LITMIR.BIZ

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frighteningly worse this time after the brief spell of human contact that this man had provided.

      ‘Wait!’ she tried again, louder this time.

      She saw his determined footsteps slow, come to a gradual but definite halt. He didn’t turn, but he had stopped, and the way that her heart lurched told her how important that was. Safe or not, her mind was made up.

      ‘What time is it?’

      It was perhaps the last question he had been anticipating, and as he turned the quick dark frown that drew his black brows together told her that. But he turned a quick glance at the workmanlike watch on a heavy leather strap around his strong-boned wrist and then brought his eyes back to her face.

      ‘Almost two o’clock—is that important?’ His gaze and his tone had sharpened on the last words.

      Her reaction had given her away. The start she had been unable to suppress, the way that her breath had hissed in through her teeth at the thought of the way her day should have been going right now.

      ‘Might have been,’ was all she could manage.

      It should have been the beginning of her new life. The start of what she had foolishly believed was the happiness she had been looking for for so long. She might have turned up at Gavin’s door to tell him that she thought she was making a mistake, but the things she had heard and seen had stopped her dead, unable to deliver her message. And Gavin had been so intent on his own sensual pleasure that he hadn’t even heard the door open. So he would have no idea the wedding was not going ahead and if it was nearly two o’clock then the ceremony she had run from was officially about to begin.

      ‘Will you help me? Can we get out of here?’ A rather wild gesture of her hand indicated the sleek, powerful black and silver motorbike that stood at the side of the road. ‘On that.’

      She had to get as far away as possible from the Hall where no doubt there must now be a search in progress, everyone wondering what had happened to the bride who seemed to have disappeared into thin air.

      ‘I take it that you need to get to your wedding?’ he asked now.

      ‘Oh, no!’

      She couldn’t hold back on the horror that flooded her mind at just the thought of it. She could still hear those words, muttered in the thick rough tones of sexual passion.

      ‘It’s worth putting up with her in my bed—taking her much prized and held-onto virginity to be legally and fully her husband. Just think, darling—half of seven million when we get a quickie divorce—that’s worth consummating the damn marriage with Miss Prim, even if I do have to lie back and think of the money. Maybe that will turn me on because she sure as hell doesn’t. She’s so big, it’ll be like sleeping with a horse…’

      ‘No way! That’s the last thing I want!’

      She’d shocked him so that his dark head went back, his amazing eyes widening for a second before narrowing again in swift assessment. Her nerves twisted painfully as she saw his frown.

      ‘I—I want nothing to do with my wedding,’ she declared, the bitter truth ironing out the shake in her voice. ‘It would have been the worst possible mistake I could make so I—got out of there fast. Leaving it all behind me. And I want it to stay behind me—as far behind me as possible.’

       ‘Es que la verdad?’

      The slow drawl had a faintly mocking edge to it, one that had her tensing every muscle as she nerved herself for his next comment. His next question—inevitably it would be something on the lines of exactly what she had left behind and why. And she wasn’t ready to answer that.

      ‘What language is that?’ she asked sharply. ‘Are you—Spanish?’

      She’d asked something that had sparked a new mood in him, one that seemed to have a shade coming down over his eyes, hiding their expression from her. But now she was intrigued, wanting to know more.

      ‘Argentinian, actually.’

      ‘And what do you do there?’

      Somehow she’d stepped over a line that he didn’t want crossing and his response was brusque, dismissive.

      ‘Horses and wine.’

      So, a gambler? Or a breeder? A drinker or… She didn’t know how to phrase the question and his stony face did nothing to encourage her to go further.

      ‘You—you’re a long way from home.’

      ‘A very long way,’ he agreed, his tone sombre in a way that made her feel he was talking of so much more than a physical distance.

      ‘So are you on holiday—or—?’

      The rough shake of his head, sending that wild wet hair flying, had her cutting off the question sharply.

      ‘It seems that really we’re two of a kind,’ he said slowly.

      There was a touch of dark amusement in his words, but there was also something more than that. Something that swirled, harsh and disturbing, at the bottom of his voice.

      ‘How so?’ Her voice caught sharply on the words.

      That deep green gaze swept over her in cool assessment then swung back to his motorbike, eyes narrowed against the rain.

      ‘We both just took off—turned our backs, left everything behind. Two of a kind.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      TWO of a kind?

      Just the thought of it took her breath away. It was true that was exactly what she’d done. She had felt that there was no other possible opening before her. But him?

      Look at him! Did he look like someone in despair at anything? A man who had felt the need to walk, leave everything behind? A man who had lost…?

      No, lost was the last thing he looked. Even with the drizzling rain misting his hair so that it hung damp around his face, the black strands whirled into crazy disarray by the wind, and the white cotton of his tee shirt plastered against the honed lines of his torso, the powerful ribcage, taut muscles, disturbed, or even dishevelled were the last words that came to mind to describe him. Strong, powerful, determined, totally in control fitted him better.

      ‘You can’t have!’ Disbelief rang in her voice.

      ‘And why not?’

      It was flung at her and the flash of danger in his eyes held a warning that made her take a couple of hasty steps back and away. She had needed this sharp reminder that he was a total stranger and one she didn’t know whether she dared to trust or not.

      ‘But—don’t you have a job—a home—family who care for you?’

      ‘I have no home in Argentina now.’

      It was a flat, hard statement, and it was only when it died from his eyes, leaving them bleak and opaque, that she realised there had actually been a light in the green depths, one that had made them warmer than ever before. And now she had driven it away with her foolish words.

      ‘No family either.’

      ‘I’m sorry… I didn’t mean…’ she began again, but he lifted his shoulders in a shrug that dismissed her concern. He deliberately switched on a smile but it was such a brief, on-off flash of a thing that it had no real warmth or even meaning. And that ‘now’ had had a special emphasis, one that made it plain the loss was of a recent date.

      ‘Perhaps we’re more alike than you’d think—both on the run, leaving our pasts behind.’

      ‘Is that really what you’re doing?’ She couldn’t see him running from anything.

      But when she looked into those moss-coloured eyes she saw a shadow that swirled in their depths, giving them a look that she recognised. It was the expression that had been on her own face when

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