Julian the opportunity either to protest or argue, Brough came over to her, holding out his hand. Shakily Kelly stood up. She didn’t particularly want to dance with him, but dancing with him was infinitely preferable to having to dance with Julian.
Good manners suggested that she ought to thank Brough Frobisher for rescuing her, but to do so would surely be to step out of the role Dee had cast for her and, perhaps even worse, to give him the opportunity to point out that she herself had been actively encouraging Julian to believe that she was interested in him.
‘Your sister is very sweet,’ she commented awkwardly as Brough led her onto the floor.
‘Sweet?’ His dark eyebrows lifted as he gave her an appraising look. ‘An excess of sweetness can be unpleasantly cloying. I don’t consider her to be sweet, rather a little too naive and vulnerable. How long have you known Cox?’
His abrupt question caught her off guard.
‘Er … a while … He … we’re old friends,’ she stammered, boldly remembering her role.
‘Old friends,’ he repeated, stressing the word as he looked hard at her. ‘I see.’
Kelly hoped devoutly that he did no such thing.
As they reached the dance floor he touched her lightly on the arm, turning her expertly towards him. The band was playing a slow, intimate dance number, and immediately she felt his arm go round her Kelly tensed.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to dancing in close proximity to a man, it was just that somehow it was unnerving with this man—
‘Enlighten me,’ he was saying to her. ‘What exactly is it about Cox that quite patently makes him so attractive to your sex?’
Kelly glanced warily up at him. He was immaculately dressed and she could just catch the scent of the very masculine cologne he was wearing, she noted approvingly. Julian’s apparent addiction to very strong and no doubt trendy aftershave was not to her personal taste at all. But despite Brough’s elegant grooming she suspected that without the shave he must have had before coming out this evening his very thick and very dark hair must mean that most evenings his jaw must be shadowed and slightly rough to the touch, adding a delicious extra frisson of sensuality to being kissed by him, especially if you were a woman who, like her, possessed slightly sensitive skin.
Appalled by the direction of her own unruly thoughts, Kelly realised that she had still not answered his question.
‘Er … Julian likes women,’ she told him lamely.
Immediately his eyebrows rose.
‘He certainly does,’ he agreed silkily. ‘Doesn’t that bother you? In my experience, most women prize loyalty and exclusivity in a relationship …’
‘Julian is simply a friend,’ Kelly reminded him sharply.
‘A very intimate friend?’ Brough pressed.
He was digging too deep, questioning her too closely, Kelly recognised, and in order to answer him she was either going to have to commit herself to more lies or risk betraying the fiction she was creating.
‘It’s hot in here,’ she complained, pulling free of him. ‘I need some fresh air.’
It wasn’t entirely untrue; she was hot and the terrace she could see beyond the ballroom’s open French windows did offer a much needed escape from the cause of that heat—which was not so much the air in the ballroom as the presence of the man beside her and her own feelings of trepidation and guilt.
As she headed for the terrace, it didn’t occur to Kelly that he would follow her. She could guess from the way he had been questioning her just what he thought of her, and she knew that in refusing to answer him she had equally plainly confirmed those suspicions.
It was a relief to reach the cool shadows of the terrace, and, avoiding the other couples strolling its length, Kelly turned instead to descend the flight of stone steps that led into the garden.
She was almost at the bottom when a sharp stone underfoot caused her to stumble, but instead of experiencing the ignominy of falling to her knees on the gravel pathway she was scooped up in a pair of hard male arms and she heard Brough’s voice against her ear telling her calmly, ‘It’s all right, I’ve got you …’
He certainly had, and it seemed he had no intention of letting her go, either. Against her body she could feel the heavy thud of his heartbeat as he helped her to her feet but still continued to hold onto her. Disconcertingly her own heart suddenly started to race, and she discovered that she was finding it hard to breathe.
‘Did you twist your ankle? Can you put your weight on it?’
‘My ankle …’ Dizzily Kelly looked up into his eyes, and then at his mouth, and then foolishly she did exactly the same thing again. The effect on her nervous system was like a shock wave of mega-force, a subterranean uprising of such intensity that it blew every fuse on her internal alarm system—and then some.
Unwisely she licked her inexplicably dry lips. What had he said about her ankle? What ankle? Helplessly her gaze clung to his. Surely no man should have such ridiculously long lashes, such darkly intense eyes. She felt as though … as though …
‘Kelly. Kelly …’
‘Yes,’ she whispered in tacit acknowledgement of what she knew was going to happen.
A kiss was simply a kiss … wasn’t it? How could she be so foolish, so unaware … so naive as to think that? This was certainly no mere kiss, this meeting, caressing of her mouth by and with his. But even as she tried to analyse what was happening, to hold onto some protective shred of sanity, the thread holding her, it snapped beneath the weight of what she was feeling. Blissfully she gave herself up to sensation—to the smooth, rough, hot, sweet feel of his mouth against hers, to the swift ascent from careful, hesitant exploration to the dizzying heights of a complete and passionate explosion of need she could feel shaking her body.
‘Kelly!’ As he whispered her name Brough’s hand reached out to touch her face, to stroke tenderly along her jaw, to support her head as his tongue-tip parted her sensuously swollen lips.
‘Brough!’
Was that really her whispering his name in a sigh that was all soft yearning and longing, exposing dangerously the tender, vulnerable heart of herself which she normally kept so carefully guarded?
Unable to stop herself, Kelly reached out and touched his jaw with her fingertips. His skin felt cool and strong. Hard, masculine. Shivering in pleasure, she stood still beneath his kiss. His arms tightened around her almost as though he wanted to guard and protect her.
Shyly Kelly opened her eyes, unable to resist the temptation to look at him whilst he was caressing her mouth with the most unbelievably erotic brush of his lips against hers, but to her shock his own eyes were open and he was looking right back at her.
The sensation of looking so deeply into his eyes whilst he kissed her felt like the most intimate experience she had ever had. Her earlier shivers had become deep tremors of intense emotion, and when he stopped kissing her and raised his mouth from hers to look searchingly at her Kelly made a small sound of distress, her fingertips touching his lips in a gesture of silent longing.
This time it was his turn to shudder, racked by a surge of male desire so strong and so open that Kelly felt her own body start to respond to it—to it and to him.
This time, when they kissed, she couldn’t remain passive beneath his mouth, but returned each caress, mirroring every touch, every sound as they kissed and broke apart, only to kiss again.
‘Kelly, are you out there?’
The sound of Harry’s worried voice from the terrace above them brought Kelly back to reality. Hot-faced, she stepped back from Brough, not sure whether to be pleased or insulted that he had released her immediately.
His own face was turned away from her