they never call you Lolita?’
She gave him a steady look. ‘Lolita was a fictional nymphet,’ she answered acidly. ‘Are you trying to make a point?’
‘No, I’m not,’ he drawled, mocking amusement lighting the depths of the stormy eyes. ‘And besides, you’re a little too old to be classified as nymphet, aren’t you?’
It was hardly surprising, in the circumstances, that she should blush, and blushing only added to the feeling of intense vulnerability which had been present since he had first started talking to her. However, at least Lola had a pale olive tint to her skin, which masked the colour far more than a classic English rose complexion would have done.
‘Yes,’ she answered shortly, and tried to freeze him with an angry look which would have had a lesser man scuttling off in the opposite direction. ‘Much too old.’
But he seemed unmoved by her embarrassment, and uncaring of her anger—and instead allowed a grey gaze that was now cool rather than stormy to rove speculatively over her.
‘And you look like a Dolores,’ he remarked suddenly. ‘With that mane of curly brown-black hair and skin which looks as creamy as the best cappuccino. But your eyes should be dark, shouldn’t they? Mysterious and black. Yet yours are blue. Bright blue. The blue of a Mediterranean sky.’
Lola met many men in her job, but she had never met anyone who was quite so self-assured as this man—and she found herself stung into defence. ‘I’m an odd mixture,’ she found herself telling him. ‘Mum says she doesn’t know where I get it from.’ And then she looked down to discover that he was still holding onto her fingertips, in a parody of a handshake!
His grey eyes followed the direction of her gaze, to where her hand lay so acquiescently against his. ‘And what else are you going to tell me about yourself, Lola Hennessy—other than the fact that the touch of my hand makes yours tremble with awareness—?’
Furiously, she snatched her hand away. ‘Or revulsion, perhaps?’
He laughed. ‘I don’t think so. Unless your eyes are lying, of course.’
She pretended to consider this, both invigorated and unsettled by the game she was allowing herself to play. ‘And do you think that is possible?’ she queried. ‘For the eyes to be able to lie?’
‘I don’t just think so, I know so. Deception is an art which can be learned through practice just like any other.’
Lola felt like a child who had tentatively dipped her toe into a puddle and become submerged right up to her neck. ‘There speaks a true cynic,’ she observed caustically.
He shrugged his wide shoulders, and a look of faint surprise crossed the dark, handsome face. ‘I’m thirty-four,’ he stated, with an air of finality. ‘Therefore I am a cynic.’
Lola laughed nervously as she mentally worked out that he was nine years older than she was. ‘And why should that follow?’
His eyes were smoky with a kind of regret. ‘Because I have seen enough of life, and of women, to know that there are few surprises left. But even cynics are interested in young women who send out such mixed messages. Or should I say especially cynics...?’
His voice held a slumberous quality now, and to her horror Lola found herself imagining what that voice would sound like first thing in the morning, all husky and heavy with sleep.
‘And do I?’ she ventured boldly. ‘Send out mixed messages?’
‘Most certainly you do.’
‘How?’ she asked, even though something inside her urged her to walk away from him. Before he snared her completely in the silken bonds of his charm.
He lowered his voice, as if he recognised that the question had been unwise. ‘You recognise the danger in me, and you want to dislike me—even, perhaps, hate me,’ he stated huskily. ‘But you can’t quite bring yourself to, can you, Lola?’
And he was absolutely right, damn him! Lola adopted the unstressed, unflappable smile she usually reserved for passengers who had been hitting the duty-free in a big way. ‘Why on earth should I want to dislike you?’
The laughter which had lurked at the depths of the grey eyes disappeared and Lola was taken aback by how hard his face suddenly looked. And how cold. ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ he answered slowly, and his eyes narrowed into cool, granite chips.
Lola registered that her heart was racing, that the blood was thundering in her head in a most uncomfortable and unwelcome way. What would he do, she wondered, if she told him that the reason why she was reacting so bizarrely and so uniquely was because at the ripe old age of twenty-five she was experiencing an overwhelming desire to be in his arms and to have him crush his mouth down on hers?
Lola shivered, acknowledging her relative inexperience with men, despite working in the seemingly glamorous air travel industry.
Oh, she had been attracted to men in the past—of course she had. She had even come very close to having a proper love-affair. But she had never experienced feelings like this before. These dark, powerful, grown-up stirrings were a whole new and rather frightening ball game.
And she could not have chosen a worse candidate to be wildly attracted to—a rich, arrogant, gorgeous cynic! Lola was not an idiot, and she knew without someone having to tell her that this man was way, way out of her reach!
His voice had now dropped to a velvet caress. ‘So tell me, Lola Hennessy, just why you dislike me so.’
Sure! And boost his already massive ego still further? She was full of tricks like that! Lola gave him a bemused stare before delivering a gentle put-down. ‘How could I possibly dislike you, for heaven’s sake? I don’t even know you.’
Had he guessed that her indifference was feigned? Was that why his stormy eyes were now sending out shadowy messages which made another shiver of foreboding tiptoe its way up Lola’s spine?
‘Well, that’s one thing that is easily remedied,’ he replied silkily. ‘I’m Geraint Howell-Williams,’ he said, and his slate-grey eyes narrowed by a fraction as he waited for her reaction.
He was obviously someone, thought Lola—that much was evident just from his appearance—but did that infinitesimal pause after he had introduced himself mean she should have heard of him?
Arrogant so-and-so! Even if she had heard of him she would have pretended not to have! ‘How do you do, Mr Howell-Williams?’ she responded, her reply coming out all wooden and formal, and she saw his mouth harden very briefly before dazzling her with the most transfixing smile that Lola had ever encountered.
There was a hint of wicked amusement lurking in the depths of those eyes now. ‘Oh, call me Geraint, please,’ he murmured.
‘If you insist,’ she answered stiffly.
‘I wouldn’t dream of insisting,’ he mocked softly. ‘I’ve always found persuasion to be a much more effective tool.’
Now that she could believe! One more dazzling smile like the one he had displayed earlier and Lola could easily imagine being persuaded into doing almost anything he wanted...
‘I’m sure you have,’ she said softly, a wry note to her voice, and their eyes met for a moment of complete understanding, which left Lola feeling slightly shaken...
He threw her a thoughtful look. ‘This is some building,’ he commented slowly, as if determined to put the conversation back on a more conventional footing.
‘Yes, it is.’ Lola dutifully looked around the clubhouse, taking in the high white moulded ceiling and the pale marble pillars which gleamed so discreetly. On each pillar was mounted the distinctive navy blue St Fiacre’s crest, lavishly embossed with golden dragons and unicorns and vine leaves.
‘It looks less like a tennis club and more like a Greek temple—and an exceptionally sumptuous temple, to boot!’ Lola observed