Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick
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nodded. ‘Me too,’ he murmured. ‘But that’s the trouble with making something forbidden—it makes it so much more exciting, wouldn’t you agree, Lola?’
‘You mean that there is nothing quite so irresistible as temptation?’ she returned.
‘Not quite,’ he returned, with surprisingly gentle mockery. ‘I can think of something far more irresistible! But temptation comes a close second.’
Lola knew that she was in danger, a danger she was at a loss to define—even to herself. She heard herself clearing her throat like a nervous politician. ‘Geraint—’
‘I like the way you say my name,’ he told her softly. ‘With that quiet, almost sing-song little Cornish burr—’
‘I need to shower,’ she cut in rather desperately. ‘And to change. And I need to shop.’ She hoped that she sounded more authoritative than she felt.
‘Of course you do,’ he agreed, and Lola was horrified to discover her heart sinking with disappointment at his easy agreement. Did that mean he was going now?
What had she been hoping for? That he would haul her into his arms and tell her that she was perfect as she was and that the shower and the shopping could wait?
‘I need to shop too,’ he said. ‘So we’ll go together.’
Lola stared at him. ‘Geraint—’
‘Lola?’
‘I mean, there must be millions of girls—’
‘In the world?’ he queried with a wry smile, deliberately misunderstanding her.
‘Who would be falling over themselves to go out with you!’ she snapped back at him, and tossed her dark head like an excitable filly.
‘Yes,’ he answered quietly, and without conceit. ‘And?’
‘So why me?’
He gave her a cool smile. ‘You aren’t being very honest with yourself, are you, Lola? You are as fascinated by me as I am by you—and it’s no good opening those pretty lips to ask me for an explanation why, because I can’t give you one.’ He shrugged with an impatient little movement. ‘I dislike clichés, but for once, here, their use seems to be appropriate. Something happened when we saw one another across that crowded room, didn’t it? Something powerful—’
‘Something disturbing,’ Lola put in, almost absently giving voice to her confused thoughts.
He stilled, his whole stance suddenly alert and watchful. ‘So it disturbs you too, does it? This feeling? He gave a short laugh. ‘Because I don’t like it very much myself.’
‘You d-don’t?’ she echoed, aware of the heavy weight of disappointment which had settled like a heavy meal in her stomach.
‘Of course I don’t like it!’ he almost snarled. ‘Do you think it gave me pleasure to make an exhibition of myself in the centre of a restaurant in which I have dined happily and without incident for over ten years? Do you think I enjoyed kissing you in public like a seventeen-year-old who had just discovered sex for the first time?’
Lola’s eyes widened into sapphire saucers. ‘Then why don’t you just leave well alone?’
His mouth thinned into a self-deprecating line. ‘Do you know nothing of human nature?’ he demanded.
She gave him a steady look which told him in no uncertain terms that she would not be patronised! ‘A little,’ she answered wryly. ‘Working with the general public day in and day out gives you some inkling of what makes people tick!’
‘So who buys more champagne?’ he queried. ‘The passengers in First Class or the passengers in Economy?’
Lola gave him a bemused look. ‘The passengers in First Class don’t pay for champagne—’
‘And yet they don’t drink so much of it as you might expect?’
‘I guess not.’
‘Exactly!’ His grey eyes gleamed with a steely fire. ‘If something is free it’s acceptable—and therefore less exciting. Put something out of bounds by either making it prohibitively expensive or banning it altogether and your appetite for it increases —that’s human nature!’
Lola hadn’t really thought about it in those terms before. ‘I don’t quite see how champagne consumption on the airline relates to—’
‘Us?’ he supplied acidly.
Lola clamped her lips tightly shut, worried that he would see the vulnerable tremor which hovered around her mouth and threatened to blow her cover. ‘But there is no us, Geraint,’ she told him tartly, because in spite of everything she derived no pleasure from saying it.
‘But that’s just where you’re wrong,’ he breathed, his grey eyes narrowing to flinty chips. ‘There is something between us. You know there is. Have you no sense of adventure in your soul, Lola? Don’t t you think we ought to explore all the infinite possibilities?’
‘No,’ Lola answered repressively. ‘I don’t.
‘But if you make something forbidden, then it becomes an obsession,’ he told her. ‘Doesn’t it?’ he persisted, with a wry elevation of one dark eyebrow. ‘And obsession is not just hard to live with, it’s downright impossible. Instead of concentrating on the day-to-day pattern of life, your thoughts become one-track, so that you can spend hours reflecting on the pleasing curve of a jawline, or how sunlight can turn hair into satin ribbons.’
His gaze ran swiftly over her face before he concluded, ‘Obsession makes life take a back seat, and that’s no good to anyone.’
Lola surveyed him steadily, unwillingly caught off guard by his frankness, his lack of game-playing. ‘You sound as though you have a lot of experience of being obsessed,’ she commented in surprise.
‘Thankfully not.’ He shook his dark head. ‘Any knowledge I may have of the subject I have gained through observation, not experience.’ He glanced down at the pale gold watch which gleamed on his wrist. ‘Now, why don’t I wait here while you get changed, and then we’ll go shopping together?’
‘Shopping together?’ Lola found herself smiling at his audacity. ‘Because I—’
‘Because unless you go upstairs and take off that ridiculous uniform,’ he interrupted in an urgent, smoky whisper, ‘I might just do something as uncharacteristic as I did last night.’
Afterwards she would hate herself for asking the question, but for now she seemed to have no control over the words she heard herself using. ‘And what’s that?’
Had he imagined her to be coy? He must have done, for a cool, almost calculating look hardened the smoky grey eyes and something approaching regret darkened their pupils to an inky glitter. ‘Did I underestimate your honesty, Lola? You want to play games with me now, do you?’
‘N-no,’ she stumbled. She wanted something, yes, but not games. Something more exciting than games. And what she wanted she was just about to get. . .
He reached out and tilted her chin with his hands, his gaze locking thoughtfully with hers. ‘Yes,’ he said, as if he was answering a question, and bent his head to kiss her.
Lola tried to hold back the tide of emotion which was threatening to flood her with its sweet, relentless waves, but it was no good. One touch and she was hooked. Out of her mind and out of control—just like that. Unprotesting, she let him take her wordlessly into his embrace.
He cradled her in a manner which hinted at protectiveness and yet at the same time he made no effort whatsoever to disguise the fact that he wanted her very, very much.
Lola shivered when she felt the hardness of his hips as he pressed his body close to hers, and found her fingers stealing up to rub distractedly at the broad