Читать книгу Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals: Seduced into Her Boss's Service / Wearing the De Angelis Ring / The Surprise De Angelis Baby - Кэтти Уильямс, CATHY WILLIAMS, Cathy Williams - Страница 12
ОглавлениеSTEFANO STROLLED OVER to the French doors overlooking the garden and stared in the general direction of the swimming pool. It was darkening outside, the bright turquoise of the sky fading into violet and navy. Upstairs, Flora had taken herself off to change. He hadn’t seen her so animated since she had come to live with him. It wasn’t to do with him or a sudden interest in developing a father-daughter relationship. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that. She had been energised by the excitement of the afternoon because, no matter how surly, grown-up and serious she was, she was still too young to really appreciate the potential danger Sunny had been in.
He shoved his hand in the pocket of his beige casual trousers and frowned, recalling every word she had told him of her unfortunate childhood.
When he had told her that he didn’t know every person working in the law firm, he hadn’t been lying, just as he didn’t personally know every single person working in the legal department of his own company, but he knew enough to suspect that the majority of them had not had to struggle to get where they were.
They would mostly be the products of comfortable middle-class families, put through private schools or excellent state schools, brought up on a diet of holidays abroad and generous pocket-money allowances, more than enough to ensure that they didn’t have to hold down an extra job in a restaurant to pay the bills.
So what was he to do with this information?
The bottom line was that he fancied her but alongside that elemental physical reaction was the sobering thought that she wasn’t like the other women he dated. That, in itself, was inherently disconcerting. Add the relationship she had with his daughter and things moved from disconcerting to downright dangerously foolhardy.
But the more he saw, the more he wanted...
And would she go out with him at all anyway? Was she even interested? Was this physical urge that was making a mockery of his common sense even reciprocated?
She didn’t give off all the usual signals. There were no coy looks or glances held for slightly too long or little-girl helplessness designed to bring out his protective instinct. He didn’t know any other woman who would have gone into detail about a miserable, deprived childhood because no one would have seen that as the sort of light-hearted chit-chat which formed part and parcel of verbal foreplay.
And the way she always looked as though she couldn’t escape his company fast enough...
She wasn’t playing hard to get.
But she blushed...and there were times when there was the ghost of a vibe, some electrical current that he could feel passing between them...soft, subtle, barely there but there enough to make his blood run hot...
Was that why he couldn’t seem to get her out of his head? He’d wrapped up his work as quickly as he could earlier today, had delegated a great portion of it to Bob Coombes, one of his CEOs...and he knew he had done that because not only had he wanted to take advantage of the thaw in relations with his daughter, but because he had also wanted to see Sunny.
It was a weakness he didn’t care to acknowledge because he allowed himself no weaknesses when it came to women. It didn’t matter how sexy a woman was or how much he was interested in bedding her, there was always a part of him that knew he could, in the end, take it or leave it.
He’d never rushed work for any woman before. He hadn’t even rushed work for Alicia. In fact, had it not been for the pregnancy, Alicia would have been as temporary as all the women he had dated since his divorce.
But he’d found that he couldn’t wait to drive back to the house and surprising her in the swimming pool...
He felt the stirrings of an erection as he recalled the softness of her body against his, the teasing temptation of those stiffened nipples...
Deep in thought, he was hardly aware of Flora until she said, standing in the doorway, ‘Sunny’s here.’
Stefano smiled, turning. ‘You look very pretty, Flora.’
Flora frowned and he wondered whether the fragile truce was over now that Sunny was no longer on the scene as a third party and unwitting mediator.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said bluntly. ‘I’m too dark-skinned.’
Stefano looked at her narrowly. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
Flora shrugged and it reminded him of those evasive, dismissive shrugs that Sunny often produced when she had no intention of prolonging a conversation she wasn’t interested in having.
Had his daughter picked that up from Sunny? But no...he had noticed that trait before. Were there barely discernible similarities just below the surface, similarities that connected them, explained the way they had just clicked? And how could a child who had had it all be similar to a woman who had had nothing as a child?
‘Who told you that?’ he pressed and was met with another shrug.
‘Mum mentioned it now and again.’
‘Your mother...’ He inhaled deeply and held onto his daughter’s serious gaze. ‘You’re beautiful, Flora, and I’m not just saying that because I’m your...dad...’ He had to clear his throat. His voice sounded strangely gruff and he felt a curious lump in his throat when she rolled her eyes but half smiled before leaving the room and heading for the front door.
