Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere. Abigail Gordon

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СКАЧАТЬ up your things. I’ll need to make a call from there as well. I was supposed to be at my parents’ place for lunch, but there might not be time for that.’

      ‘Your parents?’ she repeated blankly.

      His eyes gleamed with a sardonic light. ‘Yes, I do have parents, Salome. I didn’t ooze out of a man-hole up at the Cross. There’s even an older brother, Angelo, as well as three younger sisters—Gina, Antonia and Therese. All respectably married. I’m the only black sheep.’

      Very black, came the automatic thought.

      Her mind suddenly clicked into gear. Here was her escape from going to see Ralph. ‘Oh, well, then, please don’t put yourself out for me. Just drop me off at Molly’s and go on. You could always ring Ralph about Charles later. You shouldn’t miss an important lunch-date with your parents.’

      They had reached his car, and Mike inserted the key in the passenger-door. ‘Hardly all that important,’ he threw over his shoulder. He wrenched open the door, and stepped back to wave her inside. ‘I go out to see them every Friday for lunch. They won’t die of disappointment if I miss one time.’

      The image of Mike as a dutiful son distracted Salome for a moment, and she just stood there. She hadn’t thought of him with parents at all before now, let alone having the capacity to love and care about them, as he so obviously did. ‘Where do they live?’ she asked. ‘Your parents...’

      ‘Kellyville. They own a market garden.’

      ‘Oh, but that’s not far from Ralph’s!’ she said, before realising she was putting her foot in it.

      Mike’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Are you suggesting we might continue on there for lunch, together?’

      ‘Well, I...’ Did she want that? To meet his parents? It seemed perfectly pointless and futile under the circumstances, but in an odd sort of way, yes, she did want to, did want to fill in the hazy picture of Mike’s background. It seemed sad to love a man and not really know him.

      ‘If you like,’ she said lamely.

      ‘I don’t like,’ he snarled.

      She blinked shock at his attitude.

      ‘You don’t know my mother,’ he went on testily. ‘One look at you and she’ll start knitting baby-bootees.’

      Salome blinked again.

      ‘My dear Salome...’ he tipped up her chin with a single fingertip, looking deeply into her eyes with a dry, cynical expression ‘...all Italian Mammas want their sons married with a whole brood of children to spoil. You might not realise it but, dressed as you are today, you look the image of wholesome womanhood, ripe for marriage and babies!

      ‘So much for images,’ he muttered and, sliding his hand around under the weight of hair at her neck, he captured her mouth in a kiss not intended to convey anything wholesome.

      Salome wished she hadn’t responded, wished she had kept her lips pressed firmly together, her tongue still. But her love doomed her to failure. She moaned under his seductive onslaught, which only made matters worse. Impassioned by the sound of her arousal, his fingers tightened in the soft flesh of her neck, his mouth increasing its pressure, his free hand sliding up under her jumper to cover a single lace-cupped breast, to tease her nipple to rock-like hardness.

      When he let her go she staggered back against the car. ‘I think, perhaps, you’d better get in,’ he ground out. ‘Or shall we forget the whole damned business and go back up to bed?’

      She stared at him. He meant it. He actually meant it. And, worst of all, she was tempted. God, what was she coming to, accepting this man’s derision in the same breath as his kisses? Surely love didn’t demand that a woman give up her self-respect, did it?

      Yet if she tried to convince him he was all wrong about her he wouldn’t believe her. Not that she could entirely blame him for that. She had dug her own grave with her behaviour at his restaurant over the years. Even as late as last night, she had implied that she had taken various lovers since her divorce, ones which she didn’t even bother to go out with.

      Then there was the way she had acted with him in bed, with such uninhibited abandon. How could she explain that away if she was to claim relative innocence? By admitting she loved him? He would laugh. Or, even worse, use her admission to corrupt her further to his wishes. For he didn’t want her love, only her total submission. Which, from the way he could make her feel with a simple kiss, was not far off anyway.

      Even now he was looking at her with a smug, expectant look on his face, waiting for her to agree to a return to bed.

      With great difficulty Salome dredged up a semblance of a smile, letting her eyes cool as they looked up at him. They landed on his smouldering eyes, drifted down to his beckoning mouth, dropped further to his taut virility, all without so much as a visible flicker.

      Once again, she was struck by her capacity to act a part. Thanks to her treacherous husband! But how well she had learnt her lessons, managing to go from tortured, aroused woman to controlled sophisticate in twenty seconds. ‘They say pleasure is increased by the waiting, Mike,’ she said in a voice designed to dampen even the hottest lover. ‘Let’s wait.’

      She turned away and lowered herself gracefully into the car, sliding the seatbelt across her breasts, trying to ignore their swollen state and the way her nipples were jutting hard right through her soft bra to be outlined against the lemon wool. Her cheeks pinked under the feel of Mike’s searing glare, but she refused to look up. Finally, he swung the door shut, striding around to unlock his side and climb in behind the wheel. His sidelong glance was savage as he shoved the key into the ignition, fired the engine and slammed the gear-stick into reverse. But the car remained stationary, his hand curling over the gear-stick, his knuckles whitening as he again looked daggers at her.

      ‘That was what the fiasco in the lift was last night, wasn’t it?’ he pronounced harshly. ‘A game of tease. You always planned to give in eventually, didn’t you? Tell me, did it titillate you further, hone your undeniably voracious sexual appetite, to make me wait?’

      She stared back at him and gulped. This was taking her role-playing too far. ‘No,’ she denied. ‘It wasn’t like that at all!’

      He seemed taken aback by her vehemence. ‘What, then?’

      ‘I—I was embarrassed...confused... Drunk!’ she added in desperation.

      He made a scoffing sound. ‘Not that drunk.’

      She threw her head back to stare straight ahead. ‘You don’t have to believe me,’ she said stiffly.

      ‘I sure as hell don’t! One day, Salome,’ he growled, ‘you’ll play your sexual games with the wrong partner. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if poor old Charles might not have been on the end of a few of them.’

      Her head snapped around in automatic outrage. ‘Charles needed no encouragement,’ she protested. ‘You don’t honestly believe I’d let a man like that touch me, do you?’ An involuntary shudder rippled through her, revealing the shaken, vulnerable woman she was.

      Mike frowned across at her, then shook his head. ‘God knows what I believe any more. You’ve got me stumped.’

      Salome СКАЧАТЬ