The Morning After

CHAPTER TWO

‘OH…!’ she gasped out shrilly.

‘Damn,’ a deep voice muttered. ‘My apologies.’

But Annie was too busy trying to catch her breath to listen to any apology as she watched what looked like the full contents of a tall, fluted glass of champagne drip down the honeyed slopes of her breasts. Ice-cold bubbles were fizzing against her heated skin, the chilled liquid soaking into the thin white silk of her bodice.

The fabric darkened, then turned transparent before her very eyes, plastering itself so tightly to her breasts that anyone within a vicinity of ten feet would now know that she was definitely not wearing a bra! And to top that humiliating exposure her nipples, always so annoyingly sensitive to quick changes in temperature, burst into tight, prominent buds, pushing against the wet fabric in sheer, affronted surprise!

‘Hell,’ the culprit muttered, making her wretchedly aware that he was seeing exactly what she was seeing—and from a better vantage point than anyone else, including herself. In a delayed act of modesty she snapped her arms across her breasts at the same time as her head came up to receive the second stunning shock in as many seconds.

It was the man who had been watching her all evening—the same man who had filled her with such strange, unsettling feelings—and she just stared at him blankly, her lovely mouth parted while her body quivered badly enough for anyone to see that she was suffering from a severe state of shock.

Then flash bulbs began to pop, and the next thing she knew a male chest of a rock-like substance was blocking her off from view as a strong arm whipped around her waist to pull her hard up against his muscle-packed frame.

‘Pretend you know me!’ he muttered urgently. And before she could begin to think what he meant his mouth took fierce possession of her own.

Annie froze, this shock invasion, coming on top of all the other shocks she had just received, holding her so stiff and still that she simply let him get away with it!

But the shock did not stop her from being intensely aware of the way his mouth seemed to burn against her own, or the way he was holding her so tightly that her wet breasts were being crushed against the silky fabric of his dinner jacket. And she could feel his breath warm against her cheek, smell the slightly spicy scent of him that teased her stammering senses.

She was panting for breath by the time he drew away, giving only enough space between their lips so he could speak to her softly and swiftly. ‘At the moment only you and I know about the champagne.’ His voice held the finest hint of an accent—American tinged with something else…‘Keep up the pretence of knowing me and those greedy cameras will merely believe that Annie Lacey has just been greeted by one of her many lovers. You understand?’

Many lovers? She blinked, still too shocked, too bewildered by a mad set of events to begin to think clearly.

Then more flash bulbs popped, and she closed her eyes as tomorrow’s headlines played their acid taunt across the inside of her lids: ANNIE LACEY BARES ALL IN CHAMPAGNE CLASH!

‘Oh, God,’ she whispered shakily.

He shifted slightly, accepting her response as acknowledgement of his advice, a large band splaying across the base of her spine to ease her more closely to him. ‘Smile,’ he instructed brusquely.

Obediently she fixed a tight, bright smile to her throbbing lips.

‘Now reach up and kiss me in return.’

Her eyes widened, then darkened in dumb refusal. He read it, and his own eyes flashed a warning. Green, she realised quite out of context. His eyes were green.

‘Do it!’ he commanded harshly. ‘Do it, you fool, if you want this to look natural!’

More flash bulbs popped, congealing the horror in her shock-paralysed throat when she realised that her choices were few. She either complied with this frightening man’s instructions or she faced the humiliation that she would receive at the hands of the gutter Press.

It was no contest really, she decided bleakly. The Press would be cruel—too cruel. This man—this frightening stranger—could never hurt her as deeply as a ruthless Press could do.

So with a dizzy sense of unreality washing numbly through her, her eyes clinging like confused prisoners to the glinting urgency in his, her tense fingers began sliding up his chest and over his broad shoulders, and her slender body stretched up along the ungiving length of his as she went slowly up on tiptoe to bring her reluctant mouth into contact with his.

Only, her mouth never made it as she received yet another shock—a shock which made her wet breasts heave against his hard chest in surprise, and sent her blue eyes wider, her quivering mouth too—when her fingers made accidental contact with something at his nape.

