He knocked on the door and, within five seconds, heard Mallory careening towards it. Colin also knew when the dog arrived because he heard the loud thud and saw the door shake when the dog smashed into it.
This was so ridiculous, and humorous, it nearly made Colin smile.
However, he was so annoyed, he did not.
“Mallory! You’ll give yourself a head injury!” He heard Sibyl shout and, again, he nearly smiled. The dog was a menace (to himself) and Sibyl’s affectionate acceptance of it was one of the many pieces of what Colin considered Sibyl’s mystery. An mystery he spent a great deal of his day attempting, and failing, to solve.
The door swung open and she stood there not made up like last night but wearing a pair of tan cowboy boots, brown tweed trousers, a cream, long-sleeved, scoop-necked t-shirt, some kind of elaborate silver necklace, complicated, dangling silver earrings and her shining hair was tumbling about her face.
And she was just as stunning as she was in the magnificently sexy silk camisole and dramatic makeup of the night before
He looked at her carefully and couldn’t read her mood, her eyes were simply hazel.
“I’ll need a key,” he said by way of greeting.
What he wanted to do was scoop her in his arms and carry her up to her bed but he felt the need to control himself, felt the inexplicable need to control the situation in its entirety which included controlling Sibyl. He felt unprecedentedly out-of-control when it came to Sibyl and he wasn’t used to that.
At all.
And he didn’t like that either.
She stood, her hand on the door, regarding him warily. Then she nodded.
Then something perverse, something that didn’t even feel a part of him drove him to make that demand, “And I expect you to greet me with a kiss when you see me.”
Her mouth parted slightly in surprise and she hesitated a moment as mutiny played about her face and the hazel started to shift to the warning shade of green. Then she leaned forward and brushed her lips against his.
Before she could pull away, the devil that was controlling him made him say, “I know you can do better than that.”
Her head came up with a snap and he watched in grim fascination as her eyes, in the soft illumination from the lamps lit in the house, lost all hint of hazel and became blazing green.
Something about that pleased and irritated him at the same time.
She moved into him, her body touching his slightly then more as one hand came up to rest on his chest and the other hand slid into the hair at his nape. She tipped her head back and pressed her lips against his, he felt them open and he opened his in response. Then the tip of her tongue came out softly and touched his own.
He felt heat sweep through him at the touch of her tongue but before his arms could close around her, she ended the kiss and moved her head away.
Her hands still on him, her voice managing to be both warm and cold, she asked, “Is that better?”
In answer, he ordered, “Get your coat.”
She blinked at his sudden change, her hands falling away. “What?”
“Your coat,” he repeated.
He hadn’t even crossed the threshold. Nevertheless, she stepped away and grabbed a scarlet-coloured trench coat from a peg by the door and pulled it on. As she did, Colin turned on his heel and walked to his car.
He heard the dull thud of the heels of her cowboy boots as she rushed to catch up to him.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He didn’t stop as he strode purposefully to the car and jerked open the passenger side door to help her inside.
“Dinner,” he answered curtly.
They didn’t say another word until after they were seated at the seafront restaurant in Clevedon and he ordered a gin and tonic. She ordered the extraordinary drink of vodka lemonade with a dash of lime cordial, a maraschino cherry and ended this litany with the instruction, “And lots of ice.”
Then she smiled at the waiter and Colin felt his chest seize.