Читать книгу Greek Mavericks: His Christmas Conquest - Люси Монро, Люси Монро, Cathy Williams - Страница 11

SOPHIE looked at Theo’s dark shuttered face and wondered where this strange urge to spill all her worries was coming from.

The man did not exude natural sympathy. In fact, she had to remind herself that he was a writer because he didn’t embody any of the characteristics she associated with being in a creative profession.

But, right now, the world seemed to be on top of her shoulders. There seemed to be no end to the invoices and bills she was discovering by the minute and her father’s cavalier approach to filing meant that there was the looming spectre of yet more debts waiting in the wings. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss the situation with anyone she knew. Her friends from college would sympathise but really their heads would be somewhere else and, anyway, she hadn’t seen them for ages.

And confiding in anyone in the village, even some of the people she had grown up with, would have been a huge mistake. She was determined to protect her father’s reputation and not reveal the extent of his financial troubles.

Of course there was Robert. Sophie frowned at the thought of him. Theoretically he presented the perfect shoulder on which to cry, but for some reason she fought shy of confiding in him. To his credit, he didn’t try and force her and a couple of times had even made it clear that he would be there for her, that however great the financial mess, he had savings and would bail her out.

It almost felt treacherous to be staring into Theo’s enigmatic green eyes now, insanely tempted to pour her heart out. Robert would feel utterly betrayed.

But then Robert was too much of a fixture in her life. The advantage with Theo was that he would be gone in a matter of weeks and with him anything she said. There wouldn’t even be a temptation to keep in touch with him because she didn’t particularly care for him. In a sense, that, too, made it easier.

‘You’ve listened to a lot of other people’s problems, have you?’ Sophie asked with a wry smile.

‘It’s not usually something I encourage.’

‘I thought you said that you were a good listener.’

‘I am. Which isn’t to say that I encourage people to pour out their problems to me.’

‘Thank you for telling me that. It’s just the right thing to make me feel at ease.’ Extraordinarily, she did feel stupidly relaxed. ‘Why don’t you like people pouring out their problems to you?’

‘Because most people like advice, they like solutions. They want to be told what their next difficult step might be and no one can advise anyone else on what they should do to sort themselves out. So, to avoid being called upon to do that, I prefer to refrain from putting myself in the firing line, so to speak.’

‘Sometimes it just helps to talk,’ Sophie said slowly.

‘And, as I said, I’m willing to listen.’ He had never talked about Elena. At her funeral, he had been surrounded by sympathetic well-wishers. He had been positively drowning under the torrent of well-meaning compassion. But at no point had he felt inclined to talk to anyone about what he was going through. Not even his mother could penetrate the defence system he’d erected like a steel cordon around his emotions.

His emotions, like everything else in his life, he could take care of by himself.

‘Didn’t you know that your father was in debt? Is that the problem?’

‘Part of it,’ Sophie admitted. ‘Do you mind if I help myself to another glass of wine? I’m not accustomed to discussing my private life with other people.’

Theo felt a strange sense of satisfaction that he had got it right about this aspect of her personality. It seemed to him an almost masculine trait because, in his experience, there wasn’t a woman alive who didn’t enjoy discussing every small facet of whatever happened to be flitting through her mind.

It was reassuring to think of his landlady in those terms. Masculine, brusque, quick to bristle, never mind the stubby girlish plaits or the soft pink of her cheeks as she glanced away from him.

‘There’s nothing less private than a financial mess,’ Theo said dryly.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because it always needs cleaning up and it’s almost impossible to hide the cleaning up tools once you set to work.’

‘Don’t say that!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t want my father’s reputation to be ruined. I don’t want him to be remembered as the man who left a mess for his daughter to sort out. I don’t want to be an object of pity.’

‘No.’ Theo could certainly understand that one. ‘So how big is the mess?’

‘I honestly don’t know where to begin. Dad was the most disorganised person in the world. He has notes scribbled on pieces of paper in places no one would think of looking. Just yesterday I found a file stuffed at the back of the sofa in the sitting room above the office.’

‘Which your father used…?’

‘Oh, when he was very busy into the night reviewing something or other. Which is another problem. I don’t actually understand a lot of what’s in his files so I don’t know whether to bin them or not. Robert’s been good helping me go through them, but there are just so many!’

‘Tell me about Robert.’

‘Why?’

‘How does he fit into the dynamics?’

