LITMIR.BIZ

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for bringing me home, Jim.’ She sighed, turning with a tired smile to the man at the wheel of the car. ‘I don’t think I’d have been up to driving myself, so I really appreciate it.’

      ‘No trouble.’ James Hawthorne smoothed a tidying hand over the light brown hair that the breeze from an open window had ruffled as he smiled back at her, blue eyes warm. ‘You know I’m only too willing to help.’

      India glanced towards the house, noting the darkened windows, the single light left burning in the hall.

      ‘It looks like Gary’s already gone to bed, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t invite you in for coffee.’

      ‘Nothing to forgive,’ her companion returned easily as she pushed open her door. ‘I wouldn’t have accepted anyway. You look as if you need to get straight to bed.’

      ‘Oh, I do!’ India sighed. ‘I feel as if I could sleep for a week. Some birthday, huh?’

      ‘We’ll make up for it when things get better,’ James assured her. ‘Now, you get off and get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

      India was halfway out of the car when an impulse had her turning back and pressing a spontaneous kiss on his left cheek.

      ‘You’ve been so good to me. I don’t know how to thank you.’

      ‘No problem,’ was the smiling response. ‘You know I’d do anything for you. You only have to ask.’

      From the look on his face it was plain that he wanted more than just the friendly kiss she had given him, and the realisation twisted her nerves sharply. Hastily she backed out of the car again, with rather more speed than grace.

      ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Drive carefully, please.’

      It wasn’t Jim’s fault that she couldn’t feel anything for him, India reflected sadly as she watched his car move off down the drive and disappear into the darkness of the night. She doubted if she could feel anything for any man ever again. Aidan Wolfe had cured her of that foolishness.

      ‘Oh, how sweet!’

      ‘What...?’

      A sharp cry of shock escaping her, India jumped like a startled cat as a voice sounded suddenly from the deep shadows cast by the house.

      ‘“You’ve been so good to me”.’ The cynical tones echoed her words but gave them a dangerously different emphasis. ‘“I don’t know how to thank you”.’

      After her initial panicked reaction, the sound of that terrifyingly familiar, husky intonation had India freezing in horror.

      ‘I’m sure you’ll find a way to thank him, won’t you, Princess?’

      And the use of that once familiar teasing nickname drove all hope of redemption from her head. One person had invented that name for her, playing on the fact that India had once been part of the British empire, and only one person had ever used it—affectionately at first. It was only later that she had been able to see the other, less complimentary undertones in it.

      There was no hope now that she could be mistaken, she told herself, turning slowly with a sense of dreary resignation. At last she found that her tongue had loosened enough for her to croak, ‘Hello, Aidan.’

      He had been in her thoughts so much that if he had appeared as some unearthly apparition, conjured out of the air by her bleak memories earlier in the day, then she wouldn’t have been surprised. But, of course, Aidan Wolfe was solid flesh and bone, six feet two of toned muscle over a powerful frame. There was nothing in the least ethereal about him.

      His feet were planted firmly on the stone flags that lay before the heavy wooden main door, his hands resting loosely on lean hips, his head slightly to one side. His whole stance was one of mocking challenge as his dark eyes, eyes that were just pools of black in the shadowed planes of his face, met her stunned green ones in open provocation.

      ‘What are you doing here?’

      Aidan stepped forward into the light of the lamp that illuminated the courtyard. His smile was just a hateful, cruel curl of his lips that made her blood run cold.

      ‘Would you believe I’ve come to wish you a happy birthday?’

      ‘No.’

      It was a clipped, curt rejection of his teasing question, and she made no attempt to respond to that mockery of a smile.

      ‘And you know that I know that has to be the furthest thing from your thoughts.’

      ‘Well, there you’d be wrong, you know,’ Aidan put in with deceptive mildness, that smile growing wider. ‘I do wish you a very happy—what? Twenty-fourth birthday? And a wonderful year to follow.’

      He almost sounded as if he meant it, India told herself. But almost immediately she clamped down hard on that weak train of thought. Even to allow the possibility to slide into her mind was foolish in the extreme. Foolish and very dangerous.

      ‘It can hardly be much worse than last year.’

      She regretted the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, fearing that they gave away far too much. She didn’t want this man to know of all the long, lonely nights she had spent lying awake in an agony of frustration, the dreary, empty days she had dragged herself through since he had abandoned her so brutally. Immediately she tried to cover her tracks.

      ‘Though really I should thank you for what you did. You saved me from making what could quite possibly have been the worst mistake of my life.’

      The way his head went back slightly, showing that her attack had hit home, made her give a small smile of satisfaction.

      ‘But I’m sure you didn’t come here to chat over old times.’ Deliberately she laced the words with acid. ‘So perhaps you’ll tell me the real reason for your sudden materialisation.’

      ‘Materialisation,’ Aidan echoed in dark amusement. ‘You make me sound like some alien being, or a ghost.’

      Ghost indeed. The ghost of happier times, a reminder of the way she had once felt. India flinched away from the stab of anguish that pushed her into unconsidered speech.

      ‘A werewolf or a vampire is more like it!’ she flung at him.

      ‘Now you’re being fanciful.’

      ‘Am I? Am I really?’

      How she wished she could bring her voice down a note on two. It was too high, too shrill, too bitterly revealing. It infuriated her even more to remember that she had always promised herself that if she ever met this man again then she would be so cool, would freeze him out completely. She could never bear it if he knew just how badly he had hurt her.

      ‘Well, let me tell you something, Mr Wolfe. In my mind, a vampire is just what you are! An emotional vampire, someone who preys on people’s feelings, taking them and sucking them dry, then casting them aside without a second thought when you’ve tired of them.’

      ‘Oh, come on.’ The smooth voice mocked her outburst. ‘You surely aren’t claiming that I broke your heart? After all, it wasn’t me you wanted but my money.’

      His tone had sharpened noticeably on the last words, and now he took a couple of swift steps towards her, coming very close for the first time.

      It took all India’s self-control not to recoil in panic. She had forgotten just how tall he was, how broad his shoulders were under the immaculately white T-shirt and the loose linen jacket.

      She had never seen Aidan quite so casually dressed before, she realised. In all the time that they had been dating he had stuck rigidly to the formal suits he wore for work as well as leisure. So now it was painfully disconcerting to feel her mouth dry in an instinctively sensual response to the way that the soft cotton clung to the honed lines of his chest, the denim jeans he wore with it emphasising the powerful length of his legs.

      Oh, God, how could

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