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‘Your mother said you had a fetish about it,’ whispered Anne, trying not to lose track of her good intentions.
‘Is it my imagination, or are you raising the spectre of my mother with oppressive frequency?’ He raised his head and pulled her into him for a long, fierce kiss that drove every doubt about the rightness of what they were doing from her head.
‘Getting cold feet, Anne?’ he said as he released her crushed mouth.
She shook her head dumbly and he smiled savagely.
‘You should. Nice girls aren’t supposed to go to bed on the first date.’
Anne paled and he swore, stopping her instinctive recoil towards her door with a blocking movement of his body.
‘I’m sorry. That was cruel and uncalled for. It was frustration talking. Much as I’d like to fling you on to your bed and make mad, passionate love to you all night long, knowing I can’t gives my temper a nasty edge.’
‘Why can’t you?’ asked Anne croakily, liking him even more for that instant, unqualified apology.
‘I’m not prepared.’ At her blank look he said impatiently, ‘To protect you. Since you’re still breast-feeding I presume you’re not taking an oral contraceptive?’
‘I—well, no, I’m not…’ She was slightly stunned by the practical turn of the conversation coming hard on the heels of exigent passion.
‘And since you’ve been celibate for so long I presume you don’t have any condoms lying around the flat?’
She blushed and shook her head. He smiled grimly.
‘I do, but I know my mother will have commandeered my comfortable bed, in spite of her comments about the couch, and I have no intention of providing her with more maternal ammunition by waking her up groping around in my bedside table.’
He ran his hands forcefully up and down her slender back, shuddering as he pulled her against him, letting her feel the surging strength of his arousal.
‘Around you I don’t trust myself to dabble in a little light-hearted foreplay. It’s tough enough thinking logically just holding you like this, let alone when you’re responding to me so generously. I almost had you out there against that tree and damn the consequences.’ He rested his forehead against hers and continued in a rough undertone, ‘I don’t want to settle for rushed half-measures, either. I want to be buried deep inside you when I come, so let’s wait until we can thoroughly indulge ourselves, mmm? Perhaps tomorrow, when my
interfering mother’s gone…’
When Hunter left her—with another devastating kiss after helping her transport a sleeping Ivan from his flat to hers—Anne fell into bed still shivering internally at his casually graphic description of what their love-making would be like.
The thought of Hunter buried deep inside her was both thrilling and alarming, and also infinitely desirable, but she was secretly glad that he had given her the opportunity to put off her confession.
Tonight had been for them alone. It would remain a perfect jewel in her memory, untainted by whatever strife tomorrow’s truth might bring. For this was the night that she had acknowledged to herself that she was irrevocably in love with Hunter Lewis. He might choose to call it by other names—passion, desire, mutual chemistry—but Anne knew that what she was feeling was greater than the sum of all three. And Hunter…well, at the very least he had admitted a passionate attraction that could well flourish into something deeper and more lasting if she provided the right fertile conditions.
She didn’t see Hunter the next morning but she did get a fleeting visit from his mother, who thrust a small framed painting into her hand, declaring that she had a taxi waiting to take her to the airport.
‘I was going to give it to Hunter, but I’ve decided I’d rather give it to you,’ she said ruthlessly as Anne tried to protest against a gift of such value. ‘It’s one of Hunter’s favourites because it’s this little bay up north where we used to holiday when he was a boy. He simply lived on that beach…’
‘Then you can’t just give it to me—’
‘You don’t like it?’ Skilfully pencilled eyebrows rose haughtily and Anne blurted a disclaimer.
‘Of course I do.’ It was beautiful, a delicate oil that seemed to capture the perfection of a faded, fond memory. In the distance, on the sandy curve of beach, was a small red dot, and Anne instinctively knew it was Hunter as a child, ‘father of the man’ she loved. She suddenly felt ridiculously close to that tiny dot. As if she was sharing that gritty, sandy, sunny, innocent childhood moment…
‘Good.’
‘But won’t Hunter be upset at your giving it to me?’ She didn’t want to give him more excuses than absolutely necessary to be angry at her.
‘No more than I’m upset with that depressingly ugly experiment of mine that he insists on flaunting in my face,’ said Louise drily.
‘But, well, it’s personal to your family…to Hunter…’
‘And so are you, darling.’ The haughty brow lowered to deliver a jaunty wink. ‘Consider it my contribution to your campaign to drive Hunter wonderfully crazy. Hang it on your wall where he’ll see it every time he walks in, and tell him you’ll only sell for an outrageous price—’
‘I would never sell it to him!’ Anne cried as Louise turned for the door at the sound of a distant, impatient toot from the street.