‘He worked with my father, off and on, so to speak. He’s a trained pharmacist as well. I think he saw my dad as something of a mentor and, in the absence of a son to carry on the profession, Dad was pleased to have Robert tagging along over the past few years, especially as I’ve been away a lot of the time, going to university and doing my teacher training.’

‘So the two of you go back a long way?’

‘I guess so,’ Sophie said in a guarded voice.

Theo’s curiosity cranked into gear and, with it, his age-old talent for reading members of the opposite sex. He had always been able to sense what the slight change in body posture meant, the barely noticeable shift in tone, the quick glance. It was a talent that had spent the past eighteen months getting rusty.

‘Why do I sense a certain reticence on your part to discuss him? Normally when it comes to women that usually implies a relationship there and more often than not sex is involved. Is it?’

Sophie stared at Theo, stupefied.

‘Just an observation,’ he murmured, looking down at his empty glass and lazily reaching for the bottle of wine which Sophie had thoughtfully placed on the table in front of him. A thread of adrenaline seared through his blood.

The highly charged emotion of winning an important deal or even taking a life or death risk with his life, as he had done on the dangerous black run a few weeks back, faded into insignificance as he looked at her face.

He felt shamefully but guiltily alive. He knew that if circumstances had been different, if he had been in London, he would have resented her for awakening his ability to feel, but down here things seemed different. He had a different persona, just a man caught in a bubble in which reality was not much of an intrusion. He had no demands from the people he knew, no colleagues or clients to inspire, no familiar faces staring at him from the sidelines of his predictable run of social gatherings, most of which he ignored but a few of which he roused himself to attend.

No, here he was a mystery author who had no past and no future. There were no expectations on his shoulders. In a few weeks he would pack his bags, get his driver down and return to his normal life.

In the meantime he could be whoever the hell he wanted to be.

Anonymity had never smelled sweeter.

‘Financial problems usually involve more than one player. Hence my curiosity as to where this Robert character fits in. He probably knows a hell of a lot more than you think about your father’s debts. Are you sure they’re all to do with his work? If he and this boy were close, you might want to consider that he may have been forking out money to him, treating him like a son who might need bailing out now and again…Or maybe this so-called old friend of yours has been taking money out of the till, hence his enthusiasm to help you out now. One way of making sure that he gets his hands on anything that involves him…’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Sophie laughed shortly, allowing herself not to be poleaxed by his provocative suggestions about Robert. It was just good not to be lying in bed worrying and the fact that she didn’t like him much was even better for her because it meant that she could be herself. If he had disliked her attitude so much he would have left the cottage within minutes of being subjected to her first tirade but in some part of her she knew that he would just have written it off as unconventional behaviour and, from what she could see, he looked as though he exhibited quite a bit of that himself.

‘And how do you happen to know about financial players, whatever that means?’

‘I know about a lot of things,’ Theo said smoothly. ‘Certainly enough to be highly suspicious when it comes to anything to do with money.’

Sophie opened her mouth to level something sarcastic at that sweeping piece of self-flattery, but thought better of it. She realised that he probably did know about a lot of things. ‘There are no players,’ she found herself saying, smiling in fact at the thought of her father being some kind of crazed, criminal puppet master with accomplices lurking behind every door. Or, even more comical, good-natured Robert cunningly sneaking money from the till.

‘What’s so funny?’

‘The thought of my father engaged in underhand wheeler-dealing. And Robert isn’t some kind of dastardly accomplice who’s stitched up the books.’ She sighed heavily. ‘No, the truth is much simpler. My father loved experimenting. He was born to live life in a lab. It used to drive my mum mad. He experimented and wrote his notes and ordered his substances and there are records of some and records of others and paperwork that keeps popping up from every nook and cranny. That’s what we’re doing at the office—trying to go through all of it and tie it up into bundles. Problem is, there’s paperwork in this house as well. I know it. And in the flat above the office. And Lord knows where else! And Robert is just trying to help me put it all in order.’

‘How thoughtful of him,’ Theo murmured. The woman must be half blind not to spot the fact that the man was more than halfway to being in love with her.

He looked at her. Really looked at her. The slant of her body as she leaned forward in the chair. The combat trousers, he had to admit, looked a little sexy on her, probably because she was so slender, and under the cream jumper he was very much aware of the soft mounds of her breasts. Suddenly and painfully aware. After such a long haul of self-imposed celibacy, fierce heat slammed through Theo’s body like a sledgehammer. He crossed his legs, doing his best to ensure that his suddenly obvious physical response wasn’t visible.

