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‘I don’t work on the stock market—I work the stock market,’ Hunter corrected calmly, an utter contrast to Lily’s trembling rage. ‘More often than not to my advantage. People pay a lot of money for my opinion and I’m giving it to you free—I’d listen, if I were you.’
‘I don’t have to listen,’ Lily bristled. ‘I already know that I can’t afford it—I already know that the banks are not going to lend me the money and that the house…’ Suddenly it all caught up with her, the tension of the past few weeks, the frustration of feeling so helpless all culminating into this moment, all her fears magnified as this impossible man forced her to confront what she already knew. Tears stung her eyes as she resumed talking, her words more to herself than Hunter as she admitted the unpalatable truth. ‘It’s going to have to be sold.’
‘Sold?’ Hunter frowned, staring again at the papers. ‘I thought you were looking to buy…Oh, I see.’ He flicked over a couple of pages. ‘This is your parents’ house.’
She was too exhausted to be angry as he shamelessly delved further into her documents, the anxiety that had propelled her in recent weeks utterly depleted now. Sitting on the sofa beside him, Lily took a sip of wine and leant back, closing her eyes as Hunter questioned her further.
‘My mother’s,’ Lily corrected him her voice a monotone. ‘My father died two years ago.’
‘So it’s solely in your mother’s name?’ Without even a murmur of acknowledgment to her loss, Hunter dealt with the facts. ‘Why do you want to buy it?’
‘Because my mother can’t afford it—she’s defaulted on her loan.’ Lily let out a long tense breath. ‘She was planning to turn it into a bed and breakfast in the hope of keeping it. She’s up in Queensland now, talking to her sister about coming in with her, but things have just started to snowball. I just found out that there’s going to be a mortgagee’s auction in two weeks and unless she comes up with the money…’
‘But if she can’t afford it, surely she’s better off downsizing,’ Hunter responded, his voice utterly void of emotion, just as the bank manager’s and the umpteen lenders she had dealt with over the past few weeks had been. For Lily it was the last straw.
‘Says who?’ Lily’s voice was shrill. ‘She’s lived in that house for thirty years, all of her memories are there—her life. Why should she lose it?’
‘Because she hasn’t got the money to keep it,’ Hunter said blandly, utterly unmoved by her emotive outburst. ‘Why does she owe so much if she’s been there so long?’ God, he was direct—no skirting around the edges, no gently feeling his way into a conversation. He was business personified. ‘Didn’t your father have insurance?’
‘They took out a new mortgage to pay for my father’s treatment and to spend his last year travelling.’
‘That was rather selfish!’ Hunter rolled his eyes. ‘Didn’t he realise the mess he’d be leaving for your mother?’ Lily’s mouth gaped open, stunned at what she was hearing, reeling that he would say such a thing, but Hunter stared coolly back. ‘Don’t tell me you haven’t thought the same.’
‘Maybe…’ Lily blinked rapidly, feeling sick at her confession to a stranger. ‘Perhaps a bit, but you don’t know the circumstances, and you have no right—’
‘Fine.’ Shuffling the papers into a neat pile, he placed them down on the table and picked up his coffee, dropping the difficult subject, leaving Lily to freefall with all the emotion he’d just triggered as he calmly drank his coffee in a couple of gulps then stood up. Even though she hadn’t wanted him to stay, suddenly she didn’t want him to leave, curiously deflated as this wild animal took one sniff of the air and seemingly meekly walked away.
‘Thanks so much for the lift.’ Lily stood up and walked him to the door.
‘No problem. Thanks for the coffee.’
‘You’ll be OK to drive?’
‘Why? Are you worried about me?’
‘You’re a client…’ Lily attempted, but he shook his head.
‘No.’ Very deliberately he excused himself and Lily felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as he took away that moral dilemma and plunged her into a rather more personal one. ‘I was never there for me—I was checking the place out for someone else. So, you see, I’m not your client, which means you have absolutely no need to worry about me—unless, of course…’ boldly he stared ‘…you want to.’
‘But you said…’
‘I’m not into group therapy.’ Even the most bland of words were laced with innuendo when Hunter said them, even the most subtle flick of his eyes had her head spinning. ‘I prefer things to be one on one. I really was just there to make sure that things were aboveboard for…’ He hesitated for a fraction. ‘A friend.’
‘And were they?’