Dear Alicia, he thought, the corrosive taste of bitterness filling his mouth. She had ensured that their divorce was as acrimonious as possible and, having flown across the ocean with Flora, had made doubly sure that his visiting rights were thwarted at every turn. He had always suspected that she had filled his daughter’s head with all sorts of lies and half-truths, even though he had given her every single thing she had requested at the time of the divorce.
But had her machinations gone even further?
Had she taken out her rage and bitterness on their child? Because Flora reminded her of him? Had she made the sort of wilful remarks that had left an impact on Flora? Alicia had been very blonde. He could imagine the ugly twist of her mouth if she’d made a point of criticising Flora’s much darker colouring.
If his ex-wife had been standing in front of him right at that very moment, Stefano felt that he would not have been responsible for what he did to her. He could have cheerfully throttled the witch.
Any wonder he’d had his fill of women as long-term investments?
He laughed sourly to himself, heading in his daughter’s wake for the front door.
He saw Sunny before she actually saw him because, as he hit the hall, she was turning away, saying something to Eric, laughing.
Stefano stopped dead in his tracks and, eyes narrowed, felt a stab of something like jealousy rip through him.
Gone were the jeans. He’d told her to wear something dressy. He’d expected a variation on her working-clothes theme. Sensible skirt skimming her knees...neat top...camouflage outfit... The sort of nondescript garb designed to make her blend into the background and not draw attention to her stupendous looks.
He knew he’d been guilty of assuming that she was a girl who made it her business to avoid fun, especially after she had told him about her background, especially when he’d connected the pieces and worked out that security was way more important to her than fun, and financial security was really the one thing for which she was quite happy to sacrifice the business of going out.
She didn’t want to draw attention to herself. He guessed that she’d had a parent who had done that. What she wanted was to fly under the radar, hence her unassuming work clothes and nondescript casual clothes.
She was fiercely independent and to have been frothy and flirty would have gone against the grain.
He’d made all those sweeping assumptions about her.
She had no boyfriend. Another sweeping assumption was that she wasn’t interested in looking for one either. That sort of thing could come later and, when it did, it would be in the form of a serious-minded guy with a stable job, who, like her, wasn’t interested in the business of having fun.
It was inexplicable why he was so drawn to her, why she had taken root in his head and why she refused to go.
He liked his women to be fun. The last thing he was interested in was a serious woman because it was a short step between the woman who was serious and the woman who wanted a ring on her finger.
Avoid the serious woman and you avoided the whole ring-on-finger killer conversation.
His mother had always mistakenly imagined that he needed a nice, serious young woman to step into the role of wife and mother. She disapproved of the flighty things who came and went like ships in the night.
He liked the flighty ships in the night, though.
Which was why he’d been frankly bewildered at his reaction to Sunny.
Except...
It seemed some of his assumptions had been wildly off target.
Her long, long hair flowed over her shoulders and down her narrow spine in a tide of unruly but utterly sexy curls, and the outfit...
He broke out in a fine film of perspiration. What happened to the girl who dressed to hide? Where the hell had she gone? Stefano was almost outraged at the appearance of this sex siren to whom his body was responding with rampant enthusiasm.
He scowled at Eric, who caught his eye, reddened and stepped back just as Sunny turned towards him, all long, long legs and long, long hair, and flashing green eyes.
She should have looked tacky in such a short skirt but the casual denim jacket brought the whole temperature of the outfit down, as did the functional backpack carelessly slung over her shoulder.
Flora was staring at her, mouth open, as though an alien had suddenly leaped out of the woodwork. Stefano was on her page.
‘Did you forget to finish getting dressed?’ he heard himself say, moving forward.
It was hardly the sort of compliment she had been expecting and she stiffened, annoyed with herself for having expected any sort of compliment at all.
She belatedly wondered whether he was looking at the skimpy outfit and wondering what sort of example was being set for Flora.
She swallowed down the urge to tell him that this wasn’t her sort of dress code at all. Then she remembered what he thought of her, that she was dull, the sort of all-work-and-no-play sort of young woman who had no boyfriend and never went anywhere.