He was aware that she was telling him about her father, about his habits. She obviously hadn’t heard his sarcastic rejoinder about Robert and, for the time being, Theo was more than happy to listen to her talk, anything to give his body an opportunity to get back to normal.

He tried to conjure up Elena’s face. No luck. The urgency of his response was too powerful. He placed one hand flat on his thigh and fidgeted uncomfortably.

‘Are you all right?’ Sophie asked, concerned. ‘Am I boring you?’

‘Not at all,’ Theo muttered. His eyes strayed down to her thighs. She was sitting on her hands and when she leaned forward like that…He just knew that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

He just managed to control the groan that threatened to escape.

‘I could go…’

‘No!’ He waved her down, even though she hadn’t stood up. ‘No. Look, why don’t you stay and have some dinner with me? There’s stuff in the fridge. Catherine has been very diligent about…making sure that I don’t go hungry. At any point.’

‘I don’t know…’ She thought of the meal for one waiting back at the flat for her. Robert had invited her out to dinner, but she had refused the offer on the grounds of exhaustion. And she really had been exhausted an hour ago. Where it had gone was a mystery.

‘Okay,’ she said, making her mind up. ‘But I won’t stay for very long. It’s been a tiring week.’ She stood up, expecting him to follow suit.

‘You…go ahead…I’ll join you in the kitchen in a short while. I’m just going to…have a quick shower…’

‘Now?’

‘Seize the moment,’ Theo said. He waited until she had left the room before heading to his bedroom, taking the stairs and exhaling a long sigh of relief when he was safely ensconced in the bedroom.

He hadn’t felt this horny since he was a teenager and he was far from proud of himself. The cool water took a while to take effect but at least he felt in control once again when he strolled downstairs to find her in the kitchen and the table set.

Sophie looked up at him and her heart skipped a beat. His hair was still damp and he had changed into some beige trousers and a baggy white T-shirt that brought out the drama of his colouring.

‘You haven’t let me forget that this is your cottage,’ Theo said, fetching another bottle of wine from the fridge and pouring them both fresh glasses, ‘but it still seems strange to walk into the kitchen and find the table set.’ He wished to God that he hadn’t asked her to stay. Now that he was back in control of himself, he could feel a bitter resentment simmering inside him at the way his body had betrayed him. And the whole domestic scene laid out before him, while it was hardly her fault, only made matters worse.

What was he doing? His body was responding like a dog on heat to a woman whose personality left him cold.

‘It would seem odd to me not to set it,’ Sophie replied. She turned away hurriedly and began prodding the chicken, which she had transferred from a casserole dish to a frying pan. ‘I apologise for making myself at home…’

‘In your own home?’ Theo laughed shortly, watching how her slim shoulders stiffened.

‘While there’s a tenant in the cottage, it’s no longer my home. It’s just bricks and mortar to look after so that no problems arise with the fabric of the house.’ She reluctantly turned around and leaned against the counter top, arms folded. ‘Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea,’ she continued awkwardly. ‘You should have eaten your chicken on your own and I should have gone out to dinner with Robert.’

Theo afforded her a swift look but she wasn’t looking at him. She was frowning and staring into the distance. He had an insane impulse to drag her back to the here and now, which was dinner with him. ‘You should be careful of that man,’ Theo murmured and at first he wasn’t sure if she had even taken in what he had said but, sure enough, after a few seconds Sophie looked at him in open astonishment.

The familiar anger flooded into her and she had never been happier to feel an unpleasant emotion. Earlier on there had been moments of breathless confusion that had had her floundering and uncertain. She glared at him.

‘Do I need to ask why or will you tell me anyway?’

‘Okay, he may not be a crook, but I’ve met men like him before…’

‘Oh. And would that be in the fascinating world of literature?’

Theo ignored the interruption. ‘They’re insecure, hesitant, desperate for a bit of love. They’re the ones who marry the first woman they meet so that they can retire from the headache of the chase. Basically, they’re losers.’

‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life! Robert isn’t a loser.’

