He picked up her blood donor card. By the time he had finished ‘helping’ her, Nora thought, she would be totally stripped of all mystery. ‘Please, don’t let me keep you from your conversation with your friends—’

‘This is much more interesting,’ he drawled, with the teasing inflection which made her feel hot and edgy. ‘And I always finish what I start. It’s sort of a trademark of mine. Besides, they’re acquaintances, not friends. My friends know better than to bore me.’

‘What happens when you’re bored?’ she dared to ask.

‘I behave like a complete boor,’ he said languidly.

‘Oh…Oh!’A hiccup of startled laughter erupted from Nora as she belatedly recognised his pun, her eyes crinkling into merry crescents. ‘The insensitive and ill-mannered person, or the male pig?’ she asked with pretended confusion.

‘Actually a boar is an uncastrated male pig.’ He corrected her second option, and watched her eyelashes flutter and her freckles fight against a rising tide of pink. ‘I feel that’s an important distinction, since my answer is…yes to both.’

‘Really?’ She wasn’t about to let a man get the better of her—not tonight. ‘Then you must have a lot of very tolerant friends.’

He laughed. ‘Or a few very interesting ones.’ He held aloft a yellow-handled tool and shot her a compelling lift of his dark eyebrows. ‘A screwdriver?’

‘I like to be prepared for every eventuality,’ she told him, plucking it out of his hand, noticing that his fingers were long and supple and his nails beautifully manicured.

‘So I see,’ he murmured, as he spied the last stray item, almost hidden by a fold of her dress flaring away from her knee. He handed her the small foil package with grave ceremony.

She stared at it lying on the palm of her hand, stricken by a chilling thought. Thank God she was unable to take oral contraceptives and therefore had had to insist that Ryan always used a condom. What if Kelly wasn’t the first woman he had slept with during the year that their relationship had been sexually intimate? She would have been forced to wonder whether her health was at risk.

With a jolt she realised that it had been ages since she and Ryan had actually made love…He had been away on business, then he had gone on a skiing trip to Colorado with his rugby mates, and after he got back he had been busy with work, or she had, and their social life had got busier. There had always seemed to be a ready enough reason not to make love, and Nora admitted that she had barely noticed their extended bout of celibacy—on her side at least!

‘It is yours, isn’t it?’ he said, intrigued by the parade of expressions across her abstracted face.

‘What? Oh…yes.’ She blushed, dropping it hurriedly into her bag. ‘But don’t let it lead you to jump to any hasty conclusions about me,’ she added, putting her drink down carefully on the carpet while she fished about to find the fuse-wire and quickly wound a 15-amp strand in a figure of eight around the worn clasp.

‘The only conclusion I’ve come to is that you’re probably a highly organised person in a disorganised kind of way,’ he said wryly, watching her complete the makeshift repair with a deft twist of the fragile wire. ‘Shall we rejoin the party before people start wondering what we’re getting up to down here?’ He rose smoothly to his feet, showing no signs of stiffness from his prolonged crouch, whisking away her bag and wineglass and placing them on the edge of the window table behind him, next to his own drink, before stooping to offer both his hands to Nora.

His palms were slightly rough, the friction of his skin sliding against hers producing sparks of heat that fanned hotter as his fingers tightened, totally encompassing her slender hands, making her momentarily feel trapped and helpless and alarmingly vulnerable. A quick flex of his legs and he hauled her upright in one fluid, easy movement. Alarm turned to a rush of unexpected excitement, the sparks leaping from the point of contact to sizzle up Nora’s arms and razzledazzle around her body with electrifying speed, making it difficult to breathe, let alone coordinate her movements. The force of her forward momentum plastered her against his shirt front and she flailed on her precarious heels to find her balance, gasping when she felt an ominous downward drag on her breasts.

‘Oh, stop! Don’t move!’ she hissed at him as she realised what was happening. ‘I think I’ve caught one of my heels in the hem of my dress!’ she groaned, hopping on one wobbly foot like a drunken stork.

He uttered a smothered curse, threaded with laughter, obediently freezing in position.

‘This isn’t funny!’ she whispered fiercely into his ear. ‘I’ll be topless in a moment if we’re not careful.’

‘And this would be a bad thing?’ he chuckled softly, his breath stirring the silky curls that feathered her cheek. The deep vibration in his chest resonated against her squashed breasts and Nora was mortified to feel them begin to tingle, the nipples budding against the sheer fabric of her strapless bra, the top edge of which was now peeking above the satin band of her bodice.

