‘I did not say that.’ He sighed impatiently.
Oh, yes, he damn did! Inside she was quivering. Inside she was feeling as if she’d stepped into an ice cold alien place.
‘I’ll take the other option,’ she retaliated and went to push past him. The hand snaking out of his pocket grabbed her by the arm as the other hand arrived, holding a mobile telephone.
‘Let go of me.’
He ignored her and there was nothing relaxed about him now, Rachel saw as he hit quick-dial, then put the phone to his ear.
‘Are we still under siege from the press?’ he demanded.
He had to be talking to the security man in the foyer, Rachel realised. A new kind of tension sizzled all around them while he listened to the answer and she waited to find out where he was going with this.
The hard line of his mouth gave a twist as he cut the connection. Sliding the phone back into his pocket, he speared her with a hard look.
‘The paparazzi is still out there,’ he stated grimly. ‘I do not expect them to leave us alone any time in the near future—understand?’
Rachel just stared at him, all eyes and weighty heart and pummelled feelings.
‘Wherever you or I go from now on, I can almost guarantee that they mean to follow.’ He made his point brutally clear. ‘So think about it,cara ,’ he urged grimly. ‘Do you want to take a walk out to the local all-night pharmacy and turn this thing into a tabloid sensation as the pack follow to witness you purchasing your morning-after medication—?’
Ice froze the silence between them as diamond eyes locked challengingly with frosted blue. Rachel thought about screaming. She felt like screaming! He really, truly and honestly believed that she was ruthless enough to calmly take something to rectify the wrong they had done, his wonderfulfatalist attitude giving him the right to believe that his morals were superior to her own.
And why not? she asked herself starkly. What did he really know about her as a living, breathing person? Hadn’t she flipped out the clever counter attack to his marriage deal? Wasn’t she the cool liar and cheat around here, who could hit on a man and let him take her to his bed for no other reason than she’d fancied him?
Why not tag her as a woman who was also capable of seeing off a baby before she was even sure that there was one?
Hurt trammelled through her body, though, melting the ice and turning it into tears because she could not deny him the right to see her as a cold, ruthless schemer—she’d painted her own portrait for him to look at, after all.
He saw the tears and frowned. ‘Rachel—’ he murmured huskily.
She pushed his hand off her arm and walked away, only to pull to a hovering halt in the middle of the bedroom.
Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide, she realised as her tears grew and grew. In the end she did the only thing she could see open to her right now and climbed back into the bed and disappeared beneath the duvet again.
Heart thumping, eyes burning, she pressed a clenched fist against her mouth to stop the choking sobs she could feel working their way up from her throat.
She heard him move. The lights went off. A door closed quietly. He had the grace to leave her alone with her misery and at last she let the first sob escape—only to jerk and twist her head on the pillow just in time to see him lift up the duvet and the warm dark shape of his now fully
naked body slide into the bed.
Her quivering gasp was lost in the arm he used to draw her against him. Eyes like diamonds wrapped in rich black velvet searched her face, then a grimace touched his mouth.
‘You’re crying,’ he said huskily.
‘No, I’m not.’ Squeezing a hand up between them, she went to brush a stray tear from the corner of her eye.
Or she would have done if one of his fingers had not got there before hers took the tear away; she could not hold back another small sniff.
‘I would not have done it,’ she mumbled.
‘Si, I know that.’ He sighed. ‘We were fighting. You used your weapon well. I retaliated by cutting you to pieces. I apologise for doing it.’
‘You’re so ruthless it’s scary.’
‘Si.’ On another sigh he sent one of his legs looping over her legs to draw her in a bit closer to him, then he caught her hand and pressed it to his chest.
She felt his warmth and his muscled firmness and the prickle of hair against her palm. It was all very intimate and very dangerous—especially so when she didn’t try to pull away. The shirt formed a sort of barrier to stop the more frightening skin to skin contact, but—