LITMIR.BIZ

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hadn’t been prepared to discover this sort of intensity in the searching quality of his dark glance. Quite suddenly the quality of the tension that gripped her altered. If anything, this fresh, tingling jolt of sexual awareness was even more intense than before. It left her incapable of doing anything but staring dry-throated and breathless back at him.

      ‘I know you’re aching to ask…’

      Tess ignored the melting sensation low in her belly. It was perfectly understandable—Rafe’s low drawl was pitched at an intimate, toe-curling level guaranteed to bemuse, bewilder and befuddle just about any female with a hormone to call her own. Tess’s hormones, after years of wilful neglect, were staging an ill-timed comeback. She was aching all right, in ways she didn’t want to think about; it was all extremely embarrassing.

      ‘But, no, I didn’t accept your drunken invitation. However, I couldn’t leave you asleep in that chair so I carried you up to bed.’

      ‘I didn’t invite you into my bed!’ Fists clenched, she robustly rejected his gentle taunt.

      Stomach lurching horridly, she glanced uncomfortably at the solidity of his biceps. It wasn’t difficult to see how he’d carried her up the stairs. It was so easy, in fact, that a ridiculously romanticised version of this event was playing in her head at that very second. The only thing that was difficult to see was how she’d forgotten it…

      ‘No,’ he agreed with a grin that was slightly strained around the edges. The frequent occasions in the night when she’d cuddled up to him couldn’t legitimately be called invitations—they could be called extremely…provoking, however, and they had been a reminder that, though his heart might be broken, his more basic bodily functions were still in full working order!

      The enigmatic quirk of his sensual lips sent her tummy muscles into a fresh series of uncomfortable fluttery acrobatics. Tess ruthlessly gathered her straying wits and recognised that this was only half an explanation. Rafe had carried her up, but that didn’t mean he’d had to stay—in fact if he’d been a gentleman the idea would have occurred to him!

      ‘And you were overcome by exhaustion…?’ she suggested tartly.

      ‘I guess I was,’ he conceded, not responding to the challenge in her eyes.

      Tess permitted herself a little snort of disbelief. He didn’t look exhausted; in fact, she decided crankily, it ought to be illegal for anyone to exude that sort of vitality this early in the morning.

      ‘Trust you to turn out to be a morning person,’ she grumbled.

      ‘Not exclusively,’ Rafe corrected her solemnly.

      Tess’s puzzled frown encountered the sensual, amused gleam in his eyes; a few seconds later heat washed over her as the meaning of his smutty innuendo hit home.

      ‘You always did have an overdeveloped opinion of your own abilities.’ She aimed for amused but tolerant and almost made it.

      Rafe heard the almost and grinned as he defended himself. ‘I’ve had some very positive feedback,’ he reflected innocently.

      Tess could imagine but she tried not to. ‘I don’t require references, glowing or otherwise. What time is it?’

      He told her and with a yelp she leapt out of bed. ‘Chloe and her boyfriend are coming this morning.’

      ‘What are you going to do—roll out the red carpet?’ he drawled.

      His critical tone really got under Tess’s skin. He made it sound as though she had a choice. ‘I know what I’m not going to do and that is resort to covert dirty tricks and manipulation.’

      ‘Have it your own way.’

      She shot him a sweetly malicious smile. ‘I will,’ she assured him calmly.

      ‘I don’t understand it,’ she continued fretfully as she pulled a motley assortment of garments from deep drawers in the heavy old mahogany chest. ‘Ben always wakes up before seven.’ She’d found that having a baby made her alarm clock redundant.

      Rafe’s hand shot out and he caught the latest garment she’d carelessly flung over her shoulder in the general direction of the bed. It turned out to be a flimsy bra. A passing glance told him his educated guess had been bang on size-wise.

      There had been a plus side to his sleepless speculation: he hadn’t thought too much about Claudine. An arrested expression crossed his face when he realised how little he’d been thinking about her.

      ‘Ben did look in earlier.’

      ‘He what…?’ she snapped, stomping towards the bed, hands on her hips.

      ‘I suppose he decided there wasn’t much room this morning,’ Rafe speculated, gazing at the narrow stretch of tumbled bed she’d just vacated. On impulse he reached out and felt the warmth that still lingered from her body on the cotton bed linen. ‘He tootled off. I did go check on him—he seemed happy playing with his toys so I left him to it.’

      She gazed at him incredulously. ‘Didn’t it occur to you he must have climbed over the bars of his cot?’ She’d known for some weeks that the cot’s days were numbered. Ben had been eyeing up the bars lately with a very determined eye, and she’d already foiled a couple of abortive escape attempts.

      ‘And that is…?’

      His laid-back approach was intensely irritating. ‘Dangerous!’ she snapped.

      ‘Well, he looked fine to me.’

      ‘I can’t believe you just let him wander around unsupervised! He could have fallen down the stairs!’ she cried out, her voice rising sharply in alarm.

      ‘Calm down, there’s a gate thing over the top of the stairs. I should know—I nearly killed myself trying to step over it while I was carrying you last night.’

      Tess gave a sigh of relief. That was Ben’s physical well-being sorted. There were other traumas. ‘He must have seen me in bed with you!’ she wailed.

      ‘What has got your knickers in a twist—the fact Ben saw you in bed with someone, or the fact that he saw you in bed with me?’

      Tess recognised immediately that there was some merit in what he said, only she’d have died before she admitted it to him or herself.

      ‘Like I said,’ Rafe continued, a shade of impatience creeping into his languid tone, ‘I hardly think the sight will have seriously corrupted his morals.’

      ‘That’s not the point, you should have woken me. Routine is very important for children.’

      ‘Remember to tell Chloe that, won’t you?’ Tess flinched and looked so stricken that he instantly regretted his cheap wisecrack. ‘I would have woken you if he’d seemed distressed. What are you going to do about Chloe?’ he asked her gently.

      He swung his long legs over the side of the bed and stretched. The light material of his shirt stretched taut across his broad chest and Tess looked hastily away.

      ‘What can I do?’ She did her best to resist the tide of helplessness that washed over her. ‘I’m going to remind Chloe that this thing has to be done slowly, sensitively, with as little disruption as possible. In fact, at Ben’s pace. It’s not like I won’t still be seeing him…’ There was a tell-tale little tremor in her voice as she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘He’ll visit, I’ll visit…I’ll be his favourite aunt…’ It wouldn’t get her very far if she let herself wallow in self-pity; being an aunt would have to be enough.

      ‘And you think she’ll agree to the cautious approach…?’

      Rafe watched as Tess’s delicate heart-shaped little face screwed up into a mask of iron determination.

      ‘She’ll agree, all right,’ she intoned grimly. Stern-faced, she picked up the bundle of clothes she’d selected en masse from the bed. ‘I take it you can find your own way out.’ Distractions she didn’t need and

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