Mediterranean Mavericks: Greeks. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ right here.’

      Rose had no intention of doing any such thing. She tripped along behind Nick and reached her sister just as he was explaining the need to deliver Rose back to the house unless Lily was on her way out. Which she wasn’t, never mind the pointed looks and contorted gestures Rose was delivering behind Nick’s back.

      ‘I’ve got to stay until the last person leaves,’ Lily said gaily, ignoring her sister. ‘Only polite. And Cat can’t possibly go yet. Not when I’ve just introduced her to Joe Carr here. Can you, Cat?’

      Rose had never seen anyone truly wriggle on the horns of a dilemma, but Cat did now. She was obviously furious at the thought of her date clearing off with another woman, even though the woman was no competition, but the prospect of networking with someone from the film industry who might prove useful later down the line was irresistible.

      She did the best she could under the circumstances and all credit to her, Rose thought nastily, she did it well.

      ‘Call me,’ she purred to Nick, and then reached forward to pull him towards her. From behind, Rose watched the slender pale fingers with perfectly painted long red nails comb his dark hair and, from what she could see, he was thoroughly enjoying the kiss.

      The sight made her feel sick to her stomach. What further proof could she have that he had forgotten her? Wearing a sexy black dress and flirting madly with people whose names she could barely remember suddenly struck her as very sad.

      Lily, she noticed, was staring at her, and Rose composed her features into bland indifference, which was the stance she maintained as Nick ushered her out of the club, fetching her jacket en route, and into the sharp early morning air.

      His driver was waiting outside and she climbed into the back seat of the car in silence.

      ‘So…’ Nick slammed the door behind him and turned to her ‘…you’re suddenly very quiet.’

      ‘I’m tired.’

      ‘We still have a conversation to finish.’

      ‘What conversation?’ Rose looked at him with a sigh. ‘We don’t have anything left to finish, Nick. We’ve both moved on.’

      Nick frowned at her. ‘Which doesn’t mean that I don’t still have…’ feelings for you. Except that there was something somehow significant about saying that. So he avoided it. ‘A sense of responsibility towards you. After all, Rose, we were lovers, whether you like it or not.’

      ‘And now you’re scratching another notch on your bedpost. If it makes you feel better, I absolve you from all responsibility towards me. I don’t need your misguided sense of duty, Nick. You employed me because you were Lily’s friend and you felt sorry for me when I was in a financial mess. Now you feel sorry for me because—’

      ‘I don’t feel sorry for you,’ he snapped sharply.

      ‘Then what? I don’t want you to involve yourself in my life.’

      She slid her eyes over to him. Earlier, she had felt tipsy and mellow and just that little bit out of control. Right now, she couldn’t have felt more sober. ‘Do you always feel as though you’ve got to look out for the hapless women you’ve been involved with?’

      ‘You consider yourself hapless?’

      ‘I consider myself…changed…’

      ‘So you said earlier.’ Nick’s voice was acid. ‘I wasn’t sure whether or not to be flattered by the adjective you used for me as useful.’

      No, he wouldn’t be. Useful wasn’t exactly a sexy term. It was probably also a little too close to used for Nick’s liking, but Rose didn’t care because wasn’t that what he did with all the women who littered his life?

      ‘And people don’t change overnight, Rose. You can’t suddenly turn into a woman who lives life on the edge. You’ve never been that kind of woman. You remember telling me how much Tony and Flora turned you off the idea of taking chances because of the lifestyle they chose? They wanted you to want adventure. Instead you found your adventure in books.’

      ‘Yes, and now I’ve decided that they were right after all. I’m too young to bury myself in books when there’s a whole world out there waiting to be lived.’

      ‘And you intend to live every minute of it in revealing clothes.’

      ‘So what if I do? What business is it of yours? You’ve rescued me once. There’s no need to make a habit of it.’

      The driver was at long last approaching the house and Rose located her glittery handbag and tucked her jacket a little tighter around her shoulders, ready to sprint from car to front door in the shortest possible time.

      The frame of the redhead’s fingers clawing into Nick’s hair repeated itself endlessly in her head, like a snippet of film viewed in slow motion.

      ‘I’m not trying to rescue you,’ Nick grated, leaping out of the car as soon as it had stopped.

      ‘Don’t let me keep you.’ Rose turned the key in the lock, pushed open the door and smiled sweetly at him.

      The woman was crazy, Nick thought. Had she no idea what sort of temptation she presented to a red-blooded male? Wearing a dress like that with everything on display? Her cleavage was just a teasing reminder of her succulent breasts, which he considered outrageously hugged by the thin, stretchy fabric. If she was his, he thought, there was no way that he would let her out of the house looking like that.

      ‘You’re not getting rid of me that quickly,’ he growled, pushing the door wide open with the flat of his hand and stepping inside the house before she could shut the door in his face.

      Rose spun round and folded her arms. ‘We have nothing to say to one another, Nick.’

      ‘You’re not to leave the house dressed the way you were tonight.’ Where the hell had that come from?

      ‘You’re telling me what I can wear?’

      ‘For your own good.’ He flushed darkly and walked away from her incredulous expression, into the sitting room where he prowled restlessly before perching against the bay window so that he could look at her framed in the doorway.

      ‘For my own good?’

      ‘Stop parroting me,’ Nick said irritably. He failed to see why she would stare at him as though he had taken leave of his senses when, as far as he was concerned, he was being perfectly reasonable and pretty decent.

      ‘You may think you know what you’re letting yourself in for, but you don’t,’ he informed her bluntly, and Rose’s mouth fell open a fraction further. So it was fine for him to practically make love in front of an audience with a bimbo who seemed to have an allergy to fabric, but he still found it perfectly acceptable to lecture her about her dress code and her general code of behaviour.

      She had never known anything so hypocritical in her life. She opened her mouth a few times to say something and instead succeeded in giving a goldfish impression.

      ‘Not only is it dangerous for you to dress like that because you’re giving off all the wrong signals, but you’re dressing СКАЧАТЬ