He gave her a tired smile that was offset by the wary gleam in his eyes. “There’s no need, darling. I’ll be going straight to bed.”
Kia wasn’t about to let Phillip get away with this. They needed to talk. Tonight.
She pushed her chair back farther. “Still, I think I’ll go home, too.”
Phillip put up a hand. “Please stay, darling. I don’t want to spoil your fun.”
What fun? She didn’t call Brant’s company fun, not with him watching her, waiting. And if Phillip called her “darling” one more time, she was going to scream. She was no man’s “darling,” not when her father liked to call her his “darling girl.”
She turned back to Phillip, ready to insist on going with him. Only the look in his eyes stopped her dead. Seeing Lynette again had upset him.
Compassion stirred within her, diminishing her anger to a degree. “Okay, Phillip. I understand. You just get plenty of rest so that we can go to the art exhibition tomorrow.” Her eyes said she intended talking to him then about all this.
His eyes darted away uneasily. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“I’ll make sure she gets home safely,” Brant said out of the blue.
Kia’s heart lurched. She couldn’t imagine being in the confines of a car with Brant. Why, even the ballroom wasn’t enough to stop his silent seduction.
“No, that’s okay,” she said quickly. “I’ll take a taxi.”
“Not in that, you won’t,” Brant said arrogantly, giving her breasts a raking glance in the clinging silver dress. “There was a woman attacked just last week after she left one of the hotels by herself.”
“Yes, and they caught the guy, remember?” she pointed out, resisting the urge to tug at her bodice and cover her cleavage. “It was an old boyfriend.” She turned to Phillip. “I’ll be fine.”
But Phillip was frowning. “No, Brant’s right. You’re too attractive to be out on your own late at night.”
Okay, this was getting crazy.
“Phillip, don’t be ridiculous. I’m a grown woman. I know how to take care of myself.”
Phillip opened his mouth, but it was Brant who spoke. “I don’t think it’s ridiculous that your…” He paused. “…fiancé is concerned for your safety.”
She grimaced inwardly. What could she say to that? “Fine. You can drive me home then.”
God help her.
Satisfied with that, Phillip fobbed off someone’s suggestion that they announce the engagement over the microphone before he left. She shuddered at the suggestion, knowing it would be public knowledge soon enough. Oh, heavens, and wasn’t that idiotic journalist who’d written the comment about her getting her hooks into Phillip going to just love all this?
Thankfully Phillip’s male nurse, Rick, was in the hotel and was ready and waiting by the time Kia pushed the wheelchair through the ballroom doors. She tried to speak to Phillip, but all she got was a quick apology and a promise to talk later.
Then Rick wheeled him away. Suddenly the hardest thing to do was turn around and walk back into that room. Brant would be there with his arrogance and his hostility, and if he said so much as one word out of place, she would pour his drink over his head.
She smiled to herself. As a matter of fact, she hoped he did, she mused as she pushed open the doors and immediately felt those hard eyes eating her up from across the room. They scorched her with a look that bordered on physical intensity.
Unable to stop herself, she glanced at Brant. Through the sea of people and smoke-filled air, her knees weakened as sexual heat enveloped her, even as he pretended to be listening to something Simon said to him.
And it was a pretence. Every feminine instinct told her that he’d like nothing more than to sweep her into his arms and lose himself in her body. Her body. She had to remember that’s all he wanted.
“Hey, babe. Wanna dance?”
Startled, she turned and looked into the face of Danny Tripp, the teenage son of one of the executives who worked a few days a week in the accounts department, and who turned beetroot-red whenever she came into the room. She’d never been able to get him to say more than two words at a time.
But not tonight, it seemed. Tonight tall, young, clean-cut Danny Tripp, fortified by alcohol, had a silly grin on his face and was game for anything, especially with a group of his mates egging him on.
Great. Now she had two men lusting after her. Well, one was really only a boy in a man’s body. And the other? Yes, Brant Matthews was all man. And more. Much more.
She glanced across the room and saw the alert look in his eyes that told her he sensed another male moving in on his territory. His territory. How ridiculous to think that way. Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling.
Dragging her gaze away, she gave Danny a friendly smile so that he wouldn’t feel embarrassed in front of his friends. “I’d love to dance with you, Danny.”
“You would?” For a moment he appeared stunned. Then he grabbed her hand and dragged her out onto the dance floor.
She stumbled into his arms when he spun around to face her, and before she knew it, he’d slid his hands onto her hips, pulled her close to his lanky body and buried his face in her hair. There was none of the finesse Brant had exhibited earlier when he’d taken her in his arms. This was pure adolescent male, hungry for sex, and all the better with a woman he fancied.
Slightly alarmed—and hearing his pals’ whistles over the slow music—she put her hands against his chest and forced some distance between them. “Danny, I—”
“Don’t talk, babe.” He went to pull her back into position.
She held firm against him. “Dan-ny…” The tone of her voice must have gotten through to him, because the hold on her hips slackened. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at him, pleased to see some of the alcoholic glaze disappear from his eyes.
He gave her a self-conscious grin. “Sorry, Kia. I guess you went to my head.”
She relaxed with a smile, finding his boyishness easier to handle. “I think the drink had more to do with it than me.”
He shrugged wryly. “Yeah, well, I’m not used to drinking rum.”
Kia suspected he wasn’t used to drinking at all. “I once got drunk on brandy and was sick for a full week.”
“You got drunk? No foolin’?”
“I was young once, too, you know,” she joked, even while her heart cramped with pain at the reason she’d been drinking. It had been the day her father had married his second wife. He hadn’t wanted his “plain-looking” daughter at the wedding—or that’s what he’d been telling her mother when Kia had accidentally picked up the telephone to make a call.
She’d been crushed by his rejection, though at fifteen she should have been used to his insensitivity. Afterward she’d feigned ignorance when her mother had gently explained about her father’s remarriage. She had then gone out and gotten rotten drunk at a friend’s party, learning the hard way that drinking didn’t solve a thing.
“I hope you won’t spread that around?” she said now, pushing aside her painful memories to smile up at Danny.
“Er…” His eyes darted to his friends at the table behind them, then back to her. “Sorry. What did you say?”
Someone yelled out, “Yea, Danny,” but she pretended not to notice. They were only having fun. “I said I hope you won’t tell anyone that I once got drunk. I have a reputation to uphold,” she teased.
His