Lovestruck

CHAPTER TWO

‘IS THIS your idea of a joke?’ Sam grimly asked, staring at her as if she had grown another head. ‘Because if it is I’m not amused.’

‘Like Queen Victoria,’ she murmured.

‘What?’ he snarled.

He was really furious, she realised, surprised. She had seen Sam angry before, but it had never been with her. He was far too possessed by his job, an energy-driven man, restless and obsessed. But all that fire went into his work, not his private life. With his women he was far more casual, very laid-back, making no commitments. He never seemed to take them seriously, and she knew none of his relationships lasted very long.

She had always been irritated by the way he treated his women, as if love was just a game. She suspected he thought of women as toys to pick up, play with and put down when you got bored. Natalie could never understand why women let him treat them that way. She wouldn’t; that was for sure. Sam had once or twice asked her out, but she had always refused coolly. She only dated men who took her very seriously.

‘She wasn’t amused, either,’ Natalie reminded him.

‘Who wasn’t?’

He seemed to be mentally challenged this morning, but that wasn’t surprising after last night.

Patiently she repeated, ‘Queen Victoria. Wasn’t amused, remember?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’ he muttered.

Sam normally had a good sense of humour, but she let it pass, shrugging.

‘Give me my ring and stop trying to be funny!’ Sam stuck his hand out and she gazed at it without moving, opening her eyes as wide as she could.

‘But, Sam, we’re engaged to be married...’

He exploded, his voice going up several octaves. ‘We are nothing of the kind and you know it! Okay, maybe I was so drunk last night that I somehow or other said something or other about—’

He broke off, having lost whatever he had been going to say, or perhaps not wishing to admit he had ever proposed to her. So Natalie ended the sentence for him.

‘About marrying you? Yes, you did, Sam—in front of dozens of people. You proposed to me, on your...’

He loomed over her, smouldering. ‘Yes, okay, I don’t want to hear all that again. I was drunk. You know that! You know it wasn’t serious!’

Of course she knew, but she wasn’t ready to give up her game yet.

‘But you asked me to marry you!’ Her eyes opened wider than ever and he stared into the blueness of them for a few seconds, drawing a long, angry breath which he held as if he was counting to ten.

Then, in a very careful voice, he said, ‘For heaven’s sake, Natalie, we’ve never even had a date. Why should I suddenly propose out of the blue?’

‘You said I was the perfect woman,’ Natalie said in limpid tones. ‘Your dream woman, you said.’ She smiled mistily at him. ‘It was very romantic—especially when you went on your knees and begged me to marry you.’

Sam stared at her, dark red creeping up his face. Running a hand through his already dishevelled hair, he muttered, ‘You’re kidding! I’ve never been that drunk before.’

Oh, thanks! she thought. That’s really flattering.

Sam’s brow corrugated. He’s thinking at last! Natalie recognised. She hoped it hurt.

After a few seconds he groaned. ‘It just dawned on me—was Helen there when I...?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Natalie. In fact, she would never forget Helen West’s face at that moment—it still made a glow in her memory. She had never liked the woman; not many people at the radio station did. The only people the singer was friendly to were youngish and good-looking men in good jobs. If you were poorer or older than her, or female, or plain, Helen West used you as a doormat or was coldly arrogant when she spoke to you—which was how she had always treated Natalie, who obviously came into most categories of people she despised.

‘So that’s why I got the slap in the face?’ Sam fingered his jaw, grimacing. ‘It still hurts.’

‘Oh, poor Sam,’ Natalie sweetly said, hoping it hurt a lot, and he looked down at her, his eyes now stiletto-sharp.

‘You don’t mean that, do you? If you did you’d want to kiss it better. As we’re engaged!’

She blinked, startled. Why hadn’t it dawned on her that he might do something like that? It should have done. She knew very well what an opportunist Sam was, in his work as well as in his private life.

Natalie wasn’t the gambling type, but she took a gamble then, rather than abandon her little game with Sam, which she was enjoying too, much to give up yet—although maybe her sense of humour was leading her into dangerous territory.

Lowering her lashes and looking at him through them, she murmured dulcetly, ‘Bend down, then.’

She caught the flash of surprise in his eyes. He hadn’t expected her to agree. But he bent, watching her as if wondering how far she was going to go, and Natalie lifted her head and pressed her mouth firmly on his jaw, more or less where Helen’s slap had connected. His skin was cool and faintly prickly; he hadn’t shaved as closely as usual this morning. In a hurry, no doubt, or his hand not too steady after the night before.

Natalie quickly moved away again. ‘There. All better,’ she mocked.

It might have been wiser not to say anything. She saw his grey eyes glint dangerously, then his hand shot out to capture her chin and hold it in position while his gaze roamed over her face with cool appraisal, as if he had never really noticed how she looked before. He probably hadn’t, either. He was always too busy with work, or other women. She was just part of his office furniture, a useful piece of living equipment he needed for his job. Natalie was aware that she didn’t come into the range of women Sam noticed sexually, and it had often annoyed her. Nobody liked being mistaken for a desk or a chair.

So, when he grabbed her chin and looked at her that way, she was ready to resent it—except that as she looked into his eyes pulses began to beat in her throat, at her wrist, a reaction that disturbed her. What was going on here? She had no designs on Sam, and she wasn’t fool enough to let herself fall for him. She had thought it would be fun to tease him a little, that was all; getting involved with him had definitely not been in her game plan. Maybe it was time to stop playing with him before he began playing with her?

Oh, yes, definitely, she thought in agitation as she saw his gaze lingering on her mouth.

‘Did I kiss you when I proposed?’ he murmured in a smoky, deliberately sensuous tone that seemed to turn her brains to scrambled egg.

She gazed back at him, swallowing convulsively and unable to get a word out.

‘I must have done,’ he added. ‘If I proposed. I must have kissed you, mustn’t I? Pity I don’t remember doing it. I’d like to remember that.’

His gaze was still riveted on her mouth. She felt her face growing hot and tried to say something, anything, to break the strange trance holding her rigid.

Sam bent. Slowly. Very slowly. Her mouth dry, Natalie stared up at his approaching face like a rabbit hypnotised by the dropping shadow of a bird of prey.

When his mouth touched her lips her body seemed to be set on fire; she was so stunned by her own feelings that she didn’t even try pushing him away. She just shook like a leaf, her legs giving under her, her head falling back as if her neck had lost every bone in it and could no longer keep her head upright.

Sam’s arms went round her waist as if to catch her; she clutched at him to keep herself standing on her own two feet. She had once been in an earthquake, in Turkey. This was just how it had felt: the same sense of helplessness, the feeling that you were no longer standing on ground you could trust, tremors running through you and shaking you to your roots.

His hands on the small of her back pushed her closer, closer, until she was lying against his bare chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through her own shirt and shivering at the intimacy of the contact, aware of every muscle in his body, every smooth, tanned inch of flesh. She was overwhelmed by a desire to bury her face in that beautiful male skin and was horrified by the impulse.

She must be out of her mind! What did she think she was doing, letting him do this to her? Pulling her head back from his kiss, she put her hands Hat on that strong, naked chest, and shoved him away.

‘Stop it!’

He looked down at her with half-hooded, drowsy eyes, as if waking up, and Natalie’s heart skidded a dangerous corner. So was that how he looked first thing in the morning, in bed?

What are you thinking? she asked herself, despairing of her own brain. You told him to stop it—you should have told yourself the same thing!