Desire Never Changes. Penny Jordan

from his skin, but not making any move to touch her.

      Suddenly sleepy after the physical exercise and mental strain of the morning Somer rolled over on to her stomach, burying her face in her hands. Gradually she felt the tension easing out of her body. She closed her eyes, dimly aware of firm sure hands moving over her back, inducing a delicious sensation of lethargy that made her want to stretch and curl her body like a small cat, but before she could do so sleep claimed her.

      Finishing his self-imposed task Chase Lorimer studied the female form stretched out beside him. Very, very enticing; there had been a moment earlier on when he had come dangerously close to losing his self-control. He had thought the first time he saw her in the lift that she was still a child, shy and nervous. How wrong he had been! He grimaced faintly to himself. He ought to be used to it by now; after all she wouldn’t be the first female to pick him up thinking she was taking the first step up the ladder to becoming a top model. A touch of contempt darkened his eyes, his expression faintly bleak. Funny, but this time it really hurt.

      Shrugging mentally he got to his feet, telling himself sardonically that he was a fool to let himself get involved, but he knew he wanted her; against all logic and common sense maybe, but still he wanted her. But before he took her he would lay it on the line for her, tell her that no way was making love with him the equivalent of the modelling world’s casting couch. He frowned as he glanced down at her. Lying like that with her head pillowed in her arms she looked like a child, innocent, untouched. He grimaced faintly. He was getting far too sentimental, surely life with Laura had taught him that. He had believed himself in love with her and her with him, but all she had wanted was to use him. She had laughed at him when he proposed marriage, and inflicted a painful blow to his twenty-two-year-old ego, but the tables were turned now; now that she was a fading star, a model who was finding it more and more difficult to get assignments, who needed all the tricks a clever photographer could use to preserve the illusion of youth; who at thirty betrayed in her face the way she had lived—and loved, if you could call the casual sexual encounters she indulged in, that. Now Laura wanted to marry him, especially now that she knew that he was his uncle’s heir, but he wasn’t twenty-two any longer; he had grown older and wiser; there had been far too many Lauras in his life for him to be deceived.

      As he glanced down at Somer again his eyes were tinged with sadness and a hint of self-contempt, and here was another. A potential Laura, young enough to have the bloom still on her skin and the illusion of innocence but in reality…Picking up his equipment he headed for one end of the beach and soon became engrossed in his self-imposed task, glancing up only once to stare at the sleeping figure.