She tilted her chin at a defiant angle and smiled a challenge. ‘Not at all,’ she chirruped.
‘I love it,’ Flora piped up with gratifying enthusiasm.
‘Thank you very much, Flora!’ He might have been sarcastic but she could feel his eyes on her and that dark, intense gaze went to her head like a powerful shot of incense.
‘There’s not much there to love,’ Stefano grated. ‘A few square inches of stretchy cloth. I’m surprised you find it comfortable to sit down.’
Actually, she didn’t but she wasn’t about to tell him that. ‘It’s...er...what everyone’s wearing these days to...er...go out...clubbing...’
‘I had no idea you were a clubber,’ Stefano muttered disapprovingly, sotto voce, as Flora hopped into the back seat of the car, immediately plugging in her headphones and scrolling through her playlist on her phone.
He was leaning into the car now, his breath warm on her cheek, his dark eyes cool and inscrutable.
‘I try and get out whenever I can.’ Sunny was beginning to feel horribly uncomfortable in the skimpy outfit, under his accusatory gaze.
What business was it of his anyway? she thought defiantly.
Stefano didn’t say anything but he shot a sideways glance at Eric as he slid into the front seat.
He could hardly blame his driver for looking. The outfit was an eye-catcher! She wouldn’t be able to walk five steps without drawing stares. Should he revisit his choice of restaurant? Perhaps stay at the house and have one of the caterers he used come in and do the honours? He’d thought of the restaurant in question because it often attracted minor celebrities and he’d thought that might be fun for Flora. Now he had visions of tacky minor celebrities ogling Sunny, maybe trying to slip her their number.
He couldn’t even kid himself that he was taking an avuncular interest in her well-being, protecting her from male attention she didn’t like. No. He didn’t want men staring at her and thinking about making passes because he wanted her for himself. Didn’t matter how hard he fought it, that was the base line, wasn’t it? He wanted her.
They covered the short distance to the restaurant in silence. Sunny stared through the window while next to her Flora was in a world of her own, listening to music.
When she glanced down, she could see way too much thigh exposed because the skirt had ridden up. He’d seen her in a bikini, had already seen a lot more of her body than was on show now, but this felt different.
Not that he was looking. Except in a derogatory way.
She was unusually quiet over the meal, only interacting when pulled into the conversation. The food was delicious and the crowd was interesting. Flora, for once showing her age, got a little excited and bright-eyed at seeing a boy who was, she whispered, the lead singer in a boy band, the name of which neither she nor Stefano recognised.
Wearing this outfit had been a crazy idea. She’d wanted to prove something and the only thing she’d proved was that she had it in her to be just like her mother. Her mother used to dress like this—worse, tiny little clothes that left nothing to the imagination and attracted all the wrong attention from all the wrong men.
The more she thought of that, the worse she felt. Instead of seeing her in a different light, Stefano would now see her as someone cheap and easy, someone who stopped being a lawyer the second she could wriggle out of her suit. She worked so hard to project the image she wanted the world to see that it was horrible suspecting that one impulsive decision might have left him with the wrong impression of her.
They stayed at the restaurant far longer than she had expected. Flora, animated and excited at seeing the very young-looking boy band member, dragged her meal out for as long as she could and then insisted on having dessert.
‘Why don’t you stay the night?’ Stefano suggested, turning to look at her from the front seat.
An exhausted Flora had ended up half asleep on Sunny’s shoulder but she roused herself sufficiently to sleepily agree with the suggestion.
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow so, unless you have plans, stay over and have another day out here. It’s far nicer than being in London and you can try your hand at swimming again, if you haven’t been scared off...’
‘Thank you,’ Sunny said politely, ‘but I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...’ There were a lot of reasons to choose from. How about, she wanted to say, because you make me feel uncomfortable and just the thought of being under the same roof as you overnight sends shivers down my spine? How about the fact that I don’t have a change of clothes and I’ll die if I have to spend another day in these? And his suggestion that she try her hand at swimming again? Well, Sunny wanted to laugh out loud at that because there was no way that she was going to parade in her bikini in front of him.
‘You heard Flora. She’d like it. Wouldn’t you, Flora?’
‘I don’t think it’s very fair to try and coerce your daughter into siding with you.’
‘I can play dirty if the occasion demands... Think about it.’ He turned back around and within minutes the car was pulling through the stone pillars that heralded the long drive up to the house.
