Wedding-Night Baby. KIM LAWRENCE

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      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘GEORGIE, he’s absolutely gorgeous, darling. Where did you find him?’

      ‘Yellow Pages, Alice,’ she told her drooling school-friend with a grin. Callum was dancing with the bride, displaying remarkable grace and co-ordination for such a large man.

      ‘You never used to be so enigmatic,’ her friend grumbled, her eyes on Callum’s progress across the floor. ‘You even look different.’ Her eyes moved critically over her old friend’s slender figure.

      Georgina hardly heard. The man might be abominably conceited, she reflected, her eyes too on the tall figure, but he did have some reason. Controlled power, languid grace and an ability to make everyone present hang on his every word were all attributes that she privately thought could be put to better use in some other capacity than that of hired escort. He had something indefinable but potent; she had given up trying to classify him into any category she had ever come across.

      He still remained something of an enigma. Although he had, true to his word, been charming and amusing over the remainder of the meal, he had managed to learn quite a lot about her life, her work and friends whilst unobtrusively redirecting any questions about himself. Why the mystery? she wondered.

      He looked up suddenly, his dark features turning intuitively in her direction. Rather than avert her gaze and look elsewhere, she kept her eyes level and her chin square. There was enquiry, a challenge in his bold stare, transmuted as he held her eyes to stark and unadulterated desire.

      No man had ever, as far as she could recall, looked at her so brazenly before. The message in his stare was a blatant admission of desire. She had certainly never experienced this flash fire of wildly conflicting sensations. She stood stock-still, caught in the current that passed between them. She recognised that she was a victim of her own primitive cravings, but felt powerless to resist.

      With a soft word Callum extricated himself from his partner, who showed an inclination to pout, and moved purposefully across the room.

      ‘This is Alice,’ Georgina said nervously as he reached her side.

      ‘Hello, Alice. I haven’t danced with Georgina yet. You don’t mind if I steal her away, do you?’ His eyes only left her face for a second. She was drawn onto the dance floor without even realising she’d relinquished her role as wallflower. ‘This day is not turning out at all as I’d expected, Miss Campion.’

      ‘It isn’t?’ she said thickly. The numbness that had hit her seconds before was slipping away to be replaced by a swamping awareness of her body and its reactions and this man, this stranger who held her, his body. She’d drunk too much. She’d been building up to this day for weeks; it was the stress, the entire cocktail of emotional havoc that was responsible for the sexual awareness that had sprung to life.

      ‘You were described to me as very efficient. I wasn’t expecting hair like glossy autumn leaves, soft, buttermilk skin and sultry lips like ripe strawberries.’

      She swallowed, frighteningly aware of how much a captive she was of the deep, resonant voice and the glittering eyes. Excitement and a totally alien exhilaration were swirling in her veins. Common sense, with which she knew she was amply endowed, told her that her bruised ego was lapping up this attention because of its traumatised state. But it was difficult to reconcile common sense with the feverish clamour of her blood. She was aware of trembling—a fact he too couldn’t have failed to notice.

      ‘Very poetic,’ she replied, injecting scorn into her voice and pulling her eyes from the magnetic tug of his gaze. ‘This really wasn’t in the job description, you know.’ She swallowed. How wrong had she been when she’d thought this man was ill-equipped to act as an escort! She’d almost disastrously forgotten that that was what he was. It was the height of stupidity to fall for a look of desire. Do I need to be wanted that much? she thought bitterly. It must be genetic!

      ’And I’m certain you made that quite clear at the outset.’ His voice held a degree of almost amused affection which made her glance up.

      ’Perhaps that’s why the agency described me as efficient.’

      ‘The agency...?’ he murmured sharply. ‘Oh, yes, the agency. I never mix business with pleasure.’ Perhaps this occasion called for a little flexibility, СКАЧАТЬ