LITMIR.BIZ

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hissing gasp through his clenched teeth. Then to her dismay grinned. His blue eyes danced with mockery as he asked, ‘Is that where you are expecting to end up…?’

      Wondering when she was going to stop blurting out the first thing that came into her head, Fleur willed her fiery cheeks to stop burning.

      ‘I would prefer to spend the night in this place—’ she tipped her head in the direction of the big building behind them ‘—and you know how much I love hospitals.’

      Antonio didn’t dispute her angry claim. ‘They tell me they are letting you go home?’ His grin faded as his glance dropped to her leg.

      She nodded, relieved that he had dropped the subject of his bed, then stiffened. ‘They should not have been telling you anything.’

      Irritatingly her annoyance seemed to amuse him. ‘I promise they did not reveal any medical details. I don’t even know if you had stitches?’

      ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘And a tetanus shot. You were right.’

      ‘I usually am.’

      ‘Infallible and modest.’ He would have been even smugger if he had heard the doctor tell her that a fraction deeper and a tendon would have been severed.

      Her comment drew a grin from him, this time it seemed more tired than sardonic.

      ‘Do you have to come back to the clinic?’

      ‘No, they topped up my tetanus cover and gave me an antibiotic jab.’ She shook the paper bag in her hand. ‘Painkillers.’ Which she did need; now the local had worn off her leg was aching with a vengeance. ‘And I can go back to my GP to have them taken out. So I’m sorted. How’s Tamara?’

      Antonio visibly tensed at the name. ‘They’re keeping her in overnight,’ he said abruptly.

      ‘But she’s…’

      ‘They say she’ll be fine, but—’ his eyes swept across her upturned features and a disturbing expression slid into his eyes ‘—you already know that, don’t you?’

      Fleur stiffened and looked up at him warily through her lashes. ‘I do…?’ Overplaying the innocence big time, mocked the voice in her head.

      ‘The nurses mentioned our visitor,’ Antonio revealed, stretching one arm above his head and rotating first one shoulder and then the other to relieve the knots of tension in his spine and shoulders.

      A distracted expression slid across Fleur’s face as she imagined the things going on under his shirt…Things like taut muscle rippling beneath satiny golden skin. A hoarse sound escaped her throat as she lowered her eyes and grunted. ‘Why do you automatically assume that was me?’

      ‘The interesting limp, blond hair and golden eyes were clues,’ he revealed drily.

      Her eyes flew upwards. ‘They did not notice what colour my eyes were!’ she scoffed.

      ‘No, but I did.’

      His eyes locked onto hers and as she registered the explicitly sensual gleam Fleur’s stomach took a diving lurch. ‘I thought I’d look in,’ she admitted, tugging at the neckline of her borrowed top.

      One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But changed your mind?’

      ‘I got as far as the door, but…’

      ‘You saw me,’ he inserted drily. ‘Were you worried I would kiss you again?’

      Hoped. The colour in her cheeks perceptibly heightened. Fleur shrugged while fighting to contain her growing panic. ‘Not really. I thought I was quite safe from your unwanted attentions in front of your daughter.’

       ‘Unwanted…?’

      She squared her jaw. ‘You think I enjoy being mauled by strange men?’

      ‘I can’t speak in general, but if we’re talking specifics—’

      Fleur, who didn’t want to talk specifically or any other way about that kiss in the car, cut across him with a high-pitched, ‘I just didn’t want to intrude.’

      The muscles around his mouth quivered as his lips compressed into a hard line. ‘An intrusion might have been welcome.’

      ‘Well, it’s good that there was no real harm.’ At least not to Tamara. Fleur was less sure that she could claim the same, and she wasn’t thinking about her leg! ‘Are you staying here tonight?’

      ‘They said there’s not much point—they gave her something to help her sleep—but I will anyway,’ he said, flexing his shoulders once more before shoving his hands back into his pockets.

      ‘Then you couldn’t take me home, could you?’ she pointed out. ‘Unless your talents include the ability to be in two places at once.’

      ‘The idea was I take you home and then come back.’

      Get in a car with him again…It would be like an alcoholic getting a job in a distillery! Accepting you have a problem is the first step, Fleur, she told herself. And, oh, boy, do I have a problem!

      ‘There’s absolutely no need, and anyway you wouldn’t want to risk Tamara waking up and you not being there.’

      ‘I seriously doubt if seeing my face when she wakes up would speed her recovery. But then you already know that too, don’t you? You’ll have such a lot to tell your friends.’

      ‘I’m not a gossip and I didn’t ask to be a witness to your private family arguments,’ she reminded him, stung by the suggestion she couldn’t wait to rush out to share his secrets with the world. Why exactly had he shared them with her? ‘And, frankly, I’ve got enough problems of my own without sharing yours.’

      ‘You didn’t ask to be kissed either, but you enjoyed that.’ His eyes skimmed over her face and his voice dropped a husky octave as he added a husky, ‘So did I.’ His long lashes swept upwards from the angle of his chiselled cheekbones as his blue eyes meshed with hers.

      ‘You sound surprised,’ she observed huskily.

      His brows lifted as he looked struck by her remark. ‘I suppose I was,’ he admitted.

      ‘Because I look like someone who doesn’t know how to kiss.’

      This spiky comment drew a laugh from Antonio. The uninhibited and extremely attractive sound made several people look curiously in their direction. It made Fleur’s hopelessly receptive stomach muscles quiver frantically.

      ‘With that mouth…’ The last traces of laughter faded from his face as his glance came to rest on the lush outline. ‘You could not fail to be a good kisser. That mouth,’ he said, staring at it hard, ‘was made for kissing.’

      Not surprisingly Fleur, who was standing there with her feet nailed to the floor with dark waves of sheer longing lapping around her ankles, couldn’t think of a suitably glib retort.

      The perplexed pucker that pleated his forehead deepened. ‘No, it was my reaction that surprised me,’ he admitted, still staring at her mouth.

      I really wish he wouldn’t.

      ‘The last time I made love in a car I was in my teens.’

      ‘Knowledge I could have lived without.’ But not for the reason her caustic tone suggested.

      In her head she could see female hands sliding under his shirt and along the smooth golden skin of his strong, supple back just the way she had wanted her to.

      ‘Around you my control is…not good,’ he revealed with admirable understatement. Around her he had less control than a kid deluged by the first rush of male hormones.

      ‘And we did not make love!’ That had only happened in her head and, though her mind was pretty messed up, she could still differentiate between what was real and what was a figment of her feverish imagination.

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