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'You're frowning again,' he said mildly, as though he didn't care but he didn't remove his hand from over hers.
Why did it matter to him what she wanted? Beth asked herself. She didn't even stir his body let alone his heart. Whereas his hand on hers, the feel of his warm firm flesh, was causing her heart to bump along like a car in the wrong gear. But then everything about this evening was wrong—every¬thing. If it had been just the two of them...
The thought and the warm sensation in the most intimate part of her that accompanied it was enough to cause her to jerk her hands away from under his and say tightly, 'What do you expect me to do when you come out with such silly state¬ments? I'm not in an ivory tower, as it happens, I'm very much in the world again, but I'm living life on my terms and I intend to go on doing so. I've got a mind and I intend to use it.'
'I'm glad to hear it.' He leant back in his seat and surveyed her with narrowed eyes. 'I like a positive approach.'
Beth stared at him. There was a look on his face she couldn't quite fathom.
'So what are those terms?' he asked just as Catherine and Michael left their car and began walking towards them. Before she could reply he wound down his window and said to her sister, who had paused by his door, 'We won't be a minute. You go in and we'll join you in a moment.'
'Oh, all right.' Catherine looked taken aback but pleased and Beth inwardly groaned. Now her sister would be thinking all sorts of things and galloping off down the wrong road entirely.
'So?' Travis had turned back to her again. 'The rules of en¬gagement? Feel free to elucidate, Beth.'
She wished she hadn't started this. She breathed in the de¬licious warmth and smell of him and reiterated silently for the hundredth time that she should never have got into the car. She shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. 'Why should you want to know?' she said a little breathlessly, hearing herself with a touch of annoyance. Breathlessness was not an option round Travis. More firmly, she added, 'You said you don't fancy me and just want to be friends. Surely the rules of en¬gagement, as you call them, don't interest you?'
'Ah, but I lied, Beth.' The grey gaze didn't waver.
'What?' Utterly taken aback, she stared at him.
'I lied.' A small smile lifted the corners of Travis's mouth and she knew she was sitting with her mouth open and must look gormless, but she was so surprised she couldn't help it. 'You know, tell an untruth? Fabricate? Falsify?'
'I know what a lie means,' she snapped, but not as curtly as she would have liked. It was hard to be furious when exciting little shivers were racing up and down her spine. 'Why?' she managed eventually when he didn't say anything. 'Why did you lie about...?'
'Finding you sexually attractive?' His voice lingered over the third word and the shivers increased. 'Because you seemed to be panicking and I didn't like the idea I was driving you out of your house. We got off on the wrong foot, I know that, but taking yourself off for hours tramping the forest with Harvey to avoid me seemed a trifle desperate. But I only half lied,' he added quietly.
'Half?' she said warily. 'What do you mean?'
'I said I found you interesting as a person and I do.' He leant forward and every nerve in her body responded. 'I'm not a spotty teenager, Beth, whose only idea of a relationship is to find out what the birds and bees are about, I've had women, I don't deny it, and I would be lying if I said I didn't want to take you to bed. But not now, not before you're ready. I'd like to get to know you and for you to know me, and then, if you want things to progress...'
'And if I don't?' She was trembling so much she knew he could see it. 'What happens then?'
'Then we kiss and walk away.' His gaze didn't vacillate.
She ran a shaky hand across her face. 'I'm... I'm not ready for a relationship, however slow you're willing to take it. It's too soon after.. .everything that's happened.'
He had slightly adjusted his position as she spoke and she knew he was going to kiss her. Something had shifted and changed in the last minute or so, something indefinable but nevertheless very potent. She stared into his deep grey eyes and then his mouth touched hers but this was no light caress like before. This time his lips were warm and searching, intoxicating. He made no move to hold her or draw her into him as the kiss deepened—he didn't have to. Already a burning heat was flowing along every vein and she felt heady with the thrill of it.
She had known he would be able to kiss like this. The knowledge had been there from the first time she had seen him and even the brief fleeting caress he'd dropped so casually on her lips before had confirmed it. Sensual expertise was evident in every movement and action he made, the way he carried himself, his lazy self-assurance and effortless control.
