‘Is that what you think I am? An innocent?’ His mild voice sounded hollow, incredulous even. No doubt in his own mind he was a witty, sophisticated man of the world... The imagination had wonderful ways of compensating for one’s personal inadequacies!
‘Well, an innocent abroad, anyway,’ she said, humouring him. ‘It does rather stick out: you didn’t know about not using portable phones...or about the check-in procedures, and you were practically falling to pieces with nerves at the airport—’
‘Perhaps I was merely stunned speechless by your beauty.’
His sarcastic retort left her unruffled. She knew she wasn’t beautiful in the classical, restrained sense but she had flamboyant good looks that most men found attractive and an innate sense of style. ‘You thought I was a boy,’ she reminded him smugly.
‘Did I?’ he murmured quizzically, leaning back in his seat so that his face moved out of the spotlight. Thrown into shadowed relief, his features were stripped of gentleness, imbued now with a brooding strength that seemed vaguely sinister. A man of dark secrets and intriguing mystery...
‘You know you did,’ she said, admiring the effectiveness of the illusion: comic relief as villain. She had always believed that lighting was more effective than make-up in creating a character and here was the proof.
He said nothing and she frowned, suddenly remembering the magazine he had been leafing through at the beginning of the flight. Her pride bristled. Damn it, if he was toying with her over the matter of her identity...!
‘But you obviously know who I am now, right?’ she challenged.
His eyes dipped to her breasts, which were barely visible under the loose drape of her shirt, and to the slender curve of her hips, spanned by a wide leather belt which emphasised the narrowness of her waist. His gaze travelled down further, to the cellphone resting on her upper thigh, next to where the snug V of her jeans was pulled flat across her pubic bone.
‘Yes...you’re obviously a woman.’
The stifled statement was somehow more flattering than a gush of admiring words. To her surprise Rosalind felt her body tingle as if he had physically touched her where his eyes had wandered. Usually perfectly comfortable under the most leering male appraisal, she hurriedly crossed her legs in an unconscious gesture of self-protection.
A woman. If all she was to him was an anonymous female then he hadn’t paid much attention to that magazine, she thought with relief. He’d probably just skimmed over the glossy pages of celebrity clones before tossing it aside.
She looked at him through her lashes and received another small shock. Instead of politely averting his gaze, he had allowed it to linger on the deepened V created in her lap by her crossed legs, almost as if he could see the transparent emerald lace bikini briefs she wore beneath the sturdy denim. The muscles along her inner thighs tightened with a feathery ripple and she instinctively sought to shatter her unexpected self-consciousness with flippancy.
‘Those aren’t X-ray glasses by any chance, are they?’ she joked, and his eyes jerked back to hers. ‘Or are you going to confess they’re just plain glass and you’re simply a mild-mannered reporter?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ His eyes looked like polished jet—or perhaps it was just a coating on his spectacle lenses that made them look so hard.
‘You know—like Superman?’ He looked at her steadily and she let out a huff of disbelief. ‘For goodness’ sake, you don’t have much of a grasp on popular culture, do you? What do you do for a crust?’
‘Crust?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘A living? What sort of job do you do?’ She leaned sideways to peer at his laptop, to see if it would give her a clue. She glimpsed a busy clutter of characters before, with the swift tap of a single finger, he closed the file he had been working on, leaving the cursor blinking on a blank screen.
. ‘Top secret, huh?’ she teased, tilting her head back, the light flaring to fierce brilliance in her short cap of red hair.
‘Something like that.’
She shrugged good-naturedly at the rebuff. ‘Oh, well, we all have our secrets.’
‘Some more dangerous than others.’
The idea that his vague and distracted manner was a cover for a life riddled with dangerous secrets tickled her funny bone. ‘Ah, don’t tell me...’ Her voice dropped to a bare whisper as she rasped behind the back of her hand, ‘You’re really a spy travelling to the mysterious East on a secret mission of national importance!’
She ruined the blood-curdling effect with a husky chuckle. ‘A spy’s who’s afraid to fly!’
His colour rose. ‘I’m not afraid of flying.’
‘Of course you aren’t,’ she said, deadpan. ‘The stewardess only held your hand for take-off because she thought you looked cute.’
‘You told her to do that,‘ he accused through his teeth. ’Oh, for goodness’ sake, that was only because I knew you were probably too shy to ask for help. She came up with the “cute” all by herself—’
‘Too shy?’ He looked as if she had hit him over the head. Did he think it didn’t show?
‘Well, you must admit you don’t have a very...um...assertive personality, do you?’ she said tactfully, patting his arm. It felt surprisingly solid under the dark fabric. Unlike the other men in the cabin he had not removed his suit jacket but merely loosened his tie and a couple of shirt buttons. Through the sagging gap in the crisp white shirt she could see the smooth, surprisingly tanned skin of his chest. No hairy he-man he, she thought with an inner giggle.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being shy,’ she continued as he glowered at her. ‘A lot of women find that endearing in a man...you know, a nice change from the swaggering macho come-ons. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about asking for help when you need it, though. People respect you more for admitting your weaknesses than for trying to hide them behind a mask of false bravado. It takes courage to let people know that you’re vulnerable—’
‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’ He interrupted her homily with an exasperated snap. ‘I don’t know where you get your ideas but I can assure you Miss—’ He stopped abruptly and sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Miss...?’
‘Marlow,’ Rosalind offered quickly, anxious that his sudden burst of self-assurance should not be undermined by a minor point of etiquette.
‘Miss Marlow,’ he accepted grittily, without a flicker of reaction to the name. ‘I can assure you that if I am ever in need of assistance I am perfectly capable of arranging for it by myself!’
‘Excuse me!’ It was one of the stewardesses, speaking to Rosalind in a sternly admonitory tone. ‘That’s not a portable telephone you’ve got, is it?’
Rosalind sensed the man beside her stiffen, as if he expected her to leap at the chance to rat on him. He was probably honest to a fault. Left to himself he would doubtless pour out a full, frank and totally unnecessary confession.
‘Yes, but don’t worry, I’m not using it,’ she said swiftly, with a winsome smile. ‘Mr James here has been showing me his state-of-the-art travelling office. I was just holding this while he demonstrated some dazzling technical wizardry on his computer.’ She cast him a look of patent awe before switching her attention back to the object of her persuasion. ‘Naturally the phone is switched off,’ she said, hoping it was. ‘We’re both well aware of the airline regulations.’
‘Hmm, well, just to be on the safe side, perhaps we should remove the batteries to prevent it becoming arccidentally operational.’ The stewardess smiled, whisking it from her and deftly opening the panel. ‘Oh, someone’s done it