Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

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СКАЧАТЬ fascination whilst he watched her back away, one of his eyebrows lifted ironically as though ... as though he was almost waiting ... enjoying the prospect of having her challenge him. Well, he wasn’t going to be disappointed.

      ‘You are not staying the night in this room, my room,’ she emphasised, spacing her words with care.

      ‘No? Then evict me,’ Luke responded with a bored shrug.

      Evict him. She might be tall, but as she visually measured not just the length of his body, but compared it muscle for muscle, strength for strength, with her own, Bobbie knew that any attempt on her part to use force to remove him from the room would inevitably result in a humiliating failure on her part.

      ‘Very well, then,’ Bobbie answered coolly, changing tack. ‘If you won’t leave, then I shall simply book myself into another room.’

      ‘Impossible, I’m afraid,’ Luke told her, shaking his head. ‘The hotel is fully booked as I discovered when Fenella announced that she had booked us a double room, but by all means if you want to try...’

      Bobbie thought quickly. She was well aware of the curiosity and interest it would arouse if she were to try to change her room, especially with Luke so very much in evidence in her present one.

      ‘This is ridiculous,’ she snapped finally. ‘If Fenella isn’t going to be put off by seeing you kiss me, then what makes you think she will be just because you’ve spent the night with me? After all, if she’s prepared to take on a man who kisses another woman in public, she would more than likely be prepared to take on one who...who’s been more intimate with...with her.’

      Irritated with herself as she floundered a little, she had no idea why on earth she should feel so self-conscious about using the word ‘sex’ instead of the more coy and euphemistic ‘intimate’ in front of a man like Luke Crighton, a man she didn’t so much merely not like, but increasingly actively disliked.

      ‘Because,’ Luke explained patiently, ‘although she might be prepared to do so, she knows perfectly well that I’m not.’ When Bobbie looked perplexed, he explained matter-of-factly, ‘I do not sleep around, and as Fenella already knows, I do not and never have been “intimate”—’ he underlined the word, her word, mockingly ‘—with a woman with whom I am not either already involved or intending to become involved in a very serious relationship. In other words, my American friend, Fenella knows that if I spend the night with you, it is because I want to make you a serious and permanent part of my life.’

      Bobbie swallowed hard as she stared at him. It wasn’t often that anyone caught her wrong-footed or off guard; that anything a member of the male sex said surprised her. But this time...this one...why...why in heaven’s name did he have to be the first, the only man she had ever met to echo her own views of the importance of respecting sexual intimacy, to want it to be part of a truly committed relationship?

      She gave him a quick glance, half-inclined to suspect him of making fun of her, but one look at his face convinced her that he was totally serious.

      ‘I hope you aren’t trying to suggest that because you’ve forced your way into my room and declared your intention to spend the night with me that that means in the morning you’re going to expect me to make an honest man of you,’ she joked flippantly to cover what she was feeling.

      ‘Don’t you believe in marriage?’ he asked her unexpectedly. ‘Are you one of these modern young women who likes to think that men are superfluous to her requirements, even to the extent of forgoing the pleasure and the intimacy that creating a child together should bring in favour of a far more clinical and detached method of conception?’

      There must be something wrong with her. She must be coming down with some kind of bug, Bobbie decided. There could be no other reason for the sudden flood of heat pouring through her body, the unnerving sensation of weakness and the spine-tingling thrill of shock that had just run through her.

      ‘My plans for the method of conception of my future children is none of your business,’ she managed to retort loftily as she fought to control her dizzying light-headedness. She had to get him out of her room and fast, she determined feverishly, but could think of nothing more compelling to say to him other than a decidedly panicky ‘You can’t sleep here.’

      ‘No,’ he agreed unexpectedly as he looked at the bed. ‘I can’t, and neither, I imagine, can you.’ He gave the standard-size hotel bed a disparaging glance. ‘If I had to sleep in that toy-box version of what a proper bed should be, I’d wake up with cramp and backache to say the least.’

      Bobbie knew exactly what he meant. Back home they had proper beds, big wide long beds in which a person could stretch out luxuriously and still have plenty of room left over for...

      A startled glance seized her face, widening her eyes as she absorbed the mental image that had materialised so dangerously out of nowhere—two bodies tangled lovingly together in the comfort of her generously proportioned bed, the fine cotton sheets she favoured wrapped loosely around them, her body snugly protected by the larger, heavier, bulkier form of the man who lay next to her on his side and half across her, one leg flung possessively over her, one arm wrapped securely around her. Little could be seen of his features, but she could visualize the broad, tanned sweep of his well-muscled back and just the beginning of the sensual curve where its line ran into his butt, the dark sleekness of the back of his head, but she knew totally, of course, just what his face looked like, just as she knew, too, how he felt, how he smelled and how he tasted...before love and after it...

      She definitely must be ill, Bobbie decided as she finally managed to close her eyes and blink the awesomely realistic vision away. Why else would she be picturing herself in bed with Luke Crighton? And not just any bed, if you please, but her very own bed back home in her small, pretty clapboard house tucked away on one of the quieter streets of their little New England town.

      ‘You can’t stay here,’ she repeated. Her body trembled as she heard the rusty note of shock in her voice.

      ‘No, I don’t think I can,’ she heard Luke agreeing. There was an odd note in his voice, as well, but when she looked at him he was focusing on the bed. To her relief he started to walk towards the door, but before he opened it he stopped and turned round saying, ‘By the way, exactly how did you come to meet young Joss?’

      ‘I bumped into him by accident in Haslewich,’ Bobbie told him truthfully.

      ‘Mmm, so he said,’ Luke commented. ‘In the churchyard apparently. He said you were looking at the gravestones...?’

      Bobbie could feel her heartbeat increasing, the adrenalin starting to pump through her veins as she reacted to her awareness of danger. ‘Yes, I was,’ she agreed carefully.

      ‘Looking for one in particular?’ Luke questioned.

      ‘Just looking,’ Bobbie answered. ‘As an American I find it’s still something of a novelty for me to see gravestones with such old dates on them.’

      ‘You were in the modeRN part of the graveyard when he saw you, according to Joss.’

      ‘Was I? I can’t remember,’ Bobbie lied disinterestedly, dropping her head so that her hair swung forward to conceal and protect her expression from him. ‘Have you finished your cross-examination?’ she asked him with acid sweetness. ‘I would like to get some sleep....’

      ‘In order for me to need to cross-question you, you would either have to be guilty of or a witness to some sort of crime,’ Luke СКАЧАТЬ