‘Sadly, men like that,’ Theo mused, disregarding her heated objections, ‘usually go for a strong-willed woman, much like yourself…’

‘I’m not even going to pretend to be listening.’ She turned and stuck the rice into the microwave, pushing the numbers hard to drown out the sound of his voice. Not that he was saying anything. At the moment. He was looking at her. She could feel his eyes boring through her top and the sensation was like having her breasts touched by him, a feathery soft caress that made her redden.

For some reason she wished she had worn a bra, but then she hadn’t expected to be staying on for dinner—just fixing the heating and clearing off—and it was comfortable not having her breasts constrained. Although she was slight in build, she was not flat chested. The opposite, in fact. She now felt the weight of her generous breasts bouncing under the loose jumper, swaying as she dished out the food.

‘Dinner,’ she said flatly, nodding to his plate and sitting down at the kitchen table opposite him.

‘And the end of our conversation, I take it?’

Sophie watched him, hunkered over his plate, eating the chicken with his fork, every inch the kind of alpha male who could walk into a room and have the ladies swooning. She would have to be as thick as a plank of wood not to realise that the man’s massive ego and staggering self-assurance would have come from the power he probably exerted over the opposite sex. Did he think that his extraordinary looks somehow qualified him to be a judge of what made other people tick? Whatever he said, she couldn’t believe that his contact with the rest of the world was particularly huge, never mind how many books he had had published in the past. Writing was a solitary profession. Yes, if he wrote real adventures about real people, then he would have to interview them, but after that he would be on his own, transcribing. Transcribing at a desk somewhere in London certainly didn’t qualify him to offer advice on one of her closest male friends.

She wondered whether he assumed that she must be completely ignorant of the opposite sex, living in this backwater as she did.

Suddenly, Sophie felt an unusual protective urge towards Robert. She thought of his little kindnesses recently and bitterly resented Theo’s sweeping assumption that he could insult the man without compunction.

‘You can say what you like about Robert, but he’s gentle and kind and considerate. In fact…’ she allowed a few seconds of silence to stress the importance of what she was going to say ‘…he’s even offered to help bail me out of this financial mess…’

‘Really,’ Theo drawled.

‘Really.’ Sophie shot him a smug little smile, which he greeted by raising his eyebrows in apparent amusement.

‘Maybe he just wants to get you into bed and buttering you up with an offer he knows you’ll probably refuse seems the quickest way.’

Sophie recovered quickly. ‘Maybe that’s it. Although maybe I wouldn’t need buttering up to get into bed with him…’ She gave a shrug which she hoped displayed the wealth of worldly wisdom which was definitely not at her disposal. Whether it was the wine or a combination of the wine and the dangerously intrusive conversation, she was beginning to feel heady. She was twenty-six years old and she couldn’t remember ever having a conversation like this before. The boys in her circle, most of whom were doing post grad courses, would never have dreamt of challenging her in this way. She didn’t know whether she liked it or not. And she didn’t know whether she liked the excitement that was fizzing in her veins as she met his stare. If someone had asked her what she was eating, she would have had to think about it, even though she had been the one to dish it up.

‘Somehow he strikes me as a bit too tame for a woman like you. Unless, of course, you like the role of dominatrix,’ Theo mused aloud, finishing his chicken and shoving the plate away from him. He leaned back into his chair and looked at her steadily. There was a little drop of sauce from the chicken on her chin, by her mouth, and he allowed himself the rogue thought of wondering what she would do if he covered the three steps towards her, bent down and licked it off.

Guilt followed hard on the heels of the wayward image, but there was none of that savage longing he had had in the past to hold on to the image of Elena. The steady drumming of rain outside, the bursts of wind clawing against the window panes, was like a lullaby, easing his tortured conscience, leaving him free to indulge himself in the sight of her playing with the food on her plate.

‘You’ve got some sauce on your chin.’

‘Oh!’ Sophie wiped it off and licked her finger. For some strange reason, Theo found the innocent gesture intensely erotic. The erection he had put to rest earlier on was once more reminding him that he was still a man and one with very real physical needs.

‘Mind you, if you don’t really know whether the man actually wants you or not, then his technique can’t be very persuasive…’ Theo murmured, returning to the conversation and enjoying the faint flush of colour that spread along her cheekbones. There was nothing masculine about that reaction, he thought. In fact, it was very, very feminine.

Before his body decided to do something of its own volition, he stood up and began clearing away the plates, insisting she stay put while he tidied.

