Instead he gripped her chin with his long brown fingers and turned her face so that the light fell on her cheek. ‘He took a swing at you with the bottle,’ he said harshly. ‘Where did he hit you?’
Phoebe’s skin sizzled beneath the pressure of his fingers. ‘Have you lost your mind?’ she said, baffled as much by the tingles shooting through her as the direction of the conversation. ‘Mark didn’t hit me.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she said. ‘I think I might have noticed if I’d been thwacked by a bottle of champagne. Particularly vintage.’
His mouth tightened. ‘Not funny.’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ she said sharply. There was absolutely nothing funny about the damage he could have done tonight, possibly the most important night of her and Jo’s lives. ‘Can I have my chin back?’
He let her chin go as if it were on fire and she swung her head round to glare up at him. For a moment they simply stared at each other and Phoebe became aware that, still locked in his vice-like embrace as she was, every inch of her body pressed up against every hard-muscled inch of his.
Heat pooled in the pit of her stomach and her heart thumped. Her mouth dried and she swallowed. She had to get a grip. And not of his biceps. ‘Right. So you barged in because you thought my boyfriend had hit me?’ A rogue bubble of delight bounced round inside her before she reminded herself that not only did chivalry not exist in her world, she neither needed nor looked for it.
His brows snapped together. ‘Where I come from men don’t hit women.’
Something warm started to unfurl deep inside her. ‘Where I come from no one hits anyone.’ The Jacksons employed far more subtle tactics.
‘He called you darling. You cried out and jerked back.’
Oh. She felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘Well, yes, but only because I didn’t want to get splashed,’ she said. ‘And Mark calls everyone darling.’
His hands sprang off her as if she were a hot coal and he stepped back. ‘You didn’t want to get splashed,’ he echoed softly, his voice suddenly so cold and distant that it sent a chill hurtling down her spine and she automatically rubbed her upper arms.
In the thundering silence that hung between them, a seed of shame took root in her head and the blush on her cheeks deepened. His face was dark, tight and as hard as stone.
The combination of sheer disbelief and icy disdain that replaced the concern in his eyes made her wish she’d kept her mouth shut. If she’d kept her mouth shut she’d still be in his arms, enveloped in his heat and strength, feeling all warm and deliciously quivery instead of feeling as shallow as the pond and utterly rotten.
Then she rallied. Hang on a moment. Why was she being made to feel the guilty party in this little melodrama? She hadn’t exactly begged him for help. And it was hardly her fault if he’d mistaken her dodging an arc of champagne for something more serious. While a spattering of water turned her sleek mane of hair into a frizzy mess, a carelessly flung spray of champagne would turn it into a frizzy sticky mess and she had enough to worry about right at this minute.
Phoebe nipped that seed of shame in the bud. ‘This,’ she said coolly, pointing at her hair, ‘takes hours to straighten and my dress is dry-clean only.’
For a split second Alex looked dumbstruck and then his expression shuttered and his eyes went blank. She cast a glance over his hair, thick, dark and unfairly shiny. Of course he would never understand the struggle she had with her hair, nor the burning need to keep it under control. But what was his problem?
‘Look, I didn’t ask you to interfere,’ she pointed out. ‘And I certainly didn’t need your help.’
‘So I’m beginning to gather.’
‘I had the situation totally under control.’
‘You were standing barefoot with a twig in your hair and your dress hitched up around your hips—’
‘Thighs,’ she snapped. ‘But wherever my dress was and whatever my hairstyle, you had no business interfering.’
Alex shoved his hands through his hair. ‘What did you expect me to do? Stand back and watch you get hurt? Did you really think that he was going to come out willingly?’
Phoebe blinked. ‘Well, yes.’ With a little persuasion and guidance.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, Mark is built like a tank and was totally out of control. Your lack of judgement astonishes me.’
Phoebe flinched. Ouch, that hurt. ‘I wasn’t in any danger,’ she said. ‘Mark was incapable of hitting anything. Anyway, what did you do with him?’
‘I threw him out.’
Of course. ‘Did anyone see you?’
He frowned. ‘Does it matter?’