She’d read about freak shows and she supposed this was the modern version—she being the freak!
Damping down her mounting panic, she tried again. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine, but if I have a problem I’ll yell.’
She utilised a smile aimed at robbing her refusal of any offence and firmly closed her bedroom door on their collective shocked faces. It took her a moment to find the music selection she was looking for and turn up the volume. It wasn’t as if there were any neighbours to worry about.
One of these days she was going to take up yoga, but in the meantime her tried-and-tested relaxation method of choice was what it always had been—a five-minute session of wild, unrestrained, let-your-hair-down dancing to a rock anthem while quite frequently singing along.
When the track came to an end, she switched the music off and fell back headlong onto the canopied bed. Staring at the ceiling, she waited for her heart rate to slow to a gentle trot.
To say she was relaxed would have been an exaggeration, but she was willing to accept exhaustion as a substitute—she was just too tired to run away. The thought brought an image of her running away from Zach on the beach. She had stopped once and he’d still been standing there staring after her. The image in her head made her stomach flip.
‘Oh, God, this is crazy!’ she groaned as she padded to the bathroom. Sadly, she hadn’t left herself enough time for a long and lazy bath. The deep double-ended copper tub that took centre stage in the bathroom...now that was one luxury item she might get used to quite quickly.
Sniffing some of the lovely oils lined up, she stripped and walked into the shower, which was big enough to house a football team, though the image that slid into her head did not involve a team, just one man...who was constantly on her mind!
But not your bed, Kat,mocked the voice in her head.
It was about time she remembered she was not the sort of woman who undressed men, even in her imagination, let alone... She scrunched her face and threw a mental bucket of cold water over the febrile images.
Wrapped in a towel, duly anointed with some delicious moisturising lotion, her hair clear of salt, the last traces of sand washed from the crevices it had crawled into, she looked at the dress she had finally selected in the early hours from the racks in the massive walk-in closet.
It was midnight blue, so dark it looked black in certain lights—basically it was a slim ankle-length slip, not that there was anything basic about the cut of the heavy silk, high at the neck and low enough at the back to expose her delicately sculptured shoulder blades.
After blast-drying her long thick hair, she tried a couple of styles, almost wishing she had not rejected the services of a hairstylist, and then as she pulled her thick glossy skeins into a knot on the nape of her neck things clicked. She smoothed it properly and gathered it again, winding the sections into a smooth loose knot at the nape of her neck before sticking in several hairpins to secure it, then finally pulling out a few face-framing strands for a softening effect.
Her normal make-up was a smudge of shadow, a touch of gloss on her lips. So the fifteen minutes she did spend felt like a long time, but the end result, if not perfect, satisfied her. The dusting of blush on her cheeks lifted her pallor and the highlighter along her cheekbones worked. She carefully highlighted the almond shape of her eyes with liner before adding a sweep of mascara over her already dark and lustrous eyelashes.
She struggled to adjust the narrow straps of the dress so that they left the delicate architecture of her collarbones exposed, before slipping into the heels. She was viewing the overall effect with a critical eye when there was a knock on the door, a polite reminder from Selene.
She took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t pretend this wasn’t really going to happen any longer, but she could pretend her stomach wasn’t churning in apprehension.
Smile in place, projecting a confidence she was far from feeling, she pulled the door open. Her smile wilted and died like a rose exposed to an icy chill. A myriad sensations and emotions that were impossible to detangle hit her simultaneously as she saw the tall figure, no longer in running shorts and vest, but in the dress suit, dark hair still visibly damp as though he had just stepped from a shower. An image that did not help her composure, or her heart, which literally stalled. For several moments she felt as if it would never start again.
‘You scared the life out of me!’ Breathless, and sounding it, she lifted a hand to her throat, where she could feel a pulse that was trying to fight its way through her skin.
Zach cleared his own throat. It had been less a jolt and more an earth tremor to see her standing there and for several heartbeats he’d stood, literally transfixed.
‘I really didn’t think you scared that easily.’
She was the most fearless woman he had ever met and—as he looked at her standing there now, there was no use pretending otherwise—the most beautiful.
Against the dark fabric her skin gleamed pale gold. Her body, under the figure-enhancing cut of the midnight fabric, was slender and sensuous. The way she wore her hair displayed the length of her slender neck and her delicate collarbones. She looked exclusive and sexy—a hard look to pull off.
He leaned a hand on the doorjamb above her head. ‘If you are dressing to impress you have succeeded. You look very lovely.’
Her breath caught at the compliment.
‘I wanted to blend in,’ she said in a small husky voice, worrying that he might assume she had made the effort to impress him. Worried even more because she couldn’t swear she hadn’t!
It was hard to smile with the ache in his groin, but he did anyway. ‘Ah, well, you failed.’ Straightening up, he gestured to her to walk beside him and after a short pause she did, her perfume making his nostrils flare.
‘How was your run?’
He flashed her a frowning look. ‘Hot.’
‘When is Alekis’s surgery scheduled for?’
‘First thing Thursday if the rest of the tests are clear.’