Читать книгу Baby on Loan - Liz Fielding - Страница 9

PATRICK took a step back. Morally, he was perfectly within his rights to be in his own bathroom. He hadn’t let his house. Jessie Hayes was the one who had no right to be there. She might have signed a lease, but he couldn’t believe she’d really thought his house belonged to an eighteen-year-old girl whose idea of elegance was purple hair and a stud through her nose. All she had to do was look around her. The evidence, to anyone with half a brain, was obvious.

Unfortunately, the tabloid press wouldn’t bother about that. The slightest hint of this situation and people would be dredging up the past and conversations would grind to a halt when he walked into a room—not, this time, because people didn’t know what to say, but because they were saying too much.

That crack on the head must have been a lot harder than he’d realised, or he’d never have got himself into such a predicament. Finding a naked woman in his bath, though, had a way of concentrating his mind on the basics, and now he had just one objective in view: to get himself out of the house without her ever knowing he’d been in it.

Except his shirt was in the laundry bin. He had others, but if she saw it—and she would see it the minute she dropped her towel in there—she’d know…

He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, not for a second, certain that even a blink would wake her. But she hadn’t stirred. She was dozing peacefully, her eyes closed—dark, sea-coloured eyes, he remembered, not quite green, not quite blue, like the Mediterranean in a good mood. Then he wondered how he’d noticed such a thing in the mayhem of last night. Through the owl-like spectacles.

Maybe while she was lying on top of him, his subconscious volunteered, helpfully. He backed away from the thought, yet with the image before him he could instantly recall the warmth of her body against his, the feel of her hair as it brushed against his cheek. It tingled now, as he remembered, and he raised his hand as if to brush away an unwelcome sensation; then snatched his fingers back before they could.

Her lips were slightly parted, soft and pink and innocent of lipstick, and her arm was draped over the edge of the bath, totally relaxed by the warmth.

The tempered-steel jacket about his heart buckled slightly.

Then, as the drifting islands of foam moved, he saw the tiny tattoo of a ladybird on her thigh. And his body stirred, responding without hesitation to an overload of stimulation. The shock of it fixed him to the spot, his mind spinning with thoughts of a warm mouth beneath his, a warm body ready for love, and he gasped out loud as he realised that it wasn’t a memory but this woman he was responding to.

She sighed softly as the cooling water began to disturb her. For a moment he remained where he was, transfixed by the image. But he really did have to move, get out of the bathroom, out of the house, before she woke and he gave her the fright of her life.