Flora was dead on her feet and was in bed within half an hour and, since it seemed rude to disappear without thanking him properly for the meal, Sunny hovered, feeling more and more conspicuous in the wretched outfit.
‘Well? What’s your decision to be?’ He’d reappeared through one of the side doors, having obviously gone somewhere else after he had dropped his daughter to her bedroom.
Sunny feasted her eyes on him. He hadn’t dressed formally for the meal and was wearing a simple pair of black trousers and a cream linen shirt which highlighted his wildly exotic bronzed skin tone. All at once several thoughts raced through her head, clamouring for attention.
‘I have a lot to do tomorrow,’ she began backtracking but in her head all she could think about was...those fabulous dark eyes coolly assessing her in her borrowed clothes, coolly making judgements, coolly sneering at her.
All her dormant insecurities, ones she had thought she had put to rest a long time ago, wriggled out of their shallow graves.
She remembered the men who had come and gone, chasing behind her mother...she remembered the way her foster father’s eyes had followed her even though she had dressed like a nun in his presence...she remembered the boys she had met at boarding school, the way they had looked, as though their fingers were itching to touch...
She remembered the way she had never quite managed to fit in, always standing out amongst those well-bred girls with their braying laughs and bone-deep self-confidence.
She thought that if one of that type had dressed in a short skirt and top Stefano would never have dreamed of making awful sarcastic remarks at her expense.
If, say, Katherine had worn an outfit which, quite honestly, was hardly anything out of the ordinary on a girl in her early twenties, Stefano would probably have complimented her on it, rather than asking whether she had forgotten to finish putting on her clothes.
‘I resent the way you insulted me,’ she heard herself burst out.
She honestly hadn’t meant to say anything and she couldn’t imagine why she had because that sort of remark was a glaring admission of her insecurities—insecurities she didn’t want to advertise. Not to him, not to anyone.
Stefano, thrown a curve ball, stared at her in frowning silence.
‘Explain,’ he said eventually. ‘And sit while you explain. You make me feel like a kid called into the principal’s office to account for himself.’ He turned away and poured them both a glass of wine. They had only drunk a small amount at dinner, which had seemed a good idea with Flora present, and right now he felt as if he needed to make up for the oversight. ‘How have I insulted you?’ He sat down and dragged a chair over with his foot, pushing it back slightly so that he could extend his long legs on it as a foot rest.
The joys of great wealth, Sunny thought, without a trace of envy but more than a hint of stark realism. Every stick of furniture in the kitchen was handmade. It was obvious. You could feel it in the solidity of the wood and the smoothness of the grain. However, it would never have occurred to Stefano to be precious around any of the furniture because if it got scratched or even destroyed, it could all be replaced with the click of an imperious finger.
‘My outfit,’ she muttered, already regretting having brought this grievance out into the open because, the second she mentioned what she was wearing, his dark, lazy eyes obligingly roamed over her body, bringing her out in a tingle of excruciating awareness.
‘What about it?’ Had she noticed the way men had stared covertly at her when they had walked into the airy dining room? Flora would have been mortified had she only noticed that the underage boy-band member had done his fair share of staring at Sunny. Stefano had noticed it all and he hadn’t liked any of it.
He’d never cared what the women he dated wore. Indeed, most of them wore less than Sunny was wearing now, hadn’t thought twice about displaying their wares, just so that he could be in no doubt as to what he was getting.
Had he ever felt the slightest inclination to demand that any of them change their clothes? Dress in something prissier? Something, preferably, that covered from neck to ankle?
Simple answer...no.
But he’d had to bite back the urge to hurry the meal along this evening so that he could remove an oblivious Sunny from the sideways glances she was commanding from every single male in the room with a pulse.
He could only assume that he was so accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, from the opposite sex, that her lack of availability was stirring all sorts of puzzling responses in him. Responses that were unwanted and definitely out of bounds!
Not only was she not making any moves to attract his attention, but she was actively discouraging it.
And it wasn’t, as he had assumed, that she actively discouraged all male attention. If she did, then she surely wouldn’t own an outfit like the one she was wearing.
‘I didn’t appreciate your insinuating that I looked like...like a tart.’ Her voice was barely audible and she was beetroot red, but it had to be said. Considering she’d begun.
