LITMIR.BIZ

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of green he’d ever seen. They made the breath dry in his throat, those eyes. They made him momentarily forget what he was doing there.

      ‘What’s going on?’ she questioned, in a smoky voice. ‘And who the hell are you?’

      She sat up, blinking as she looked around—but not creating the kind of fuss he might have expected. As if she was used to being woken by strange men who had walked into her apartment at midday. He felt another shimmer of distaste. Maybe she was.

      ‘My name is Conall Devlin,’ he said, looking at her face for some kind of recognition, but seeing only a blank and shuttered boredom on her frozen features.

      ‘Oh, yeah?’ Those amazing eyes swept over him and then she yawned. ‘And how did you get in, Conall Devlin?’

      In many ways Conall was the most old-fashioned of men—an accusation levelled at him many times by disappointed women in the past—and in that precise moment he felt his temper begin to flare because it confirmed everything he’d heard about her. That she was careless. That she didn’t care about anything or anyone, except herself. And anger was safer than desire. Than allowing himself to focus on the way her breasts jiggled as she moved. Or to acknowledge that as she rose to her feet and walked across the room she moved with a natural grace, which made him want to stare at her and keep staring. Which made his groin begin to harden with an unwilling kind of lust.

      ‘The door was open,’ he said, not bothering to hide his disapproval.

      ‘Oh. Right. Someone must have left it open on their way out.’ She looked at him and smiled the pretty kind of smile which probably had most men eating out of her hand. ‘I had a party last night.’

      He didn’t smile back. ‘Doesn’t it worry you that someone could have walked right in and burgled you—or worse?’

      She shrugged. ‘Not really. Security on the main door is usually very tight. Though come to think of it—you seem to have got past them without too much difficulty. How did you manage that?’

      ‘Because I have a key,’ he said, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger so that it glinted in the bright spring sunshine.

      She was walking across the room—the baggy T-shirt moving across her bottom to draw his unwilling attention to the pert swell of her buttocks. But his words made her jerk her head back in surprise and a faint frown appeared on her brow as she extracted a pack of cigarettes from a small beaded handbag which was lying on a coffee table.

      ‘What are you talking about, you have a key?’ she questioned, pulling out a filter tip and jamming it in between her lips.

      ‘I’d rather you didn’t light that,’ said Conall tightly.

      Her eyes narrowed. ‘Oh, really?’

      ‘Yes. Really,’ he gritted back sarcastically. ‘Discounting the obvious dangers of passive smoking, I happen to hate the smell.’

      ‘Then leave. Nobody’s stopping you.’ She flicked the lighter with a manicured thumbnail so that a blue-gold flash of flame flared briefly into life, but she only got as far as inhaling the first drag when Conall crossed the room and removed the cigarette from her mouth, ignoring her look of shock.

      ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ she spluttered indignantly. ‘You can’t do that!’

      ‘No?’ he questioned silkily. ‘Watch me, baby.’ He walked out to the balcony and crushed the glowing red tip between thumb and forefinger, before dropping it into another empty champagne glass, which was standing next to a large pot plant.

      When he returned he could see a look of defiance on her face as she took out a second cigarette.

      ‘There are plenty more where that came from,’ she taunted.

      ‘And you’ll only be wasting your time,’ he said flatly. ‘Because every cigarette you light I’m going to take from you and extinguish, until eventually you have none left.’

      ‘And if I call the police and have you arrested for trespass and harassment,’ she challenged. ‘What then?’

      Conall shook his head. ‘Sorry to disappoint you, but neither of those charges will stand up—since I think the law might find that you are the one who is actually guilty of trespass. Remember what I just told you? That I have a key.’ He paused.

      He saw her defiance briefly waver. He saw a shadow cross over her beautiful green eyes and he felt a wave of something which felt almost like empathy and he wasn’t quite sure why. Until he reminded himself what kind of woman she was. The spoilt, manipulative kind who stood for everything he most despised.

      ‘Yes I know but I’m asking why—and it had better be a good explanation,’ she said in a tone of voice which nobody had dared use with him for years. ‘Who are you, and why have you come barging in here, trying to take control?’

      ‘I’m happy to tell you anything you want to know,’ he said evenly. ‘But first I think you need to put on some clothes.’

      ‘Why?’ A smile played at the corners of her lips as she put a hand on one angled hip and struck a catwalk pose. ‘Does my appearance bother you, Mr Devlin?’

      ‘Actually, no—at least, not in the way I think you’re suggesting. I’m not turned on by women who smoke and flaunt their bodies to strangers,’ he said, although the latter part of this statement wasn’t quite true, as the continued aching in his body testified. He swallowed against the sudden unwanted dryness in his throat. ‘And since I don’t have all day to waste—why don’t you do as I ask and then we can get down to business?’

      For a moment Amber hesitated, tempted to tell him to go to hell. To carry through her threat and march over to the phone and call the police, despite the fact that she was enjoying the unexpected drama of the situation. Because wasn’t it good to feel something—even if it was only anger, when for so long now all she had felt had been a terrifying kind of numbness? As if she were no longer made of flesh and blood, but was colourless and invisible—like water.

      She narrowed her eyes as her mind flicked back through the previous evening. Had Conall Devlin been one of the many gatecrashers at the impromptu party she’d ended up hosting? No. Definitely not. She frowned. She would have remembered him. Definitely. Because he was the kind of man you would never forget, no matter how objectionable you found him.

      Unwillingly, her gaze drifted over him. His rugged features would have been perfect were it not for the fact that his nose had obviously once been broken. His hair was dark—though not quite as dark as hers—and his eyes were the colour of midnight. His jaw was dark and shadowed—as if he hadn’t bothered shaving that morning, as if he had more than his fair share of testosterone raging around his body. And what a body. Amber swallowed. He looked as if he would be perfectly at ease smashing a pickaxe into a tough piece of concrete—even though she could tell that his immaculate charcoal suit must have cost a fortune.

      And meanwhile the inside of her mouth felt as if it had been turned into sandpaper and she was certain her breath must smell awful because she’d fallen asleep without brushing her teeth. Her fingers crept up surreptitiously to her face. Yesterday’s make-up was still clogging her eyes and beneath the baggy T-shirt her skin felt warm and sticky. It wasn’t how you wanted to look when you were presented with a man as spectacular as him.

      ‘Okay,’ she said carelessly. ‘I’ll go and get dressed.’

      She enjoyed his brief look of surprise—as if he hadn’t been expecting her sudden capitulation—and that pleased her because she liked surprising people. She could feel his gaze on her as she padded out of the room towards her bedroom, which had a breathtaking view over some of London’s most famous landmarks.

      She stared at the perfect circle of the London Eye as she tried to gather her thoughts together. Some women might have been freaked out at having been woken in such a way by a total stranger, but all Amber could think was that it made an interesting start to the day, when lately her days all seemed to bleed

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