if in slow motion, giving her plenty of time to escape, a chance she could not take because his deliberate, almost taunting, slowness made her mouth dry and chained her to the spot. Connel put both hands on the wall on either side of her, and softly asked, 'Missed me?'
Her breathing seemed to stop, as if she had died; desperately she snatched at air, refusing to let him send her into this spiral of desire and panic and helplessness. No man had ever done this to her. She wasn't going to let Connel Hillier drown her mind and bewilder her body.
Hoarsely, she lied, I've been too busy to miss anybody! Have you been away? Anywhere exciting?'
He put a finger under her chin and tipped her head back before she could stop him, forcing her to look up into those mocking, narrowed eyes.
'What a spiky little hedgehog you are, aren't you? Every time I try to get any closer, you roll yourself up into a ball and I find myself impaled on your sharp prickles.'
'Better stay away from me then, hadn't you?' she breathlessly whispered, fighting not to stare at his mouth. Why did it have this hypnotic attraction for her? Okay, it was beautifully shaped, but so what? In her job, she met terrific-looking actors with sexy mouths every day. Not one of them had ever had this irresistible lure! In fact, if asked, she would have said she was immune to good-looking men. Some of them she positively disliked because their looks made then vain; some of them were as thick as fog. Look at Hal Thaxford! For her a man needed a lot of other qualities—a sense of humour, kindness, honesty, brains, integrity, common sense. If he was attractive physically too, great, but looks weren't a vital part of the package for her. So why couldn't she stop gazing at Connel like some star-struck kid?
He took a step closer, so that their bodies almost touched. 'I gather that despite everything the doctor said, you've worked every day. Mark told me his wife was very worried about it.'
Her eyes flashed. Mark had no business discussing her with him! 'I'm fine,' she said crossly. 'Look, are you going upstairs or not? Because if you're not, let me pass. I want to go and make some coffee and something to eat.'
'Do you know what I want?' he whispered, and her heart turned over.
'No!' she lied, slid under his barring arm and began to hurry downstairs, only to have her feet skid underneath her.
Gasping, she found herself tumbling forward and reached for the banister, but in the same second Connel caught her by the waist and yanked her back upwards.
Instinctively, Zoe clung to him, still off balance, trembling, realising how nearly she had fallen down the steep stairs.
'You're the most accident-prone female I ever met,' Connel muttered, his lips brushing the pink, whorled folds of her ear, sending shivers down her spine.
