CHAPTER THREE

      ‘WOULD you like to dance?’

      Miranda tensed. How could she refuse?

      ‘Er—thank you.’

      Unsteadily she stood up and allowed Ben Frobisher to guide her towards the dance floor.

      ‘I’m sorry if this evening has rather lumbered you with me,’ he apologised to her. ‘When your father asked me to join him this evening, I thought it might be a good way of getting to know a few people.’

      Miranda tried not to think about the effect his proximity was having on her. Treat him just like any other client you’ve had to entertain, she exhorted herself, but she knew already that that was impossible.

      The band was playing a waltz, and her body tensed involuntarily as Ben took her in his arms.

      ‘It’s hard to believe that the waltz was once banned for being decadent, isn’t it?’ she said breathlessly as she fought to dismiss the sensations invoked by his touch, sensations which were making her feel as nervous and ill at ease as a teenager. Thank goodness it was impossible for him to know just how he was affecting her!

      ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he responded thoughtfully, ‘when you bear in mind that it was the first time that men and women had actually danced exclusively with one partner and the opportunities it affords for body contact. And even these days it isn’t exactly unknown for couples to take advantage of the intimacy allowed in dancing together to reinforce their desire for one another.’

      She couldn’t help it—her skin went hot as her mind treacherously conjured up a mental image of the two of them swaying intimately together, dancing body to body, his arms wrapped around her so that she was aware of every movement of his muscles, every breath he took, every small reaction of his flesh to hers … She trembled uncontrollably, causing him to frown down at her and enquire in concern, ‘Are you cold?’

      ‘Yes. Just a little,’ she lied. It wasn’t true; if anything she was too hot, but she could hardly admit to him just what had caused that sensual frisson of sensation to galvanise her body.

      As she matched her steps to his she had an appalling urge to move nearer to him, to close the gap between their bodies and to …

      Desperately she shut her eyes, trying to suppress the illicit wash of sensation that rushed through her, but the darkness only made things worse, only increased her sensual awareness of him to the pitch where she was as intimately aware of the heat and scent of him as though they were in fact established lovers.

      That shook her more than anything else—that ready acceptance of her senses to acknowledge her physical responsiveness to him.

      That was the trouble with being a daydreamer, with having a far too vivid imagination, she told herself bitterly. It led you into all sorts of dangerous assumptions.

      For example, if she hadn’t given in this afternoon to her own idiotic and wanton impulse to tamper with the actual reality of her earlier brief meeting with him, transforming it into some kind of impossible erotic encounter, she would not be suffering the humiliation and discomfort of trying to subdue her body’s physical response to him right now.

      Thank God that as yet no one had developed any means of correctly reading the human mind. The very last thing she could have endured would have been the ignominy of knowing that he had guessed what was happening to her.

      She tried to convince herself that in these days of equality it was no more shameful to her as a woman that she should be so physically affected by a man she hardly knew, and who had definitely not given her any encouragement to feel that desire, than had their positions been reversed, but it didn’t work.

      She was obviously a good deal more gender-orientated than she had supposed, she reflected wryly.

      ‘Your father was telling me that you live out at Gallows Reach.’

      The soft-voiced comment made her stiffen slightly before admitting, ‘Yes, I have a cottage out there.’

      ‘You don’t find it too remote?’

      ‘Not really. Perhaps if I weren’t mixing with so many people during the day I might find it too isolated, but as it is …’

      ‘Mmm. I know what you mean. I must say, I’m enjoying the solitude of the place I’m renting. I thought it would be a good idea to see how I took to living somewhere so remote before I actually took the plunge and bought a property.’

      ‘And how are you finding it?’ Miranda asked him curiously.

      ‘Interesting,’ he told her promptly. ‘Something of a voyage of self-discovery, in fact. It’s rather a long time since I’ve spent so much time on my own.’

      Miranda tensed again. Did that mean that, despite the fact that he wasn’t married, there was or had been someone important in his life? But his next words disproved this theory, as he added, ‘In London I had an apartment at the top of the building which housed our office. Not an ideal situation because it meant that I was virtually spending twenty-four hours a day with my work. In the beginning when we first set up in business that was necessary, but recently I’ve began to find that my whole life seems to revolve around the company.’