‘No,’ she said, her eyes suddenly dark and sombre. ‘No wishes. No heart-searching or self-recriminations. They serve no useful purpose. And we know what we are to each other, no matter what everyone else wants to believe.’
‘I love you,’ he murmured, and kissed the tips of her fingers where they lay lightly against his mouth.
‘Now that,’ she decided, ‘has just earned you the right to use me whenever you want to. Business or pleasure, my love. I am at your service!’
A sudden movement on the very periphery of her vision had her bead twisting in that direction just in time to catch sight of her stranger turning away from them, and that odd feeling went chasing down her spine again.
‘Have you any idea who that man is?’ she asked Todd.
‘Which one?’ he prompted, glancing in the direction that she was looking, but already the stranger had disappeared through the door which led into the main function room.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She turned back to face Todd. ‘He’s gone.’ And she made a play of cleaning her sticky fingers on the damp towels provided, aware that Todd was frowning at her, wondering why she’d felt driven to remark on the person at all. He knew that it wasn’t like her; she usually showed a distinct lack of interest in the male sex in general. So her sudden interest in one man in particular intrigued him. But just when he was going to quiz her further a colleague of his joined them, and the moment was lost.
A fact for which Annie was thankful, because she didn’t think that she could give Todd a reason why the stranger was bothering her as much as he was. He was impertinent, certainly. The way he had been watching her all evening made him that. And arrogant too, because he didn’t even bother to look away when she caught him doing it!
But…
She had no answer to her ‘but’. And on a sudden burst of restlessness she excused herself from Todd and his companion with the excuse that she was going to the bathroom.
She began threading her way through the crowd towards the main foyer, a tall, graceful mover with the kind of figure that was now back in fashion—slender but curvy, with high, firm breasts, a narrow waist and sensually rounded hips.
Being so blonde meant that the white and gold combination of her outfit suited her, the silk clinging sensually as she walked, advertising the distinct lack of underwear beneath it. But although she was well aware of the admiring glances that she was receiving she acknowledged few of them, smiling only at people she knew but giving them no chance to waylay her.
The foyer was almost as busy as the function rooms, with people milling about or just standing in small groups chatting, and Annie paused by the doorway, her blue gaze searching for the direction of the ladies’ room. She spied it way across on the other side of the thickly carpeted foyer, but had barely taken a small step in that direction when she caught a flashing glimpse of flamered hair and sighed when she realised that Susie was going in the same direction.
In no mood for a cat-fight in the Ladies, she watched Susie disappear from view, then turned, feeling a bit at a loss as to what to do next and wondering if she dared just walk out of here without telling Todd.
She’d had enough now and wanted to go home. The tall dark stranger had unsettled her. And the fact that Todd had already had his confrontation with Susie, and that Susie was completely aware of whom Todd was here with, made her reasons for being here at all redundant.
And, to be honest, her bed beckoned. In her line of business early nights were a fact of life, and her body clock was telling her that she was usually tucked up and fast asleep by now.
Quite how it happened she didn’t know, but all of a sudden a noisy group came bursting out of the room she’d just left, forcing her to take a quick step back out of their way—which brought her hard up against the person standing behind her.
She turned quickly to apologise—only to stiffen on a fiercely indrawn breath as something icy cold and very wet landed against her chest…!
CHAPTER TWO
‘OH…!’ she gasped out shrilly.
‘Damn,’ a deep voice muttered. ‘My apologies.’
But Annie was too busy trying to catch her breath to listen to any apology as she watched what looked like the full contents of a tall, fluted glass of champagne drip down the honeyed slopes of her breasts. Ice-cold bubbles were fizzing against her heated skin, the chilled liquid soaking into the thin white silk of her bodice.
The fabric darkened, then turned transparent before her very eyes, plastering itself so tightly to her breasts that anyone within a vicinity of ten feet would now know that she was definitely not wearing a bra! And to top that humiliating exposure her nipples, always so annoyingly sensitive to quick changes in temperature, burst into tight, prominent buds, pushing against the wet fabric in sheer, affronted surprise!
‘Hell,’ the culprit muttered, making her wretchedly aware that he was seeing exactly what she was seeing—and from a better vantage point than anyone else, including herself. In a delayed act of modesty she snapped her arms across her breasts at the same time as her head came up to receive the second stunning shock in as many seconds.
It was the man who had been watching her all evening—the same man who had filled her with such strange, unsettling feelings—and she just stared at him blankly, her lovely mouth parted while her body quivered badly enough for anyone to see that she was suffering from a severe state of shock.
Then flash bulbs began to pop, and the next thing she knew a male chest of a rock-like substance was blocking her off from view as a strong arm whipped around her waist to pull her hard up against his muscle-packed frame.
‘Pretend you know me!’ he muttered urgently. And before she could begin to think what he meant his mouth took fierce possession of her own.
Annie froze, this shock invasion, coming on top of all the other shocks she had just received, holding her so stiff and still that she simply let him get away with it!
But the shock did not stop her from being intensely aware of the way his mouth seemed to burn against her own, or the way he was holding her so tightly that her wet breasts were being crushed against the silky fabric of his dinner jacket. And she could feel his breath warm against her cheek
, smell the slightly spicy scent of him that teased her stammering senses.