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He removed one hand and she held her breath in silent rejection of the fact that he might be pulling away from her. But he wasn’t. He stayed close, so that when he lifted something out of the top pocket of his tuxedo his hand brushed against her breast and she stifled a noise of awareness.
Stifled or not, his eyes simmered when they connected to hers as though she’d moaned loudly. He knew how she felt. Because he felt the same?
“Dance with me, and this is yours.”
Her fingers shook as they took the paper from his hand and unfolded it, the familiar fear that always assailed her at moments like this flushing her skin. It was a cheque. She gathered it was from Stavros. While she struggled with words, numbers she could recognize, and she recognized the number of zeros on this cheque.
“For the charity?” She asked urgently, missing the way his eyes knitted together for an instant, at the strange question. After all, the charity’s name was clearly printed at the top of the envelope.
“Nai.”
“Stavros,” she gasped, shaking her head. “It’s too much.”
“It’s a good cause,” he shrugged. “I can afford it.”
“But it’s…”
He lifted a finger to her lips, silencing her instantly. “It’s worth it.”
Her heart turned over and she closed her eyes for a moment. “One dance?” Her eyes locked to his.
The thumping of inevitability beat in both their hearts.
“One dance.”
Claudia stared up at him, into his eyes that were so dark they were almost black, into eyes that seemed to see straight through her, and she nodded. Her mouth was too dry to form words.
As if he’d planned it, seconds later, the singer swapped from the up-tempo Christmas carol, pausing for a moment before the unmistakable piano beginning of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas began to play.
“Here?” Claudia rasped.
“Here. Now.” He pulled her closer, looping his hands low at her back, moving his hips so that she moved with him. Slowly, as though she might get burned, Claudia lifted her hands up, linking her fingers behind his neck, letting her fingers give into temptation and stray to his hair at the nape.
“How did you get into this?”
“Margaret spoke to me about the charity years ago,” she said, letting her head dip closer to his chest.
“I mean organizing fundraisers. You seem very good at it.”
“Thank you,” she acknowledged the compliment with a nod of her head.
“I had no idea you were so actively philanthropic.”
Claudia’s eyes darted to his. “Because you thought I was too busy being a disgraceful heiress to look beyond the headlines.”
“Perhaps,” he surprised her by conceding. “I look beyond them now. I see you are not what I thought.”
She drew in a sharp breath, completely unprepared for his admission. “You do?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
She swallowed, unable to express the gladness that was rolling through her.
“So you’ll let me come back to London? To my own home?”
He pressed a finger to the base of her chin, lifting her to face him. He scanned her for a moment, his eyes moving left to right, reading her features, and then he smiled. A dazzling smile that made her stomach lurch. “It isn’t what you want.”
“Like hell it’s not,” she muttered, but the rejoinder lacked ferocity. Was he right? Did she want to go back to Barnwell? To spend Christmas with him?
