Free Girl Behind the Scandalous Reputation by Michelle Conder Page A

to look at me with that come-hither sexiness. You want to know what happens next? I’ll tell you. You sit over there on that sofaand you don’t move. You don’t talk and you don’t whine. The only thing you’re allowed to do without me is go to the bathroom, and if I think you’re up to no good in there you’ll lose that privilege as well. Is that clear enough for you?’
    ‘Crystal,’ she snapped, straightening her clothing and pulling her cardigan tightly around her body.
    She touched her tongue to her lips and another shaft of desire shot into his aching groin. Then she raised her chin and looked at him with over-bright eyes, and once again he felt like the jerk she’d called him earlier.
    ‘You know,’ she began softly, ‘Jordana thinks you’re one of the good guys. Boy, does she have
that
wrong.’

CHAPTER SIX
    T RISTAN sat opposite his sister at one of London’s most exclusive eateries and tried not to brood over Lily’s earlier comment. Because Jordana was right, damn it. He
was
one of the good guys, and he didn’t know why he was letting the two-bit actress beside him, laughing over Oliver’s unfunny jokes, make him question that.
    Maybe because he’d kissed her the way a man kissed a woman he planned to sleep with and then blamed her for it. As if this maddening desire he felt for her was a deliberate spell she had cast over him…Which, come to think of it, was a much better explanation than the alternative—that he just couldn’t keep his hands off her.
    Which was not the case at all. What had happened in his office earlier was the result of extreme stress boiling over. Nothing more, nothing less.
    Tristan prided himself on his emotional objectivity when it came to the fairer sex, and really this constant analysis of what had happened earlier was ludicrous. Yes, he was a man who liked his ‘
i
’s’ dotted and his ‘t’s’ crossed, but Lily was just an anomaly. An outlier on an otherwise predictable curve.
    So what if his reaction to her was at the extreme end of the scale? It happened. Not often to
him
before, granted, but…once she was gone and his world had returned to normal he’d forget about her—as he had done the last time.
    As he had done every other woman who had graced his bed.
    Only Lily hadn’t graced his bed, and maybe that went someway to explaining his almost obsessive thoughts about her. He’d never had her. Had, in fact, made her off-limits to himself. And he wanted her. No point denying the obvious. Maybe if he had her
—no
! Forget it. Not going to happen.
    But that didn’t change the fact that now that his ferocious anger at being caught up in her situation had abated, and now he’d had a chance to observe her with Oliver and his sister all night, he had to admit he was starting to question his earlier assessment of her.
    There was something so earthy and genuine about her. Something so lacking in artifice. He’d noticed it when she had engaged in a conversation with his PA and three of his paralegal secretaries.
    She hadn’t tried to brush them off, or spoken down to them. She’d been warm and friendly and called them by name. Something he would not have expected a drug-addicted diva to remember, let alone do.
    He couldn’t comprehend that he might have been wrong about her—but nor could he ignore the sixth sense that told him that something didn’t add up.
    Especially since the police believed that the haul found in Lily’s bag, although small, had been intended for resale purposes. Lily just didn’t strike him as the type who worked for a drug cartel, and nor did she appear to need money. Which left the possibility that she was innocent, had been framed, or had been an unknowing drug mule.
    Or she’d brought the drugs in for a lover.
    In his business Tristan had come across people who did far worse things for love, and he told himself the only reason he cared about this possibility was because he felt sorry for her. If she was so in love with some