the vibrant, alive, noisy, scary, exciting place it was. No, Rowena immediately associated it with Quinn, incredible sex and the frightening consequences of the latter…
‘What about the weekend you came home?’
‘You knew about that?’ Startled, she glanced up to see an expression she couldn’t quite place on his face.
‘Wasn’t I meant to?’
‘It was no secret.’ Recovering a little composure, Rowena managed to continue in a persuasively reasonable tone. ‘I’ve just started a new job. I’ve hardly had time to make contact with every casual acquaintance I have.’ She gulped, but the sound was drowned out by the sibilant hiss of his indrawn breath.
Oh, God, that had come out all wrong and then some…!
‘Casual acquaintance,’ he said very softly and deadly silkily. Then, even softer, ‘Casual acquaintance. Tell me, Rowena, how do you say hello to people you know quite well?’
She closed her eyes as an image appeared in her mind’s eye of herself walking down the crowded New York street three months ago, surrounded by a seething mass of humanity. Maybe it had been the mild culture shock of moving to another city where she knew nobody, or maybe it had been the stress of proving herself, but she had never felt so alone in her life.
Then she’d seen him. She hadn’t even needed to get a proper look at that unmistakable profile—his innately elegant, long-legged stride would have been sufficient proof. Two men in the world couldn’t move that way. Without thinking she had barged through the people separating them, breaking every rule of pedestrian etiquette and probably bruising a few shins to get to him.
Waving her bag above her head, she’d shrieked his name like a demented banshee until she’d been hoarse. She’d almost been at his shoulder when he’d finally turned around and Rowena, her face flushed, breathing hard, had come to an abrupt halt.
Shock of recognition in his eyes had morphed into hot desire. An answering desire had shimmered hot and liquid through her.
‘You’re here,’ she said stupidly. ‘I can’t believe it.’
And then he kissed her.
‘Convinced now?’ he asked, when he lifted his head.
Rowena stared dizzily up into his face unable to focus properly—unable to do anything much except stare at him.
The native New Yorkers, a tolerant bunch and not easily surprised, had parted around the embracing couple.
‘I always knew you’d be a good kisser, you’ve got such a beautiful mouth.’ Her hands, pressed flat against the hard surface of his chest, felt his responsive rumble of laughter.
He continued to display his proficiency at kissing in the taxi, then in the lift going up to his hotel room. The kissing didn’t stop once the door had closed behind them but other things started, things she couldn’t even think about without blushing.
Hurtling back into the present, Rowena was still faced with Quinn’s anger at being called a casual acquaintance. ‘You caught me at a weak moment,’ she defended herself.
‘There was no catching involved—the way I recall it you did the running.’ He reached across and touched her chin with his forefinger.
‘And you wonder why I’ve been avoiding you,’ she said, jerking her chin away from his grip.
‘I thought that was all in my mind.’ Quinn spun around on the smooth surface of the desk until his legs were the wrong side of it—her side.
‘I knew it would be like this,’ she muttered, grabbing two handfuls of silvery fair hair and shaking her head from side to side. ‘I thought you understood New York was a mistake, not the start of something.’ Nothing that she had any intention of telling him about just now, anyhow.
‘The only mistake I made was allowing you to persuade me to leave.’
Rowena’s heart dropped as far as her narrow, expensively shod feet. His inflexible tone and grim expression suggested that he was about to compensate for that mistake.
She closed her eyes, incredibly frustrated by his unyielding, downright mule-headed attitude. ‘Talking to you is like…like talking to that wall!’
Which, if things went on like this, she’d be doing in next to no time. She could see it now—crazy fashion editor carted away by the men in white coats. How her enemies would love that…another fast-track hot shot hits the dust!
‘You want me,’ he insisted.
At least this was one subject he didn’t have any doubts about—he couldn’t be in the same room as her without knowing that Rowena craved his touch just as much as he did hers. This knowledge only increased his frustration. Hell, the sizzling, sexually fuelled static between them was nothing short of a fire hazard!
Rowena glared at him for about twenty seconds before her defiance deserted her. ‘That’s as maybe,’ she conceded, concentrating hard on controlling her wildly fluctuating complexion—women in her position did not blush like schoolgirls; neither did they ache inside the way she did.
Quinn’s grin had a worryingly predatory look to it.
‘No maybe about it.’
A small shrug of her slender shoulders conceded his cocky claim. ‘You’ve only yourself to blame—laying down rules and conditions,’ she brooded darkly. ‘Whatever happened to spontaneity and free love?’ She quivered, working herself into a resentful lather as she contemplated her bad luck. She’d found the lover of her dreams—a man not noted for his steadfast devotion—and he had to get all moralistic and possessive on her.
‘Free love?’ Quinn mused. ‘I’m trying to see you as a flower child, but it’s not easy,’ he admitted.
‘You’re nothing but a reformed rake!’ The old-fashioned term seemed to suit him oddly well—he definitely had the legs for tight-fitting Regency breeches as well.
Quinn’s lips quivered at this hot accusation. ‘Just for the record, in my book spontaneity is good, but you get nothing for free. You’ll have to learn to live with the fact I’m not available on a casual, nocturnal basis only. There are people who provide such services, I believe—for a price!’
Her hand flashed out but Quinn’s reflexes were faster. Rowena found her wrist enclosed in a steely grip. Feet braced on the floor, he drew her in between the confines of his iron-hard muscular thighs as he pulled her hand back down to her side, clicking his tongue in mocking disapproval.
‘I want to be part of your life, Rowena—an integral part.’ Rowena stopped struggling, at least physically. Her inner conflict was less easily subdued! Their eyes meshed and she instantly got herself lost in his sea green gaze. ‘I’ve no interest in the sort of hole-in-the-corner affair you were suggesting in New York.’
‘Private is not the same as sordid.’ Most men would have been flattered by the sort of civilised arrangement she had offered him—no complications, no emotional dramas.
‘I’m not good at subterfuge.’
Rowena’s bosom swelled with incredulous indignation. ‘There speaks the man who’d just conned his way into this building!’
‘If you hadn’t been so unreasonable I wouldn’t have needed to resort to less than open tactics.’
‘Dirty tactics, you mean,’ she retorted, pulling her wrist free from his grip and waving an admonitory finger in front of his nose. ‘We both know that when you want something there’s just about nothing you won’t do!’ she snapped furiously.
Quinn gazed levelly back at her, not the least disturbed by her heated indictment. He reached forward and ran a finger slowly down the soft curve of her cheek, his piercing eyes darkening as she flinched back as if burnt.
‘And at the moment I want you…’