Free Dark Paradise by Sara Craven Page B

experience.
    Her only comfort was the thought that Alison was still safely with Jon, because this would have been a very bad scene for Alison. Matt Lincoln certainly wouldn't have made any guarantees to her about his conduct, even if she'd wanted him to, she thought miserably, remembering the way Alison had been looking at him in the restaurant. She acquitted Alison of actually contemplating infidelity in cold blood, but at the same time her sister-in-law was bored and peeved with marriage, and she would be vulnerable to the kinds of pressure that these circumstances would produce. Someone as blatantly attractive as Matt Lincoln with all that undoubted sexual charisma wouldn't even have to try very hard, she thought.
    But she wasn't like Alison, or like any of the other girls he fancied for a while. She wasn't vulnerable. She was impervious to any amount of his kind of charm, and for that she had Drew Wakefield to thank, although it had never occurred to her that she would ever be grateful for the lesson he'd taught her. Drew had always been her secret shame, but now he was her secret weapon, and one that she could well need before she was finished.
    She shivered, wondering why she was sitting there, thinking all these disturbing things when she could have been searching in his case, his jacket for her passport. Not that it would have been there, she realised wearily. It would be downstairs in the hotel safe, and retrieving it without a damned good reason wouldn't be easy.
    She heard the bathroom door open and Matt returning. One swift sidelong look under her lashes told her all that she needed to know, that he was wearing the silk robe and nothing underneath it.
    She heard the tinkle of ice cubes and the subdued pop of a cork, and realised he was opening the champagne.
    He said, 'I'm drinking to the success of this assignment. Do you want to join me?' He smiled. 'Champagne makes a fantastic nightcap—beats warm milk into a cocked hat!'
    Kate said stonily, 'I'm not in a celebratory mood. I don't want any champagne.'
    'As you please.' He paused. 'When you think of something you do want perhaps you'd let me know.'
    He was laughing at her, and she glared at him, remembering the first time she'd looked across a room and seen him with a glass of champagne in his hand, and felt the unwilling tug of attraction.
    As she felt it now, she realised incredulously. She swallowed, gulping air, fighting down bewilderment and dismay. The implication in his words had been that some day she might want him, and it was fortunate he'd never know how close to the truth he was.
    Her heart was beating extra-fast suddenly, and in her ears it seemed as audible as that distant insistent drumbeat. She leaned back in her chair, breathing deeply, struggling for composure. And she'd just been congratulating herself on her own invulnerability where he was concerned, she thought bitterly.
    She was in danger, real danger, and she couldn't deny it, but at least she realised it, and forewarned was forearmed—wasn't it?
    Matt lifted his glass in a mocking toast. To us,' he said, and drank, almost as though he'd been reading her thoughts.
    Kate's colour rose, and she got to her feet in one swift movement and went over to her case, busying herself with unlocking it and searching for her toilet bag, finding her nightdress and robe, although if she was going to be spending the night in that chair, then she would do better to remain fully dressed.
    The bathroom door had a bolt, and she pushed it into place, uncaring whether he heard or not, feeling a sense of security for the first time.
    She unbuttoned her dress slowly and wearily. It had been a long and tiring flight, she thought, and probably accounted for that extraordinary moment of weakness just now. She would feel entirely different in the morning.
    She sighed as she stepped under the shower, letting the warm water stream soothingly down her body, lifting her hair away from the nape of her neck with both