His hair was so long that he had it tied back with a thin velvet ribbon!

He gave a soft laugh deep in his throat, white teeth flashing between beautifully moulded lips, sardonically smiling in amusement at her shock.

Then he wasn’t smiling, his green eyes darkening into something that stung her with a hot, dark sense of her own femininity and had her body stiffening in rejection even as he arched her up against him and closed the gap between their mouths.

She stopped breathing. Her fingers coiled tensely around that long, sleek tail of dark, silken hair as fine, pulsing jets of stinging, hot awareness sprayed heat across her trembling flesh.

For all her carefully nurtured reputation, for all the juicy rumours about her personal life, Annie rarely allowed herself to be properly kissed, rarely let any man close enough to try—though those who wished to would rather have died than admit such a thing to anyone, which was why her image as a man-killer stayed so perfectly intact.

So to have this man kiss her—not superficially but with enough sensual drive to have her own lips part to welcome him—seemed to throw her into a deeper state of shock, holding her completely still in his arms as she felt her response like a lick of fire burning from mouth to breasts then, worse, to the very core of her sex. Her muscles contracted fiercely in reaction, her lips quivering on yet another helpless gasp.

Then, thankfully, she was free—thankfully because in all her life she had never experienced a response like that! And the fact that she had done so with this perfect stranger both frightened and bewildered her.

‘Right,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

Crazily she found herself leaning weakly against him, sponge-kneed and dizzy with the strange cacophony of reactions taking place inside her. Her mouth was throbbing, her heart trembling and her damp breasts quivering where they were being pressed tightly against his chest.

Inside she was fainting—it was the only way her muzzy head could think of describing that odd, dragging feeling that seemed to be trying to sink her like liquid to the ground. Even the roots of her hair reacted stingingly as his chin brushed across the top of her head when he moved to glance around them.

He shifted her beneath the crook of his powerful arm, and he was big—big enough to fit her easily beneath his shoulder, even though she was no small thing herself. Her hand slid from the long lock of his hair to flutter delicately down his back to his lean, tight waist, her other pressing against the front of his white dress shirt where she was made forcefully aware of the accelerated pounding of his heart beneath the sticky dampness where her wetness had transferred itself to him.

The whole scene must have looked powerfully emotional to anyone watching all of this take place—the notorious Annie Lacey meeting, throwing herself upon and leaving hurriedly with a man who could only be an old and very intimate friend by the way he held her clasped so possessively to him. But, huddled against him as she was, at that moment she could only be glad of his powerful bulk because it helped to hide what had happened to her from all those curious eyes.

But when she felt the cooling freshness of the summer night air hit her body she at last made an effort to pull her befuddled brain together.

‘Wait a minute!’ she gasped, pulling to a dead stop in front of the row of waiting black cabs. ‘I—’

‘Just get in,’ he instructed, transferring his grip to her elbow and quite forcefully propelling her inside the nearest cab.

Annie landed with less than her usual grace on the cheap, cracked leather seat.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she exclaimed with shrill indignity as he climbed right in behind her.

He didn’t bother to answer, but instead, and to her horror, began stripping off his black silk evening jacket!

Annie made an ungainly scramble into the furthest corner of the seat, blue eyes revealing the real alarm she was now beginning to feel.

‘Where to, mate?’

‘Tell the guy,’ the man beside her commanded. ‘Then put that on—’ the jacket landed on her trembling lap ‘—before his eyes pop out of his head.’

Annie glanced sharply at the cabby to find his eyes fixed on her breasts so shockingly outlined against the sodden fabric of her dress. Dark heat stung along her cheeks as hurriedly she dragged the jacket around her slender shoulders and clutched possessively at its black satin lapels.

‘Your address,’ her accoster prompted, after having watched sardonically her rush to cover herself up.

Annie flashed him a fulminating look, frustratedly aware that she had no choice but to comply. Well, she did have a choice, she acknowledged bitterly. She could toss this alarming man back his jacket, climb out of the cab and walk back into the hotel to face all those eagerly speculative eyes while she went in search of Todd.

