LITMIR.BIZ

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day to ask Fleur’s advice. Normally she was only too happy to put in extra time, but today she wanted to go home and escape all the curious eyes.

      By the time she finally made it to the staff car park hers was the only car left. She dug into the pockets of her coat and came up empty, so, shoving her bag on one hip, she scrabbled inside for her elusive car keys and discovered everything but. Impatient, she resorted to emptying the entire contents of her capacious bag on the top of the car bonnet and almost immediately saw her keyring—saw it a second before it slid to the ground and then in slow motion vanished down the grating of a drain.

      Fleur lifted her hands to her head and released a cry of sheer disbelief before dropping down to her knees, oblivious to the fact her coat was dragging on the wet ground. Through the grating she could see what might have been the glint of metal. She tried to move the heavy covering, but accepted it was futile after a few seconds. The darned thing was lodged tight.

      She brushed her grubby fingers together and sat back on her heels.

      ‘Great, the perfect end to a perfect day!’ She heaved a sigh and felt the prickle of self-pitying tears sting her eyelids. ‘Someone really doesn’t like me—’ She broke off as a pair of shiny shoes came into view.

      And here was someone else who didn’t like her.

      ‘Are you stalking me?’ She had to raise her voice above the deafening thud of her accelerated heartbeat.

      ‘I have come to apologise.’

      Breathless excitement was not the reaction of a sane person to the voice of a man she loathed. But then sanity had nothing to do with the things she felt around Antonio!

      ‘Apology accepted, now go away,’ she grunted without lifting her eyes from foot level.

      ‘Earlier—’

      ‘Does the word grapevine mean anything to you? Have you any idea of how many versions of earlier are circulating by now? Until today when I walked down the corridor nobody stared or whispered.’ Actually not everyone was whispering! ‘And I have to tell you that was the way I liked it. Living your life in a goldfish bowl may appeal to you, but some of us enjoy our privacy.’

      An expression of incredulous disbelief washed over Antonio’s face as he stared at the top of her silky head. In his experience women were all too aware of the effect they had on the opposite sex.

      ‘If you thought you ever faded into the background you are totally deluded.’ His hands clenched at his sides as he visualised those anonymous eyes covetously following her every move.

      The tug Fleur had been fighting became impossible to resist, and her eyes were drawn upwards until they reached his dark face. Back-lit by the hard pale light of the overhead security light, his face looked all fascinating angles and intriguing hollows.

      He looked dangerous and complicated and sinfully gorgeous—he was all three. Their eyes locked and a sharp illicit thrill chased along her receptive nerve endings.

      Her throat felt achy and raw as she protested, ‘I’m not deluded!’

      ‘You’re—!’ His eyes slid from hers. ‘Fine, you’re not deluded,’ he acceded, sounding as if he was bored with the entire subject.

      His patronising attitude really got under Fleur’s skin. ‘Don’t humour me. I’m not a child.’

      ‘But if you’re not deluded you just live in some sort of alternative universe.’ He subjected her face to a feature-by-feature inspection before explaining in a husky voice that sent a tingle all the way down to her toes, ‘Because, believe me, in this world men do not not notice a woman who looks the way you do.’

      ‘I’m ordinary,’ she protested.

      ‘Your skin is totally flawless.’ Fleur froze as he squatted down to her level. Her eyes half closed as he ran his finger down the curve of her cheek. ‘And,’ he rasped in a mesmerising whisper, ‘like silk.’

      ‘Very funny.’ Her breath coming in a series of choky, uneven little gasps, she turned her head to break the debilitating contact.

      ‘Have I mentioned your mouth?’

      His voice gave a whole new meaning to seductive; the husky rasp was positively sinful. Her eyelashes lifted off her cheeks as she directed a defiant look at him.

      She touched her fingers to her lips, exhilarated and scared all at once, and heard herself ask, ‘What’s wrong with my mouth?’

      She felt rather than heard the primal rumble in his chest as he inhaled sharply and answered huskily, ‘Not a thing.’

      Before she had time to do anything but lift her passionglazed eyes to his he suddenly stiffened and barked, ‘Get up! Por Dios, woman, I’m not made of stone. I can’t think with you down there. Or, rather,’ he added with a self-derisive sneer, ‘I can think.’

      Her mind computed the thing he might be thinking and her inner temperature jumped by several degrees.

      Her eyes widened in protest as he grabbed her arm and hauled her bodily to her feet. Gritting her teeth, Fleur looked pointedly from his face to the fingers encircling her upper arm and back again. He ignored the message.

      ‘I’ve apologized. What do you want me to do?’ he demanded.

      Kissing me would be good. As she looked at his mouth things inside her melted some more. So don’t look! Her lashes came down over her eyes as she tore her eyes from the sensual curve of his lips. It was time she took back some control.

      Fleur couldn’t fight him and her own compulsion to lean into him, to let her body melt into his hardness. So she let his fingers stay where they were and tried not to think about the heat of his sleek, hard male body.

      ‘Going away would be good, for starters,’ she returned, her voice as cool as her body was hot. ‘After all, there is no one around and half the fun of calling someone a calculating bitch is having people hear you do it.’

      In the shadows the colour along his chiselled cheekbones deepened.

      ‘I spoke with Tamara…’

      ‘Great! Though,’ she added bitterly, ‘it might have been even greater if you’d done that before you barged in accusing me—’

      ‘She explained things more clearly.’

      ‘The way I tried to. I suppose she tried to as well, but you probably didn’t listen to her any more than you listened to me. You heard what you wanted to and you wanted to believe that I’m a conniving bitch. What’s wrong, Antonio—was I getting too close?’

      Fleur, who was staring fixedly at the floor, did not see his face as her shot in the dark hit home.

      ‘I do not—’ He broke off, loosing an impatient curse as he cupped her chin in one hand and dragged her face up towards his. ‘It is very difficult to talk to the top of someone’s head.’ His eyes flickered to her head as he lifted a section of silky blonde hair from her nape and let it slide through his long brown fingers.

      His lips quirked into a quick self-derisive smile as he let his hand fall away. It came to rest on the curve of her hip.

      If anyone saw them they would look like lovers embracing. The shocking idea sent a shameful rush of heat through Fleur’s body. She released the breath trapped in her lungs in a series of controlled little gasps and told herself firmly, This has to stop!

      ‘As I was trying to say, I do not always act as rationally around you as I might.’ She heard the sardonic inflection in his voice and heard him add in an odd voice, ‘But then we both know why that is…so I might have overreacted.’

      ‘Might…? You think?’ The puzzled expression in her eyes deepened. ‘What do we both know?’

      ‘We both know that it’s not easy to maintain objectivity when you’re dealing with someone you can’t look at without

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