‘If you’re looking for a replacement for Harry, I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I never eat dessert.’
Kate’s dark brows shot up. ‘Never?’ she demanded, quite unable to resist this opportunity to retaliate. His own reputation where women were concerned wouldn’t bear too much scrutiny.
Acknowledging the hit, his mouth twitched into something that might, with encouragement, have turned into a smile. A very cynical smile. ‘Well, certainly not as often as the newspapers would have you believe.’
Kate placed her hand on a heart that was racing uncomfortably. ‘Are you telling me that the newspapers don’t always tell the truth?’ she asked, with complete seriousness.
‘Not always,’ he assured her, with equal gravity. ‘They tend to dwell on the sensational at the expense of probity. A habit they have in common with the female of the species.’
For just a moment she thought she had glimpsed something beyond the scorn, but she had clearly been mistaken. Kate shivered slightly at the chilling sincerity with which he spoke. ‘Perhaps you should improve the quality of your reading matter, Mr Warwick,’ she advised him. ‘And your women.’
‘I hardly think you’re in any position to offer advice on the good character of women,’ he said pointedly.
‘And you are?’ she demanded.
‘Oh, yes, Kate. I know exactly what makes a woman run. Money, power, ambition. They will do anything for it.’ And this time his smile almost reached his eyes. ‘They frequently do.’
She refused to let this go unchallenged. ‘Haven’t you forgotten the most important emotion?’
He folded his arms and regarded her with interest. ‘And what is that?’
‘Love, Mr Warwick.’
‘Love?’ He raised one dark expressive brow in a slightly puzzled expression. ‘Do you mean sex—Kate?’ Her cheeks fired under his raking gaze as he stretched out a long, well-shaped hand to lift the little brooch, read her name. She jumped as his fingers brushed lightly against her breast and, beneath her white wra-pover overall, her nipple hardened with such shocking immediacy that he could not fail to notice. His eyes flickered to hers. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. But that’s not an emotion. It’s a weapon.’
‘What did you come to the kitchen for, Mr Warwick?’ she asked, turning abruptly away. Until that moment, despite his almost unbelievable rudeness, she had felt in control of the situation. Had felt able to match anything he could throw at her. But she had been fooling herself. Her heart had been locked away for so long that she had failed to appreciate the dangerous spike of sexual awareness that had mingled with the buzz of anger.
‘Ice,’ he said simply, in reply to her question.
‘Ice?’
‘Ice. You know. Little cubes of frozen water. If it’s no trouble? But if you want to rush off and keep your appointment with Harry, just point me in the right direction and I’ll help myself.’
She wrenched open the freezer door and tried to remember that this man was a guest in her client’s house. ‘It’s no trouble,’ she said through gritted teeth as she grabbed a bag of ice and dumped it on the table, jabbing a hole in it, wishing it were him. She tipped some into a bowl, holding it out at the full stretch of her arm, unwilling to move any nearer, to risk further contact.
He made no move to take it. Instead he continued to regard her with a level, penetrating, oddly seductive stare that, despite her anger, or perhaps because of the flood of adrenalin rushing giddily through her veins, did something rather odd to her insides, flipping them over in a way that made her breath catch raggedly in her throat and her breast rise and fall rather too quickly.
Gripping the bowl more tightly in a desperate attempt not to betray the urgent increase in her pulse-rate, she lowered her eyes to the broad white expanse of his shirt-front, the top button unfastened to reveal his tanned throat, the silk tie long since pulled from its bow to hang loose about his neck. But he hooked his fingers under her chin, lifting her face until she could not avoid looking up at him. Five feet and four inches in her stockinged feet, she had a long way to look.
‘Is there something else you want, Mr Warwick?’ Her voice stuck somewhere in her throat and emerged as little more than a whisper.
For a long moment his dark eyes held her captive to a searching scrutiny, her apparently boneless legs his unwilling accomplices to this hijack. ‘Perhaps I’ve changed my mind about dessert,’ he said, at last.
Kate had thought she was angry, but now she was glad of the fury that lashed through her, restoring some semblance of sanity to her overheated body. Jason Warwick might be considered desirable by some women, but as far as she was concerned he was an arrogant, self-opinionated… She stopped. Forced a smile to her lips. Pride demanded a cool response.
‘What exactly did you have in mind, Mr Warwick?’ she asked. ‘A quick fumble, like your friend Harry?’ If she had thought she could shame him, she realised at once that she had made a mistake. Nothing about him changed, but his eyes sparked ominously as they scanned her face.
‘In all my life…Kate…’ he paused briefly to linger on her name, investing it with the power to insult ‘…I have never done anything even remotely the same as Harry Roberts.’ His voice was as smooth and cutting as glass. ‘I certainly wouldn’t be cheating on my wife with the hired help in someone else’s kitchen.’ She took a swift step backwards, away from the drugging touch of his fingers and for a moment she thought she had escaped him. But the table dug into her back and before she could turn away he had placed his hands, either side of her, making her his prisoner. ‘But then, I’m not married.’
‘So it’s all right?’ She was at his mercy. They both knew it, but she had had enough of lecherous men for one night. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Warwick, but I’m afraid you’re really not my type,’ she said, holding herself rigid, eschewing an unseemly struggle in an effort to retain some semblance of poise.
‘No?’ He raised one eloquent brow and shrugged slightly. Then, taking the bowl of ice from her hands and putting it on the table behind her, he said, ‘Shall we see?’ For him this was just a game, one in which his partners were always more than willing. So he waited, making no move to meet her halfway, apparently expecting her to stand on her toes and reach up to kiss him. Kate was damned if she would.
Yet she knew that kissing Jason Warwick would be a world away from being manhandled by his fellow dinner guest. Her racing pulse, the way her body quickened mindlessly to the warm masculine scent of him, the gentle pressure of his arms as they held her captive told her so, ringing alarm bells in her head. She had thought she was immune to such careless flirtation. Heartbreak was a painful vaccination, but it had served her well over three hard years.
But this man emanated a quite irresistible magnetism and, while her head was behaving rationally, she was only too conscious that her body was not. Her lips were hot and swollen as she imagined his beautiful, passionate mouth plundering them, and there was a trembling about her midriff at the thought of his hands about her waist, drawing her close…
She shivered convulsively. What on earth was happening to her? Sensible, down-to-earth, cold-as-ice Kate, who never let even the most devoted of her admirers within an arm’s length.
Agitated, stalling for time, she reached up to tuck a glossy black strand of hair behind her ear. Her lips parted nervously and she ran a cooling tongue across their surface. For a moment their eyes met and with a jolt like an electric shock she realised that he was angry. With her? For her apparently casual flirtation with Harry Roberts? That was surely ridiculous. Or was it with himself for so eagerly following suit?
Well, she thought, furious at his arrogant assumption that she was prepared to inflate his oversized ego a little further, he needn’t get himself into a bother about it. Her grey eyes turned steely and her naturally warm voice dropped several degrees below