The Sister Swap. Susan Napier
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Название: The Sister Swap
Автор: Susan Napier
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
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‘Suit yourself!’ Anne snapped, flicking the wet braid over her back.
‘I usually do.’
‘Why am I not surprised?’ she murmured, parodying his ironic first comment.
He didn’t answer, studying the side of a box of baby-rice with raised eyebrows. Uh-oh.
‘I happen to like it, OK?’ Anne snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it into the carton. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘No. But I think you might. You must be even younger than you look,’ he said drily.
‘Just because I’m not impossibly cynical and trying to make everyone around me miserable, it doesn’t mean I’m a babe in arms!’ she said hotly.
‘So I see,’ he murmured, eyeing the formerly demure white shirt that was plastered by rain to her generous breasts. ‘Is that little homily supposed to be a jab at me?’
‘If the shoe fits!’
‘For a promising writer you have a very hackneyed turn of phrase.’
‘That’s because I save all the good stuff for my books,’ she told him tartly.
‘The good stuff?’ he echoed, his hard mouth kinking in mocking amusement. ‘Inelegant but succinct.’
‘Thank you for that critique, Professor,’ Anne said sarcastically as she straightened, grateful to have the heavy carton to hug to her chest. The way he had looked at her breasts had made her tingle uncomfortably.
‘Let me carry that for you.’
‘Thank you, but I’m quite capable,’ she said, starting up the few remaining steps.
‘At least give me your key so that you don’t have to put that down to open your door.’
‘I can manage,’ she told him, stopping at the top and waiting for him to move on.
He studied her stubborn expression. A muscle moved in his bluntly square jaw as he said through his teeth, ‘You really are the most incredibly…irritating woman…’
At least she had finally graduated to adulthood in his eyes! She grinned.
‘Oh, I can be a lot more irritating than this,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘See you later, Professor!’
‘Not if I see you first,’ he delighted her by growling with childish petulance as he stumped off in the direction of his own door. ‘And stop calling me Professor.’
‘Why? Does it make you feel your age?’ She wasn’t going to let him have the last word.
‘I’m only thirty-seven,’ he shot back, ramming his key into the deadlock that adorned the battered entrance to his flat.
‘Really?’ she said wickedly, squinting at him along the length of the hall. ‘You look much older. Maybe it’s just because you’re so surly—’
‘I am not surly!’
He was yelling. Anne beamed at him. ‘Don’t burst a boiler, Prof. I’m sure you’re utterly charming when you’re with people of your own generation…’
She was giggling as she bolted him out. It was rather risky of her to taunt him but she just couldn’t seem to help it. Something about him just seemed to beg her for a provoking response. She had never known a man whose emotions simmered so close to the surface. Her father and brothers were real men of the land who had an earthy sense of humour and were stoically good-natured. Anne could tease and provoke them and they would only laugh and brush her off like a pesky fly.
Hunter Lewis was definitely outside her experience and, as Anne wistfully informed Ivan over his puréed vegetables, experience was one of the things she had come to Auckland to obtain!
ANNE took a big breath before knocking on the door, her nervousness making her fist land a little harder than she had intended. She took another deep, unsteady breath as the door began to open and then nearly fell over at the sight of Hunter Lewis in a towel.
Much as she hated to admit it, he was very impressive, the bulky, well-defined muscles flowing over his shoulders into a deep chest, the sculpted power of which was evident even through the masking of dense, dark hair. He was certainly every inch a man, she thought as her eyes helplessly traced the inverted triangle of hair that tapered from a broad hand span between his masculine nipples to an enticing narrow line that dipped beneath the white towel insecurely hitched around lean hips. His belly was as taut and tanned as the rest of him and his long legs were strong and sinewy, smothered with the same silky-rough black hair that covered his chest. Patches of water glistened on his bare skin and glinted in his body hair, as if he had been interrupted in the process of drying himself.
‘Seen enough?’
She wondered wickedly what he would do if she said no. Hurriedly she tore her gaze away from the taut pull of towelling across his flanks and summoned all her meagre acting powers. She edged closer.
‘Uh, I made some pasta sauce and I thought you might like some…as a kind of thank-you—for helping me with my shopping the other day. And I have your tie here too, all cleaned and pressed.’ He had said he had wanted it by Friday and she hoped she would get Brownie points for delivering it a day early although his expression wasn’t encouraging.
She gave him a coolly restrained smile that she hoped was unthreatening and lifted the covered plastic con- tainer in one hand, offering his tie with the other. She had no intention of telling him that she had carefully washed and pressed it herself in clear defiance of its bossy care-tag. At the moment a dry-cleaning bill was effectively as far beyond her budget as a new silk tie would have been, so she’d figured she had nothing to lose.
He reached for the tie but made no attempt to accept the pasta sauce, and she took advantage of his sudden need to anchor his slipping towel and ducked under his arm to saunter into his flat.
‘Come in, why don’t you?’ he murmured ironically, turning to follow her.
‘Thanks, I will…just for a moment,’ she said cheerfully, as if he had uttered a gushing welcome and she was merely being polite.
The physical layout of his loft, she discovered to her intense interest, was virtually a mirror-image of her own, but there any resemblance ended. Here lived sinful luxury instead of artful practicality.
There was oatmeal carpet underfoot, so thick and soft that her sandalled feet sank down into it, and the walls were colour-washed a pale terracotta, dappled with either sponge or brush to produce a stippled effect that provided an interesting background for the gilt-framed paintings which lined the walls. Floor-to-ceiling wooden bookcases surrounded the familiar high, arched windows at one end and at the other was a huge, ornately goldframed mirror that took up almost the whole of the wall that backed on to her flat, effectively doubling the apparent length of the room, the reflection of the sky making it seem lighter and airier СКАЧАТЬ