Free Living the Charade by Michelle Conder Page A

a grunt of discomfort, his jet-black lashes parting to reveal slate-grey eyes still glazed with sleep.
    Miller pushed at his hands and scrambled backwards, her legs colliding with one of his knees as she roughly slid her leg out from between his.
    Tino let out a rough expletive and moved his legs out of the way. ‘Watch the knee.’
    ‘Watch the...?’ Miller had a vague recollection of the men questioning Valentino about some racing injury but she didn’t care about that right now. ‘Get your hands off me, you great oaf.’
    She shoved harder at his immovable arm and sucked in her tummy muscles as his steely forearm slid across her bare stomach.
    Finally, fully awake, he acquiesced.
    ‘No need to sound the alarm, I was just sleeping.’
    Miller gripped the duvet up to her chin. ‘You were groping me.’
    ‘Was I? I thought you’d just ruined a pleasant dream. Sorry about that.’
    ‘Yes, I just bet you’re sorry.’ She saw his eyes sharpen on hers. ‘How did I end up in bed with you anyway?’
    Valentino casually slid his hands beneath his head and Miller swept her angry gaze over those powerful arms and that muscular chest. She felt her breath catch and her heartbeat speed up and berated her instant reaction.
    ‘I don’t know, Sunshine,’ he answered. ‘Are you prone to sleepwalking?’
    Miller narrowed her gaze, her mind flashing back to last night. A vague memory of being lifted floated to the surface of her mind. ‘You carried me.’
    Valentino yawned and pushed up until he was leaning against the headboard. The sheet dropped down to his waist, and the morning sun fell over part of his bronzed chest and corrugated abdomen as if lighting him up for a photo shoot.
    He scratched his chest and her eyes soaked him up. God, the man really did look airbrushed!
    ‘Damn. Maybe I’m prone to sleepwalking,’ he said.
    Miller hugged the duvet closer and felt her nipples throb with awareness as her hands accidentally grazed over them. Heat immediately bloomed in her face at the memory of why her breasts felt so heavy and sensitive.
    ‘This isn’t funny. That’s sexual harassment.’
    The great oaf just rolled his eyes. ‘As I recall it, it was you who cuddled up to me in your sleep—not the other way around.’
    ‘I did not.’
    ‘Suit yourself. But last night I put a row of pillows between us, and I know it wasn’t me who knocked them aside. Anyway, I disengaged my hand as soon as you asked.’ He raised and lowered his knee gingerly beneath the blanket and she hoped that she had hurt him.
    ‘Remind me not to do you a good deed again,’ he said.
    ‘Ha. Good deed, my foot. You wanted to...to...’
    ‘Have my wicked way with you?’ His eyes glinted. ‘If that was what I wanted that’s what we’d be doing.’
    ‘You wish.’
    ‘A challenge, Miller?’
    She didn’t deign to respond. Why would she? Of course it wasn’t a challenge—especially when she had liked the feel of him against her a little too much.
    Her breathless response reminded her of the time she’d been secretly trapped in the girls’ toilets at the hideous school she’d attended while the main bullies had loitered, giggling vacuously over some boy or another.
    By the time they had hit fifteen, boys had been all they could talk about. Miller had wanted to yell, What about when it all goes wrong? But of course she hadn’t. She hadn’t wanted to look more like a freak than they already thought she was. All of them had seemed content to live in the moment in a way she never could after her parents had divorced.
    ‘There was no way I was letting you sleep on the floor. Get over it.’ Valentino’s gruff voice jolted her back to the present.
    ‘Turn the other way,’ she demanded, letting her painful memories slip away.
    When he complied without argument she shot out of bed and snatched up her robe. Ignoring him, she grabbed her running clothes and stalked towards the bathroom.
    ‘Just so we’re clear.’ She stopped in the