entire body. He was an awesome kisser. First-class. And Isis imagined he’d be an equally spectacular lover. God only knew, she wanted the infuriating man, but they’d known each other five minutes, for goodness’ sake. One of them had to be sensible.
She could be sensible while she was kissing him, Isis decided. She could allow herself to lose her head a little with him, but she decided not to qualify exactly how much and how far a “little” kiss would take her.
But she was not going to sit waiting for any man in a hotel room when she was in an exciting city that was just waiting to be explored. The swanky room was all about the large, inviting bed. The farther away she was from beds when with “Just Thorne,” the easier it would be for her to maintain a safe distance. He was temptation personified, but as much as she was intrigued and as much as she wanted to kiss him some more, they had a business relationship. She didn’t want to muddy the waters when she’d invested everything she had on the chance that he could tell her where to find Cleo’s tomb.
Sex, no matter how tempting, was out.
Pulling her red Windbreaker out of the closet, Isis grabbed her camera bag and slung it across her body. It doubled as a purse, and was rarely out of her sight. Tucked in next to her precious Canon 5D Mark II was some walking-around cash, a credit card that was almost maxed out, and her keycard. She let herself out of the room and headed for the elevator.
Jabbing the button, she shook her head. He’d kissed her into complete delirium, leaving her hot and bothered, then practically shoved her out of the cab before she knew what hit her. The fact that she’d called a halt a nanosecond before that was immaterial.
Before she realized that he wasn’t getting out with her, she was looking at the back of his head as the taxi sped away.
She touched her mouth as the elevator dinged. “Chicken.”
Picking up a London street map in the lobby, she set out to explore the city. Isis kept to main thoroughfares, and happily window-shopped for several hours. The brightly lit shops beckoned, but she didn’t buy anything, just looked, and smelled, and tasted. She popped into an ice-cream shop and ordered a banana split, inhaling it while talking to a young mother and her two ice-cream-smeared little boys.
She took hundreds of pictures—of buildings, and people, and flower boxes and anything else that struck her fancy. When she was taking photographs she totally lost herself. She finally realized how much time had passed, only because her feet were starting to hurt. The shops were starting to close and there weren’t as many people on the street. It was too early to go back, so she decided to see the comedy she’d been dying to see at a fifties-style movie theater a few blocks from the hotel.
It was well after eleven when she let herself into her room and kicked off her shoes. She frowned just inside the door as she tried to remember where the light switch was. She was sure she’d left the light on before she—
The bedside lamp flashed on. “Just call me Thorne” was lying on the bed, hands stacked behind his head. “Where the bloody hell have you been all night?”
Isis gave him a cool look. He looked delicious, his hair rumpled, a pillow crease across his cheek. “Would you like to rephrase that?” she asked pleasantly as she put her bag on the desk and started removing her coat. His cane leaned against the back of the chair.
“Where have you been, and with whom?”
“Camilla and Charles invited me for dinner. I hated to say no.” She walked to the narrow closet and hung up her coat and scarf. “And how did you get into my room? I locked the door when I left.”
He sat up, swinging his bare feet to the floor. He had huge feet, even for a man over six foot three. Just looking at his feet turned her on. “To go where?” he demanded tightly. “You didn’t bother leaving a note, or a phone message. For all I knew, you were abducted.”
Isis sat in the chair by the desk, out of his pacing path, and shot him an amused look. He was mad. She could see that as he limped-stalked, limped-stalked. But his anger was over-the-top and totally illogical. “Really?