LITMIR.BIZ

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leg on her knee sent a lightning zap of heat through her body. Hot. Searing. Scorching. So scorching she expected to look down and see a singed and smoking hole in her thick black tights.

      She stepped back once the customer had gone, pen poised pointedly. ‘Espresso? Water no ice?’

      ‘He’s your only living parent,’ Flynn said.

      Kat sent him a look that would have frozen mercury. ‘So? With relatives like him, lead me to the nearest orphanage. I’m checking in.’

      Something moved in his gaze as quickly as a camera-shutter click. But then his lazily slanted smile came back. ‘Are you going to get my coffee?’

      ‘Are you going to take no for an answer?’

      His eyes beneath those dark, winged brows roved her lips. Did he feel the same flicker of animal attraction deep and low in his belly? Kat could feel it now. The pulse of lust thrumming in her blood every time his dark eyes trapped hers, as if he too were thinking of what it would feel like to have her stripped naked and pinned beneath his body.

      Or against the kitchen bench.

      Be still her heart, her pulse, her giddy-with-excitement girly bits.

      Another customer came past, but this time Kat turned so her back was to Flynn. Big mistake. She could sense his gaze on her bottom, burning through the layer of her boring black uniform to the satin and lace secrets beneath. She turned and carefully masked her features, but even so she could feel the warmth glowing in her cheeks.

      ‘What are you doing for dinner this evening?’

      Kat put her hands on her hips, anchoring her resolve in case it took it upon itself to quit its shift. ‘I suppose this is a rarity for you? A woman actually having the willpower to say no to you?’

      The glint in his eye made something in her stomach swoop. ‘Nothing I like more than a challenge. The harder, the better.’

      Joe came up carrying a tray of coffees. ‘Kathy, are you working the floor or flirting with the customers?’

      ‘Sorry, Mr Peruzzi,’ Kat said. ‘This customer has a...a complicated order.’

      ‘Tables seven and ten are waiting for their bills,’ Joe said. ‘And tables two and eight need clearing and resetting. I’m running a café, not a freaking dating agency.’

      Kat smiled sweetly even though her back teeth were glued together. ‘There isn’t a man inside this café I would be even remotely tempted to date.’

      Joe hustled past and Flynn said, ‘Would you be remotely tempted to serve them some coffee?’

      She held his mocking look with steely intent. ‘You won’t win this, Mr Carlyon. I don’t care how many jobs you make me lose. I will not be told what to do.’

      He leaned back in his chair as if he had all the time in this world and the next. ‘By the way, you were great in that toilet-paper ad,’ he said. ‘Very convincing.’

      Kat could feel her back molars grinding down to her mandible. At this rate, her dental hygienist would be charging a search fee. The only thing more humiliating than doing a job like that toilet-paper gig was having your worst enemy see it. ‘So, just the coffee, or would you like a full breakfast to clog your arteries?’

      He gave a low, deep chuckle that made the backs of her knees shiver. ‘I’ll have some cake.’

      Kat frowned. It was seven thirty in the morning. Who ate cake at that hour? ‘Cake?’

      ‘Yep.’ He winked at her. ‘And I’m going to eat it too.’

      * * *

      ‘What was that all about?’ Meg asked when Kat came back to the servery. ‘You’re so red I could cook table four’s buckwheat pancakes on your cheeks.’

      ‘I swear to God I’m going to explode if I have to go anywhere near that man,’ Kat said. ‘I seriously do not get what women see in him. So what if he’s good looking? He’s an arrogant jerk.’

      ‘I think he’s gorgeous.’ Meg’s expression had that whole star-struck thing going on. ‘He has such dark-brown eyes you can’t tell where his pupils begin and end.’

      Kat got out a large slice of devil’s food cake and liberally coated it with cream. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That should fix him. If that doesn’t give him a heart attack, nothing will.’

      ‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with his heart,’ Meg said. ‘He looks like he seriously works out. And he’s so tall. Did you see him stoop as he came in?’

      ‘I suppose he has to be that tall to allow room for all that ego,’ Kat muttered, picked up the coffee and made her way back to his table.

      ‘Here you go.’ She placed the plate, the coffee and the glass of water in front of him.

      Flynn cocked an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you going to give me a cake fork?’

      Kat rounded her eyes in mock surprise. ‘Oh, you actually know how to eat with cutlery, do you? I would never have guessed.’

      His lopsided smile did that swoop and dive thing to her belly. ‘You should be onstage.’

      ‘Yeah, well, that’s the plan.’

      ‘So how’s that going for you?’

      Kat wasn’t going to tell him anything about her audition in a few days’ time in the West End. The AR Gurney play Sylvia couldn’t have come along at a more opportune time. It was one of her favourite plays and she knew deep in her bones she was right for the part of the dog Sylvia. Audiences worldwide loved the notion of a human playing a dog. If she landed the role and did it well, it could launch her career. She wanted the part on her own merit, not because of whose DNA she shared. She didn’t trust Flynn not to leak something to Richard Ravensdale, who might then open doors she wanted to open with her own talent.

      ‘I’ll go and get that fork for you.’ She gave Flynn a tight smile. ‘Or would you like a shovel?’

      His eyes held hers with implacable intent. Hinting at an iron will that was energised, excited, exhilarated by the mere whiff of a challenge. ‘I’d like to see you tonight.’

      ‘Not going to happen,’ Kat said. ‘I have an appointment with a cat and a fur ball.’

      That glint was back in his eyes. ‘I didn’t know you had a cat.’

      ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve picked up a new house-sitting job. The agency I work for occasionally rang me this morning. The person they had for the post had to pull out at short notice due to a family crisis. Apparently the cat is one of those ones that are too precious to go to a boarding centre. It has—’ she put her fingers into air quotes ‘—issues.’

      ‘How long will you be house-sitting?’

      ‘A month.’

      ‘Where in London?’

      Kat gave him a cynical look. ‘Why would I tell you? You’d be on my doorstep day and night pestering me to meet my sperm donor.’

      The corner of his mouth tipped up in an enigmatic smile. ‘So, I guess I’ll see you when I see you.’

      Not if I can help it. She swung around and stalked back to the kitchen.

      * * *

      Flynn’s gaze followed that deliciously pert behind until it disappeared into the servery. The thrill of the chase had always excited him but this chase was something else. Kat Winwood was hot. Flames, flares, and hissing and spitting fireworks hot.

      It was amusing to set the bait and sit back and wait for her to take it. She pretended to hate him. To loathe the ground he walked on, the space he occupied. The air he breathed.

      But behind the fiery flash of her green-grey gaze he could see something else. Something she was at great

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