‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Was it some kind of test?’
Why not be honest? Wouldn’t a man like this spend his life being told what he wanted to hear, rather than the unadulterated truth?
‘I thought that you might have had your fill of fancy restaurants,’ she observed. ‘I mean, surely luxury must grow a little wearing if it’s relentless? I thought of bringing you to a place you would be least likely to eat in, had the choice of venue been yours. And so I brought you here,’ she finished, and lifted her shoulders in a gesture of conciliation.
Guileless! he thought, with unwilling admiration. ‘How very perceptive of you, Rose.’
The compliment warmed her far more than it had any right to. ‘That’s me,’ she said flippantly, picking up her menu and beginning to study it, only to glance up and find him studying her. ‘Shall we order?’
Khalim’s black eyes narrowed. He had never had a woman treat him like this! Did she not realise that she should always defer to him? He felt a renewed tension in his body. Strange how such insubordination could fuel his hunger for her even more.
They both ran their eyes over the menus uninterestedly and ordered salads and fish.
‘Wine?’ questioned Khalim. ‘Or would you prefer champagne?’
‘But you rarely drink alcohol,’ pointed out Rose. She crinkled a smile up at the waitress. ‘Just fizzy water, please.’
‘Or a fruit punch?’ suggested the waitress.
Rose opened her mouth to reply, but Khalim glittered a glance across the table at her, and she shut it obediently.
‘Fruit punch,’ he agreed, and he began to imagine what it would be like to subdue her in bed.
When they’d been left on their own once more, Rose felt distinctly uncomfortable under his lazy scrutiny.
‘Do you have to stare at me like that?’
‘Like what?’ he teased.
As if he would like to slowly remove her dress and run his hands and his lips and his tongue over every centimetre of her body. Rose shivered with excitement. ‘You don’t need me to spell it out for you. It’s insolent.’
‘To admire a ravishing woman? Rose, Rose, Rose,’ he cajoled softly. ‘What kind of men must you have known before me if they did not feast their eyes on such exquisite beauty?’
‘Polite ones,’ she gritted.
‘How very unfortunate for you.’ He saw the threat of a glare, and retreated. ‘Are we going to spend the whole lunch arguing?’
Arguing seemed a safer bet than feasting her eyes on him, though maybe not. Didn’t this kind of sparring add yet another frisson to the rapidly building tension between them? Rose felt a slight touch of desperation. Where were her ‘people-skills’ now, when she most needed them? ‘Of course not,’ she said, pinning a bright smile to her lips. ‘What would you like to talk about?’
She sounded as though she was conducting an interview with him, thought Khalim, with increasing disbelief. By now she should have been eating out of his hand. ‘Are you always so…’ he chose his word carefully ‘…arch with men?’
‘Arch?’ Rose took the question seriously. ‘You think I’m superior?’ Her eyes glinted with amusement. ‘Or is it just that you aren’t used to women who don’t just meekly lie on their backs like a puppy, where you’re concerned?’
‘Not the best analogy you could have chosen, sweet Rose,’ he murmured mockingly. ‘Was it?’
And to her horror, Rose started blushing.
He saw the blush. ‘My, you are very sensitive, aren’t you?’
Only with him! ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m a big girl. I live in the real world. I have a demanding job. If I can’t cope with a teasing little comment like that, then I must be losing the plot.’ And that was exactly what it felt like. Losing the plot. ‘Perhaps I was being a little arch. Maybe it’s a reaction. I just imagine that most women allow you to take the lead, just because of your position.’
‘Again, very perceptive,’ he mused. ‘It makes a refreshing change to have a woman who—’
‘Answers back?’
He had been about to say have a conversation with, but he allowed Rose her interpretation instead. His own, he realised, would surely have sounded like an omission. What kind of relationships had he had in the past, he wondered, if talking had never been high on the agenda? He nodded. ‘If you like.’
The waitress chose that moment to deposit their fruit punches in front of them, and they both took a swift, almost obligatory sip, before putting the glasses down on the table, as if they couldn’t wait to be rid of them.