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Gwen felt dizzy as the image from the past was overlaid by one of the man standing on the stage, his words just sounds that had a physical effect on her, sending successive shivers over the surface of her suddenly too warm skin.
She felt as though everyonemustsee what was happening, that they were all staring at her, but crazily they were completely oblivious. Now they were laughing, an appreciative ripple of sound that wafted like a breeze through the vaulted room—Rio was being amusing, entertaining. She knew full well, though, that he could get alotmore entertaining than this, especially when there was skin-to-skin contact involved.
Jaw clenched, lips compressed over the cry trying to escape her lips, she closed her eyes and thought,Do not go there, Gwen...But too late—she was already remembering that first shock of feeling skin-to-skin contact after he had unfastened her bra for the first time and, holding her eyes, had pulled her hard against his chest...
The myriad impressions made her dizzy: the warmth of his skin, the clean salty tang she’d breathed in, the tingling of intense pleasure as her hardened nipples pressed into the barrier of his naked, muscled chest.
His eyes didn’t leave hers for one moment, the hot desire burning in them making her limbs go boneless, silencing the voice telling her she needed to explain to him that she didn’t have a clue what she was doing. It had seemed a matter of simple politeness only a few minutes ago, but now she found herself thinking in a hazy way what did it actually matter...?
Why shouldn’t her embarrassing inexperience remain on a need-to-know basis? After all, he’d not twigged yet so why should it matter? She could suddenly see all the advantages of sleeping with a stranger: you didn’t owe them anything, including explanations... Ironic, really, when this was precisely whathepointed out to her a few days later in a frigid voice filled with icy contempt she would never, ever forget...even though she had tried.
‘I owe you nothing, certainly not explanations. We had sex; we are not in a relationship.’
The brutal words carried the impact of a sledgehammer, each individual scornful syllable adding fresh layers of hurt as she clutched his shirt around her. Unable to match his marvellous unselfconscious attitude to nudity, she had pulled it on to walk to the bathroom, and it retained the scent of his skin but it didn’t give her a warm feeling of intimacy; she felt mortified and stupid and very,verycold.
She lifted her chin, struggling to salvage a tiny shred of pride. ‘I... I didn’t think we were.’ It wasn’t totally a lie; she knew that a few nights of passion did not add up to a relationship. It nearly hadn’t even made it this far after he’d found out he was her first lover and hadn’t exactly been thrilled about it, and he’d been quite clear then that this was not the start of anything; it was just casual fun he was offering.
Pride and the determination not to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she had just begun to believe that they’d developed a deeper connection made her stand her ground rather than run away. She felt stupid even imagining for a moment that when he’d told her she was the best sex he’d ever had, it meant he thought she was different and what they had was worth more than a quick fling. It was easy to seenowthat it had all been wishful thinking on her part.
Maybe he’d known anyway because in case she’d missed the point he drove it home with brutal honesty.
‘We are not exclusive, you and I. You do not have the right to interrogate me.’
The chill in his eyes, the hauteur in his body language, the expressive curl of his lip did not require the addition of the snap of his fingers to tell her she was being dismissed, not just from his bed or this room, but from his life.
‘Who I sleep with...and, let me tell you, it is neverknowinglyanyone who would rifle through my private correspondence...is none of your concern.’
She tried to defend herself, tell him that wasn’t what she’d been doing, she really did, but she failed. Basically, because the bottom line was that it was true shehadread his letter, but not intentionally. She’d picked up the incriminating piece of paper off the floor along with the pile of other correspondence that had landed on the carpet when she had caught it with her elbow. She was unable to replicate the precision of the neat stack but, tongue caught between her teeth, she had been making an effort to do so when the letterhead had caught her eye. She had scanned a sentence before she had realised what she was doing and...she really shouldhave stopped; that was why she knew the guilt had been shining in her eyes when he’d caught her in the act.
She had considered pretending she hadn’t read it, but it would have looked foolish.
As it turned out that wasn’t even an option as the awkward words just blurted out of her mouth in the face of his accusatory glare.
‘I only said, “So you have a child...” I didn’t know, that’s all. Are you and the mother together?’ She felt the blood drain from her face. ‘You’re not...not married, are you?’
He arched a brow. ‘Would it have mattered to you if I were?’
She wanted to slap him then, and she had never struck anyone in her life, she couldn’t even crush a spider, but it took all her control to keep her clenched hand at her side, refusing to rise to the insulting provocation.
‘What is his name?’ There was no reason he shouldn’t have a child, several children, in fact, and no reason either that he should have mentioned it to her...because he had made it quite clear that what they were enjoying had a shelf life. She was the one who had decided something had changed—and now it had.
He was the sort of man whose response to the news that he was a father was to demand a DNA test; he was the sort of man who, when asked his son’s name by her, replied that he couldn’t remember! The irony was that she’d learnt more in the last twenty seconds about this man than she had in three whole days...or, rather, nights.
He arched a dark brow and regarded her with frozen distaste. She had caught glimpses of the hauteur before but had never been on the blighting, chilly receiving end of it.
‘What business is it of yours if I have a child?’ His voice carried no expression but it didn’t need to as his eyes said it all.
‘None at all,’ she agreed as the paper in her fingers that outlined in black and white a DNA match fluttered to the floor. ‘So it confirms you’re a father, so what? It takes more than a piece of paper to become one of those, doesn’t it? Paternity has very little to do with being a father—that’s all about a lifetime commitment, not just donating your genes—so I really hope this kid has someone else in his life who doesn’t need proof that they’re related to him, and someone who actually remembers his name.’
With a sneer of contempt that was aimed as much at herself as at him, she gathered her dignity around her as she removed his shirt and, with a grimace of distaste, she dropped it on the floor before she walked away with her head held high.
CHAPTER TWO
RIOWAITEDFORa polite ripple of laughter to die down before he moved on. His mother, who he was standing in for, could do this sort of thing in her sleep and she’d been genuinely upset that she couldn’t attend today, which proved, he supposed, that there were some people who enjoyed their schooldays and wanted to be reminded of them. His glance slid over the young shiny faces turned to him.
Were there any lonely kids out there who cried themselves to sleep when the lights went out? Not that he’d been traumatised by being sent off at a ridiculously young age to an English boarding school, just stifled, perhaps.
The fact that he and his twin brother, Roman, were each other’s support group meant he’d never suffered the sort of isolation that had afflicted some of the other children, and there had been enough foreign students at his school to make his own accent nothing to set him apart. Despite the fact he had survived the experience relatively unscathed, sending his children to boarding school was a tradition that he intended to break, not because he was rebelling against tradition, but because he didn’t intend to have children at all.
