CHAPTER FOUR

      IT WAS SNOWING in earnest when Flynn walked Kat back to the house next door. Even though it was only a few metres, she was conscious of his tall, warm body walking beside her along the footpath. In her flat shoes she barely came up to his shoulder. She didn’t like admitting it but their playful banter was something she found intensely stimulating. Sparring with him was like being involved in a fast-paced fencing match. She had to be on her guard every second.

      She wondered if he would come into the café tomorrow. A little spurt of excitement flashed through her at the thought of seeing him again. She didn’t want to be attracted to him, or to even like him, but the way he had handled the ‘rodent-ectomy’ as he called it had lifted him in her estimation. She still couldn’t get over the fact he hadn’t mocked her for her phobia. It had been a perfect opportunity to tease her. But instead he had simply dealt with the problem with surprising expertise and tact, as if it were perfectly normal for her to be squeamish about removing an unwanted creature from beneath the sofa.

      Kat unlocked the door and turned to look up at him through the falling snow. ‘Thanks for tonight.’

      ‘You’re welcome,’ he said. ‘I closed the cat flap, by the way. I put some duct tape over the catches. I think Monty must’ve worked them loose. He’s a smart cat.’

      Kat couldn’t stop looking into his dark brown eyes with their thick fringe of lashes. Every now and again his gaze would flick to her mouth, the contact of his gaze making her lips feel tingly. ‘Thanks for not making fun of me.’

      His brow furrowed like a series of tide lines on a seashore. ‘About what?’

      ‘My silly phobia.’

      He blinked away some snow and smiled, the flash of his white teeth making her stomach do a jerky little somersault. ‘I used to be scared of the dark when I was kid. I slept with a night-light on for years. I got an awful ribbing about it at boarding school but eventually I got over it.’

      ‘I can’t imagine you being scared of anything.’

      There was a long beat of silence.

      Kat looked at his mouth—the way it was curved, the way his dark stubble surrounded it, the way his lean jaw with the sexy cleft in his chin made her ache to trail her fingertips over its rough surface. She sent the tip of her tongue out over her lips, watching with bated breath as his eyes tracked its journey. Her awareness of him sharpened. His stillness. As if he were waiting for her to make the first move. It had been months since she had felt a man’s lips on hers. Months since she had felt a man’s arms gather her close and remind her of how good it felt to be wanted. Needed.

      Flynn’s hands came down on the tops of her shoulders as softly as the snow cascading around them. His head came down, his foggy breath mingling with hers in that infinitesimal moment before contact. And yet, he didn’t make that final contact. He hovered there as if he knew she would be the first to break.

      If you kiss him, you lose.

      But I want to kiss him.

      Yes, but he knows that, and that’s why he’s waiting.

      I haven’t been kissed in months.

      He probably knows that too.

      But it’s been so long, I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to be a woman.

      If you kiss him, you might not be able to stop.

      Back and forth the battle with Kat’s conscience and her flagging willpower went. And the whole time Flynn waited. She put a hand on his chest, then both hands. His coat was soft and warm to touch, but then, who could go past cashmere? Beneath the luxurious fabric she could feel the outline of his toned muscles. If she took a step, even half a step, she would be flush against his pelvis.

      Even without closing that tiny distance she knew he was aroused. She sensed it. His body was calling out to hers, signalling to her, stirring hers to send the same message back. She became aware of her breasts, the way they seemed to swell, to prickle, to tingle. She became aware of her breathing; the way it stopped and started in little hitches and flows, swirling in a misty fog in front of her face, mixing intimately with his. She became aware of the pulsing throb between her legs, that most secret of places that ached for fulfilment. Baboom. Baboom. Baboom. The blood in her veins echoed the frantic need coursing through her.

      ‘If you don’t make up your mind soon, we’re both going to freeze to death on this doorstep,’ Flynn said.

      Kat dropped her hands from his chest and stepped back. ‘You thought you’d won that, didn’t you?’

      His glinting eyes and crooked smile made her insides twist and coil with lust. ‘It’s only a matter of time before I do.’

      She gave him a scornful look. ‘Dream on, Carlyon.’

      His eyes darkened as if the challenge she’d laid before him privately excited him. ‘Something you should know about me—I always win.’

      Now it was Kat getting excited. She loved proving people wrong. It ramped up her determination. It fuelled the fire in her belly. If anyone said she couldn’t do something, she made it her business to do it. If anyone said she would do something, she made sure she didn’t.

      Although there was a part of her that recognised the challenge of resisting Flynn Carlyon was right up there, as far as difficult challenges went. But as long as she kept her distance she would be home free. ‘I’m sure that arrogance works well for you in court but it makes absolutely no impression on me,’ she said.

      He reached out his gloved hand and traced a fingertip along the surface of her bottom lip. ‘I’ve thought about kissing you since the first day I met you.’

      Me too! Me too! Kat kept her features neutral in spite of the excited leap of her pulse. ‘I wouldn’t have thought I was your type.’

      His gaze went to her mouth as if savouring the moment when he would finally claim it. ‘You’re not.’

      Why the heck not? ‘Not used to slumming it, then?’

      His brows came together, forming a two-fold pleat between his eyes. ‘Is that how you see yourself?’

      It was how others saw her. She had been the victim of classism since she’d been old enough to know what it was. Having a charwoman and barmaid for a mother didn’t exactly get her high enough on the social ladder to suffer vertigo. ‘I know what side of the tracks I come from,’ Kat said. ‘It’s certainly not the same side as you.’

      His frown was still pulling at his brow, as if invisible stitches were being tugged beneath his skin. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’ Then after a slight pause he added, ‘I don’t actually know who my parents are.’

      Kat frowned in confusion. ‘But you said your father is a builder and your mum is—’

      ‘They’re not my real parents.’

      She looked at him blankly. ‘Not your real parents... Oh, are you adopted?’

      Something in his eyes became shuttered. His mouth was flat. Chalk-white flat. I-wish-I-hadn’t-said-that flat. But, after a moment of looking at her silently, he finally released a breath that sounded as if he had been holding it a long time. A lifetime. ‘Yes. When I was eight weeks old.’

      ‘Oh... I didn’t realise. Have you met your birth mother?’

      He gave a twist of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. ‘No.’

      ‘Have you gone looking?’

      ‘There’s no point.’