‘I’m a twenty-first century man,’ he said, which was enough to make him grin. Dinosaur was one of the labels an ex-girlfriend from years back had once told him and certainly, however much he was in favour of equality of the sexes in the workplace, he still saw almost every chore to do with the house as something firmly planted in a woman’s domain. In fact, if he thought about it, he really couldn’t remember the last time he had ever done what he was now in the process of doing, namely clearing the dishes from a table after he had shared a meal with a woman.

In fact, thinking even harder on the matter, he realised that sharing a meal with a woman anywhere other than a restaurant or, at a push, her place, was not something that had ever been on his agenda. Women fussing in his kitchen had always made him feel slightly uneasy. Until Elena. Although…

Had she ever cooked for him? No—not enough time to enjoy the pleasures of domesticity before tragedy had taken her away. Their relationship had been frozen in the courtship stage.

Before he could travel down the usual inexorable path, he realised that Sophie was saying something about his twenty-first century man observation and in a particularly acerbic tone of voice, he realised.

‘What am I doing?’ he demanded, temporarily distracted. He brandished one plate in his hand and looked meaningfully at the sink.

‘You’re putting your dirty plate into the sink and you’ve been polite enough to take mine as well. I wouldn’t,’ she added with scathing sarcasm, ‘be too hasty to enter any Man of the Year competitions based on that…’

Before she could continue, Theo had swept round to face her and leant over her, bracing himself on the arms of her chair. He was so close to her, in fact, that she could see the golden specks in his eyes, was horribly aware of the thickness and length of his eyelashes, acutely conscious of the sexy contours of his mouth.

She was also very very conscious of her own body and the way it was shrieking in response. Her nipples, grazing the thick cotton of her jumper, had tightened into buds and every part of her seemed to be melting.

She could breathe him in. His uniquely clean male scent filled her nostrils and she blinked away the temptation to sigh and close her eyes.

‘And, in your opinion, what would qualify me to enter that Man of the Year competition…?’ Theo drawled. His eyes dropped to her heaving breasts and he hurriedly fastened them safely back on her face.

‘Not an ability to move a dish from one part of the kitchen to another…’

Theo grinned and then laughed softly under his breath. ‘What, then?’

Their eyes met and Sophie was sickeningly transfixed. Her heart was beating like a drum inside her, reverberating in her head and making her pulse race. In a minute she half expected to lose the power of speech completely.

If he would only give her a little more breathing room, she might be able to gather herself into the coherent, fairly unflappable young woman she had always considered herself to be. As it was, she could feel her face getting hotter and hotter and probably redder and redder as well.

He must have read her mind because, to her intense relief, he pushed himself away and fetched two mugs down from the cupboard. In her flurry of nerves, Sophie could hardly focus on resenting him for knowing his way around her house as well as she did.

Instead, clearing her throat, she told him that she had to be getting along.

‘I apologise if I made you feel awkward by stepping on your toes about your boyfriend…’

‘Robert is not my boyfriend! And, anyway, you didn’t make me feel awkward. I’m not completely green when it comes to men, you know.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ Sophie said firmly, before he decided to question her on the subject. She wouldn’t put it past him. His lines between interested and downright rude seemed to be very blurry.

She stood up, making sure to keep a healthy distance away from him. For a kitchen that had always seemed more than big enough, it suddenly felt claustrophobically small. ‘Shall I give you a hand with those dishes?’ she asked politely. She was pretty sure that he would leave them for Annie to do in the morning but reverting to her professional role of landlady went some distance to rescuing her from her muddled confusion.

‘And risk giving you an even bigger reason to accuse me of not being the perfect example of Modern Man…?’ Theo murmured, dragging a smile out of her. He folded his arms and leaned against the counter. He might, actually, wash the damned dishes. ‘I’m still interested in hearing your definition…’

‘Oh, it’s the same as any other woman’s…’

‘Some women like their men to be men…’

Sophie edged imperceptibly towards the kitchen door. ‘Are you sure you don’t mean cavemen?’ she asked caustically. ‘These days women like men who share everything, from household duties to bringing up the kids. They like men who aren’t afraid to cry and who are willing to admit when they’ve made a mistake…’

Theo struggled not to laugh. ‘Not all women…’he pointed out, moving towards her. He knew that he was flirting outrageously and it felt good. Reality was happening somewhere else but, here and now, there was just this. Feeling like a human being after months spent in a wilderness. He wasn’t about to forget that the wilderness was still there, waiting for him, but he could snatch this feeling of normality and enjoy it for a short while.