‘Yes!’ Her chin was level with his shoulder, his tanned throat a tempting few inches from her mouth.

‘For goodness’ sake, stop laughing at me and try doing something helpful,’ she gritted. She pulled her hands from his loosening grasp and looked down over her shoulder, arching back to try and unhook her spiked heel from the looped thread, but the twisting motion jerked her awkwardly bent leg and she gave a little squeak as she felt herself begin to pop free from the top of her dress.

Her squeak turned to a breathless gasp as his hands whipped to her sides, palms clamping around the front of her ribs with almost painful force, splayed fingers digging into her back, anchoring the straining fabric firmly in place, her dignity still intact. ‘It’s all right. I’ve got you. Now try,’ he advised.

Nora was aware that she was teetering on the brink of social disaster. She licked her dry lips, her heart still pounding with fright, scarcely able to draw breath against the fierce compression of his grip. She stared up at the man holding her, her eyes wide and dark with doubt, her teeth sinking painfully into her bottom lip. She had already been betrayed by one man tonight. She had picked Blake MacLeod out as a dangerous man…what if it was an element of cruelty in his nature which gave him the dark aura she had found so appealing? What if he was setting her up for fresh humiliation?

‘Go ahead—I won’t let go.’ There wasn’t a trace of his previous mockery in his quiet voice and cool gaze. ‘Trust me.’

His calmness and the continuing steady pressure around her ribs curbed her fears. In any case, trussed up as she was, she really didn’t have any choice but to trust him.

It took her several flustered seconds to untangle the transparent thread from her snagged heel, and when she was finally standing on two feet again she uttered a ragged sigh of relief. She was grateful that he had drawn her slightly away from the group he had been talking to, sparing her the embarrassment of introductions. ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure…’

The silky mockery was back and as their eyes met she was even more aware of his hands still firmly caging her ribs, his thumbs sloping up under her breasts so that with every exhaled breath she stroked herself against him. All he had to do was to alter the angle of his thumbs and he would find the stiff crests which pushed against the shiny satin, she thought hectically. She could feel the long muscles of his thighs bunching as they tensed against hers, the hard thrust of his hips still bracing the centre of her slender body, generating a primitive response that filled her with a furious elation. The social buzz around them faded from her consciousness, her breathing quickening in response to the sultry recognition that darkened his grey eyes. Her heart jumped inside her chest, throbbing against the warm pad of his thumb, and her sensitised skin crackled with energy.

‘We haven’t even been introduced,’ she murmured faintly, having difficulty shaping the words on her thickened tongue.

‘It’s a little late to be formal. I’m Blake MacLeod.’

‘I know.’ She saw his eyelids give a wary flicker. ‘After I saw you across the room, I wondered who you were, so I asked someone…’

‘I see.’ The brackets around his mouth relaxed. ‘And?’

He obviously sensed there had been more to it than a simple identification. ‘She said that you had a bad reputation with women and I should avoid you like the plague.’

‘And yet…here you are,’ he said in a neutral tone that was at odds with his smouldering eyes. ‘Should I have asked someone about you?’

A rueful smile revealed Nora’s disproportionately wide mouth and splendid teeth. ‘It wouldn’t have done you much good. I hardly know anyone in this crowd. I only got invited because I used to flat with the sister of the girl who’s turning twenty-one.’ Her eyes were almost on a level with his and it gave her a powerful kick to look directly into the windows of his deep, dark soul. ‘I’m Nora.’

His impressive eyebrows lifted. ‘Just Nora?’

‘Eleanor, actually, but no one calls me that,’ she breezed. No one except Ryan when he was impatient with her—grinding up the syllables in his gritted teeth!

Blake was silent, and she realised that he wasn’t going to let her get away with the evasion. So much for hoping that she could cloak herself in alluring mystery for the evening.

‘Lang. Nora Lang,’ she said, adopting a flippant Bondian drawl. ‘Does that make you any the wiser?’

He dipped his head, acknowledging the introduction. ‘Not wiser, but certainly better informed. I always try to make informed decisions.’

‘How boring,’ she teased. ‘Don’t you like surprises?’

‘It depends on the nature of the surprise,’ he said, deliberately running his eyes over her captive body.

She felt her skin tighten in every pore. ‘Are you always so cautious?’

‘It depends on the nature of the threat.’

The verbal fencing was having a heady effect on Nora’s battered self-confidence. ‘Do I threaten you, Mr MacLeod?’ she asked with a sweet smile.

‘The idea seems to excite you.’

