The tiny quirking of one corner of his beautifully shaped mouth betrayed an impulse to respond with some provocative suggestion, but he resisted the temptation admirably, saying instead, ‘For dinner. I take it you weren’t planning on going to the restaurant dressed like that.’
The look he turned on her clothes was distinctly uncomplimentary.
‘I wasn’t planning on anything!’
With an effort, Georgia restrained herself from banging her hand against the side of her head to clear the confusion. She felt as if she was appearing in some play where the script was constantly being changed without warning.
‘And I don’t recall you asking me out!’
‘I didn’t’ The gleam in those dark eyes was totally unrepentant. ‘But it seems the obvious answer.’
‘Answer to what? Nothing seems in the least bit obvious to me. Oh, look, you’d better come in.’
Perhaps once inside, back in the security of her own familiar surroundings, she might be able to think clearly again. But, unfortunately for her hard-won composure, the first thing that caught Georgia’s eye as she led the way into the sitting room was the telephone receiver, still dangling from the edge of the table where she had dropped it in her haste to answer the summons from the doorbell.
The thought of Lucas realising that she had still been trying to get in touch with him, the possible interpretation that he was capable of putting on that fact, sharpened her voice more than she had planned when she turned to him to ask, ‘Now, why are you really here?’
‘I told you. I want to take you out to dinner.’
‘Why?’
One dark eyebrow lifted slightly at her tone, and Lucas’s mouth twisted cynically.
‘Oh, don’t worry, darling,’ he drawled tauntingly. ‘I’ve no designs on your body, delectable though it may be. Believe me, I prefer my women with a rather more approachable side to their personality.’
She just bet he did! And if that crack about her ‘delectable’ body was supposed to flatter her into seeing him in a more favourable light then he’d better think again. She had no delusions about her own appearance, and knew she was certainly not the fantasy female type. The dig about personality was likely to be much closer to fact
‘I just thought that if I was to do my job properly, then we ought to get better acquainted,’ he went on.
‘Is that really necessary?’
‘Well, I’m hardly going to convince anyone that I’m hopelessly enamoured of you if I don’t know a single thing about your background.’
‘Oh, but—’
Just when she had thought she was getting things back under control once more, he knocked her for six all over again. She really should have thought things through more thoroughly.
The truth was that all she had visualised was the look on her father’s face when she turned up at his birthday party with Lucas Mallory at her side. But now she was forced to face the fact that there was a great deal more involved in all this than she had anticipated, and involved was very definitely the word for the position in which she now found herself.
‘I can’t see you being “hopelessly enamoured” of anyone,’ she muttered, knowing deep down that she also couldn’t see him really understanding any of her private reasons for doing this in the first place. ‘But surely I don’t have to tell you things face to face? Couldn’t I just put all the facts in a letter?’
‘A business memo, perhaps?’ Lucas mocked. ‘The file on Georgia Harding: name, date of birth, address.’
The final word sparked off a whole new set of questions in Gerogia’s mind.
‘And that’s another thing. How did you know where I lived?’
His shrug dismissed her concern as unimportant.
‘Why is that a problem? I know names and addresses and a whole lot more about all my other business associates.’
‘Yes, but I’m not just—’
Too late, she saw the trap he had laid gaping widely beneath her feet, and backed off hastily, but not quite swiftly enough. Lucas had seen her reaction, she realised, seen it and noted it with a smile that was frankly predatory, making her heart lurch uncomfortably.
‘In my case I think it’s more of an invasion of privacy. If I’d wanted you to know, I’d have told you.’
‘And the fact that you didn’t tell me was far more intriguing than any more direct information, as I’m sure you must know.’
That smile had grown, lighting but not warming the darkness of his eyes in a way that made Georgia think shiveringly of a soaring eagle focusing intently on the innocent rabbit or mouse it had marked out as its prey.
‘If you’re thinking that I did it deliberately in order to “intrigue” you, then I’m afraid I’ll have to disillusion you on that score.’
She could see only too well just how it would arouse his interest, of course.
‘I mean, I can see that a man like you, who’s used to having women if not actually throwing themselves at your feet, then at least coming running if you so much as click your fingers—’
‘You have a decidedly exaggerated idea of my appeal, Ms Harding,’ Lucas drawled with lazy mockery. ‘Or is it that your opinion of your own sex is so very low that you believe they have so little respect for themselves as to behave as you say?’
‘You’re a fine one to talk about respect!’ Georgia flung at him. ‘Particularly where women are concerned!’
That barb struck home, the long back stiffening in response, the dark head coming up, granite eyes blazing into hers.
‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’
Oh, damn, she’d gone a bit too far, said more than she had meant to.
‘I read the papers!’
‘And believe every word?’ he demanded cynically. ‘I gave you credit for rather more intelligence than that.’
Georgia wasn’t at all sure how to respond to the deliberately double-edged compliment, feeling as if she had been backed into a very uncomfortable corner.
‘And I have a friend-’
‘Oh, of course! And does this friend have a name?’
Georgia shifted awkwardly from one foot to another, feeling that she had been pushed into a corner yet again.
‘I promised I wouldn’t say.’
‘I see.’
The two syllables were so brutally clipped and curt that they made Georgia think uncomfortably of the sound of a door slamming shut, or the trap that she had imagined earlier snapping closed with bone-crushing force.
‘So you can throw out accusations, put any slur you fancy on my reputation, and I’m not even allowed to know the name of your informant?’
He was dangerously close to losing that famed cool. Georgia realised nervously, his potentially dangerous temper only being held in check by ruthless control.
‘You probably wouldn’t even remember her. And, besides, I don’t think your reputation—’ deliberately she gave the word a sardonic intonation ‘—needs any help from me.’
‘So that’s the way it is, is it? You’ve barely spoken more than a couple of hundred words to me and yet already you have me tried and convicted, found guilty without even so much as a chance to state my case.’
Georgia