LITMIR.BIZ

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time…’

      Stephanie stared at him furiously for several seconds. ‘Oh, just go away, will you?’ she finally huffed irritably. In all of her daydreams, all her fantasies about actually meeting Jordan Simpson, Stephanie had never once imagined herself telling him to go away!

      ‘I’ll take that to mean that you want time to think about what to cook me for dinner,’ Jordan said.

      Stephanie shot him another frowning glare, only breathing a sigh of relief once he had left the kitchen. She heard the sound of him whistling tunelessly to himself as he walked down the corridor and then shut the study door behind him seconds later.

      There had to be a way for Stephanie to get through to Jordan—to make him accept the professional help Lucan had hired her for. She just had no idea what it was!

      ‘Comfortable?’ Jordan asked sarcastically later that evening, as he entered the sitting room to find her curled up comfortably in one of the armchairs, the only illumination in the room coming from the warm and crackling fire she had lit in the hearth.

      ‘Very, thank you,’ she answered, and she sat up to swing her bare feet slowly to the floor, still wearing the dark green sweater and fitted jeans she had changed into earlier. ‘It isn’t seven o’clock yet, is it?’

      Jordan’s jaw tightened, and his eyes hooded to conceal their expression as he took in how the firelight picked out every amazing colour in Stephanie’s plaited hair. ‘I’ve worked long enough for now. How was your afternoon?’ He leant heavily on his cane as he came further into the room, the pain in his hip and leg from sitting down all afternoon making his tone harsher than he’d intended.

      ‘Boring,’ she admitted.

      He raised dark brows. ‘Boring?’

      She gave a shrug. ‘I’m simply not used to sitting around all day having nothing to do.’

      Boredom was something that Jordan knew a lot about, after the weeks he had spent in hospital in the States before coming here. ‘There’s lots of books in here you could have read. Or you could have gone for another walk. Or another swim,’ he added dryly.

      Stephanie gave a pained wince. ‘I’m not going back in the pool until you do.’

      ‘Then you’ll be waiting a long time,’ Jordan rasped, scowling as moved awkwardly to drop down into the armchair opposite hers, sighing in relief to be off his hip once again. He dropped his head back against the chair to turn and look at her. ‘Do you ever wear your hair loose?’

      Stephanie put a self-conscious hand up to the slightly untidy plait. ‘Not really.’

      ‘Then why bother to keep it long at all?’

      ‘I—I’ve never really thought about it.’ She frowned, very uncomfortable under the scrutiny of that piercingly narrowed gaze.

      Jordan looked predatory in the firelight, his eyes an amber glitter, every sculptured angle of his face thrown into sharp relief: the harsh slash of his cheekbones, the long aristocratic nose, his hard, sensual mouth, and the strong lines of his jaw darkened by a five o’clock shadow.

      Stephanie sensed a waiting stillness about him. A coiled expectancy much like a jungle cat poised to spring. With Stephanie as its prey!

      She stood up abruptly, needing to escape from all that leashed power for a few minutes, at least. ‘Would you like a glass of wine before dinner?’

      Jordan gave a brief smile. ‘I thought you would never ask.’

      Stephanie paused in the doorway. ‘You’re in pain again, aren’t you?’ She could see by the deepening of the grooves beside his eyes and mouth and the weary droop of his head that he was inwardly battling to keep that pain under his control rather than letting it control him.

      He shot her a hard look. ‘Just get the damned wine, will you?’

      She bit back her own angry retort, knowing by the dangerous glitter in Jordan’s eyes that now was not the time to argue with him on the subject of the pain he was suffering. Or the unsatisfactory method he chose to dull that pain. ‘Would you like red or white?’

      ‘That all depends what you’re making for dinner.’

      She shrugged. ‘I have potatoes and lasagne baking in the oven, and a salad made up and stored in the fridge.’

      ‘Red, then. Just go, will you, Stephanie?’ he urged fiercely as she still hesitated in the doorway. ‘When you come back I promise to try and do my best to make polite pre-dinner conversation.’ The harshness of his expression softened slightly.

      She looked sceptical. ‘About what?’

      ‘How the hell should I know?’ His snappy impatience wasn’t in the least conducive to polite conversation! ‘It’s been so long since I tried that I think I’ve lost the art of small talk.’

      Stephanie wasn’t sure he’d ever had it!

      Even as the charming and magnetically handsome Jordan Simpson, he’d been known as a man who didn’t suffer fools gladly—a professional perfectionist, with little patience for actors less inclined to give so completely of themselves.

      As Jordan St Claire, a man well away from the public limelight, he didn’t even attempt any of the social niceties, but was either caustic or mocking. That mood depended, Stephanie was fast realising, on the degree of pain he was in at the time. Right now she would say he was in a lot of pain.

      ‘I’ve never particularly enjoyed the shallowness of small talk, either,’ Stephanie told him.

      ‘Then I guess we’ll both have to work at it, won’t we?’ Jordan closed his eyes to lay his head back against the chair, his expression harsh and unapproachable.

      Or just pained…

      Stephanie was becoming more convinced by the moment that his hip and leg were more painful than usual this evening. She could see the effects of that pain in the dark shadows beneath those gold-coloured eyes, and in the way his skin stretched tautly over those high cheekbones and shadowed jaw. No doubt wine helped to numb that pain for a while, but it wouldn’t take it away completely.

      Even though she didn’t think drinking wine was the answer, she knew that Jordan accepting some sort of help to manage his pain was better than no help at all. So she turned on her heel and sped off to get some.

      ‘Here you are.’ Stephanie returned from the kitchen a few minutes later to hand Jordan one of the glasses of red wine she’d brought, and placed the bottle on the table beside him before carrying her own glass across the room and resuming her seat near the warmth of the fire. ‘So, what shall we talk about?’ she prompted after a few minutes of awkward silence.

      Jordan had sat up to drink half the glass of Merlot in one swallow, knowing from experience that it would take a few minutes for the alcohol to kick into his system and hopefully numb some of the pain in his hip and leg. ‘Why don’t you start by telling me about your family?’ He refilled his glass as he waited for her to answer.

      She raised surprised brows. ‘What do you want to know about them?’

      ‘You’re really hard work, do you know that?’ he growled.

      ‘And you aren’t?’

      ‘You already know about my family,’ Jordan pointed out. ‘Two brothers, both older than me, one by two years, the other by two minutes. End of story.’

      ‘What about your parents? Are they both still alive?’ Stephanie sipped her own wine more slowly.

      ‘Just my mother. She lives in Scotland,’ Jordan answered curtly.

      Stephanie seemed to expect him to say more on the subject. But Jordan had no intention of saying any more. He wasn’t going to tell her that his mother, the Duchess of Stourbridge, was desperately awaiting the marriage of her eldest son so that she could step back and become simply the Dowager Duchess.

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