Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick
So this sensation of almost drowning in sweet, drenching pleasure—was this unique to her? Did this dance feel like any other to Geraint Howell-Williams? Lola wondered. Because it sure as hell didn’t to her! At that moment, drifting in his arms, she felt as though she was starring in every love story ever written.
Love story?
Her adolescent little fantasies brought Lola back to her senses with a start, and as the number trailed off with one final, lingering throb of the saxophone she took a deep breath and looked up at him.
‘Th-thank you for the dance,’ she said falteringly.
The grey eyes were enigmatic as he dropped his hands from where they had been lightly holding her hips. ‘My pleasure.’
‘It’s time I was going.’
‘Sure?’
That was, thought Lola wryly, what they called a leading question. To be honest, she wasn’t sure—she would have liked to hang around and dance like that with him all night.
But a girl had her pride to think of. He was the kind of over-gorgeous man who had probably had things much, much too easy in the past. And Lola’s turning him down was almost certainly going to help his emotional development enormously! ‘Quite sure,’ she answered firmly.
He nodded his dark head. ‘Where do you live?’
Lola had only been a resident for the past six months, and she still had not worked out how to answer this particular question without giving in to the toe-curling embarrassment of having to explain how she’d actually come to own a house worth almost a million pounds.
People always jumped to such awful conclusions when they found out that a pensioner she hardly knew had left it to her!
‘I live here,’ she told him. ‘On the St Fiacre’s estate.’
‘I see,’ he murmured softly.
Lola searched his face for the tell-tale looks of surprise—but there were none.
She was still extremely sensitive about living in a house on the estate once termed ‘the Beverly Hills of England’ by some enterprising journalist—one where all the residents were not just rich, they were seriously rich.
Except for Lola, of course.
The rich had a look and a lifestyle all of their own, and Lola did not possess either! She looked exactly what she was—a working woman who needed a bit of clever juggling to pay her bills. Although, admittedly, a working woman who lived in an enormous house. A house which she was fast coming to the conclusion she was going to have to sell.
‘I’ll walk you back,’ he said.
‘No!’ It came out more vehemently than she had intended, but really! A walk home in the moonlight with a man like Geraint Howell-Williams? Agreeing to a dream scenario like that would simply be asking for trouble!
‘And why not?’ he asked coolly.
He was very persistent, she would say that for him, although she doubted that he had ever had to use persistence with a woman before! ‘Does there have to be a reason?’ she parried. ‘Or are you implying that no woman in her right mind would refuse an invitation to have you walk her home?’
He fixed her with a steady grey gaze. ‘Did you come here with another man tonight?’
‘Do you think that I would have been dancing like that with you if I had come with another man?’ Lola demanded, instantly growing flustered. Now why had she mentioned the way they had been dancing—especially when it made his eyes gleam with such a hot, exciting look?
‘I have no idea.’ He shrugged shoulders whose breadth was emphasised by the exquisite cut of his dinner jacket. ‘Who knows what hidden agenda a woman might have when she agrees to dance with a man?’
Or vice versa, thought Lola with amusement. ‘Such as?’
He plucked two glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waitress and handed one to Lola who took it without thinking. ‘Such as wanting to show off her figure in a clinging gown. That could easily apply to you...’
Lola, who had not intended to drink alcohol at all that evening, now took a huge, emboldening slug of the fizzy wine and was grateful for the warmth and the bravado it gave her. ‘This dress is not clinging!’ she declared, glancing down at the deep blue velvet.
There was smoky amusement in the grey eyes. ‘Oh, come on, Lola,’ he chided softly. ‘It probably wasn’t meant to be—but when you combine a sensual material like velvet with a Botticelli body clinging is what you get.’
‘You mean I look fat?’
‘I mean you look sensational,’ he murmured, sounding as though he meant it. ‘If you really want to know.’
Lola felt a rush of pleasure kick-starting at the pit of her stomach. This man whom she was trying so hard to dislike was flirting like mad with her, and right now she didn’t care!
Flustered, she swept a great handful of hair unnecessarily over her shoulder. ‘And what other reasons do women have for dancing with men?’ she queried, in an effort to stop him giving her that hungry look which was making her long to be kissed by him.
‘To make a boyfriend jealous, perhaps?’
‘But I haven’t got a boyfriend,’ said Lola instantly, and then could have kicked herself. There was no need to make herself sound as though she was desperate! Or on the shelf. Or both! ‘Not at the moment, anyway,’ she finished defiantly.
‘No,’ he said thoughtfully.
Lola found herself wishing that she could check her appearance somewhere. Was her nose shiny? Had her mascara smudged beneath her eyes? Was that why he was subjecting her to that highly disturbing, narrow-eyed scrutiny?
‘And there is, of course,’ he drawled, ‘the rather obvious reason why a woman agrees to dance with a man.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Oh, I think you know the answer to that one.’ He gave her a long, steady look.
Lola took the look as a challenge. ‘No, I don’t.’
The grey eyes glittered. ‘That she can’t resist him, of course. That she wants to be in bed with him... and dancing is a socially acceptable substitute for sex. Sublimation,’ he finished on a mocking note, and then, as if sensing her objection, added softly, ‘You did ask, Lola.’
He was right. Perhaps it had been naive of her. But then again, there were civilised ways of answering naive questions, weren’t there? The glass froze halfway to Lola’s lips. ‘Are you trying to shock me?’
‘Why?’ he mocked, and their gazes locked for a fraught and sexually charged moment. ‘Am I succeeding?’
Not in shocking her, no—he was exciting her by saying things he had no right to be saying. It was crazy, thought Lola, how a deep voice and a sexy body could turn a normally sensible girl’s brain to jelly! ‘No comment!’ she declared firmly. ‘And I’m definitely going now!’
‘Did you drive?’
‘No, I walked.’
‘Then I am going to walk you home,’ he said, and shook his dark head firmly as he saw her open her mouth to refuse. ‘Please, Lola,’ he urged, almost huskily. ‘It’s a dark night for a woman to be out on her own.’
It was years since a man had said something so delightfully chivalrous to her, although Lola usually associated chivalry with a certain kind of innocence—and innocence was not a word which suited Geraint Howell-Williams at all!
She tipped her chin up to look him in the eye, so that her hair spilled down in mahogany spirals all over her shoulders. ‘And which, out of interest, offers me more in the way of danger?’ she challenged. ‘The dark night? Or