‘—but I only found out about it myself about half an hour ago,’ she finished stoutly, bracing herself as he prowled back to where she stood. She dug her toes into the carpet, determined not to give ground.
‘So you immediately rushed over to strip and join in the fun?’ he savaged with brutal sarcasm. ‘I had no idea that history teachers were so progressive…’
His raking look of contempt made her clear, honey-gold skin bloom with unwelcome fire. Her grey eyes darkened with reproach, which only seemed to feed his smouldering fury.
‘Is this one of the methods of “inspiring young minds” that you talked of bringing to the college?’ Up close she could see the small scar on the left corner of his narrow upper lip, the one that gave him such an impressive sneer. ‘How long have you been offering private lessons in practical sex education as a part of your curriculum?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she cried, struggling to remain reasonable in the face of his flagrant provocation. There was no point in both of them losing their tempers. She had noticed it was a popular tactic of his—playing devil’s advocate, needling people until they became too annoyed to think straight, let alone consider the wisdom of their words. Maintaining control was the key to surviving a verbal encounter with Scott Tyler.
‘This is just a set of unfortunate circumstances—’ she stated clearly, tilting her head up in the unconsciously haughty gesture that she had inherited from her flamboyant mother.
‘That’s what they all say.’ His cynical laugh was gritty with scorn. ‘The “unfortunate circumstances” usually involve getting caught red-handed at the scene of the crime. I’m a criminal lawyer, remember—I’ve heard every excuse in the book.’
‘And who better than a lawyer to know that appearances can be deceptive?’ she snapped back.
‘In your case I’d agree…very deceptive. Who’d have thought that the quiet and refined Miss Adams, with her modest hemlines and sensible shoes, would have a penchant for see-through underwear and seducing her students…’
‘I was not seducing anyone!’ spluttered Anya, unable to refute the underwear allegation. For the most part her clothes were classically simple and tasteful, as required of a role-model for impressionable teenagers, but since her slender figure required only the bare minimum of support she didn’t have to be practical when it came to buying lingerie. She was free to indulge her secret passion for gossamer-thin lace and frivolous frippery. As long as she was well covered up she considered it no one’s business but her own what she chose to wear under her clothes.
Only right now she was feeling very much undercovered and a trifle cool, despite the heat in her cheeks. Glancing down, she saw that the oversized white shirt she was trying to anchor one-handed across her scantily clad body was made of slippery, ultra-fine silk through which it was possible to see the sheer lace of her low-cut emerald bra and matching panties.
‘Really…so you just like to prance around half-naked at parties for your own entertainment? You obviously find it sexually arousing to be the focus of male attention,’ he taunted, his sardonic stare making her supremely conscious of the way her nipples had tingled to hardness against the twin layers of flimsy fabric. ‘That’s tantamount to seduction in my book.’
‘Then your book would be wrong!’ She might have known that he would draw attention to something any real gentleman would have politely ignored. How dared he imply that she found him attractive? ‘There’s a cool breeze coming through the window behind me, in case you haven’t noticed!’ she pointed out obliquely.
His blue eyes glinted with malice and she hurried on before he could make another devastating comment.
‘For goodness’ sake, you can’t think I took my clothes off because I wanted to—’
His face hardened, his whole body contracting with a dangerous tension. ‘Are you claiming that Sean tried to rape you?’ he ground out.
‘No, of course I’m not!’ she cried, frankly appalled at the direction of his thoughts. One side of the shirt slipped from her distracted fingers and she frantically brought up her other hand to try and overwrap the fabric into more concealing folds.
His hostile preparedness had eased at her shocked exclamation but now his hand shot out and enveloped her fragile wrist in a steely grip.
‘Watch what you’re doing, woman! For God’s sake, give that to me before you singe a hole in one of my best shirts.’ He extracted the stubby remains of the mangled joint and let her go, crushing out the still-burning tip with his bare fingers.
‘Your shirt?’ She rubbed her buzzing wrist, goose-pimples breaking out over every centimetre of bare skin being caressed by the borrowed silk. ‘I—it was in the bathroom—I assumed it was Sean’s…’ she stammered.
A vein pulsed in his temple and a possessive growl sounded at the back of his throat. ‘What—it’s not enough that you play lord of the manor to your friends when I’m away, you have to dress the part, too?’ He sent his nephew, who was just getting unsteadily to his feet, a wrathful look that had him plopping heavily back down on his backside. ‘When I said I was happy to look after you and Sam for a few weeks, I didn’t envisage it meant opening up my wardrobe to you, as well!’
He screwed up the final shreds of cannabis cigarette in his contemptuous fist and scattered the dusty debris out of the open window.
‘Is there any more where that came from?’ he demanded of Anya.
‘I have no idea,’ she said succinctly, still grappling with the knowledge that she was wearing his shirt. It made her feel strangely shivery, uncomfortably vulnerable to him in a way that it was difficult to define. ‘It wasn’t mine. I’ve never smoked marijuana in my life.’
A tug of his scar hitched his lip into a disbelieving curl. ‘You’re telling me you never ran across any illicit weed when you were a pupil at that exclusive upper-crust school of yours? Places like Eastbrook are a hotbed of experimentation—WASPy little rich girls doing the rebellion thing, or getting high as a way of punishing mummy and daddy for being too busy with their own lives to pay them enough attention; bored young things always on the lookout for kicks, with easy access to money and no one to really care how they spend it—’
‘There’s that kind of element in every school, no matter what social strata it serves,’ Anya said, stung by the sneering accuracy of his thumbnail sketch. ‘And I never said I hadn’t come across it, only that I hadn’t used it.’
‘Come to think of it, cannabis is probably a little low rent for the privileged elite,’ he jeered. ‘Maybe the junior jet-set prefer designer drugs to go with their designer clothes.’
Now he was going too far! Anya’s quiet temper bubbled to the surface. His entire attitude was in need of serious readjustment!
‘You have a real chip on your shoulder, don’t you?’ she burst out. ‘Let me guess: your parents couldn’t afford to send you to a private school, so you resent anyone who was given the educational and social advantages that you weren’t. Well, most young kids don’t have any more choice about where they go to school than you did—I certainly didn’t!
‘And, contrary to your obvious prejudice, Mr Tyler, private school pupils aren’t all elitist snobs who take their privileges for granted and look down their noses at the rest of the world. A lot of them are the children of ordinary, e