The distraction of her family was welcome, familiar faces, people who loved her. Her father looked very distinguished in a suit, his mane of thick white hair—all red gone out of it in recent years—curling away from his still ruggedly handsome face. Strange, she had been the only one to inherit his hair and blue eyes. Her younger brothers, Greg and Pete were built like their father, but had their mother’s dark colouring, and both of them looked very attractive, all brushed up for the wedding. Her mother, as always, was the essence of femininity, her dainty figure encased in a peach lace dress.
Robert Connelly’s voice boomed out from his big, barrel chest. “Well, look at you!” His hands grasped Sam’s arms, squaring her up for his beaming pride and admiration. “So much for your mother’s accusation I was making a man of you by letting you have your head about doing what you wanted.” He turned triumphantly to his wife. “My Sam can turn into a beautiful woman any time she likes.”
Her mother regarded her with more whimsical bemusement. “I couldn’t imagine you looking more lovely, Samantha,” she said quietly. “It was like a dream, watching you walk up the aisle.”
“I guess dreams can come true sometimes, Mum,” Sam wryly answered, still helplessly insecure about Tommy’s response to her.
They stayed chatting about the wedding for a while before spotting friends and moving away to catch up with them. Her brothers lingered to make teasing remarks to Tommy about keeping their suddenly glamorous sister under his wing. He blithely replied he was the best man to take care of her, and under his wing was precisely where she belonged, this claim being accompanied by a light hug, plunging her straight into more emotional and physical turmoil as the length of her body was drawn against his, her arm pressed to his chest, hip to hip, thigh to thigh.
Her brothers laughed and wished Tommy the best of luck as they drifted off in search of some luck of their own. Sam was inwardly reeling from the electric awareness of being this close to him, feeling the strong masculinity of his physique, smelling the subtly enticing cologne he must have dabbed on his neck, sensing the strong current of energy that was so much a part of his vibrant personality.
“Do you know this rose in your hair is right in line with my mouth?” he softly mused. “I have the most extraordinary urge to pluck it out with my teeth and sweep you into a wild tango.”
“Don’t!”
Jolted into tilting her head to look up at him, she lost the train of protest, any further words dying in her throat. His face was perilously close to hers, the smooth clear-cut line of his jaw that invited stroking, the mouth perfectly shaped for kissing, a nose that seemed to embody a flare of passion, dark eyes dancing with wickedness and fringed with thick long lashes that were sinfully seductive, eyebrows slanting into a diabolical kick and the springy black curls that made him look so dangerously rakish.
“Such appealing eyes,” he murmured. “Why have I never seen them appealing to me before, Samantha?”
Her heart was in her mouth. She couldn’t answer.
“I would always have answered an appeal from you,” he went on. “As I will now. Your rose is safe…until you want to match me in wanting to let your hair down and…”
“Tommy!”
The sharp call of his name broke the intimate weave of his words around her heart. It was a woman’s voice, claiming his attention. Sam’s head jerked towards it and her stomach contracted as she saw who the woman was…Janice Findlay, Tommy’s most recent flame, and flaming she was in the look she gave Sam, a scorching dismissal that left her burning.
Before today, Sam would have instantly disengaged herself and left Tommy to his playmate. Never would she have contested any woman for his attention. But it seemed to her his words had given her the right to stay at his side and how he handled this situation would tell her more of where she stood with him than anything else.
“Ah, Janice,” he addressed her coolly, his arm hugging Sam more tightly, apparently determined on preventing her from moving away. “Enjoying the wedding?” he casually added, as though Janice Findlay was no more than another guest to him.
Her auburn hair came out of a bottle, Sam decided, noting the darker roots at the side parting. So much for Tommy’s taste for a fiery combination. Nevertheless, Janice was certainly aiming to heat up the opposite sex, the low V-neckline of her slinky black dress putting her prominent breasts on a provocative display.
“It’s quite unique, darling…the setting, the Outback touch with the didgeridoos…my parents thought it marvellous,” she drawled in a sexy voice. “Absolutely honoured to have been invited.”
“I’m glad they’re having a good time.” A strictly polite reply.
Undeterred, Janice offered him a smile that reeked of provocative promise. “I notice drink waiters are circulating with glasses of champers. Come and have some bubbly with me, darling. You must be dying of thirst.”
“Janice, I’m sure you can find someone else to share your fondness for champagne.” There was a steely note driven through the smooth suggestion, and it emphasised his stance as he added, “As you can see…I’m busy.”
Even Sam caught her breath at the direct and unmistakable rejection. As much as she wanted to be put first, it seemed a cruel set-down to a woman who probably had every right to expect him to keep fancying her.
Janice’s smile twisted into bitter irony. “Off with the old, on with the new, Tommy?”
“The old ended some time ago, as well you know,” he retorted quietly. “Making a scene won’t win you anything, Janice.”
“Won’t it?” Her chin tilted up belligerently, her eyes flashing fiery venom, shot straight at him, then targeting Sam. “Well, just don’t think you’re sitting pretty, Samantha Connelly,” she drawled derisively. “You won’t win anything, either.”
With a scornful toss of her hair, she turned her back on them and headed straight for one of the drink waiters. She snatched a glass of champagne off his tray, held his arm to stay his progress through the milling crowd, threw the drink down her throat, replaced the empty glass and grabbed another full one.
“At that rate she’ll be under a table before the reception dinner begins,” Tommy muttered in dark vexation.
“You were…rather cutting,” Sam commented, feeling a twinge of sympathy for the woman he’d cast aside. She knew all too well the frustration of wanting Tommy King, and not being able to reach into him.
“She was unforgiveably rude in her self-serving attempt to cut you out,” he stated tersely.
“Perhaps she felt she had just cause.”
Tommy swung her around to face him, anger blazing from his eyes. “Why do you always assume the worst of me?”
Did she? Maybe she did, in some kind of perverse bid to make him less desirable so she wouldn’t want him so much. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to,” she rushed out in guilty agitation. “I just don’t know where you’re coming from, Tommy, and faced with Janice like that…”
“My involvement with Janice ended the night she did a striptease at a party, then fell on her face, dead drunk,” he bit out in very clear distaste. “For me it was a complete turn-off. I saw her home safely but that was it. And I told her so. She has no excuse for slighting you and no cause to malign me.”
To Sam’s intense relief, his expression changed, the anger swallowed up as his eyes gathered a commanding intensity. He lifted a hand and laid its palm gently on her cheek. “Please…don’t let her spoil this.”
Sam could not tear her eyes away from his though the passionate wanting they were communicating made her head swim. She snatched