And how, Andy wondered irritably, considering that she was covered completely, did the intensity of Darius’s gaze as he watched her approach somehow manage to make her feel as if she were naked from head to toe instead?
‘Saturday is only two days away,’ she taunted as she came to a halt just feet away from him. ‘So did your original date have to cancel?’
Andy gave an inner wince even as she asked the question; if Darius Sterne’s original date had cried off, for whatever reason, then there was a multitude of women who would happily have taken her place. He certainly didn’t need to resort to going to the trouble of seeking Andy out, for the sole purpose of inviting her to go with him.
‘I didn’t have a previous date.’ He raised dark brows, as the same thought obviously crossed his own mind. ‘It is a bit short notice, I admit, but I only arrived back from a lengthy business trip at six o’clock this morning.’
‘And no doubt you immediately thought of me!’ she dismissed scathingly.
‘What makes you think I ever stopped thinking of you?’ he challenged.
Andy found it hard to believe that Darius had given her a single thought after their first meeting, especially when he seemed to have been out of the country for the past week.
And yet he was asking her to believe that just hours after his return he had come here to see her?
Andy was determined not to read too much into that. ‘Arrived back from where?’
‘China.’
‘They don’t have telephones in China?’
His jaw tightened at her sarcasm. ‘You didn’t give me your telephone number or email address.’
‘I didn’t give you the address of my dance studio either, but you don’t seem to have had any trouble finding that out for yourself,’ she countered.
His eyes glittered his displeasure at the underlying sarcasm in her voice. ‘I thought you would prefer that I came here and made the invitation in person.’
‘Did you?’ Andy mused. ‘Or did you imagine I might find it harder to refuse you in person?’
Darius had convinced himself this past week that Miranda Jacobs couldn’t possibly be as intractable as he had thought she was being that night at his club. That maybe she had just been playing hard to get last week, in an effort to pique his interest. Just five minutes back in her infuriating company, and he knew that Miranda was every bit as stubborn as he had first thought she was.
He wasn’t used to being told the word no, by any woman. Not once, but twice!
Darius slid his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers, rather than reach out and touch Miranda, not sure which would win out if he did touch her: his need to shake her or kiss her!
‘You didn’t seem to have any problem with saying no to me in person last week.’
She gave a shrug of those slender shoulders. ‘Which begs the question, why are you bothering to ask me again, when you already know the answer?’
Darius breathed in sharply, his hands clenching in his trouser pockets, as he once again fought the need he felt to reach out and shake this woman. An impulse he resisted because he had every reason to believe he would then be tempted into kissing her. Senseless! ‘I thought the charity benefitting from the dinner might be of interest to you,’ he bit out between tightly clenched teeth.
Andy eyed him guardedly, very aware of the tension thrumming through Darius’s lean and muscled body, as he now stood just inches away from her.
Of excited awareness thrumming through her own body.
Just as she was also aware of how alone they were in the studio, with only the distant noise of the traffic outside to disturb the tension between the two of them.
She gave a slow shake of her head. ‘Why are you doing this, Darius?’ she asked softly. ‘What possible interest can you have in taking out a failed ballerina?’
‘You didn’t fail, damn it!’ Darius cut in harshly, his brief elation at finally hearing her call him Darius having been completely overridden by the anger he now felt at hearing her describe herself as a failure.
Once he had accepted that his desire for Miranda wasn’t going to go away, he had made it his business to find out all that he could about her.
And a failure wouldn’t have fought and struggled her way back onto her feet after undergoing numerous operations, in the way that he now knew Miranda had needed to do four years ago.
A failure wouldn’t have studied and worked so hard in the years since, in order to earn a teaching certificate in the subject she loved, but could no longer participate in herself.
A failure wouldn’t have spent most of her share of the inheritance left to her and her sister by her parents five years ago to open up this dance studio.
The Internet truly was an intrusive thing...
Even if he had made the start of his fortune out of it!
And the ballerina Miranda Jacobs, and the tragic accident during her performance of Swan Lake, had once been part of that public domain. Not so much once she had begun her long recovery and disappeared from the newspaper headlines; stories in the tabloids were always fleeting, instant things, with none of those newspapers interested in reporting anything long-term.
Darius had his own method of finding out anything that he wanted to know. And, within days of meeting her, he had wanted to know everything there was to know about Miranda.
‘I doubt you have ever failed at anything in your life,’ he repeated.
‘So you prefer we think of it as my just having made a career change?’ she mocked. ‘A step sideways, if you’ll excuse the pun?’
‘I prefer to think of it as you working with what you have left,’ Darius dismissed briskly; annoying as Miranda was being, he was determined not to argue with her. ‘So, about this dinner on Saturday?’
‘You mentioned I might be interested in the charity?’
Darius masked his inner triumph as Miranda showed a grudging interest. ‘It’s in aid of disabled and underprivileged children.’
A charity that did interest her, Andy admitted irritably, and one she already worked with; she gave over one of her sessions a week to working with disabled and/or underprivileged children.
Had Darius already known that?
Of course he had. He was a man who would make it his business to know anything he wanted to know. And for some reason he had wanted to know about her.
Or maybe it was that he thought of her as some sort of charity? Someone who had once been in the public eye, but now lived and worked in obscurity, at her little dance studio in the suburbs of London?
‘You know, Miranda, I was really hoping to do this the nice way.’
Andy looked up at him sharply. ‘What does that mean?’ She eyed him warily, not at all comfortable with that feral smile now curving those sculptured lips. It was not the genuine smile she had visualised last week, but nevertheless it still put two attractive grooves into the lean hardness of his cheeks.
‘If you just say yes, to accompanying me to the charity dinner, then you’ll never need to know.’ He shrugged.
Andy’s unease only increased at his pleasant tone. ‘Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that my brother-in-law works for you?’ She had been very aware of that fact from the moment Darius had approached and spoken to her in the club last week. She just hadn’t believed he would actually stoop to using that connection in order to impose his considerable will.
Until now.
‘Intelligent as well