So she unearthed the make-up and did her best to follow the instructions she’d been given that afternoon. It took her a while, but in the end she inspected her reflection with something like relief. She looked all right.
‘Well, perhaps a bit better than all right,’ she told her reflection, sternly squelching an ignoble satisfaction.
After all, if the guests were connected to the mineral industry surely there wouldn’t be anyone to make her feel inferior? They’d be middle-aged men with weather-beaten faces.
Wrong. The first person to arrive was young and tall and gorgeous, with a mane of artfully cut and shaded blonde hair, and clearly she knew Luke very well, embracing him with delight.
Which didn’t bore him in the least. He might have avoided the full-blown kiss she was intent on pressing on his lips, but he did it without being obvious, and he kissed both cheeks and then held her at arm’s length and said something to her that made her laugh and blush and pat his cheek.
Only then did he introduce Fleur. The gorgeous blonde looked a little puzzled and said, ‘I thought you were married—oh, sorry, wrong woman!’
Presumably she meant the mysterious Janna.
At that moment Fleur was devoutly thankful to the woman who’d chosen the clothes for her and to Luke for making her accept the cosmetics. They were armour.
Armour she desperately needed, although Luke gave her unobtrusive but steady support as she negotiated the evening. She even enjoyed the dinner, although when it was over she couldn’t remember what she’d eaten.
That might have been because the man beside her, a mining magnate and the most important man in the delegation, turned out to be unexpectedly charming—a man with the soul of a poet when he spoke of the wild, hot, dusty Outback that had made his fortune.
When they’d all gone she said formally to Luke, ‘Thank you. You certainly know how to give a dinner party.’
‘You seemed to enjoy yourself. Perhaps I should tell you that your dinner partner is very happily married.’
He didn’t say it unpleasantly, but she felt a shock of outrage. ‘It’s not necessary,’ she returned with a bite. ‘He’s old enough to be my father.’
As a riposte it was a cliché, but it was all she could think of.
Luke lifted a black brow to devastating effect. ‘Is that important?’
Goaded, she snapped, ‘Possibly not to your blonde friend, but it is to me.’
‘I was jealous,’ he said with cool menace. ‘Were you?’
‘Jealous?’ She stared at him, then coloured and let her lashes fall. ‘Neither of us have any right to—to feel anything. Particularly not that,’ she said, turning to go.
He touched her bare shoulder and she froze. No, she thought confusedly, looking straight ahead. Tonight he wore a magnificent tropical dinner jacket that emphasised his masculine waist and the lean hips beneath it. It should have looked theatrical; Luke carried it off to perfection.
She tried frantically to haul her thoughts into some sort of order, but her eyes had fixated on the tanned column of his throat, and the arrogant jut of jaw, shaded slightly now by a faint show of beard—and his mouth…
Ah, God, how had she managed to keep her gaze from his mouth for so long?
His lips hardened, then tilted in a smile. ‘So why did we both feel it?’ he asked, his deep, slightly taunting voice reaching inside her and opening floodgates to release sensations that shook her down to her soul.
Fleur gulped. His hand tightened on her shoulder for a second, then relaxed.
‘You smell like the sea,’ he said quietly. ‘With a hint of frangipani. And when you smile, did you know you have a dimple in your left cheek? It’s infuriatingly elusive—it comes and vanishes so quickly it’s difficult to catch, but it lends something mischievous to your smile. Were you a mischievous child, Fleur?’
‘I don’t know,’ she croaked. Was there the faintest hint of an accent in the way he said her name? Dimly Fleur remembered his French great-grandmother.
She was having such difficulty concentrating, and all he was doing was talking to her, and resting his hand on her shoulder—well, no, he was sort of caressing it, stroking it as though it was infinitely delightful to his touch…
Tension knotted inside her, holding her in a grip of sensuous enchantment. If something didn’t end this delicious stand-off soon, the flames licking through her would consume her and she’d go up like a bonfire. Or do something drastic.
He lifted his hand, and she thought she might be able to breathe again if she stepped back, but she couldn’t move.
A lean forefinger came to rest on her cheek, just a bit above her mouth. ‘Here,’ he said gravely, except that a raw note ran beneath the word, wildly exciting her.
‘What?’
‘I think the dimple is just here.’ And he kissed the spot his finger had touched, his hand sliding across her shoulder in a gesture that shouldn’t have been at all carnal.
Her heart went into overdrive, beating high and rapid in her throat and ears, so that all she could hear was his voice as he went on thoughtfully, ‘Or perhaps it was here.’
And he kissed her again, this time a little closer to her mouth.
Desire, like a keen longing mixed with incandescent pleasure, rocketed through her. She stiffened, unconsciously raising her chin so that the kiss grazed the edge of her lips.
On a rough note Luke breathed her name as though it were some kind of talisman, and kissed her aching, eager mouth properly. His lips were firm and warm and compelling as they explored hers. Every thought driven from her head by a charge of pure, unadulterated excitement, Fleur groaned and went limp, and his arms came around her and pulled her into his lean, aroused body.
Stunned, she heard the odd noise she made when he lifted his mouth—part satisfaction, part plea—and she knew he understood it, too. He settled her back against him and kissed her again, and this time she opened her mouth for him, while skyrockets coloured her closed eyelids with the glittering desperation of hunger.
A reckless craving that was reciprocated in spades. She recognised it in the surge of power in his body, the deepening intensity of the kiss, and the burgeoning of his body.
She almost cried out with frustration when he lifted his head again. He took in a huge breath and said in a harsh, intense voice she didn’t associate with Luke Chapman, sophisticated man of the world, ‘That may well be the biggest mistake I’ve made.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, feeling slightly sick but understanding perfectly.
‘Do you regret it?’
Was it her imagination, or did his arms tighten around her? ‘No,’ she said frankly, adding with even more honesty, ‘Although I probably will in the morning.’
‘You and me both.’ But he laughed quietly as he let her go.
Cold and desolate, Fleur hugged herself until she realised how she must look—pleading, hugely needy—and let her arms drop to her sides. The wildfire heat of a few seconds ago was fading fast, replaced by the chill of his rejection.
‘I didn’t intend this to happen,’ he said abruptly.
‘Neither did I,’ she said. ‘Is that normal?’
He closed his eyes for a second. ‘No,’ he said, when he opened them again. ‘Which is not to say it’s abnormal, either. Basically—and this is very basic—I think it’s a matter of genes.’
‘Genes?’ Oh, she