the reputation of nurses, and it meant you’d get your pick of any girl you wanted. If you were that shallow, you wouldn’t have had the dedication to study for as long as it takes to get a medical degree—or have made it to consultant level at your age.’
His face shuttered. ‘Medicine just suits me.’
And he wasn’t prepared to talk about it. Which meant that the reason was important to him. ‘Who’s the real Seb?’ she asked softly.
He shrugged. ‘What you see is what you get.’
She didn’t believe him. Somewhere, underneath all that charm, was the real Sebastian Radley. A man she suspected might be a great deal more appealing than Seb the Hon., the socialite. ‘I think you’re hiding something. Running away from something. You’re using all your women as a huge smokescreen.’
‘And what are you running away from, Dr Ward?’ he riposted.
‘Nothing.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Come on. You’ve just pinned me down. Because I date a lot, you say I’m running away. You’re the opposite: you don’t date at all. So what are you running away from?’
Too many memories. Scott Cooper. Her own gullibility. ‘That’s my business.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He took a sip of wine. ‘Stalemate, I think.’
‘Let’s drop this,’ Alyssa said, suddenly feeling out of her depth.
‘You started it.’
True. ‘It doesn’t mean you have to finish it.’
He grinned. ‘I like you. You’re refreshing.’
Refreshing? She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. ‘If that’s meant to be a pick-up line, you failed.’
‘It wasn’t. I’m not planning to have sex with you.’
Her face burned. ‘So now I’m the unattractive one.’
‘Actually, no. Though you’re very good at making yourself look invisible. When I heard your name on the winning ticket, it took me a while to place you. You’re attractive, Alyssa. Actually, you have the kind of mouth any red-blooded man would want to kiss until your eyes went hazy. The kind of flawless Celtic skin that looks like fresh cream. Skin that just begs to be explored. All over.’
She could just imagine him doing that. Kissing her for hours, until her senses swam and she opened to him. In every sense. Mind, heart and soul—and definitely body. Skin to skin. Feeling his heart beating against hers. Feeling his mouth against her skin, exploring and teasing and finding out where she liked to be touched, kissed.
Oh, hell. She’d thought her defences were sound. Against Seb, they were flimsy. Amateur, even. One more line like that, and she’d be on the point of begging him to take her somewhere quiet.
She dug her nails into her palm, hoping the tiny pain would clear her head. Charming meant cheating. She knew that. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.
‘But there’s something else that I always make clear from the start,’ Seb said quietly. ‘I don’t have affairs with women who are married or attached in any way. And I don’t try to bully or persuade women into doing something they don’t want to do. You’ve told me you’re not interested, and I accept that. I’m not going to push you into having sex with me.’
Alyssa wasn’t sure whether she was more relieved or disappointed. Relieved that he wasn’t expecting her just to fall into his bed, and disappointed for exactly the same reason.
‘Pudding?’ He handed her the menu.
When had the waiter appeared? She hadn’t noticed. Oh, no. Please, don’t say he’d overheard the conversation she’d just had with Seb.
I’m not going to push you into having sex with me.
Her skin burned with mortification.
‘I,’ Seb said, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on hers, ‘am having crème brûlée.’
Crème brûlée. Celtic skin that looks like fresh cream. He was doing this on purpose.
She glanced at the menu. ‘It’s not on the list.’
He smiled. ‘They’ll do it for me.’
His arrogance was breathtaking. On the other hand, if he was a regular customer—a very regular customer—the staff probably indulged him.
That was Seb’s trouble. He was over-indulged.
‘Not by everyone,’he said, and her hand flew to her mouth.
‘I didn’t mean to say that out loud,’ she muttered. ‘Sorry.’
‘If you were anyone else, I’d demand a kiss as a forfeit.’ He leaned back in his chair and gave her a lazy grin. ‘But you’re not interested.’
‘Quite right.’ A kiss as a forfeit. Her whole body tingled at the idea, but she forced herself to sound cool, calm and collected. ‘I’ll have the lemon posset, please.’
Though when their desserts came, she wished she’d asked for crème brûlée as well. It looked gorgeous. The perfect caramelised crust—and with a raspberry on the top, dusted with just a smidgen of icing sugar and decorated with a tiny fresh mint leaf.
Clearly her longing showed on her face, because Seb scooped the raspberry from the top of his pudding, and leaned over towards her. ‘Open wide.’
‘I…’
Another hint of that, oh, so sexy smile. ‘You know you want to.’
Oh, yes.
She opened her mouth and allowed him to feed her the mouthful of fruit, caramel and cream.
‘My turn,’ he said softly.
He wanted a taste of her pudding?
Oh, Lord. If this was ‘not pushing’, she hated to think what he’d be like when he was trying to persuade someone into having sex with him.
Frankly, he wouldn’t even need to try. If they weren’t in the middle of a restaurant, she knew she’d be taking her clothes off right now and letting him do whatever he liked. Because she knew he’d make it good for both of them.
Embarrassed, she scooped a spoonful of the lemon posset and fed it to him.
He licked a smear from his lower lip, making her temperature rise a notch. ‘Creamy and smooth, with a hint of tartness. My idea of perfection,’ he said.
He was talking about the dessert. So why did she want him to be talking about her?
Somehow she managed to keep her composure during the rest of the meal. Coffee and tiny petits fours. When they’d left the restaurant, Seb switched on his CD player and she pretended to listen to Mozart so she wouldn’t have to make conversation on the way back to her flat.
And then a car overtook Seb in the middle of a roundabout. A small, bright yellow car—at least, the bits that weren’t rusty were yellow. The exhaust sounded illegal and the music pumping from the car was so loud that they could actually hear it above the music in their own car—and their windows were closed.
‘Idiot!’ Seb yelled, then glanced sideways at Alyssa. ‘Sorry.’
‘It was a stupid place to overtake,’ Alyssa said. ‘But let it go. Don’t get into a boy racer match.’ She could imagine Seb chasing after the yellow car and overtaking it, just to prove that he could.
‘I’m not that immature,’ Seb said. ‘I get it all the time in this car—people either want to drive it or want to beat it. But I also know this car could take on just about anything on the road and win. I don’t have to prove anything.’
All the same, when they came to the next set of traffic lights, the yellow car