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Why had she let him, tonight? He shelved that question to be analyzed later. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but cooking dinner is not a service you usually offer your guests.” He had researched her business before coming down here today, looking for ways he could persuade her to go through with the sale.
“No, it isn’t.” She agreed with a small frown, her cheek still tingling from where his fingers had brushed against it.
“Then you did me a favor, and now I’ve simply returned it.”
She huffed. “Well, I suppose if you put it like that...”
“Excellent.” He watched as his smile had the desired effect. Visibly, she relaxed. “So, no hard feelings over the fact I washed up. Now, please sit.”
She had any number of excuses at her disposal. She was flat out. She was exhausted. Being a single mum to Maxie, running a business, and restoring a dilapidated old building all took their toll, and what she needed more than anything was an early night.
But she didn’t say that to her guest. She rolled her eyes in mock annoyance and sat down on one end of the worn sofa. It was a mistake to choose the sofa over an armchair, because Marcus immediately came to sit beside her.
She was not going to show that it bothered her in the slightest, but inside, she felt her heart speed up to an almost unbearable tattoo.
“What did you want to know?” She locked her eyes with his and immediately pulled them away, focusing instead on the flames licking the stone grate hungrily. The intimacy of their setting was difficult to ignore, and Katie hoped that it was making her body respond more fully than it otherwise would. If she’d met this man in broad daylight, at a fluorescent-light lit shopping centre, she probably wouldn’t have felt a tenth of this overwhelming attraction. Even as she clutched at the proverbial straw, she knew it was ridiculous. This man would be desirable, anywhere, anyhow, to anyone. He was sex on legs.
Wind rattled against the windows of the lounge and Katie startled.
He raised his eyebrows and she tried to smile, exhaling a long, slow breath in an effort to distill some of the tension.
“I’ve lived here six years, but I still find these storms a bit scary.”
“Scary?” He kept his expression neutral, but he had found her confession oddly sweet.
“You have no idea how good that feels to admit to someone!” She responded nervously. “Usually I have to be the grown up, for Maxie’s sake. Storms aren’t scary, Maxie! This house has been here over two hundred years, it’s not just going to blow away in one night!” She puffed out her cheeks. “But it could.”
Her eyes were so beseechingly earnest that he longed to kiss away her worries. “The house is as sturdy as they come,” he said, lifting his eyes to the ceiling and hoping he was speaking the truth. He stretched an arm along the back of the sofa, his fingers dangling only an inch from her shoulder. The knowledge that he could easily bring her in to an embrace did not help the direction of his thoughts. “You said you’ve only lived here for six years. Where did you grow up?”
She lifted her gaze to his. She felt like she was at an invisible fork in the road. One part of her was so alive in his company that she would do anything to prolong it, while the more sensible part of her was screaming to get away from him as quickly as she could. Men like this, and her ex, were Trouble with a capital ‘T’. Too good looking and confident for their own good. But Katie had been sensible for a long time. And David Trent was only in Wadeford for two weeks. Was it really so very terrible to get to know him a little better? To relax her vice-like grip on her privacy for a short while? After all, she’d been a kid when she’d known Roberto. Surely she had better sense now. A better handle on her own behavior. Surely she could enjoy a harmless flirtation without getting her heart torn into three thousand pieces.
Decision made.
“London.” She said, settling back into the sofa and crossing her legs. She picked at an invisible thread on her dress. “South London, in a little bend of the Thames called Barnes.” She smiled, reminiscing about her picturesque upbringing. Or as it had seemed at the time. “What about you?”
Marcus had decided that his best option was to stick to the truth wherever possible. “I am originally from America, but I went to college here in England, at Oxford, so travelled back and forth during holidays.”
“That’s a lot of moving around.” Though he couldn’t know it, she had her own personal reasons for wanting to know more about such a nomadic life. “Was it hard? To travel so much?”
“Not in the slightest. I relish change. I exist in a permanent state of wanderlust.”
His confession did nothing to remove the romantic image of him she was rapidly constructing. He was strong, handsome, mysterious and a traveler. And a teacher! An academic. A warning light flashed in her brain. He was too good to be true.
“Where else have you been?” She nestled deeper in the sofa and the action brought her shoulder into direct contact with his fingers. He felt the spark of heat that travelled along his arm and straight through his body, and it was obvious from her look of surprise that she had felt it too. She straightened, the relaxed mood seeming to infuse with an aching awareness.
Outside, it had begun to rain heavily agai
n, and the sound of the fire, and the sheeting rain, seemed to strengthen the intensity of the atmosphere. He leaned in towards her, just a fraction, but close enough so that their thighs were touching. “I’ve been everywhere.” His words were husky and Katie felt her stomach roll with desire.
“Everywhere?” She repeated, but her mind felt thick and nebulous.
“Mmmm.” He raked his eyes over her face intently. “Australia, Asia, all over the States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa… everywhere.”
“That sure is a lot of places.” She said in awe. “I’ve never left England.”
“Never?” He raised his eyebrows, momentarily thrown by her confession.
“My dad was terrified of flying, and my mum was too sensible to waste money on holidays. It all went into my education, you see. We were comfortable, but by no means wealthy. They scrimped and saved so that I could go to prestigious public schools. By the time I finished university, I was ready to see the world but…” her voice petered out as she raised her eyes meaningfully towards the ceiling, where a warm little body would now be curled up in bed, fast asleep. She smiled as she pictured him, blankets thrown off, one leg dangling over the edge of the bed, well-worn teddy clutched in his pudgy fingers. “Maxie happened instead.”