Stefano flushed darkly because he could hardly try and adopt a pious stance when he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Even if she had managed to misconstrue the intention behind his words.
‘I thought you might have been uncomfortable with the sort of unwarranted attention an outfit like that might attract.’
‘I’m not wearing anything any girl in her twenties might not wear.’
‘But not many of them have the sort of knockout figure to do justice to it...’
Sunny blinked and then, as the full meaning of his words sank in, she felt her whole body react with just the slightest of trembles. Because those words, huskily spoken, seemed to target every single inappropriate thought she had had about him, ripping them free of the innocent labels she had done her best to attach to them.
He wasn’t making a pass at her, she told herself firmly. Maybe he was flirting but, if he was, then he was on a road to nowhere because she didn’t do flirting! Especially with someone like Stefano Gunn!
But he’d thrown her off course and she was having trouble marshalling her thoughts.
Stefano watched the way she stiffened, straightening her narrow shoulders. She wasn’t quite meeting his eyes, but her mouth had tightened and her expression was shuttered and she was perched on the edge of her chair as though making sure she could leap out of it as fast as possible, should the situation demand.
‘I apologise if you found my comment about your outfit...offensive,’ he offered gruffly. ‘And you’re absolutely right, of course. You aren’t wearing anything that any other girl your age wouldn’t wear. In fact, I know a few who would cheerfully wear half as much and they’re twice your age...’
Sunny relaxed a little. She stared at the glass of wine, as if only noticing it for the first time, and took a tentative sip.
Now she felt as if she might have overreacted. He’d hit a nerve, but how was he supposed to have known that? She was struck by another thought...
Had he made that remark, spontaneously and without thinking, because he had felt that she would not have blended in with the crowd in the posh restaurant he had taken them to? Had he thought that she would stick out like a sore thumb amongst the upper-middle-class suburban crowd with their cardigans and pearls? When he’d told her that he’d only been thinking about her and the unwarranted attention she might have been exposed to, had he really been saying that he’d been thinking about himself and his embarrassment at being seen with someone who clearly didn’t know the dress code for the expensive restaurant he had taken them to...?
In truth, she’d barely noticed who was there at all. She’d been too busy feeling self-conscious. But of course it would have been a wealthy crowd.
A fresh wave of insecurity washed over her, ebbing to leave a sour taste at the back of her mouth.
Now he was being kind and she hated that.
‘I only reacted because...’
‘Because...?’
‘My mother used to dress in skimpy clothes,’ Sunny burst out, inwardly groaning at the lack of control that seemed to sweep over her whenever he was around. It was as if he could somehow get her to say stuff she wouldn’t normally say and he could get her to do that without even trying. She feverishly played with the stem of her wine glass with frowning concentration. ‘I always swore that I would never dress in anything that wasn’t...wasn’t...’
‘Buttoned up to the neck? That didn’t cover as much as possible without inviting heatstroke...?’
‘She had no control,’ Sunny said helplessly. ‘In and out of drink and drugs and guys...’ She felt tears of self-pity sting the back of her eyes and she wanted the ground to open and swallow her up. ‘You have no idea...’ she said in a muffled voice.
She was hardly aware of him leaving his seat so that he could drag a chair close to her. She was grateful for her hair, which hung across her cheeks, shielding her expression.
‘I’m sorry,’ Stefano said with urgent sincerity. He reached out to stroke the side of her face and then gently tilted it so that she was looking at him. This was so inappropriate and yet it felt so right. He thought about all the reasons why he shouldn’t be touching her at all, not even the most innocent of touches, of which this definitely wasn’t one, and all that emerged was the stark ferocity of his physical response. It seemed to batter through everything to emerge the victor.
‘These aren’t even my clothes,’ Sunny whispered, even though she had told herself that there was no way she would admit to that because she had been so keen to prove to him that she was capable of having fun just like any other girl her age.
‘No?’ Stefano wondered why he was so relieved to hear that. Her skin, under the roughened pad of his thumb, was velvety-smooth and her eyes, up close like this, were the clearest green he had ever seen, the colour of sea-washed glass.
‘They belong to the girl I share the flat with,’ Sunny confessed, resisting the urge to lean into the gentle absent-minded strokes of his finger on her cheek. Her heart was racing. This felt very, very dangerous but she told herself that that was purely in her imagination because he was just being kind.
