Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

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СКАЧАТЬ that. She forced herself to forget the warm glow of recognition she had experienced the very first time she had set eyes on him. As if she had known him all her life. Or longer. She stared at his handsome face and tried to sound coolly logical. ‘I’m sure that kind of thing happens to you all the time, Guy.’

      He shook his head in anger. ‘But that’s just the point, dammit—it doesn’t! Oh…’ He shrugged as he saw her disbelieving face. ‘Women come on to me all the time, sure…’

      Sabrina’s smile turned into a grimace, wondering if he had any idea how much he had just insulted her.

      ‘But usually it leaves me cold,’ he reflected thoughtfully. ‘I haven’t had casual sex since I was a teenager.’ And never like that, he thought achingly. Never like that.

      Sabrina flinched. ‘I don’t remember coming on to you,’ she objected, but more out of a sense of pride than conviction. ‘I thought it was you coming on to me!’

      He threw her a look of mocking query. ‘It was pretty mutual, Sabrina. You’re not going to deny that, are you?’

      No, she wasn’t going to deny it. She looked down at her lap, as if the knotted fingers lying there would provide some kind of inspiration.

      ‘I’m still waiting for an answer, princess.’

      The resolve which had deepened his voice made Sabrina frown at him in alarm. ‘That sounded like a threat!’

      He shook his head. ‘Of course it isn’t a threat,’ he said patiently. ‘But surely you aren’t deluding yourself that we don’t need to talk about what happened.’

      She bit her trembling lip. ‘C-can’t we just call it history, and forget it ever happened?’ she croaked.

      ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘Of course we can’t. I think you owe me some sort of explanation, Sabrina.’

      ‘I owe you nothing!’

      He wanted to know. He needed to. ‘Why did you run away the next morning?’

      ‘Why do you think?’ She shuddered as she remembered waking up all warm and replete in his bed. ‘Because I realised what I had done! And it was never going to be any more than a one-night stand, was it, Guy? Besides, you lied to me—so how could I trust you?’

      ‘And wouldn’t it have been more sensible to have thought all this through before it actually happened?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t drag you back there with me! You weren’t drunk!’

      His condemnation was like a slap in the face and Sabrina flinched beneath his accusing stare.

      ‘So what was I?’ he demanded. ‘A substitute? Did you close your eyes and pretend it was Michael?’ He ignored her look of pain, remorselessly grinding the words out. ‘Any man would have done for you, wouldn’t he, Sabrina? I just happened to come along and press the right buttons.’

      She met the dark, accusing fire in his eyes. ‘You honestly think that?’

      ‘I don’t know what to think. It’s not a situation I’ve ever found myself in before. Thank God.’ His gaze narrowed into a piercing grey laser, and then he saw her white, bewildered face and felt a sudden slap of conscience. ‘You look terrible,’ he said bluntly.

      ‘Thanks.’ She sat up a bit and sucked in a breath. ‘I’m feeling a bit better, actually.’

      ‘Well, you don’t look it. ‘I’m going to ring down for some soup for you. You can’t go home in that state.’

      ‘Guy, no—’

      ‘Guy, yes,’ he countered, reaching out to pick up the phone, completely overriding her objections.

      Soup and sandwiches arrived with the kind of speed which suggested to Sabrina that he might have already ordered them. Had that been the muffled conversation with the landlord she had overheard?

      She told herself that she felt too weak to face food, but the stern look on his dark face warned her that if she refused to eat, he didn’t look averse to picking up the spoon and actually feeding her!

      Guy sat and watched her. The thick broth sent steam over her pale features, but gradually, as the bowl emptied, some of the roses began to creep back into her cheeks. He saw her half-heartedly bite into a sandwich and then look at it with something approaching awakening—as if she had only just learnt how good food could taste when you were hungry.

      Sabrina wiped at her lips with a napkin and sighed, aware of the glittering grey eyes which were following her movements with a steely kind of fascination. He hadn’t, she realised, eaten a single thing—he’d just sat there and watched her like a hawk.

      She flicked him a questioning look. ‘You’re not hungry?’

      ‘No, I’m not hungry,’ he said flatly. ‘And I think it’s time I got you home.’

      She shook her head. He was too potent a presence, who had demonstrated the depth of his contempt for her. She didn’t want him invading any more of her space. She didn’t need any more aching reminders of just how devastating he really was.

      She had blown it with Guy Masters by being too greedy. She should have given him her telephone number and gone back to her own hotel that night.

      But nothing could change the fact that she had been desperate for him, driven on by an unrecognisable hunger she’d been unable to control.

      Well, it was too late now. What man wouldn’t be filled with contempt at what she had allowed to happen, and so soon?

      ‘Why don’t you just call me a cab?’ she said tiredly. ‘I don’t need you to come with me.’

      ‘I’m taking you home,’ he said firmly. He saw her open her mouth and shook his head with the kind of dominance that brooked no argument. ‘Oh, no, Sabrina,’ he said softly. ‘This has nothing to do with independence, or pride. You’re in no state to go home on your own—’

      ‘Yes, I am!’ she protested.

      ‘You are not,’ he contradicted impatiently. ‘And you can sit there arguing with me all night long, but it won’t change a thing. I’m not budging on this—I’m taking you home.’

      But her ice-blue eyes looked so helpless as she stared up at him that he found himself unable to resist the temptation to brush a stray strand of hair away from her cheek, feeling its warm tremble beneath his fingertip.

      His grey gaze burned into her and for one heart-stopping moment she thought that he had relented. She saw the sudden, impulsive softening of his mouth and the way that his eyes had now brightened to glittering jet and thought that he was about to kiss her.

      But all he did was open the door. ‘Come on,’ he said abruptly. ‘Time we were out of here.’

      He made her sit down while he went to settle up with the landlord, gently placing her against some cushions as if she really were pregnant. And Sabrina bit her lip as an inexplicable yearning to carry his black-haired baby washed over her.

      Outside the pub was no ordinary taxi—somehow he had managed to magic up a long, СКАЧАТЬ