‘Very.’ He nodded. ‘And the coffee was most welcome, but now it’s time to go, I can tell that I’ve annoyed you.’
‘A bit,’ Lily admitted, ‘but that’s my problem, not yours.’
‘Do you do it all the time?’ Hunter asked, still staring unashamedly, but it was his mouth rather than his eyes that held Lily’s attention now, thick sensual lips that barely moved as he spoke, but his words were all silkily measured. ‘I mean, everything someone says—do you analyse it? How can my obnoxiousness be your problem?’
A sliver of a smile shivered on her own lips, countered by a nervous pink tongue bobbing out, and it was as if they were writing their own rules for flirting, the manual that said eye contact was so important tossed aside as they both concentrated on a more subtle erogenous zone. For Lily the effect was devastating, her mouth rendered almost immobile, words stammered out in a breathless voice as her lips ached for his. ‘It-t i-isn’t—my reactions are m-my own.’
‘Well, I’m glad I can evoke a reaction.’ The irony of his statement wasn’t lost on Lily. Never in her life had a person evoked such a reaction, her mind, her body spinning with awareness, dizzy from a host of new sensations. ‘And I am sorry if I offended. I have this terrible superiority complex, you see. I know I’m always right.’
She was actually smiling now, terribly reluctantly but she was definitely smiling, and in that unguarded second he pounced, well, not pounced, but for the first time he touched her, his fingers picking up a strand of damp blonde hair and tucking it behind her ear. Even though she stood stock still his touch felt like a dam was bursting somewhere inside, rivers of awareness, arousal coursing through her as his free hand took the glass she was clutching and placed it carefully on the hall table.
‘Tonight’s been…’ He paused while he chose his words. ‘Unexpectedly pleasant.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t bore you.’
‘Far from it.’ He frowned quizzically at her. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Why bother checking?’ Lily gave a rueful smile, but it covered a nervous swallow. She somehow sensed what was coming next, almost knew what he was going to ask her. ‘Why would a pretty little thing like you give up on the pot of gold?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Oh, but I think you do!’ He was pinning her with his eyes as he voiced a question most would never have dared. ‘How did someone as young and as beautiful as you get so cynical?’
‘Cynical.’ Lily smiled and frowned at the same time—cynical was the last word that she’d use to describe herself. She adored her life, her family, her friends, was happy, motivated and truly believed that the world and the opportunities it offered were there for the taking.
‘Yep, cynical,’ Hunter insisted. ‘All this talk about not believing in love—maybe you shouldn’t knock it till you try it.’
‘I tried it once and didn’t like it.’ She threw his own words back at him but despite her best attempts Lily’s dismissive voice couldn’t disguise the pain that was there.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘For someone who makes a living getting people to open up, you’re incredibly reluctant to share.’
‘There’s not much to tell.’
‘Try me.’
Her eyes jerked to his, saw the challenge that was there and met it head on. ‘OK, then. I was engaged for two years—we were actually going to bring forward the wedding in the hope my father would be able to come.’
‘But?’ Hunter asked because clearly there was one.
‘My father took a sudden turn for the worse—and two days before he died I found Mark, my wonderful fiancé, in bed with my supposed best friend. There—is that enough information for you?’
He didn’t respond to her sarcasm and again he offered no sympathy, didn’t even acknowledge her pain, just fired another direct question. ‘So you ended it?’
‘No.’ She watched his eyes narrow at her response. ‘I was too busy dealing with my mother, the hospital. There was just so much going on…’ Her voice wobbled a touch and Hunter jumped in.
‘You didn’t even confront him?’
‘Nope…’ Her eyes glittered with unshed tears. ‘I just put it in the too-hard basket. The last thing Mum needed was more upset—she was really close to Mark, and for all the world Mark was the perfect fiancé when my father died. You should have seen him take over, calling relatives, arranging the funeral, even holding my hand through the service. I can still hear everyone telling me how lucky I was to have him—in fact, if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I’d never have believed he could be unfaithful. I’d probably be married to him now if I hadn’t found out—still be living in a fool’s paradise.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘With Janey—my one-time best friend. Apparently, as Mark likes to tell it, I was a bit depressed after my father died and froze him out—they still insist that nothing happened for months after we broke up.’
‘You’re better off without them.’ Hunter shrugged, not remotely moved by her story. ‘But one swallow doesn’t make a summer.’
