Her words had no effect as six men, the waiters among them, crowded her, insisting on imposing their help on her. She felt her anti-crowd discomfort rising, taking on a phobic edge. She turned to the one presence that wasn’t invading her personal space. The man. This time the burning of his gaze was welcome, a refuge.
Understanding her unspoken appeal, he put himself between her and her harassing helpers, cut them off from her with the impressive barrier of his sand-gold-clad body, an imperial flick of his hand sending them scattering from her field of vision. Then he turned to her.
She averted her eyes this time, feeling the heat that had been doused by shock and champagne surging up to her face again.
She’d better not be blushing. She couldn’t be blushing. She hadn’t blushed since she was sixteen.
But the sizzling was unmistakable. She was blushing.
Just great. This man was resurrecting every clumsy foolishness she’d thought buried along with her father…who’d turned out to be not her real father. Not that biology mattered to her. Francois Beaumont would always remain her father in every way that mattered. And his death over a decade ago had forced her to mature overnight….
Oh, whom was she kidding? She’d matured in certain areas only, had become an expert in erecting barriers and bulldozing her way through the confrontations that made up social life, using her blunted social skills as a weapon.
Now no barrier or battering ram would do, and here she was, soaked, blushing and feeling terminally silly.
As if in answer to her distress again, the man handed her napkins, shielded her from prying eyes as she dried herself, echoing her actions, his movements slower, more efficient.
When he judged she’d done all she could, he retrieved the napkins from her numb fingers, piled them on the trays of the still-apologizing waiters. Then he motioned to her, a graceful gesture that was a cross between command and courtesy, spreading his abaya’s sleeve like the wing of a great vulture, signaling for her to precede him in the direction he’d been heading when she’d caused the indoor champagne shower.
She didn’t need a second bidding, streaked to the open French windows.
As they stepped out into the night, the first solo violin strings of a poignant composition she didn’t recognize flowed, as if scoring their progress across the gigantic terrace. Lost in the surreal movielike moment, she breathed in relief. She’d made it outside without snagging those damned spiked heels into that double-damned layered skirt and falling flat on her face.
She felt him two steps behind her, his aura magnified now that others weren’t diluting it, felt dwarfed, inundated. She looked around, anywhere but at him, not really seeing the landscaped grounds that sprawled into the moonlit horizon.
Feeling like a ten-year-old who’d just made an irrevocable fool of herself in front of the one person she wanted to make an impression on, she tucked champagne-drenched tendrils behind her ear and blurted out, “Well, that was sure needed.”
A smile soaked his fathomless tones as they rode the sultry California summer breeze, a bit muffled behind his intimidating, incredibly exciting veil. “The fresh evening air? The escape from oversolicitous admirers and pawing champagne blotters?”
British. His accent. Highly educated, deeply cultured, laden with class and control. And with an inflection that told her he wasn’t actually English, but something too complex to fathom. He sounded exactly as he looked. Exotic, superior, formidable.
Not that she knew how he looked. After the stolen glimpse at his costume—that of someone ready to tackle a sandstorm head-on— she hadn’t ventured another look at him. Couldn’t work up the nerve to take that look. Probably would only when he decided she’d taken enough of his party time and went back to his companion.
He just had to have a companion. Men like him—assuming other men like him existed—were invariably spoken for. And this one wouldn’t merely be spoken for. He’d be fought over, tooth and nail.
She sighed. “Actually, I meant the champagne shower.”
Hell. And he’d know she wasn’t even joking. She should just shut up until he moved on. She’d do well to remember she was an outcast for a reason. She’d never developed the art of conversation. Or the common sense of social graces. Every time she hurled out what she was thinking, uncensored, she varied between cultivating disgruntled critics or outright enemies.
Not that she was cultivating either here. The man must simply think her a total moron by now. Oh, well.
Turning her back on him, she flopped her purse over her back, raised her multilayered skirt, wrung its ends, took off one soggy shoe, then the other and dangled each over the marble balustrade, watering the shrubs with excess champagne before placing the shoes facedown to drain.
So what if she was confirming his suspicion that he’d just stumbled on the party clown? What did his opinion matter, anyway?
Suddenly, nothing seemed to matter as dark rumbles rose, harmonizing with a cello solo, both male and instrumental music enveloping her in a surge of warmth and…well being?
Oh, wow. He was laughing. And not at her. With her. She could tell by the answering exuberance rising inside her.
She felt him leaning against the balustrade, looking down at her, and she shivered at the amusement still staining his voice. “So—you welcomed the cooling off, even at the price of braving the rest of the ball wet and sticky, in a ruined gown and barefoot?”
Her lips twisted in self-deprecation. “With the way I was sweating, this was my fate anyway. I was already squishing in my shoes. It was a relief to fast-forward to the inevitable end.”
“May I inquire why such a cool-looking butterfly was sweating buckets in the perfectly air-conditioned ballroom?”
Butterfly? At five-foot-six and a hundred and forty pounds, she was too substantial to be called that. And cool-looking? Was he baiting her? Trying to get her to admit why she’d been so hot and bothered? As if she’d tell him!
Then she opened her mouth. “Are you a different species? Perfectly air-conditioned? Not according to this body’s thermostat. I entered that ballroom and almost got knocked off my feet by thousands of people emitting the steam of body heat and self-importance, then you trained those eyes on me and I just about spontaneously combusted…”
Shut up. Just shut up.
This was far worse than her usual candor crises. This man disturbed her. Unbalanced her. Big time. But there was no use feeling bad about it now. The damage had already been done.
She gritted her teeth and waited for his response, expecting him to burst out laughing for real this time. Or to take advantage of her confession and proposition her.
“So that was why you welcomed the cold shower!” Here it came. The making fun of her. The lewd proposition. Or both. “Thank you.”
Wha…? Thank you? What the hell was he thanking her for? The ego stroke? The comic relief?
Her chagrin evaporated as he went on, something that was no longer amusement—wonder?—coloring his magnificent voice. “Thank you for giving me the opening to let you know how you tampered with my temperature the moment you trained these eyes on me.”
He touched her then, a thumb tracing a burning, downcast lid then a forefinger below her chin, coaxing her face up. She trembled at the barely substantial contact.
Then he exhaled a gravelly, “Do it again.”
His invocation raised her eyes to his without volition. And the impact was even harder this time. In the full moon’s rays, the whites of his eyes shone silver, the irises infinite by contrast, a black hole sucking her whole