That niggling fear bolstered her lagging resolve. She wasn’t twenty years old anymore—she was a woman. A strong, independent woman, and she could handle this man and her unexpected and inexplicable attraction to him.
“Mr. Logan,” she said, in what she hoped was a casually disinterested tone.
He turned slowly, and she realized then that he’d been standing at the window watching for her. That he’d seen her arrive. That, in all likelihood, he’d seen Stuart kiss her good-night.
“Good evening, Ms. Quinlan.”
She didn’t insist that he call her Riane this time. She’d already decided it would be best to keep this man at a distance—as far a distance as possible. He was too potentially dangerous to her peace of mind to allow him to encroach on her carefully ordered life.
“How did you get in here?” she demanded.
“Your housekeeper, Sophie, let me in.”
“I didn’t mean into the house—I meant through the security gates.”
“Sophie again,” he told her.
Riane frowned. “She’s not in the habit of opening the gates to strangers.”
“But I’m not exactly a stranger, am I?”
“You are to Sophie.”
“I told her that we’d met at the charity ball, and that I had something that belongs to you.”
“And do you?”
He gestured to the wrap draped carelessly over the back of her father’s chair. The velvet wrap that she’d belatedly realized she’d left in the ballroom.
“I didn’t realize you worked in lost and found.”
One side of his mouth kicked up in a half smile. “Apparently I do.”
“Well, thank you for returning it.”
“You’re welcome.”
But instead of moving toward the door, as she expected him to do, he leaned back against the corner of a bookcase and folded his arms over his chest. His pose was deliberately casual, his gaze leisurely as it skimmed over her. His self-confidence bordered on arrogance, the boldness of his stare almost insolent. It unnerved her, and aroused her.
“You look…” Joel paused, his deep blue eyes filled with heat as he sought the appropriate word to complete his thought, “…stunning.”
Stunning.
Riane felt her cheeks flush with guilty pleasure. Why did it matter what Joel Logan thought? Why did his reluctant compliment mean so much to her when Stuart’s words had only annoyed her?
The answer came quickly, unbidden. Because Joel Logan made her feel like a woman—feminine, attractive, desirable. With Stuart she only ever felt like an accessory—a suitable companion for any press conference or primary.
Uncomfortable with the comparison, with the feelings he stirred inside her, Riane refused to acknowledge the comment. “Was there something else you wanted, Mr. Logan?”
“I expected at least a few minutes of small talk, maybe the offer of a drink.”
Riane bit back another sigh, resenting that the manners so carefully ingrained since childhood demanded that she participate in such formalities. But she’d managed to convince herself that Joel Logan had gone back to wherever he’d come from, and his unexpected appearance here—in her home—disconcerted her.
“Forgive my lack of manners, Mr. Logan. It’s been a very long day and I wasn’t expecting company.” She didn’t care that her apology sounded more like an accusation. She would go through the motions, but that was all. “Would you care for a drink?”
He inclined his head slightly, watching her intently. She stood firm, unflinching beneath his steady gaze.
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” he said at last.
She crossed over to the sideboard, removed the crystal stopper from the Waterford decanter and poured a generous amount of scotch into two highball glasses.
She passed one to him, careful that their fingers not brush in the transfer. She was determined to avoid any and all physical contact with him. She’d let him have his drink, find out what he wanted and send him on his way.
But Joel obviously had other plans, because he set his glass down on the shelf and brushed his fingers over her bare shoulder, down her arm, linking them loosely around her wrist. She felt the jolt of awareness reverberate through her system, sending tingles from the top of her head to the tips of her toes and all the erogenous zones in between. Still, she refused to let him see how he affected her, refused to let him know that her whole system went into overload when he touched her.
She looked at his hand on hers, raised a brow. Most of the men she knew would have taken the not-so-subtle hint and terminated the unwanted contact, but Joel either didn’t understand her signal or simply refused to comply with it. She suspected it was the latter.
“How long have you been engaged?” he asked.
The abruptness of the question, as much as the hint of annoyance in his tone, startled her. “The engagement isn’t official yet,” she told him, silently wondering if it ever would be.
“No wedding date set?”
“No.” She tugged out of his grasp and stepped away. She tipped her own glass to her lips and drank deeply, the scotch burning a fiery path down her throat that didn’t compare to the heat on her arm where he’d touched her.
He picked up his glass again and sipped. “Nice scotch.”
Riane downed the last of her drink, set the glass down with a snap. “Did you come her to discuss my wedding plans, my father’s scotch, or was there something else you wanted?”
“Have I said or done something to upset you, Ms. Quinlan?”
Yes, damn it. She wanted to scream the words at him, to let her anger and frustration spill over. She’d been perfectly happy until Joel Logan had come into her life. Okay, maybe that wasn’t entirely true. But she’d been content, for the most part, because she hadn’t known what she was missing.
She still didn’t know, but every time he looked at her, every time he touched her, he made her wonder.
“You’re here,” she said simply.
“I was thinking if either one of us had a right to be annoyed,” he said casually, “it would be me.”
“Why?”
“Because a woman who’s engaged to be married shouldn’t look at another man the way you were looking at me Saturday night.”
She dropped her gaze and moved to refill her glass. “I’ll apologize for the fact that you obviously misunderstood my intentions.”
“I didn’t misunderstand anything,” Joel said coolly.
Riane lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug, raised the glass. Joel was at her side before it touched her lips, his fingers wrapped around the wrist that held her drink.
Her first thought was that he moved fast.
Her second, he was dangerous.
Her next, she wanted him.
It was irrational, it was insane, but in that instant, she knew it was true. It wasn’t the subtle tug of desire she’d felt when she’d danced with him at the ball. There was nothing subtle about this at all. It hit her with the force of a runaway freight train, uncontrollable, unstoppable, undeniable.
Chapter 3
Joel