For goodness’ sake, he was Darius Sterne, billionaire businessman, well known for keeping his emotional distance from all but his twin Xander—to the point that several of the women he had been physically involved with in the past had accused him of being cold and ruthless.
But he freely admitted that he had no idea right now how to escape this situation without hurting Miranda. And he didn’t want to hurt her; he just needed to get away from her for long enough to be able to think straight. To be able to bring some perspective to the situation. To see if there was any perspective to be found!
The question was how?
This was also something which had certainly never bothered him in the past.
He didn’t believe himself to be a deliberately cruel man when it came to the women he had been involved with, he had just never been interested in them outside the bedroom.
He already knew that Miranda wasn’t anything like the women he usually slept with. She was nothing like the models and actresses he usually took to bed. They were women who were only too willing to sleep with him, even if for nothing more than the boost the publicity of just being seen out with one of the Sterne brothers could and would give to her career.
Had he always chosen women who were deliberately no threat to his closed-off heart?
Maybe.
But Miranda was different.
He’d had to blackmail Miranda into going out with him at all!
He sensed that she was extremely vulnerable, emotionally as well as physically, and his own emotional scars from the past, and the estrangement between his mother and himself, made him the very last man she should ever become involved with.
Which was why Darius needed to leave.
Now!
He pulled away from her, deliberately not looking at her nakedness as he rose to his feet, knowing that if he did his resolve would weaken, and he would simply end up making love with her again.
‘Bathroom?’ he prompted gruffly as he refastened his jeans before pulling his T-shirt back on.
* * *
Darius’s thought were an enigma to Andy, but the fact that he couldn’t even look at her as he dressed didn’t bode well for what he might have been planning in his head for these past few moments.
Which was fine, because Andy couldn’t look at him either, now that the euphoria and pleasure had faded and the stark reality of the fact that she had just made love with Darius on her own sofa became all too embarrassingly apparent.
She had never had a man caress her so intimately before. It made her blush just to think of what she and Darius had just enjoyed together!
At the same time as she couldn’t forget the ecstasy he’d brought her. It was a pleasure such as Andy had never dreamed possible, let alone ever imagined sharing with Darius Sterne.
He might be physically and emotionally distant now, but he hadn’t been at all the cold lover she had feared he would be. No, he had been so considerate of her, so caring of her physical shyness. He had even kissed the scars she had hidden away these past four years!
Which, Andy admitted, had been her complete undoing.
How could she have resisted a man who saw those scars as battle wounds rather than the unsightly imperfection Andy had always considered them to be?
She couldn’t. She hadn’t wanted to.
And Darius had made her first physical encounter so beautiful.
Enough so that she could feel herself falling in love with him?
Whatever her own feelings on the matter, Darius’s distant behaviour told her that the closeness was over.
‘Up the stairs and on the right,’ she answered him huskily, frowning as Darius turned abruptly on his heel and strode off in the direction of the bathroom without so much as glancing back.
It gave Andy time to quickly gather up her scattered clothes, so that she could dress before Darius came back. Except, she realised as soon as she sat up, that there was no way she could put her clothes back on when her thighs and abdomen still bore the evidence of Darius’s climax.
How embarrassing was that!
Maybe if she made a quick run for the kitchen, grabbed a towel, and—
Before she could so much as move Darius had come back out of the bathroom and run lightly down the half a dozen steps onto the main floor space. He was carrying one of her fluffy gold bath towels in his hand, his eyes unreadable as he strode purposefully towards her.
Suddenly acutely aware of her nakedness she instinctively crossed one knee over the other before she leant forward with her elbow on her knee, effectively shielding at least part of her nakedness from him.
‘Here.’
The expression in his eyes was hidden behind hooded lids as he handed her the towel before turning away again, shoulders hunched as he thrust his hands into the pockets of jeans. With his back to her he gave Andy the privacy she needed to use the towel before pulling her clothes back on.
‘Do we need to talk about this?’
The fact that he needed to ask, and the way in which he asked, told Andy that what Darius was actually saying was that he didn’t want to talk about it.
That he regretted what had happened.
Andy wasn’t sure how she felt about what their lovemaking had revealed to her. But no doubt she would have days and weeks in which to agonise over her feelings.
When she would never hear from Darius again.
Which, Andy realised, saddened her more than she liked to admit.
She had tried from the first to resist her attraction to Darius, knew from their first meeting, when she had been so instantly aware of him that it was a foolish attraction at best, and a dangerous one at worst. An attraction she had guessed would only bring her heartache.
She now knew for certain that it would.
Because her reaction to Darius today, and their lovemaking just now, told her that she had allowed her heart to become involved. She had no idea if that tumult of emotions was actually love, but she definitely had strong feelings for Darius, much stronger feelings than she had ever felt for any other man. Strong enough that she had allowed him to see her scars. That she had then given herself to him willingly.
She hadn’t really needed to read all that stuff online about Darius, regarding the history of his brief physical relationships with beautiful models and actresses, to know that he wasn’t the type of man who did emotional relationships.
Any more than Andy was a woman who did purely physical ones.
Although Darius certainly couldn’t be blamed for thinking that she was, after the way she had behaved with him just now.
The best that she could hope for now was to try to salvage at least some of her pride.
She stood up. ‘So...’ She frowned at the sound of a mobile phone ringing. It wasn’t hers.
Darius muttered under his breath as he drew his mobile from the back pocket of his jeans, a frown between his eyes as he checked the number on the screen. ‘I’m sorry but I have to take this.’
Andy nodded abruptly as she turned away to finish tidying up the kitchen, leaving Darius the privacy to take his call. Or at least it started out that way.
‘What the—? When?’ he demanded of the caller harshly. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Tell Xander... Never mind, I’ll tell him myself when I get there.’ He ended the call abruptly. ‘I have to leave immediately, Miranda.’ He sounded distracted.
Andy had already guessed that