The King's Bride By Arrangement - Annie West Page 0,57

respecting her need for time and space. Even if...

Paul’s thoughts frayed as he noticed something down the corridor. A line of light under Eva’s door. It was close to three a.m. and she was still up.

He didn’t hesitate. He’d been trained to take charge, to make things happen.

In two beats of his heart he was at her door, head inclined, listening. Was that movement inside?

He raised his hand and tapped on the solid wood. For several seconds he waited, listening, then tapped again. He was reaching for the handle when the door swung open.

Golden lamplight silhouetted her, congealing his thoughts into a hard knot in his gut. Eva’s hair was loose on her shoulders and she’d wrapped a robe around herself, cinched tight at her waist.

Paul’s breath dried out, like a mistral wind sighing out of his lungs in an arid rush.

She was beautiful.

But she was more than simply beautiful.

He didn’t have the words to do her justice. There was just the heavy thrum of his heart beating mine, mine, mine.

‘It’s very late, Paul. I need to...’

Paul inserted a shoulder in the gap between door and jamb and kept moving. The gap widened. For a second they stood toe to toe, so close her heat drenched him, then she moved back and he shut the door behind them.

Eva rubbed her arms as if she were cold, her hands disappearing up the wide sleeves of her robe. It was pale silk, with a delicate pattern of wisteria blossom, making him think, as her long straight hair swung across it, of geishas and oriental luxury.

The notion intensified when she moved, her breasts shifting free against the thin material, and he realised she was naked beneath the patterned silk.

He’d been going to say something but now the words eluded him. He swallowed hard as he took her in.

She spoke but for a couple of seconds it was lost in the white noise of his blood pumping hard, roaring in his ears.

Eva folded her arms in an attitude of annoyance, pulling the fabric tight over her breasts, and dimly he realised she was waiting for him to answer whatever she’d said. Paul dragged his gaze back to her up-thrust chin and prim mouth.

‘You’re angry.’

‘I’m tired, Paul. There’s no point rehashing our last discussion. I want to go to sleep.’

With a clarity that tasted bitter in his mouth, he noticed she wasn’t talking about rehashing the discussion tonight. She meant ever. She’d had her say and didn’t want to open the subject again.

‘Yet you’re still awake. What’s the trouble? Too much on your mind to sleep?’

He glanced over her shoulder and noticed a suitcase open on an antique carved trunk. It was half-full.

Ice shafted through him, chilling his blood.

She was packing?

Didn’t she mean to wait till next week, as she’d said?

Urgency gripped him, twisting his gut into knots.

He’d planned to talk to her tomorrow. Convince her to stay. He could be persuasive, and he’d had no doubts he could make Eva change her mind—or at least agree to stay a little longer, which would give him the time he needed to...what?

It was obvious she’d already thought things through. That, all the time he’d imagined her enjoying herself, she’d been counting the days till she left.

And yet there were times, lots of them, when he’d sensed she was anything but distant or uninterested.

‘I often don’t sleep straight away after an event late in the evening. But I was just about to turn the light off.’ Her gaze flickered away from his and he knew she was lying.

To make him go.

Because she didn’t want to give him the chance to change her mind?

Because she intended to leave sooner than she’d said?

It seemed only too likely.

She wouldn’t listen to him. Wouldn’t be persuaded.

But there was one way he might get through to her.

Paul wasn’t even conscious of forming the thought when he found his fingers brushing the softness of her cheek, down past her chin to her throat then feathering up to push into the heavy curtain of her hair.

Her breath was a sharp inhale and her eyes widened, catching his. She opened her mouth, probably to stop him, so he raked his fingers purposefully across her scalp, moulding her skull as he lowered his head.

Eva’s words never came.

He felt the puff of warm air from her mouth to his, scant centimetres away, but there was no objection.

Her head seemed heavier in his grip, as if she tilted back into his touch, leaving her face turned up towards