Those same hands spun her round and lowered her to the floor. Looking up, she almost forgot to breathe. Farlan was standing next to her, his green eyes narrowed in disbelief.
‘I was just trying to put a book back.’
‘In those?’
Farlan looked down at her shoes and then immediately wished he hadn’t as he felt a stealthy stirring of lust at the sight of her long, slender legs in what were quite conceivably stockings.
Watching her eyes widen at the harshness of his voice, he felt like a jerk. But Nia wasn’t the only one who had been caught off balance.
Imagining what would have happened if he hadn’t been there to catch her made him feel sick.
But it was his body’s swift, treacherous reaction to how good it felt to have her pressed against him that had shaken him more.
In the car, everything had seemed so clear. Deep down he’d known he was avoiding her, and that was why he had turned around and driven back to Lamington. To prove to himself that what had happened in the cottage had been either a fluke or just a final twitch of muscle memory—that there would be no next time.
And he’d been doing just fine.
Until Nia had sashayed into the library with her hair falling in front of her face, looking like a cross between Jessica Rabbit and a Hitchcock heroine in a pencil skirt and shiny high heels.
Who the hell wore heels like that when they were popping over for tea?
Realising he’d lost his train of thought while he’d been staring at her legs, he gritted his teeth. ‘Why are you even up a ladder anyway? Don’t you have staff to put your books back for you?’
Her hair had fallen back from her face and, gazing down at her, he felt his heartbeat accelerate. She looked stunned, and furious, and for a moment he thought she might slap him or stalk off, but instead she just shook her head.
‘No, I don’t. Now, do you mind?’
He f
elt a tic of anger and something else pulse through his chest as she pushed his hands away from her body and edged backwards, as if he’d been trying to mug her rather than save her from breaking her neck.
Her neck…
His eyes were a beat behind the words, but as they dropped to the smooth, creamy skin of her throat he felt the hum in his head slither down his veins.
Had those pearls she was wearing been a gift? And, if so, who had given them to her?
The most likely answer to the question sharpened his anger to a point. ‘Yeah, I do mind, actually,’ he said curtly. ‘I mean, do you have any idea what would have happened if I hadn’t been here?’
A flush of colour spread over her cheeks. ‘Nothing would have happened.’
‘So no need to thank me, then?’ he said sarcastically.
She frowned. ‘Thank you? For what? Haranguing me?’
Containing his temper with an effort, he shook his head. ‘If I hadn’t come along when I did it would have been like a game of Cluedo in here. Lady Antonia, in the library, with a ladder.’
‘Why are you making this such a big deal? My foot slipped—that’s all.’
He stared at her in frustration, maddened by both her lack of gratitude and the smooth Englishness of her voice.
‘I was fine. In fact, if you hadn’t scared me I probably wouldn’t have lost my balance.’
So what was she saying? That this was his fault?
He stared at her in silence, her words and her light floral scent tangling with the emotions in his chest.
Reaching down, she picked up the book she’d dropped.