But the very idea of doing that made her feel slightly sick. All those eyes with their amused, knowing looks, and sly sniggers from people who would see the whole thing as yet another Annie Lacey sensation.

Reluctantly she muttered her address, then subsided stiffly into her corner of the cab while he leaned forward to repeat it to the cabby.

Annie followed the lithe movement of his long body with her eyes.

Who is he? she wondered tensely. Though he sounded American there was an added hint of a foreign accent in his deep, gravelly voice that she couldn’t quite place. And his skin wore a rich, smooth olive tint that suggested foreign climes—like the colour of his raven-black hair with its outrageous pony-tail lying smoothly along the pure silk of his bright white dress shirt between well-muscled shoulderblades.

What is he? Even in profile his face showed a hard-boned toughness of character that somehow did not go with the flamboyant style of his hair.

He gave a conflict of impressions, she realised, and wondered if it was a deliberately erected facade aimed to put people off the track where his true personality was concerned.

And why did she think that? Because she did it herself and therefore could recognise the same trait in others.

Instruction to the cabby completed, he slid the partitioning window shut then sat back to look at her.

Instantly those strange sparks of awareness prickled along the surface of her skin—an awareness of his firm, sculptured mouth that had so shockingly claimed her own, of lips that made hers tingle in memory, made her throat go dry as they stretched into a smooth, mocking smile.

‘A novel way of meeting, don’t you think?’ he drawled.

Not gravel but velvet. She found herself correcting her description of the liquid tones of his voice. And laced with a hint of—what? Contempt? Sarcasm? Or just simple, wry amusement at the whole situation? Annie flicked her wary glance up to his eyes. Strange eyes. Green. Green eyes that again did not go with the dark Latin rest of him, and were certainly alight with something that kept her senses alert to the threat of danger.

Danger?

‘You were watching me earlier,’ she said half-accusingly. ‘And you know my name.’

He smiled at that, the wry—yes, it was wry—amusement deepening in his eyes. ‘But you are a very beautiful woman, Miss Lacey,’ he pointed out. ‘Your face and your body can be seen plastered on billboards all over the world. Of course I know your name.’ He gave a small shrug of those wide, white-clad shoulders. ‘I would expect every red-blooded man alive to recognise you on sight.’

‘Except that all those other men do not make a point of stalking me all evening,’ she pointed out.

His attention sharpened. ‘Are you by any chance trying to imply something specific?’ he enquired carefully.

Was she? She was by nature very suspicious of men in general. This one seemed to have gone out of his way to be where he was right now.

‘Perhaps you suspect me of spilling the champagne deliberately?’ he suggested, when Annie did not say anything.

‘Did you?’ Cool blue eyes threw back a challenge.

He smiled—the kind of noncommittal smile that tried to mock her for even thinking such a thing about him. But she was not convinced by it, or put off.

‘Things like it have happened before,’ she told him. ‘In my business you collect nut cases like other people collect postage stamps.’

‘And you see me as the ideal candidate for that kind of weird behaviour?’ He looked so amused by the idea that it made her angry.

‘You can’t tell by just looking at them, you know,’ she snapped. ‘They don’t have “crazy man” stamped on their foreheads to give me a clue.’

‘But in your business, Miss Lacey, you must surely accept that kind of thing as merely par for the course.’

‘And therefore relinquish the right to care?’

He offered no answer to that, but his eyes narrowed thoughtfully on her as though he was making a quick reassessment of something he had already set in his mind about her, and a small silence fell.

Annie turned her head away to stare out the cab window so that she did not have to try and read what that reassessment was about. Why, she wasn’t sure, except…

She sighed inwardly. She knew why. She’d looked away because he disturbed her oddly. His dark good looks disturbed her. The way he had been staring at her earlier disturbed her. His shocking kisses had disturbed her, awakening feelings inside her that she had honestly believed she did not possess.