This woman was nothing to him and never could be. She was too forthright, too abrasive and too damned unpredictable. In the blink of an eye she went from being erotically feminine to aggressively unappealing.

Right now, one of the plaits was coming undone, which he had to admit looked quite cute.

Spotting his eyes on her hair, Sophie dragged the elastic bands off and ran her fingers through the blunt blonde mane. Plaits were no good. Not when she was trying hard to hold on to her sang-froid.

‘Maybe not the ones you mix with…’ Sophie retorted. She wondered what sort of women he mixed with and came up with an assortment of choices, all stunningly beautiful and probably very tall. A drop dead gorgeous man in a glamorous field of work and with a good bank balance, if his ability to meet the rent was anything to go by, would want a woman who could match him for style and looks.

‘Can you truthfully tell me that you prefer a sensitive man who gets excited at cooking the evening meal and weeps during sad movies?’

Sophie felt her mouth twitch and she stared down at her feet.

‘Maybe,’ Theo murmured slowly, ‘it works if you want a man who can sit with you in the evenings and do some cross stitch in between gossiping about the latest reality show on TV…’

Sophie was not going to give in to the temptation to laugh. She reminded herself of his ability to be as arrogant as hell, not to mention targeting her personal life and asking questions that were way out of line. Because he also had a wicked sense of humour when he chose, it just made him all the more infuriating.

She schooled her expression into one of thoughtful agreement. ‘Yes, companionship is always wonderful…’ she mused. ‘Obviously the cross stitching is taking it a bit too far, but a man who can cook—well, actually, I don’t think you’ll find too many women who would run screaming in the opposite direction from that…’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Theo drawled lazily. ‘Maybe it’s the women I’ve mixed with. They have fed me the illusion that what turned them on was strength of character…’

He flicked the tea towel in his hand over one shoulder and began to walk in her direction. Sophie very nearly yelped in sudden alarm.

She spun round on her heel, before her legs could let her down by turning to lead, and headed straight for the front door. She spoke with her back to him, rambling on about strength of character having nothing to do with whether a man was sensitive or not. She knew that he was right behind her, would be seeing her to the door so that he could lock it behind her. She reached the door and grasped the door knob just as Theo drew even with her.

There was a lingering scent of some light floral perfume on her. Theo could smell it very faintly. And her hair, no longer in plaits, was a mass of tiny waves falling softly around her face.

Typically, she was gabbling on in an argumentative manner about something or other, like an irate little terrier snapping angrily at nothing in particular. Theo grinned down at her just as she raised her eyes and she glared, on the verge of continuing her running disgruntled monologue.

‘If women want the sensitive, culinary type of man, then can I give you some advice…? Men want women who don’t rant all the time…’

Theo thought she might explode on the spot. This time he couldn’t help himself. He flung back his head and laughed and, God, did it feel good.

Sophie, rendered speechless, stared at him open-mouthed and was still staring at him when he finally sobered up.

‘Course,’ he murmured in a dangerously soft voice, ‘there is one foolproof way to stop a woman in mid-tirade…’

She should have sensed it but, even when he leant against the doorframe and lowered his head to hers, the feel of his mouth against hers was shockingly unexpected. She gasped and was driven back as he kissed her deeper, harder, with the urgency of a man denied physical contact for too long.

His body was pressed against hers and she was mindlessly aware of his erection. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, painful and sensitive and yearning for him to pull up her jumper and lave them with his tongue.

The full inappropriate horror of the situation hit her seconds after it hit him and Theo was the first to pull back, enraged with himself and filled with sudden savage self-disgust.

Worse than the lapse in his self-control was the knowledge that he had enjoyed every minute of that kiss, had wanted to do more.

‘Go…’ he rasped and Sophie frantically yanked open the door, shaking like a leaf.

He was aware of her leaving and knew that he had locked the door behind her. Somehow he found himself in his bedroom where, for once, his drift off to sleep was not preceded by a couple of hours on his laptop computer.

Events, whatever you wanted to call it, had taken him by surprise and now he would need to figure out what to do. Because if there was one thing Theo did not welcome in his life it was surprise. With surprises, in his experience, always came an element of the nasty and nasty was something he would ruthlessly excise from his life, whatever the cost…