He was in the reception room, and he was on his mobile. She walked in, crossed to the cocktail cabinet which had been opened to show a lavish display, and poured herself a vermouth. A large one.
Then she turned, glass in hand.
Her ex-husband had stopped talking.
Slowly, very slowly, he slid the phone back into his jacket pocket. Then he just stood and look
ed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEO could feel his body react. It would have been impossible for it not to have done. Emotions surged through him along with his body’s animalistic response.
One emotion was obvious, but the other—
The other was completely out of place. He thrust it aside.
Then, like the connoisseur of fine women he was, he allowed his overriding sensation free rein—along with his eyes.
She was wearing eau-de-nil silk, clinging to her body more closely than her own pale skin, the material cupping her breasts and revealing their deep, exposed cleavage. Her fair hair was swept loose around one shoulder, falling seductively over one side of her face. Her eyes were huge in her face, lashes sooted with mascara, deepened by shadow, and her mouth was a lush curve of shimmering colour.
She stood, weight on one leg, one hand loose, the other raising a glass to her mouth. She took a slow, deliberate sip, then lowered the glass again. It was a calculated, provocative gesture.
So, he thought, that was how she was going to play this, was it? The mix of emotions clashed in him again, and, as before, he thrust aside the irrelevant one.
He knew what the woman in front of him was. He’d known it for a long time now, and it was not knowledge that drew from him anything other than the desire to do exactly what he was going to start tonight. The dish he was going to consume cold, and so very, very enjoyably.
He started to walk towards her.
Vicky stood, completely frozen, glass in her hand, like a rabbit that was being approached by a lean, intent predator. But beneath the frozen stillness of her pose something was running. Running in her veins, her nerves, her skin, like a fire through tinder-dry grass.
And it was tinder-dry all right.
Two years—two years—since that fire had last run in her veins.
Memory crashed through her, fusing present with past in a searing moment.
Theo, walking towards her, with one intention, one intention only, in his eyes, eyes that held hers, not letting her go, not letting her move.
Not letting her escape…
She’d wanted to—desperately—but she hadn’t been able to. Hadn’t been able to run, hadn’t been able to move. Had only stood there while he walked towards her, reached for her…
He was reaching for her now, his hand fingering down the long fall of her hair beside her face. Hair was supposed to be unfeeling, and yet, if so, how was it that a million nerve-endings had started to fire within her?
For a long, endless moment he said nothing, just held her eyes, his eyelids lowering infinitesimally as he contemplated her. She stood immobile, quivering with awareness of him. Of his closeness.
Of his intent.
Then, in a gesture that was almost leisurely, he let his hand fall.
‘Dinner first, I think,’ he murmured.
He strolled through into the dining room that opened off the drawing room. Vicky followed behind. Her heart had started to thump. She tried to make it stop, but it wouldn’t. So she took another mouthful of her vermouth. Its spiced headiness made her feel better.
Stronger.
And she needed to be strong. She needed to be absolutely strong.