Whose Bed Is It Anyway?

The fire in his expression flared into an inferno. He flung back the sheet and stood up from the bed. ‘I’m not allowed to get naughty,’ he said softly.

Why ever not? ‘But you’d like to?’ she pointedly asked, refusing to glance down and check out his legs. Or recognise the rapid pounding of her pulse. ‘Aren’t you all man? In control of your own destiny? If you want to be wicked, be wicked?’

‘Things are never that simple.’ He walked towards her.

‘No?’ She lifted her chin free of the rollneck of wool and fought the instinct to step back. ‘Seems they are to me. See, I’m bad. Bad news for anyone who comes near.’

‘You’re bad news?’ His eyebrow quirked, as if he didn’t believe her.

‘Oh, yeah.’ In the last few weeks the gossip columns had been filled with it. Only because they needed some kind of cannon fodder to fill the inches of newsprint and populate their webpages with salacious scandal. They all needed a villain. This month, she was it. She’d forgotten how awful it was to be vilified. She’d thought she’d escaped it years ago. ‘You’re right not to be attracted to me. I’m the wild child who’ll ruin a man.’

‘I never said I wasn’t attracted to you,’ he replied calmly. ‘And your supposed badness can’t ruin me.’ He whisked the grey T-shirt off and tossed it onto the bed. ‘I’m bulletproof, didn’t you know?’

She stifled a gasp at his gesture. At the expanse of skin he’d exposed. Yep, the bullets would bounce off those bristling muscles. Dear heaven, this man was hewn.

‘Nothing you can do could tarnish my image,’ he said boldly.

‘You’re that perfect,’ she sarcastically humoured him. But though he was joking, she knew he was about as perfect as it got.

‘Apparently.’ A teasing gleam lit his chocolate eyes. ‘Though you and I know different.’

‘True.’

‘And what about what I could do for you?’ he said softly.

‘There’s no redeeming me,’ she said bluntly. ‘And you should be more careful. Reputations can only go down. Never up.’

‘What did you do that’s so bad?’ His amusement told her he thought she was kidding.

He’d find out eventually. And no matter what she said in response, he wouldn’t believe her. Nobody did. Not even her sister. And her father perpetuated it—not caring about the veracity of any of the stories spread over the Internet. ‘Any publicity is good publicity’ was his mantra. He was wrong.

It was only a matter of time until she saw the judgment enter James’ eyes. Hell, she’d seen it last night. ‘You took one look at me and thought I was trouble.’

‘And I was right about that.’ Softly, he didn’t deny it. ‘But haven’t you heard? I like trouble.’ He walked right up to her. ‘I go out of my way to find it.’

‘Only so you can fix it.’ She glared up at him. ‘And sorry, Handsome, I don’t need fixing.’

‘No?’ he asked, so close she could feel the warmth of his body hitting her even through the baggy layers she wore. ‘You need something else from me?’

She could hardly breathe for the heated tension in the room. ‘All I need is a space in this bed to sleep. Nothing else.’

His gorgeously outrageous smile returned. ‘Maybe.’ He stepped to the side and then walked past her into the bathroom. ‘But you might be surprised what I can come up with.’

She couldn’t resist turning to watch him walk. Goaded by his jaw-dropping back view, she asked the worst possible question. ‘You think you’re irresistible?’

He glanced back from the bathroom door, his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his boxers, that wry-but-wicked smile on his lips. ‘I guess we’re about to find out.’

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