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At least when he fought her she could fight back. When he was cold she was equally chilly. But when he smiled—
Suddenly the hostility oozed out of her and she felt hideously unsure of her own response. All she wanted to do was wrap her arms around his neck and snuggle against him, or spend an evening in a beach-side restaurant laughing together as they attacked a plate of delicious seafood.
All she wanted was to forget the past and start again—
Shocked by her own thoughts, she tried to remind herself that he was the enemy, but what sort of enemy made her pulse race so frantically and made her feel so alive?
‘I love the dress,’ he said huskily, waiting for her to lock the door and then holding out a hand. ‘If I’d known I would have driven the sports car. It matches the colour perfectly.’
She ignored the hand and arched an eyebrow, trying to switch back to an atmosphere of attack. ‘So now I’m an accessory?’
He smiled and took her hand firmly in his, ignoring her token resistance. ‘Accessories are supposed to blend in, agape mou. You definitely don’t blend. You strut and lift that pretty chin and flash your eyes at me.’
‘Only when you annoy me.’
‘Which is most of the time, it would seem.’ His tone was ironic and she risked a glance at him, thinking that this was Zander at his most dangerous. The gently mocking tone, the slightly narrowed eyes, the hint of a smile that turned his mouth from hard to tantalisingly sexual.
It was a cruel reminder of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him at the impressionable age of twenty-one.
They stepped into the car and instantly all her muscles tightened with the memory of what had taken place only hours earlier. Blood pulsed through her veins and her fingers gripped the edge of the seat.
‘Relax,’ he advised softly, lounging back in the far corner of the seat, amusement lighting his dark eyes as he registered her discomfort. ‘There’s no way I’m going to jump you ten minutes before we are supposed to appear before the general public. When you and I finally do what we’re both burning to do, we are going to have total privacy and no deadline. And we will not be surrounded by paparazzi.’
Images exploded in her head and her mouth dried. ‘We’re not going to do anything.’
His eyes didn’t leave her face. ‘We’re already doing it, Anni.’ His voice was husky. ‘This is foreplay, and you know it.’
‘No—’ Her denial was a soft moan that lacked conviction even to her.
He gave a slow smile. ‘Actually the longest foreplay I’ve ever indulged in. Why do you persist in denying what we both feel?’
‘Because it won’t work.’
He lifted an eyebrow, his expression gently mocking. ‘We’ve done it before, agape mou.’ His voice was velvety smooth and utterly confident. ‘We know it works.’
And that was the basic difference between them, of course. He was talking about sex. And that was all that was on offer. She turned her head and stared out of the window in a state of helpless confusion.
If she gave in to the sexual pull, where would it lead?
Ecstasy?
And then more misery.
‘We’re too different, Zander.’
‘I’m a man and you’re a woman,’ he pointed out with a laugh in his voice. ‘For what I have in mind, different is essential. We’re supposed to be different.’
She turned back to him, thinking that the last thing she needed was to be remin
ded that he was a man. It was evident in every angle of his powerful body. Zander was masculinity in the raw. Hard where she was soft. And the woman in her responded to his strength and maleness with an eagerness that shocked her.
This was a man who had hurt her so badly that the wounds had never healed.
How could she look at him and not turn and run?
Were her instincts for self-preservation so poorly developed that she couldn’t act to avoid a disaster?
But it was so much more complex than that.
