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He delivered the addition as if it had never occurred to him that anyone would not follow his edicts. She mimed a mocking salute at the retreating back of the man who seemed determined to take over her life.
And she was letting him!
‘Oh, God!’ she sighed out before sliding back into the showroom-smooth white sofa. Like everything, it looked as though it had never been touched, let alone used.
She swung her legs down to the floor, careful not to jar her foot, and guiltily dusted the pristine fabric before, from her semi-recumbent position, gazing around the very white room, well, multiple shades of white. The effect was actually quite soothing.
Except she was past soothing.
She sat there, her head spinning as the day’s events came crowding in, playing like a film on a loop—a horror film.
By the time Soren reappeared she felt as though her head was going to explode with the whirling chaos of disconnected thoughts.
But she clung to the only positive: her grandfather was innocent of what they accused him of. Was she being naive thinking that in the end the truth would always come out?
In the meantime, she had to deal with being one of the central figures in the scandal of the moment, and no one seemed to believe she knew nothing.
As much as she appreciated this offer of a night’s respite, she could not see the point of delaying the inevitable and, although she hated the idea of the press intrusion, someone needed to be out there standing up for Grandpa Henry.
She watched as Soren placed a first-aid box on a side table and pulled it across to the sofa.
‘It’s very kind of you to offer me a place to stay tonight, but I can’t hide for ever.’
He didn’t respond to her despondent addition, just looked at her through the half-lowered veil of his dark lashes for a moment longer before grabbing a footstool.
‘What if you could?’ he said, straddling the stool. ‘Hide. Not for ever, but for... Come on...’
In response to his imperative gesture, she lifted her foot and extended it warily towards him. ‘Could hide?’ she queried, closing her mouth over a shocked sigh as his cool fingers grasped her ankle and yanked it onto his knee.
‘Until things die down.’ His eyes rose from his contemplation of her foot.
She lifted her chin. ‘I’m not going to run away. I haven’t done anything wrong. Grandpa has not done anything wrong. I want to tell people that.’
Dio, he thought, imagining her standing there facing a camera while she defended the old bastard. They would crucify her with the realities.
She shifted a little against the white upholstery as his inscrutable bright eyes brushed her face for a moment longer before he bent over the small foot that lay on his knee.
‘Your grandfather is safe—his condition not only makes him effectively immune from prosecution, but immune to public opinion.’
‘This is about his reputation, not— Ouch!’ she yelled.
‘Hold still.’ He appeared unsympathetic to her pain, but his touch as he continued to dab the raw area with antiseptic was gentle, and as clinical as his manner. ‘I’ll put a dry dressing on.’ She gave another gasp, this time soft, and when he looked up her teeth were digging into her full lower lip, and she was pale, the dark stain along her cheekbones emphasising that pallor. ‘You all right?’
Closing her eyes was Anna’s only defence against his penetrative stare and the horrifying possibility he had guessed that her gasp was not connected with her blistered foot but the casual brush of his finger along the sensitive skin of her instep.
‘Fine, just get on with it...’ She softened her abrupt response with a guilty, ‘Thank you.’
The belated polite addition drew his eyes back to her face but Anna, who had kept her eyes scrunched closed, did not see.
‘It’s going to be painful for a while,’ Soren warned, thinking that there was a lot of it about, as he continued to focus his effort on ignoring the pain he was feeling, courtesy of the heavy, hot weight of arousal, the killing pressure in his groin.
‘It’s fine.’ She shook her head and opened her eyes, carefully avoiding his. ‘I’m finally getting an opportunity to test out all those relaxation apps.’ She needed a lot more than a lavender candle, she reflected, wondering when all the self-control had gone from her life.
Relax—that was one thing that Soren couldn’t allow himself to do at that moment. He could not afford even temporary hormonal amnesia.
He liked sex.
He liked women.
