His After-Hours Mistress

She’d been dreaming of the last time she had seen her family. Her father had been as cold and remorseless as ever. Denying her entry to the house. Saying things in that harsh voice he used to show his disapproval. Things that had cut her pride to ribbons, though she had held her head high. He had seen her off as if she had been a creature from the gutter. But that was what she was to him then. No longer his daughter, just a thing he would step over in the street.

Roarke’s hand on her arm gave her a start. ‘Don’t,’ he ordered gently when she looked a query at him. ‘Come back. Wherever you just were, you clearly don’t want to be there.’

His perceptiveness brought an unexpected lump to her throat, and she had to clear it. ‘Some dreams are hard to shake off,’ she confessed, and he smiled faintly, as if he knew from experience.

‘For some of us the past isn’t a pleasant place to be, is it?’

That wasn’t a path she wanted to travel, and in order to fend him off Ginny eyed him ironically. ‘You have bad dreams? I would have thought you’d need a conscience for that.’

He wagged an admonitory finger at her. ‘Now, that wasn’t nice, sweetheart. As it happens, I do have a conscience, but I doubt very much if I could convince you of the fact. You have this habit of expecting the worst of me.’

‘A side you delight in showing me,’ she was quick to point out, and he laughed.

‘Ah, well, if you expect to catch fish you have to use the right bait, otherwise they won’t rise,’ he explained, and Ginny’s eyes narrowed.

‘Implying that I rise to the bait, I presume?’ she charged wrathfully.

‘Which you do beautifully.’

She wanted to respond to that with a furious denial, but to do so would be to rise to the lure he had just put out, and therefore confirm what he was saying. She had to satisfy herself with a baleful look and one word.

‘Snake.’

Roarke chuckled. ‘Damn, but I have to admire your self-control. You are one cool customer.’

She might look cool, but inside Ginny was seething to the point of incandescence with frustration. ‘You’re too clever by half, Roarke Adams. People like you have been known to come to a sticky end.’

‘There, you see, there’s something for you to look forward to. My comeuppance. Will you look on, gloating with satisfaction?’ he teased her, and she rolled her eyes.

‘Oh, please, gloating is so passé. I’ll probably be leading the cheering section. It will be made up of all the women you’ve toyed with over the years.’

‘I’m afraid it won’t be as large a group as you imagine. I’m on pretty good terms with most of my exes,’ he reminded her, and she knew that basically it was true. She might rag him over the ones who had taken it badly, but they were in the minority.

Ginny had never been able to understand it. How could women allow themselves to be used as they were, and still like the man when he decided it was over? ‘You must be related to Svengali,’ she said now, and Roarke smiled rakishly.

‘Sweetheart, I don’t have to hypnotise a woman to, as you’d put it, have my wicked way with her.’

‘No,’ Ginny agreed with a grimace. ‘You merely smile at them, and they turn all weak at the knees.’

‘What turns you weak at the knees, Ginny? What’s Daniel’s secret weapon?’

There was no way Ginny would tell him that if Daniel had a secret weapon he kept it well hidden. He didn’t turn her weak at the knees, and she wouldn’t want him to. She’d done that, and it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. ‘That’s none of your business.’

Roarke’s smile suggested he wasn’t taken in by her response, but at least he didn’t follow it up. No, he took a different tack. ‘So, what did dear Daniel say when you told him where you were going this weekend?’

The nerves in Ginny’s body jolted uncomfortably. Picking up her magazine, she flipped it open. ‘He said nothing. Why should he have anything to say?’ she responded in an offhand manner designed to tell him how unimportant the situation was.

Roarke studied her downbent head curiously. ‘You mean he saw nothing odd in you going away with me? How open-minded of him. I didn’t think he had it in him, to be frank.’

Ginny shrugged. ‘We travel together too often for him to be upset this time,’ she offered, recalling with a tiny frown just how upset he had been.

‘True, but this is different…or doesn’t he know that?’ Roarke added thoughtfully, and Ginny groaned silently at his persistence. ‘You didn’t tell him, did you? Where does he think you are?’ The amusement in his voice made her wince.

Slapping the magazine closed, she turned to stare him out. ‘This is a business trip as far as he’s concerned. When I realised how much he dislikes you, I chose not to tell him. Are you satisfied now? Can I read my magazine in peace?’

‘Daniel dislikes me?’ he asked, sounding even more amused. ‘The man has a hidden depth. Well, well, well.’

Exasperated, Ginny was tempted to hit him with her magazine. ‘It’s not uncommon for people to dislike you, Roarke, hard as that is to believe. I dislike you too.’

‘Ah, but does he dislike me for the same reason? You see me as a womaniser. Is that what Daniel thinks too?’ Roarke mused, then snapped his fingers as an idea struck him. ‘Of course, that’s it. He’s afraid I might turn my attention to you.’

It was irritating that Roarke should hit the nail on the head so quickly. ‘I told him he had nothing to worry about. I’m not the least bit interested in you. I think I may even have mentioned a ten-foot bargepole. That desperate I’m not,’ she added sardonically for good measure.

‘Besides, you have Daniel,’ Roarke put in sagaciously.

‘Exactly,’ Ginny agreed, returning once more to her magazine. ‘I have Daniel, and I’m not in the market for anyone else.’ Saying which, she turned her shoulder on him and concentrated on the words on the page.

Roarke wasn’t to know that they were little more than a jumble of letters because her thoughts were concentrated on those brief moments when a pair of roguish grey eyes had set her nerves skittering and her heart skipping. Why they had become fascinating, she couldn’t say, but she was seeing them in a way she never had before. Added to that, she could still feel where his hand had touched her. She was aware of him, too. Physically. Suddenly she could sense him, when she had sat beside him before and never felt a thing. It was as if something had been switched on inside her, and she was far from comfortable with it. She had to be losing it to find Roarke Adams even remotely attractive. That damned chemistry had picked a fine time to rear its ugly head. However, what could be switched on could also be switched off, and that was what she was going to do. All she had to do was will it. She was a sensible person, so it shouldn’t be that difficult…should it?

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