The black cab rumbled on, stopping and starting in London’s busy night traffic. People were out in force, the warm summer night and the fact that it was tourist season in the city filling the streets with life. Pub doors stood wedged open to help ease the heated air inside rooms packed with casually dressed, enviably relaxed people. Cafes with their pavements blocked continental-style by white plastic tables had busy waiters running to and fro, and the sights and smells and sounds were those of a busy international metropolis, all shapes, sizes, colours and creeds mingling in a mad, warm bustle of easy harmony.

She sighed softly to herself, wishing that she could be like them, wishing that she could walk out and mingle inconspicuously with the crowd and just soak up some of that carefree atmosphere. But she couldn’t. Her looks were her fortune, and therefore were too well-known—as the man sitting beside her had just pointed out. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with a scarf covering her head, she would still be recognised. She knew because she’d tried it.

The trouble was, she decided heavily, she was becoming weary of the life she led, the restrictions that life placed on her. Tired of an image that she had created for herself which meant her always having to be on her guard with people—people like the man sitting beside her.

‘The champagne caught your hair.’ The sudden touch of light fingers on a sticky tendril of hair just by her left ear had Annie reacting instinctively.

She jerked violently away from his touch. He went very still, his strange eyes narrowing on her face with an expression that she found difficult to define as he slowly lowered his hand again, long, blunt-ended fingers settling lightly on his own lap.

A new silence began to fizz between them, and Annie did not know what to say to break it. There was something about this man that frightened her—no matter how much she tried to tell herself that she was being paranoid about him. Even that touch—that light, innocent brush of his fingers against her hair—had filled her with the most incredible alarm. Her heart was hammering too, rattling against her ribs with enough force to restrict her breathing.

She bit down on her lower lip, even white teeth pressing into lush, ruby-coloured flesh, and her dusky lashes lowered to hide her discomfort as warm colour began to seep into her cheeks.

Then the cab made a sharp turn, and she saw with relief that they were turning into a narrow cobbled street of pretty, whitewashed cottages, one of which was her own.

Almost eagerly she shifted towards the edge of the seat so that she could jump out just as soon as they stopped. The sound of soft laughter beside her made her throw a wary glance at her companion.

He was smiling, ruefully shaking his sleek dark head. ‘I am not intending to jump on you, you know,’ he drawled. ‘I assure you I do possess a little more finesse than to seduce my women in the back seats of black cabs. And,’ he went on, before Annie could think of a thing to say in reply, ‘I did think my behaviour exemplary enough to give me gallant-knight status if nothing else.’

He thought those kisses in the hotel foyer exemplary behaviour? She didn’t. And he could sit there smiling that innocently mocking smile as long as he wanted to, but she would not lower her guard to him. Her senses were just too alert to the hidden danger in him to do that.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said coolly. ‘But gallant knights are so few and far between that a girl does not expect to meet one these days.’

The taxi came to a stop outside her tiny mews cottage then—thankfully. Because she was suddenly very desperate to get away from this strange, disturbing man.

But as she went to slip off his jacket and opened her mouth to utter some polite little word of thanks for his trouble he stopped her.

‘No.’ His hand descended onto her shoulder to hold his jacket in place. ‘Keep it until we arrive at your door,’ he quietly advised, sending a pointed glance at the cab driver. ‘One can only imagine what the champagne has done to the fabric of your dress by now.’

She went pale, remembering that awful moment when she’d caught the cab driver’s gaze fixed on her breasts, so transparently etched against her sodden dress.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, clutching the jacket back around her.

He said nothing, opening the taxi door and stepping out, then turning to help her join him before he bent to pass some money through the driver’s open window. Annie supposed that she should offer to pay the fare, but somehow this man gave the impression that he would not appreciate such egalitarian gestures. There was an air of the old-fashioned autocrat about him—an indomitable pride in the set of those wide shoulders flexing beneath the white dress shirt as he straightened and turned back to face her.

She shuddered, feeling oddly as though something or someone had just walked over her grave.

