The Seduction Project. Miranda Lee

snapped off his engine and swivelled in his seat to face Molly, a scowl on his handsome face. ‘It’s not Dennis Taylor, is it?’

      Dennis Taylor was the only boy in Liam’s class who could rival him for looks and subsequent business acumen. As dark as Liam was fair, he had thick black wavy hair, heavy-lidded dark eyes and the body of a bouncer. He did not have Liam’s super intelligence or creative flair but he was a born salesman who’d gone into real estate after leaving school and done very well. He’d opened his own agency on the Central Coast a couple of years back and had recently expanded. Unmarried, he was a swinging bachelor type who played the field without mercy. He’d recently bought an acreage not far from Terrigal beach and built an orgy palace of a house, the rumoured activities therein supplying plenty of fuel for the local gossips.

      Molly only knew Dennis as well as she did because his folks lived two doors up. He came to visit them quite often, and, Dennis being Dennis, he always waved at Molly if she was out the front watering or weeding the garden.

      A couple of months back, he’d also knocked on the door and asked if she and her mother wanted to sell the house. Even after they’d said no, he’d left his business card then stayed talking to Molly for ages. He was one of those males who could not go past a female without proving he was God’s gift to women. His charm operated on automatic pilot.

      Molly found him likeable enough, but shallow. It irked her that Liam should think she could be madly in love with him.

      ‘Well?’ he probed. ‘Is it?’

      ‘I’m sorry but I refuse to answer any such questions on the grounds they might incriminate me.’

      Liam glowered at her. ‘You’re being damned difficult.’

      ‘I don’t think so. You might be my friend but there’s a limit to what I will tell you. And I think my love life is my own private business, don’t you? After all, when I asked you what had happened between you and Roxy, you wouldn’t tell me.’

      ‘Hmm. Fair enough. But if it is Dennis,’ he growled, ‘then I hope to hell you never get your heart’s desire. His reputation with women is appalling.’

      Molly rolled her eyes. As if Dennis Taylor would take any serious notice of her anyway. That was as far-fetched as Liam doing so! Suddenly, she tired of this game. ‘If it will make you feel any better,’ she said wearily, ‘then it’s not Dennis. But please don’t come up with any more candidates. I’m not going to tell you and that’s that!’

      ‘You’ve really dug your heels in about this, haven’t you?’

      ‘You could say that,’ she pronounced, and crossed her arms with finality over her chest.

      ‘I had no idea you could be this stubborn.’

      Her sideways glance carried a sardonic flavour. ‘There are quite a lot of things about me you don’t know, Liam.’

      ‘Mmm...I’m beginning to see that’s the case. And there I’ve been all these years, telling people what a sweet little thing you are. It seems Roxy might not have been altogether wrong.’

      Molly bristled. ‘Oh? And what, pray tell, did dear Roxy say about me?’

      ‘She said you were a sly piece and she wouldn’t trust you as far as she could throw you.’

      Molly’s blood pressure rose a few notches. ‘Humph! That’s the pot calling the kettle black!’

      ‘I take it you don’t like Roxy?’

      ‘You take it correctly.’

      ‘Why?’

      Molly almost launched into a tirade about vanity and superficiality and naked ambition, but pulled herself up just in time. There was little point in being vicious, now that the girl was possibly on the way out. Besides, the truth might sound too much like jealousy.

      She managed a light shrug. ‘You can’t like everyone in this world. Some people just rub you up the wrong way right from the start.’

      ‘True. Okay, I won’t be a pain and press for more. Neither will I ask you any more embarrassing questions about Mr X. I’m just relieved it’s not Dennis. Come on, let’s go for that walk.’ He was out of the car before she could say Jack Robinson, bounding around the front to her side where he wrenched open the passenger door.

      ‘Do...do you think we could have our coffee first?’ she asked a little shakily when Liam took her hand and drew her upright out of the rather low-slung vehicle. Whilst she told herself it was sheer hunger causing her stomach to cramp suddenly, she rather suspected there was another cause, and extracted her hand from Liam’s as soon as she could.