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She put on her best face as she nudged Reuben under the table with her boot. To his credit he didn’t even flinch.
‘Belgravia,’ she said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. She was living there—for the next two weeks at least.
‘Oh...’ Millicent gave an almost disbelieving nod of her head. ‘How lovely.’
‘Well, it was lovely to see you again, Millicent,’ Reuben said quickly. He might as well have put a sign above their heads saying, Go away. Now.
Instead, he did something much more unexpected. He leaned across the table and grabbed hold of the lapel of Lara’s jacket. It pulled her forward just a few inches and that was enough for Reuben to lock his lips onto hers.
For a second she couldn’t breathe. He’d stood up and leaned all the way across the table. She could taste coffee. She could taste apple. But what she didn’t get—not for a second—was how good his lips felt against hers.
This was no tender kiss. No tiny peck. His other hand reached across and fastened at the back of her head, almost holding her in position. She could have objected. She should have objected. But something else was happening. Her lips were starting to move against his. For some unknown reason her body was starting to waken and fire on all cylinders. He didn’t need his hand at the back of her head. She couldn’t have pulled away even if she’d wanted to.
The kiss deepened, his lips opened against hers, his tongue nudging along the edges of her lips. It was only natural to let her own lips open to his. Her brain was in a swirl. What on earth was she doing?
Then, almost as soon as it had begun, it was over. Reuben pulled away, sitting back with a cheeky gleam in his eyes and leaving her stunned.
After a few seconds she almost remembered to breathe.
Millicent gave an almost discernible sniff then swept away in her stilettos as if she had been born to wear them—and she probably had been. Lara watched in slight awe. If that had been her she would be sprawled on her back by now.
She turned her steely gaze to Reuben and arched her brows. She couldn’t have formed words if she’d tried.
He actually shifted a little in his seat. Apart from when she’d bashed him over the head this was the first time he’d actually looked a little uncomfortable. Good.
He gave a little gulp. ‘I think I might have just crossed the line there.’
‘You’re so far over the line, you can’t even see it any more. It’s just a speck on the landscape. Is that how you roll? You just grab unsuspecting women for a kiss?’
He had the decency to look a little sheepish. He pointed towards the food. ‘I try to soften the blow first with coffee and cake.’
She stared hard at him. Her mind was still tumbling over and over that kiss. The kiss that had made her heart race erratically, her mind go numb and woken up parts of her she’d thought were dead. Kisses weren’t meant to do that. Or certainly not a kiss with no preamble, no flirting, and in a public place.
‘I know. I’m sorry.’ He leaned across the table towards her. ‘Desperate times call for desperate measures. Want to know what my friends and I actually call Millicent?’
Her curiosity spiked immediately. She just hoped it wasn’t some crude boy thing. She was trying not to focus on the logical part of her brain that had recognised he’d just said he’d had to be desperate to kiss her. ‘Okay,’ she said cautiously.
He glanced around, almost as if he expected Millicent to spring out again from behind the nearest pillar. ‘The barracuda.’
Lara choked. ‘What?’
He nodded. ‘Honestly. She’s a nightmare. So I’m sorry about the girlfriend thing and the kiss thing, but it was the quickest way to get rid of her without being rude.’
‘So ignoring her and kissing me wasn’t rude, then?’
Reuben’s eyes twinkled as he leaned back in his chair. ‘You can’t say it was all bad, was it?’
She ignored the cheeky comment. The guy was a player. And she was feeling a little wicked. It seemed like kissing a bad boy brought out the worst in her.
Lara fiddled with her last tiny cake—the strawberry and vanilla pastry. ‘I have a price, you know,’ she said carefully.
Reuben sat back. He looked a tiny bit worried. ‘What do you mean?’
She pointed behind him to the glass cabinet. ‘It will take at least another four deaths by chocolate since you killed my last one.’
He breathed a sigh of relief and grinned. ‘Absolutely.’ He stood up and walked back over to the counter, coming back moments later with a pile of tiny chocolate cakes all topped with cream. He pushed them across the table towards her. ‘Go on. Do your worst.’