‘Y-you should have held the taxi,’ she murmured stiffly as the black cab rumbled off down the street, belching out pungent diesel fumes as it went.

If he picked up on her unspoken warning—that if he was standing in the belief that she was going to invite him into her home then he was mistaken—he did not show it, merely shrugging those big shoulders dismissively as he turned towards her black-painted front door.

‘Your key?’ he prompted.

Disconcerted by his calm indifference to any hint she had given him, she decided grimly not to argue, lowering her pale head to watch her fingers fumble nervously with the tiny catch on her soft gold leather evening bag to get at the key. The quicker she got the door open, the sooner she could get rid of him, she decided, wondering crossly what the heck was the matter with her. She didn’t usually feel like this.

She didn’t usually get herself into crazy situations like this one either. She was very careful not to do so normally.

Normal. What was normal about any of this?

Refusing to allow her fingers to tremble, she fitted the key into the lock, pushed open the door, then forced herself back around to face him. ‘Thank you,’ she said firmly, ‘for bringing me home. And—’ she allowed him a small, dry smile ‘—for saving my embarrassment.’

‘Think nothing of it.’ He sent her a little bow that was pure, old-fashioned gallantry and befitted somehow this tall dark man who reminded her so much of a throwback from another age. South American, maybe? she wondered curiously, then shuddered, not wanting him to be. She had a strange, unexplainable suspicion that it would actually hurt her to find that he might be the same nationality as Alvarez.

If he was aware of her curiosity he did not offer to relieve it. Instead, and with another one of those bows, he held his hand out towards her as though he were going to grab hold and push her into the house.

Defensively she took a big step back, bringing herself hard up against the white-painted stone wall behind her, and almost choking on an uplift of clamouring fear.

‘My jacket,’ he reminded her softly.

Oh, God. Annie closed her eyes, angry with herself because she knew that she was behaving like an idiot and really had no reason for it. He had, as he had pointed out, shown her exemplary behaviour over the whole messy incident!

Except for those kisses, she reminded herself tensely. Those kisses had not been exemplary at all.

Lips pressed tightly together over her clenched teeth, she slipped off the jacket and handed it to him. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured without looking at him.

‘My pleasure,’ he drawled, his long fingers sliding delicately over hers as he took the jacket from her. Her own began to tingle, fine, sharp showers of sensation skittering across the surface of her skin to make her tremble as she whipped her arm across her body in an effort to hide herself from those terribly disturbing eyes.

Casually he hooked a finger through the loop and draped the jacket over his shoulder, his lazy stance showing no signs that he was going to go away.

Annie waited, praying fiercely that he was not standing here expecting her to invite him in. No man other than Todd had ever stepped a single foot inside her home. And only Todd had done so because he had proved time and time again that she could trust him with her very life.

She thought of this house as her sanctuary—the only place where she felt she could relax and truly be herself. She didn’t want to give way to the compelling urge he seemed to be silently pressing on her to break that rule and invite him to enter.

Panic began to bubble up from the anxious pit of her stomach—panic at the man’s indomitable refusal to be brushed off by her, and panic at the knowledge that if he kept this small, silent battle up she was going to be the one to give in.

Then he touched her.

And, good grief, everything vital inside her went haywire—muscles, nerves, senses, heart, all clamouring out of control as his hand cupped gently at her chin, lifted it, forcing her wary blue gaze to meet the probing expression in his.

He didn’t say anything, but a frown marred that high, satin-smooth brow as though he was reassessing—again—and was still not sure what he was seeing when he looked at the infamous Annie Lacey.

‘Beautiful,’ he murmured almost to himself, then bent suddenly, blocking out the dim lamplight as his mouth swooped down to press a soft, light kiss to her trembling mouth. ‘More than beautiful,’ he extended as he straightened again. ‘Dangerous.’ Then he said, ‘Goodnight, Miss Lacey,’ and simply turned and walked away, leaving her standing there staring at his long, loose, easy stride with his jacket thrown over one broad shoulder while that shocking pelt of raven hair rested comfortably along his straight spine.