She felt a sluggish warmth move through her veins. ‘I’ll admit it has a certain raw appeal…’

‘It’s an interesting proposition, Nora, but I’m afraid I’m not into S&M.’

She blushed, not pink, but a vivid rose-red. ‘I wasn’t—I didn’t mean that!’

‘No? Sorry, I must have misunderstood,’ he said with such patent insincerity that they both knew he was lying, and mightily enjoying her confusion.

‘I’m not into anything weird!’ she said firmly.

‘How about mildly kinky?’

She thought of Ryan and Kelly in the bathroom. In the bath of all places, in the middle of the afternoon. Nora’s bath! Boring, undemanding, unadventurous Nora who obviously didn’t know what she was missing…

‘Define kinky.’

He laughed, a deep masculine rumble of appreciation. ‘Now who’s being cautious?’

‘A woman alone has to take care not to raise expectations she’s not prepared to fulfil,’ she said primly.

‘You’re here alone?’ In spite of the upward inflexion it was more of a statement than a question, and he didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I watched you as you came in,’ he admitted unexpectedly.

‘Did you?’ Her smile widened for an instant before she remembered her ignominious entrance. ‘Oh. And I suppose now you think I ricochet about the place like some sort of unguided missile,’ she said with a sigh.

His fingers briefly contracted on her ribcage. ‘Or perhaps a cleverly guided one.’

‘Are you accusing me of dropping my bag at your feet on purpose, in order to meet you?’ she demanded, clenching her fists against his chest.

‘Did you?’

She tipped her chin and looked down her nose at him. ‘That is so arrogant! Do you consider yourself so irresistibly attractive that you automatically assume that every woman is grovelling to attract your attention?’

His mouth ticked up at her haughty response. ‘Well, not every woman. Did you?’

‘No, of course I didn’t!’

Then she recalled her chaotic thoughts in the moments before she had turned coward. ‘Well…’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth as she struggled with her over-scrupulous conscience. ‘Maybe I might have been thinking of a way to introduce myself, but…no, I wouldn’t have—certainly not consciously, anyway…’

His eyes were on that tell-tale worrying of her lip. ‘You mean it was in the nature of a Freudian drop?’ he said, with such suspicious blandness that her fists relaxed against his chest.

‘Is that any different from a Freudian slip?’ she asked, discreetly smoothing out a small crease she had made in his yellow silk tie.

‘It’s generally more revealing,’ he told her, and paused before adding, ‘Rather like that dress.’

She followed his gaze and uttered a stifled sound of annoyance when she saw that the embroidered edge of her black bra was still visible above the top of her dress. He beat her to the rescue, the backs of his fingers branding her with their searing warmth as they dipped beneath the fabric at the side of her breasts to gently hitch up her top by several freckles.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered, her hands automatically replacing his as he stepped back, leaving her bereft of his disturbing touch. She wriggled even more securely into the dress while he turned to pick up his neglected drink. ‘I wish I’d never worn the wretched thing,’ she grumbled. ‘I knew it wasn’t right for me.’

Unfortunately she’d had no choice since it was what she had been wearing when she had fled the flat. She had been trying on her dress and accessories when she had heard odd noises from the bathroom. Believing Kelly was out on a modelling job, she had snatched up a heavy lamp with which to clock the intruder if he turned nasty. In hindsight, she wished she had used it!

To Nora’s chagrin Blake didn’t disagree. He tucked her bag in the crook of her elbow and placed her wineglass in her hand. ‘So why wear it?’

He had manoeuvred her to one side of a support pillar, his back to the room, discouraging anyone else from joining the conversation.

‘It was a gift from a friend. He advised me that something black and strapless would make even me look elegant.’

‘Some friend.’ His sardonic drawl made Nora’s eyes light up with militant agreement.

‘Former friend,’ she corrected him with savage relish.

‘Personally, I think the shoes were the better buy,’ he said.

‘The dress was terribly pricy,’ she murmured, with a twinge of guilt.

He shrugged. ‘So were the outrageously sexy shoes, but they’re a work of art in themselves.’

Outrageously sexy? Little thrills ran up and down her spine.

‘How do you know what they cost?’ As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Nora cursed the foolish naivety of her question. As a wealthy man he was probably used to paying his lovers’ bills—and to making sure he got full value for his money!

