Free Brazilian's Nine Months' Notice by Susan Stephens

yourself.’
    ‘I’ll hurt you first,’ she assured him heatedly.
    She already had, he realised. Emma Fane had blasted his cold stone heart to hell. ‘I would never hurt you.’
    ‘So you say.’ She whipped her face away as he brushed her mouth with his.
    ‘I mean it,’ he insisted quietly, realising he was absolutely sincere.
    ‘Until the next woman comes along?’ she demanded sceptically, staring at him with furious eyes. ‘I know your track record, Luc. Everyone knows your track record. It’s hardly a secret when you feature in every celebrity magazine under the sun.’
    ‘If you think I live my life in a public forum, you don’t know me at all.’
    She was panting for breath—anger, not arousal, he suspected as she softened against him. ‘Come with me,’ he coaxed then. Cupping her chin, he brought her back to face him, and when he brushed her lips this time he felt her tremble. ‘You’ll achieve nothing here, except working yourself to death, when I can offer you a world of opportunity.’
    ‘Yes,’ she interrupted, her eyes wounded as she stared into his. ‘But it would be your world, not mine.’
    ‘Working double shifts as you do shouldn’t be anyone’s world,’ he said, filled with exasperation and anger when he thought of how this hotel abused its staff. ‘Killing yourself with exhaustion won’t help you to forget anything.’
    ‘Don’t,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you dare pull that card!’
    Emma had never given herself the chance to recover from the shock of her parents’ death, and he knew grief couldn’t be pushed aside and forgotten, and that it had to be brought out into the open, to be faced up to and dealt with. And even then, coping strategies were necessary for a long time, maybe for ever. Emma hadn’t scraped the surface of her grief, but had thrown herself into his arms, and then into her work instead.
    ‘I’m done with arguing with you,’ he warned.
    ‘And I’m finished with you,’ she assured him angrily, struggling in his arms. ‘Will you please let me go?’
    ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘This discussion is over.’ And to prove it, he kissed her into silence.
    ‘No. Luc!’ she said when he finally released her. ‘You can’t get round me this time!’
    ‘No?’ he queried, kissing her neck.
    She shivered and tried to pull away as he rasped his stubble gently against her tender skin. Finally, she rested her hands flat again his chest. ‘You don’t play fair.’
    ‘No. I don’t,’ he agreed. Running his hands lightly down her back, he whispered, ‘Now we eat.’ He smiled to feel her tremble. Was the disappointment on her face because he’d chosen food over progressing this?
    She made an angry sound. ‘Do you really think I’m going to sit down and eat with you?’ Her gaze flashed to the food.
    ‘You need to eat. I’ll feed you, if I have to,’ he warned.
    ‘I’m not hungry.’ But her rumbling stomach gave her away.
    Her hand felt so small in his as he led her to the sofa, where he told her to sit. This was quite unlike any other encounter he’d ever had with a woman and required a whole new rulebook. Emma was like a wounded animal who had come back home to Scotland, thinking she could avoid the media furore in London surrounding her parents’ death, only to find the uproar was also well rooted here. She had no one to turn to. Her friends were married, or moving away, leaving her to cope with the fact that she was well and truly on her own.
    She ate slowly at first, and then ravenously without inhibition. He thought back to another night and a different appetite.
    ‘What?’ She looked at him, sensing his distraction. ‘Aren’t you going to eat anything? Shall I choose something for you?’
    He huffed a small laugh. ‘In the interests of equality, go right ahead.’
    Her small gesture touched him. When she passed him the plate of food, he reached out and ran his forefinger lightly down her cheek.

CHAPTER SIX
    S HE WANTED TO be angry with