The Hot-Blooded Groom. Emma Darcy

around her bloodstream, stirring up a buzz of sexual possibilities again.

      ‘Some women’s prime requirement of right would be a certain level of income. The child-price, one might say,’ he said sardonically.

      Sunny frowned. ‘I could support a child myself. That’s not the point.’

      ‘What is?’

      She rounded on him, not liking the cynical flavour of his comment, and hating the idea of him applying any shade of it to her. ‘You have a father. What was right for you as a child?’

      His mouth curled with irony. ‘For him to be there when I needed him.’

      Which she could no longer trust Derek to do. The clanging casino noise around her drove that home again.

      ‘You’ve just said it all, Mr. Templar,’ she stated decisively.

      Her eyes clashed with his, daring him to refute that this quality overrode everything else. It carried the acceptance of responsibility and commitment, displayed reliability and caring, and generated trust…all the things Derek had just demonstrated wrong about himself.

      Bryce Templar didn’t refute it. He stared back at her and the air between them sizzled with tense unspoken things. Sunny had the wild sense that he was scouring her soul for how right a mother she would be, judging on some scale which remained hidden to her but was vibrantly real in the context of mating.

      ‘Let’s make that Bryce,’ he said quietly.

      And she knew she had passed some critical test. They stood apart, yet she could feel him drawing her closer to the man he was, unleashing a magnetism that tugged on all that was female in her…deep primitive chords thrumming with anticipation.

      He smiled…slowly, sensually, promisingly. ‘You must be hungry by now. I am.’

      ‘Yes,’ she replied, almost mesmerised by the sensations he was evoking. She was hungry for so many, many things, and every day of this week in Las Vegas she had felt them slipping away from her, leaving an empty hole that even the most exciting career couldn’t bridge. Maybe she was crazy, wanting this man to fill the emptiness so much, she was projecting her own desire onto him.

      ‘This way,’ he said, and proceeded to guide her around the casino area to the MGM reception desk.

      Sunny was barely conscious of walking. She was moving with him, going with him, and he was taking her towards a closer togetherness. Dinner for two. On first-name terms. Sunny and Bryce.

      She expected him to ask about restaurants at the desk, but he didn’t.

      ‘Bryce Templar,’ he announced to the clerk. ‘A suite has been booked for me.’

      ‘Yes, Mr. Templar. The penthouse Patio Suite. Your luggage has been taken up. Your key?’

      ‘Please.’

      It was instantly produced. ‘If there’s anything else, sir…’

      ‘Thank you. I’ll call.’

      He was steering Sunny towards the elevators before she recollected her stunned wits enough to say, ‘I thought you were staying at the conference hotel.’

      ‘I’d already checked out when I saw you in the lobby.’

      She frowned, bewildered by this move. ‘Couldn’t you check in again?’

      ‘I preferred to keep my business with you private.’

      Private…in a private penthouse suite.