His wicked smile suggested he had read her mind. ‘Because they have a famous Italian name stamped on the sole…and you’re still wearing the price tag.’ He bent down and laced his fingers around her left ankle, lifting her foot and peeling something off the delicate sole of her shoe. Although she automatically gripped his shoulder for balance, he had acted so swiftly that he had replaced her foot firmly on the ground before she had a chance to wobble. ‘I noticed it when we were kneeling down.’

Ignoring the lingering warmth in her tingling ankle, Nora stared at the small adhesive-backed paper square he had pressed on to the back of her hand.

‘Oh, my God!’ she breathed, aghast.

‘Don’t worry, I don’t think anyone would class it as a major social gaffe—’ he began in amusement.

‘My God, this can’t be the price!’ Nora continued in an outraged whisper. ‘This is wrong—it has to be a stock number or something. I can’t have paid that for a pair of shoes! I wouldn’t have! It’s indecent!’

‘Maybe they were on sale,’ he murmured, watching her dusting of freckles glow vivid ginger against her blanched skin.

‘Expensive hotel boutiques target high-rolling tourists—they don’t have sales,’ she said hollowly. She blinked her thickly mascaraed eyelashes, trying in vain to make the dollar sign in front of the figures go away. ‘I don’t believe it—they cost almost twice as much as the dress did!’ She heaved a sigh, screwing up the price sticker until it was a tiny hard pellet and flicking it away.

‘How much did you think they cost?’ he asked curiously.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t care. I was in such a temper I didn’t even look at the price,’ she admitted, closing her eyes as she frantically tried to remember what else she had put on her credit card this month.

‘A temper?’

‘Mmm?’ Her eyes flew open and she became enmeshed in his intently curious gaze. Had he noticed that her eyelids were slightly pink and puffy under their lavish powdering of green shadow and gold glitter? She didn’t want him to think she was a pathetic weepy female. ‘Oh…’ She gestured vaguely with her glass and delivered the understatement of all time. ‘I was upset about something that happened earlier.’

‘And when you’re upset, you shop?’

‘God, no. I hate shopping…for clothes, anyway.’ She shuddered. ‘All that standing around, staring at yourself. And I certainly don’t get paid enough to buy shoes like this every time I lose my temper!’

‘What kind of work do you do?’ he asked, propping his arm against the narrow pillar, his wrist skimming the curve of her bare shoulder.

‘I help people fix problems with their computers,’ she said, deliberately down-playing her skill. She was all too familiar with the glaze that appeared on people’s faces when she started talking about her job.

‘Here in the city?’

‘Our offices are just a few blocks away.’ She didn’t want to talk about Maitlands. Or even think about how she was going to cope with the strain of working in the same office as Ryan—and Kelly—after tonight. ‘This is the first time I’ve been up the Sky Tower, though. Have you been here before?’

‘I bring international clients to the restaurant and casino quite regularly. PresCorp has a permanent suite at the hotel. It’s also useful for occasions like this, when my workload is so heavy that I don’t want to waste time commuting.’

Prickles danced across her skin. ‘You’re staying here at the hotel?’ she blurted huskily. He gave her a speculative look and she fought down a blush. ‘Wouldn’t a serviced apartment be more cost effective for the company?’ she hastened to say.

‘Even luxury apartments don’t come with twenty-four-hour room service—’ He stopped as she suddenly stiffened, the colour draining from her face. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No—yes.’ She ducked her head below the level of his shoulders, burying her nose in her drink. ‘I just realised that I’m famished. I wonder when they’re going to serve some proper food.’

‘Not for some time yet.’ He tilted his wrist so that she could see the face of his steel Rolex. ‘Supper at ten-thirty p.m., the invitation said—and there’ll be speeches to get through first. Didn’t you eat before you came?’

She recalled throwing up in a rainy gutter somewhere, retching her heart out while the tears streamed down her face.

‘I wasn’t in the mood.’

‘There’re plenty of nibbles going around. Would you like me to get us some?’ He dropped his arm and began to turn.

‘No! Don’t go!’ She clutched at his jacket, her eyes sliding past him.

‘I was only going to signal a waiter.’ He looked down at her fixed expression, noting the way she had edged around to keep his body between herself and the room, while still keeping whatever was holding her attention in view. ‘Someone you didn’t expect to see tonight?’ he asked shrewdly.

Someone she would be happy never to see again!

With growing outrage, Nora watched Ryan working the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He had been enormously pleased at the prospect of mixing with some of the city’s leading citizens, but he had only received an invitation to the party because he was her partner. He certainly knew how to market himself, she’d give him that, but now that the scales had fallen from her eyes she could see him for what he was: a noxious little opportunist!

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