The Beautiful Widow - By Helen Brooks Page 0,48
OK, so he’d proved his point.
A wry smile curved his lips as he moved back fully into his seat, but the glitter in his silver eyes was a great deal more elemental. ‘And that’s without really trying. When I have you naked and willing in my arms it will be long and slow and lasting and we’ll go to heaven and back. I can promise you that, my passionate little puritan.’
Toni stared at him helplessly. Logic told her it would be the biggest mistake of her life to let this carry on. She was already emotionally involved with this man and she still didn’t know how it had happened, but if they became lovers she would never recover from the fallout when it finished. Lovers … It was the culmination of all her secret fantasies over the last months, all the long hours when she’d tossed and turned in her chaste little bed in an agony of need.
And then he took the decision out of her hands. ‘I’m not going to take no for an answer, Toni,’ he warned very softly. ‘From employer and employee, we’ve now moved to friends, OK? And the next step’s timing will be up to you.’
She stared at him, her eyes still dark with desire. ‘Friends don’t kiss, not like we have. Is this friendship going to be on more … platonic grounds?’
‘Not a hope in hell, sweetheart.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT HAD GONE FAR BETTER than he’d expected. Steel glanced at Toni as they drove back to the city later that night. They had gone for a drive after their heart-to-heart in the car park, exploring the surrounding area for some thirty miles or so around the house before stopping for dinner at an imposing country hotel. Toni had telephoned her parents before they had left the pub after lunch and arranged for her mother to pick the twins up, and, although she hadn’t exactly relaxed during the afternoon, she hadn’t been distant or withdrawn. During dinner he’d set out to make her laugh and he’d succeeded. Yes, all in all it could have been a lot worse.
He glanced at her again as the car was forced to stop at traffic lights. She was sleeping, her hair forming a soft and silky veil and hiding her face from him. Even in her sleep she managed to elude him, he thought wryly. But no more. He refused to stay on the perimeter of her life for one more day, one more hour, one more minute. He had been patient, more patient than he would ever have dreamt he could be over this woman, and more honest in his opening up to her too. Was she aware of that? Aware he’d let her see more of him than anyone else had done?
Admittedly he hadn’t intended that to begin with. His firm mouth twisted. The evening chats he’d manoeuvred as a means of finding out more about her with a view to getting her into bed had backfired a little. She’d got under his skin, beguiled him, tempted him to reveal things he’d never thought he’d talk about to anyone. Not because she’d been pushy, hell no, just the opposite. It was the gentle, unassuming way she had that had knocked him for six. That and the air of unsophisticated innocence that clothed her like a second skin. He’d had to remind himself more than once that she had been married, that she had two children and was far from being a chaste virgin.
But when he kissed her … His body stirred, becoming as hard as a rock. She was a different woman. And he wanted her—sinner and saint, he wanted all of her.
It was the damnedest thing, he reflected as he drove home through the white, frosty world outside the cosy warmth of the car, that he—a man who placed great value on being in control—had never felt more out of control in his life. And yet it didn’t make any difference. She was like a drug and infinitely more addictive than the strongest narcotic or opiate.
When he drew up outside her house it was past eleven o’clock and only the hall light was glowing. He kissed her awake, smiling slightly as he felt her respond even before she was fully conscious.
She was flushed and dishevelled and as sexy as every schoolboy fantasy by the time he exited the car and walked round to the passenger door, and once she was standing on the pavement he kissed her again,