Читать книгу Tall, Dark And Dangerous - Kate Proctor - Страница 8

‘GINNY!’

Ginny’s entire body froze for an instant, then she continued hoeing the geranium bed, the stark white gleam of her knuckles against the handle the only outward sign of an inner fury.

That bellowed name was one of only a handful of words to have broken the silence that had descended like a wall between them since his announcement that he was having her investigated. Quite frankly, she couldn’t have cared less if they’d never exchanged another word for the rest of their lives, she told herself, hoeing like one possessed. And if he really expected her to believe his ridiculous claim, he must think her the biggest fool alive—the only information he had on her was her name, for heaven’s sake!

‘Ginny, I called you,’ exclaimed Michael exasperatedly, striding towards her. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

‘I’m sure the whole region heard you.’

‘So how come you didn’t answer me?’

‘Because, believe it or not, I’m not a dog trained to respond to your every command,’ she retortedly hotly, glowering up at him as his narrowed eyes flickered coolly over her dishevelled appearance.

‘You were some distance away, so I called loudly,’ he stated unconcernedly. ‘If you chose to interpret it differently, that’s your problem. Anyway, I wanted to tell you Libby called—and that I’m hungry.’

Ginny tried to counteract the shock surging through her by reminding herself that Libby had said that she would ring him and that her only reason for concern would have been had Libby not done so.

‘I…You were in your ofice so early this morning, I didn’t know what to do about breakfast,’ she stammered.

‘And it didn’t occur to you to ask me?’

Though he injected a questioning lilt into those mocking words, Ginny treated them as the statement they were obviously intended to be, and ignored them. ‘There’s bread and some goat’s cheese—or I could cook some——’

‘Bread and cheese will do me fine,’ he cut in, his eyes meeting hers in a look of chilling balefulness. ‘Get yourself cleaned up and we’ll eat together.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ retorted Ginny, willing herself not to be intimidated by those eyes.

‘I’d like you to join me, anyway,’ he stated, then turned and strode back towards the house.

Ginny flung down the hoe, her blood boiling—an effect he managed to have on her just about every time he opened that supercilious mouth of his, she noted with outrage. Except that it wasn’t always anger with which he made her blood boil, she reminded herself with a jolt of alarm that deflated her rage like a pricked balloon. She tensed as a now almost familiar honeyed warmth began slinking its way seductively through her. She wasn’t normally susceptible to looks, no matter how devastating, she reasoned exasperatedly, and especially not when they cloaked a personality as vile as Michael Grant’s did.

With a groan of pure vexation at her own stupidity, she ran to the house and raced upstairs to her room.

She couldn’t have it both ways, she argued impatiently with herself as she took a quick shower; despairing one minute of her apparent inability to feel anything more than a mild flutter of attraction towards a man, and wallowing in angst the next because one of them was affecting her in a manner she hadn’t bargained for.

Her look was brooding as she slipped on a fresh white T-shirt, a leaden heat throbbing through her as her mind attempted to skirt the passion that had flared between them the day before in order to examine his reaction to what had happened. She walked over to the wardrobe and opened its doors. Perhaps a really calculating man could have produced to order that groan of surprised disbelief that had escaped him… but never the accompanying desire that had surged hot and unmistakable in his body.

Never before in her life had any man had the power to reduce her to this mind-sapping state of permanent confusion—though what little she knew about men was probably dangerous, she reflected bitterly. Her trouble was that her aunt’s vituperative hounding of her over her first and only sexual experience wasn’t the only price she had paid for that oddly innocent indiscretion—ever since that incident it had been as though she had been trapped in an emotional time-warp, simply marking time until…She gave a violent shake of her head, dragging a navy skirt from the wardrobe and putting it on.