Free A Delicious Deception by Elizabeth Power Page A

you?’
    His observation was, like his eyes, so direct and probing that she looked quickly away without answering, ashamed to let such a hard-headed character as he was see the welling emotion she had to fight to control.
    King couldn’t take his eyes off her tight, tense features—the perfect structure of her forehead, the pert nose with those slightly flaring nostrils, the gentle curve of her cheek.
    This girl was a real enigma, he decided, with his face a study in concentration. On the one hand she seemed guarded and extremely defensive, which aroused his natural suspicions, especially since he’d taken her as a gold-digger. Definitely like someone with something to hide. Yet on the other hand she spoke about and behaved towards her mother as though she would give her life for the woman if she had to, which didn’t quite tie in with the hard-headed opportunist he was prepared to think she was. He was finding, he realised, that he harboured very conflicting opinions aboutRayne Carpenter, and it wasn’t in his nature to be confounded by anyone. And on top of that there was still this strong and nagging feeling of having known her before …
    ‘We all do things according to what our consciences tell us we should do, don’t we?’ she suggested meaningfully, wishing she could control her tongue and not let her emotions run away with her until she was ready to hit him—and his father—with the truth.
    ‘Should it prick my conscience that every time you come within a yard of me I want to take you to bed?’ he said softly, fondling her hair. ‘Or that you want me to against your own better judgement?’
    The space between them was suddenly charged with so much electricity it was as if someone had lit a whole boxful of fire-crackers and Rayne’s heart started hammering in her chest.
    ‘Can we drop this subject? Please,’ she breathed emphatically.
    Her breath seemed to stick in her lungs as his arm came across the back of her seat, bringing him closer to her.
    ‘Have you never heard the expression “He who pleads is lost”?’ he murmured with his smile predatory, his lashes thick and dark, shielding his eyes as they rested on the fullness of her trembling, slightly parted mouth.
    When his lips touched hers it was only to make contact with the outer corner of her mouth, a contact that left her craving the full onslaught of his kiss, made her grasp the seat to stop herself from twining her arms around his warm, muscled torso as he lifted his head.
    ‘What’s wrong, Rayne? Can’t you accept the consequences of what you’ve got yourself into?’ His voice was quite steady, not ragged with sexual desire as she’d imagined it would be. In fact there was a note of hidden danger in the very choice of his words.
    ‘I wasn’t aware I’d got myself into anything,’ she utteredtremulously, knowing he was still suspicious of her, still vigilant, even if she had imagined that softening in him just now, because she had, she realised, telling herself now that she had been a fool to do so.
    ‘Then you obviously need convincing,’ he said.
    She expected him to demonstrate exactly what he meant, but he didn’t. Instead he simply started the powerful car and drove them back to the villa.
    So what had he meant by that? she wondered when, once there, he left her to her own devices, abandoning her to deal with some business in the study. Did he intend to keep her on tenterhooks—make her wait until her guard was down before proving his point to her again? That she couldn’t resist him. Or had he guessed the secret she was keeping from him and Mitch and was merely luring her into a false sense of security until such time as he disclosed what he had uncovered?
    And that was a very unfortunate pun, Rayne decided with a grimace because, if she wasn’t careful, she was in danger of him not only guessing who she really was before she was ready to tell him, but also of winding up in his bed! And wouldn’t that be a double