He grinned, relaxing again, and gave it.
‘Take that, you bitch,’ she murmured to the unseen Susie as they drew apart.
Todd shook his head with a wry smile of appreciation for the act that she was putting on for him. ‘You,’ he murmured, ‘are a dangerous little witch, Annie Lacey.’
‘Because I love you and don’t mind showing it?’ she questioned innocently.
‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘Because you love me one way but enjoy presenting it in another. Now, stop laying it on with a trowel and go and talk to Lissa.’
He gave her a light tap on her rear to send her on her way and she fluttered her lashes at him as she went, his laughter following behind her.
The sound was like manna from heaven to Annie, who hadn’t heard him laugh like that in days. And she decided it was worth all the speculative looks that she was now receiving from those around them who had witnessed their little staged scene just to know that he had got his sense of humour back.
And that included the dark, brooding look that she was receiving from one man in particular, she noted on a sudden return of that hot breathlessness.
He was now standing on the other side of the room—though how he’d got there that quickly through this crush Annie didn’t know.
Her heart skipped a beat.
That look was very proprietorial.
Who did he think he was, looking at her like that?
Her chin came up, her famous, cool blue eyes challenging him outright.
He smiled, his chiselled mouth twisting wryly, and he gave a small shrug of one broad shoulder as if to say, I have no right but—what the hell?
Arrogant devil! With a toss of her beautiful hair she spun away and went to join her agent. But right through the next half-hour she was acutely aware of him, what he was doing and who he was talking to.
And even more acutely aware of every time his glance came her way.
It was weird, oddly threatening yet disturbingly intimate.
Todd joined her, and after a short while they moved off through the crush, eyes with varying expressions following their slow progress as they paused several times to speak to people they knew. Some envied Todd Hanson the delicious woman curved to his side, and some envied her the attractive man she was with. But few could deny that they complemented each other perfectly—she with her long, softly rounded, very feminine body, he with his tightly packed, muscled frame, both with their fair-skinned, blond-haired, aggravatingly spectacular looks.
They ended up in another room where a buffet had been laid out. It was the usual kind of spread expected at these functions—finger food, high on calories and low on appetite satisfaction. Todd loaded up a plate with Annie’s help, then they found a spot against a wall to share their spread, the plate full of food balanced between them on the flat of Todd’s palm.
It all looked very cosy, very intimate, with Todd feeding Annie her favourite devilled prawns while she held a chicken drumstick up for him to bite into. But the conversation between them was far from cosy.
‘Well, did you get to speak to her?’ Annie asked him bluntly.
‘She collared me.’ Todd shrugged offhandedly. ‘It wasn’t the other way around.’
‘After waiting until I was safely out of the way, of course. Bite—you’ve missed a tasty bit there…’ He bit, sharp white teeth slicing easily into succulent chicken. ‘So, what did she have to say?’
Another shrug. ‘Nothing worth repeating,’ he dismissed.
Which meant, Annie surmised, that Susie had spent the time she’d had alone with him slaying Annie’s character. He fed her a mushroom-filled canapé and she chewed on it thoughtfully for a while, then said firmly, ‘All right, tell me what you said to her, then.’
For a moment his eyes twinkled, wry amusement putting life into the pure blue irises. ‘Just like that,’ he murmured ruefully. ‘She could just have been enquiring about your health, you know.’
‘And we both know she was not,’ Annie drawled.
He huffed out a short laugh. ‘Do you have any false illusions about yourself at all, Annie?’ he asked curiously.
‘None that I know of.’ She pouted, then, like him, shrugged a slender shoulder. ‘They wouldn’t be much use to me if I did have them, would they?’ She was referring to the fact that people believed what they were conditioned to believe, and the Alvarez affair had done the conditioning on her character four years ago.
His blue eyes clouded at her candid honesty about herself, a grim kind of sympathy replacing the moment’s amusement. ‘I wish…’ he began, but she stopped him by placing sticky fingers over his lips.