The relief when he could finally sit down and have the width of the breakfast table between them was enormous. Well, it was until the silence again became a stilted roar. They might have both been going through the motions of eating with the automation of two robots oblivious to the other’s presence, but Brett figured between them they’d exercised more covert glances than a CIA agent did in a career. This was getting ridiculous! He was thirty-four, for God’s sake, not fifteen!
‘So,’ he said, quickly lowering his unintentionally loud voice when she physically started, ‘are you feeling any better now you’ve eaten?’
Nodding, she quickly swallowed. ‘A bit.’ A tiny smile tugged at her mouth. ‘You were right; you are a good cook.’
1 did warn you.’
His teasing didn’t draw more than another small smile, but its briefness didn’t dull its impact. Brett scrambled to keep the conversation going. ‘You like Thai food?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never had it. I had Italian once.’
‘Once?’
‘My family didn’t eat fancy stuff.’
‘Well, then, I guess I’ll have to introduce you to a wider culinary range while you’re here.’
‘Oh, no! Really. I wouldn’t feel right letting you fix meals for me.’
‘Why not? You have to eat, and it’s no fun just cooking for myself.’
For several seconds she seemed nonplussed by his logic, then produced another of those killer smiles. ‘All right, but only if we take turns. You cook one meal, I’ll cook the next’
‘Fair enough.’
Their gazes met and held, and Brett had a difficult time convincing his libido that he really wasn’t interested in any woman right now—much less the young girl across the table. Even if she was the most incredibly beautiful female he’d ever seen. Yet the hypnotic effect of those turquoise eyes made it impossible for him to look away, and they suffused his body with an inner warmth that was as tranquil as it was disturbing.
It wasn’t until she lowered her lashes and rose from her chair that Brett was capable of blinking and breathing again.
‘Would you like tea or coffee?’ she asked.
Caught up in trying to unravel his bemused thoughts, he had to rerun her words twice before they made sense. ‘Whatever you’re having is fine.’
‘I only drink tea,’ she told him. ‘But I don’t mind making you coffee if that’s what you want.’ The curve of her mouth was almost as bewitching as those of the body she leaned gracefully against the counter, and the item which sprang to the top of his immediate ‘want list’ wasn’t anything as innocuous as either beverage. He managed to bite back the admission. ‘Thanks, but tea’s okay with me.’
‘How do you have it?’
Brett found himself actually having to think before making what should have been an automatic response. ‘White. No sugar.’
‘Darjeeling, Earl Grey or Irish Breakfast?’
It was then his trouble alarm started clanging!
The truth was he had no damn interest in what sort of tea he drank and way too much in the woman making it; all of it sexual.
The problem was he wasn’t supposed to be in the market for sex. Even more disturbing than discovering he was, was finding himself window shopping in an area outside his habitual interest zone.
Which, of course, was Meaghan’s fault! he thought testily. She was the one who’d placed him in Joanna Ford’s proximity. It was bad enough she’d exposed him to the ethereal raven-haired witch currently holding up boxes of tea like a quiz show hostess, but if his sister hadn’t erected neon ‘keep off the grass’ signs around Joanna, he probably wouldn’t have given the girl a second glance. After all, as attractive and sexy as she was, it didn’t alter the fact she was only eight years older than his niece and twelve years younger than him.
What was more, he decided, she was only proving a distraction because he was allowing her to be one. Determined to correct that situation right now, he responded to her repeated query about the tea with an uninterested, ‘Surprise me,’ then stoically refocused his attention on finishing his breakfast. His only reaction to the steaming mug which moments later was placed near his right hand was a headbent murmur of, ‘Thanks.’
Ruing the absence of a newspaper to bury his head in, Brett continued to eat and to drink his tea without once letting his gaze shift beyond the centre of the table. With the passing of each loud, silence-breaking tick of the wall clock he congratulated himself on having triumphed over the temptation to look at his breakfast companion. See? It wasn’t hard. He could be as indifferent to Joanna Ford and her seemingly mystical intrigue as he could the salt and pepper shaker her long, elegant fingers were idly tracing with slow, sensuous strokes.
‘Brett...’
The husky utterance of his name was his undoing, immediately snapping his gaze up to hers.
‘I wasn’t lying when I said I didn’t drink last night,’ she told him. ‘But I think you’re right about me having a hangover.’
A curt nod would have communicated his lack of interest in further discussion on the subject, but instead Brett heard himself say, ‘A contradictory comment, but I take it as meaning you think it’s possible you were slipped a mickey.’
Her brow wrinkled. ‘Slipped a mickey?’ The confused shake she gave her head set her dark hair glittering in the sunlight. ‘What does that mean?’
Aw, hell! There ought to be laws against women this unworldly being allowed within a thousand-kilometre radius of a major city. Especially one with a male population. Deciding the sooner Joanna had her beautiful but innocent eyes opened and developed a cynical edge the safer every red-blooded man she was likely to encounter would be, he went on to explain what a Mickey Finn was, concluding with, ‘Some idiot with a juvenile sense of humour probably spiked the punch.’
‘But mostly I drank cola.’
‘Out of a can or bottle?’
She stiffened in her chair and glared at him. ‘Look, I mightn’t be all that terribly chic and sophisticated...’ hearing anger in her voice startled him ‘...but I do know it’s good manners to use a glass!’
Prudence had him swallowing the smile trying to force itself from his lips. ‘While that social nicety has its place, Joanna, sometimes good manners have to take second place to good sense.
‘So.’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you exactly what my father told Meaghan and me when we were sixteen and just starting to hit the party circuit. One: never accept a drink from anyone at a party unless the bottle cap or ring tab is still sealed. Two: never leave a drink somewhere and then go back and drink it later. And three: avoid punchbowls at all costs.
‘As Dad used to say, “The most innocuous thing someone will spike a drink with is alcohol, which can leave you sick as a dog. Other things can leave you dead.’”
‘You mean some people might put drugs in someone else’s drink?’
‘No... Some people do.’
At her look of alarm, he hastened to reassure her. ‘Relax, Joanna; you might’ve been plastered last night, but you didn’t appear doped.’ But then, because she still looked so shocked, concern caused him