And she didn’t want him to be kind... She wanted him to be...a man...
Her breathing became shallow and her eyelids fluttered as the realisation settled like a leaden weight in the pit of her stomach. Finding him attractive had been inexplicable enough but at least that had been a passive situation, something she could deal with, even if it was inconvenient.
But wanting him to carry on touching her all over, wanting him to look at her with the hunger of a man looking at a woman he wanted...
She eased back and immediately missed the headiness of being close to him and feeling his skin against hers.
‘Amy lent them to me,’ she said in a more matter-of-fact voice. ‘She thought they might look a bit better than the usual stuff I wear when I go out...’
After that brief moment of intimacy, Stefano could feel her pulling away from him and the need to recapture the lost connection slammed into him with the force of a freight train.
‘But I didn’t feel comfortable in them, if you want to know the truth.’ She gave a careless shrug, hoping to dispel the electric charge between them.
A girl could lose herself in his eyes, she thought a little wildly. So it was no wonder that she was falling victim to all sorts of wobbly legs type feelings!
‘Why the name?’ Stefano murmured before she could slip away into polite conversation, before she could distance herself from him.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Your name. Is it a nickname? Because, from what you’ve told me about yourself...about your mother...’
‘You’re not really interested in that!’ Sunny laughed weakly. ‘And I’m sorry for being such a wimp and spilling my guts out! I’m sure that’s not the sort of thing you bargained for when you asked me to come along with you and Flora tonight...’ Hot and bothered by the way he was looking at her, she tried to find something sensible to say about Flora, some observation that would turn the intimacy of this conversation around because her bones were melting, especially because, instead of taking the hint and pulling away from her after she had tactfully drawn back, he had sat forward, once again closing the distance between them.
Nothing sensible came to mind and she licked her lips nervously.
‘I’m interested,’ Stefano murmured.
Sunny sighed. No big deal. Was it...?
‘She was in one of her optimistic windows,’ she said sadly. ‘That’s what she told me many times over the years. She’d come off the drugs and the drink as soon as she found out that she was pregnant with me...’
‘And your father?’
Sunny lowered her eyes and felt her breath catch. ‘No idea. Probably just another drifter...’
‘I’m sorry.’
And he sounded as though he genuinely meant that, which brought a lump to her throat. Her eyes tangled with his and clung. He had, she thought distractedly, the most wickedly long eyelashes...
‘You were saying...’ Stefano reminded her.
‘So I was. I was saying that Mum was off the bad stuff and she just plucked the most hopeful name she could think of...’ Sunny smiled wryly ‘...and I’ve been stuck with it ever since. I haven’t even got a useful middle name I could have reverted to...’
‘Your outfit,’ Stefano murmured.
Sunny tensed. ‘I can’t wait to get it off...’
‘I didn’t say...what I said to be insulting...’
‘Maybe you thought I wouldn’t fit in with that crowd.’ She forestalled any truths that she knew would cut to the quick.
He looked at her with open puzzlement and she laughed, knowing that she’d at least got that bit wrong. He wasn’t the sort to care what other people thought.
‘I said what I said because...’ he sat back and folded his arms, his eyes not wavering ‘...the thought of other men looking at you...’ He shouldn’t be doing this but knowing that didn’t help and didn’t change anything. He was experiencing that very, very rare feeling of being at the mercy of something bigger and more powerful than his own iron willpower. He allowed his words to sink in, not knowing whether she would respond at all but driven to find out because he just had to. ‘Well, put it this way... I didn’t like the idea and I couldn’t see how they could fail to stare in that outfit of yours...’
‘You didn’t like the idea...’ She felt as if she was suddenly walking through thick fog with no signposts in sight.
‘Men look...and then they want...’ He shrugged in a way that was typically foreign, an overblown gesture that seemed to convey dry amusement and impatient resignation at the same time. ‘I didn’t like the thought of that...’
‘Of what?’
‘Of both...’ His stomach clenched because, for once, he wasn’t staring at a guaranteed outcome. She was quirky and...unpredictable, and both those things added up, for him, to an unknown quantity. And for once the riptide was carrying him. He didn’t like it or want it but he was powerless to resist it.
‘I didn’t like the thought of them looking...and I didn’t like the thought of them wanting... I felt that both those things should come from...me...’