‘Sorry?’
‘So, your ex was a bastard—hardly enough to judge an entire species by.’
‘It was enough at the time,’ Lily countered, but two spots of colour were burning on her cheeks, his scrutiny unnerving as he refused to accept her sorry tale.
‘Come on, Lily, you’re a sensible girl—relationships end for far less—you probably were a right old misery to be with at the time. Now, I’m not saying he was right to do what he did, but I’m sure you can see where the relationship started to go wrong.’
‘Are you always this sensitive?’
‘Not always.’ Hunter responded to her sarcasm with a brand of his own. ‘But given we’ve only just met, I didn’t want to be too harsh.’ He stopped teasing then, his eyes assessing her for the longest moment, his voice serious when finally it came. ‘What else happened to you, Lily?’
‘Nothing!’ She answered him too quickly, her voice a touch too shrill, and if she’d been strapped to a lie detector it would have blown a fuse at her pathetic attempt at denial. ‘Isn’t that enough to be going on with?’
He stared at her through narrowed eyes and Lily dragged hers away, his scrutiny unnerving, as if somehow he could see deep inside her. But just when she thought he’d push harder, just when she was on the verge of maybe even telling, thankfully, regretfully even, he pulled away. ‘For now,’ Hunter said, pulling his car keys out of his pocket, and turned to go. ‘Thanks again for the coffee.’ He smothered a yawn as he walked out of the door and no doubt out of her life. Lily was gripped with something akin to sadness, biting down on her lip she fought the impulse to call him back, not realising that Hunter was battling with demons of his own.
He didn’t want to go home.
Didn’t want to ring Emma and tell her about his evening—didn’t want a night rattling around his apartment on his own. But more than that, he didn’t actually want to leave Lily.
And it wasn’t just because she was gorgeous—beautiful women were ten a penny in his word. If it was just sex or company he wanted, he had plenty of willing participants—it was this gorgeous woman that enthralled him.
Drenched, miserable and exhausted, she’d still given him her time—and unlike so many others she expected nothing from him.
Nothing!
Jangling his key on his index finger, heading for his car and a music-fuelled ride home, something stilled him.
Something he couldn’t define made him pause and turn around.
‘I really am fine to drive…’ Very slowly, very deliberately he turned to face her. ‘I’d just rather not.’
Her eyes jerked to his and the lust blazing in them was so blatant there was no question of mixed messages, his meaning utterly, utterly clear. As Lily stared back, transfixed, she begged for reason to descend, for her usually ordered mind to focus, to give an appropriate response to his terribly inappropriate proposal.
She wanted to say yes!
One hand was leaning on the wall behind her as his other smoothed another imaginary lock from her forehead, tracing again the path he had blazed so easily before, infinitely kissable lips literally a breath away, the taste of him an imagined delicacy on her tongue, and lust battled with reason. Surely she’d regret this. To contemplate sleeping with this man was something every woman in his path surely did, but to actually fathom it, to know that for tonight at least all this could be hers, was a conundrum Lily had never in her life envisaged. He was as out of place in her bedroom as he had been at the community centre, a divine prototype that didn’t belong in the parameters of her existence. Yet here he was, adoring her with his eyes, lifting the silver lid and tempting her with laden, flambéd plates of passion—the ultimate, most elicit dessert menu thrust in front of her to break her diet. She toyed mentally with the delicacies on offer, knew that a flavor of nectar would surely sour her tastebuds for ever, that to taste him now could only render any future offerings lacking.
But she wanted this.
Wanted to taste him, to feel him, wanted that moment on her lips to spend a lifetime in her memory…
The brush of his mouth on hers almost made her faint, her flesh swelling with ripeness as he graced her with his presence, a tiny shocked gasp as instead of a kiss, first he licked her, his tongue tracing the Cupid’s bow of her lips, then bit her lower lip, and if it had been anyone else she’d have recoiled, but not with Hunter, it was the single most erotic thing she had ever experienced in her life—and it wasn’t transitory, tasting her, circling her lips, till he had to stop, till he had to end this delicious torment with a kiss…only he didn’t. Instead, he gently bit into her lower lip, sucking her till she was swollen, till her body was writhing with want, yet his hand was still leaning lazily on the wall behind her as he urged her body closer with sheer magnetism.
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