Fiancee By Mistake

‘Pity,’ he drawled. ‘I was enjoying the show.’

He didn’t react to her use of his name. Probably he was well used to having people, especially women, recognise him immediately. It would be one of the burdens of fame.

Or, more likely, this man would consider it one of the perks of his job. Certainly he had appeared in the gossip columns as frequently as he had on the television, and with an ever-changing cast of beautiful women in the role of his partner.

Though just lately she hadn’t read very much about him, Leah recalled. Probably because he had been busy filming the latest series of Inspector Callender. She doubted very much that his social life could have ground to any sort of halt.

‘You put on a great performance.’

Leah could hear the smile in Sean’s voice even though she couldn’t see his face. She was pressed against his chest, held too close to be able to look up at him.

“‘Performance”!’ she spluttered, struggling to twist free from the strength of his hold. ‘It was no such thing! If you think—’

But movement was a mistake. Instead of loosening his grip, he tightened it painfully, crushing her even closer to the warmth of his body. She was so near to him that she could feel the steady beating of his heart under her cheek.

‘Calm down.’ His voice was softer now, warm as the touch of his hand on her face, stilling her instantly. ‘You’ve had a shock. Take a minute or so to recover. Breathe slowly, deeply.’

Soothed by the gentle stroke of his thumb over her cheek, Leah obeyed automatically. But if breathing deeply was meant to calm her, it had exactly the opposite effect. It only added to her awareness of him in a new and disturbing way. The scent of some clean, tangy cologne tantalised her nostrils, but mixed in with it was the subtle, uniquely personal scent that was his alone.

Leah suddenly felt as if something had short-circuited inside her brain. She couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t focus on anything other than the warmth and strength that enclosed her, the pressure of Sean’s body all along the length of her own.

Her heart seemed to be racing in double time, sending her blood pounding through her veins until her head swam. There was a hot, tight knot of excitement deep inside her that, contrarily, made her shiver convulsively.

‘Are you cold?’

Being so very close, Sean couldn’t have missed her reaction. His hands closed over her arms, sliding under her coat, smoothing the soft skin below the short sleeves of her dress.

‘You’re frozen!’ Concern sounded in his voice and he increased the pressure of his touch. ‘You need to get your blood moving…’

How could that be? Leah wondered dazedly. How could her skin be cold when inside she felt so burning hot? And her blood didn’t need any assistance. Already it was searing through her with the white-hot force of molten lava.

There was one thing she did need, though, and the force of that desire was so great that she just couldn’t fight it.

With a low murmur of sensual awareness, she lifted her head and pressed her lips to Sean Gallagher’s neck, her mouth soft against the warm strength of the taut muscle of his throat. The roughness of a day’s growth of stubble abraded her cheek and the faint salt taste of his skin made her tongue tingle.

For the space of a heartbeat she felt him stiffen in shock, and knew the fear of rejection. That momentary panic was enough to bring home to her the foolishness of what she had just done, but before she had time to react the hostile tension in his long body suddenly changed to a new and very different sort of awareness. Leah had perhaps a second or two to register the change before he moved again.

‘So that’s your game, is it?’ he muttered, swinging her round sharply, so that instead of being at his side she was now clamped firmly against him.

Her breasts were crushed against the hard wall of his chest, her pelvis tight against his. Then, as he leaned back against her car, he pulled her between his legs so that she felt enclosed by him on three sides. The bite of the wind receded as she felt the heat of his body reach her even through the layers of their clothes.

Sean’s mouth came down onto hers, taking it without care or consideration, crushing her lips back against her teeth and forcing a cry of shocked response from her. If her blood had seemed hectic moments before, now she felt that it was positively incandescent.

When his tongue probed the sensitive interior of her mouth she moaned out loud, as if the action had been a more intimate invasion. She couldn’t control her instinctive response to the arrow of need that sliced through her, making her writhe in an uncontrolled movement that drew a low growl from deep in Sean’s throat. It seemed as if some wild, electric charge had passed through every inch of her body, setting it alight with burning, tingling excitement.

She had no awareness of the darkness around them. She didn’t feel the stinging sensation of the whirling snow as it fell against her face, nor the icy drifts that pooled around her feet in the well-worn shoes. There was only herself and this man and the blazing electrical storm they had lit between them. Leah whimpered in blind delight as rough hands pushed under her coat, finding and closing over the sensitised swell of her breasts under the scarlet velvet.

With shocking suddenness Sean broke the intimate contact, wrenching his mouth away from hers with a violent imprecation. She was his brother’s fiancée! For several seconds more he swore with savage and unnerving eloquence, pushing her away from him with such force that she slid dangerously on the treacherous road surface.

‘And what was all that about?’ The blazing fury in his voice could be heard even above the wild cacophony of the howling wind. ‘Just what did you think you were doing?’

How could she answer that? Leah didn’t dare to even look into his face, keeping her eyes fixed on the ground as she tried to impose some order on her wildly confused thoughts.

What had she been doing? What had possessed her to throw herself at a man she had never met in her life before? A man she knew nothing about other than the stories in the tabloids and the fact that his face and form appeared on her television set once a week?

‘I—didn’t think.’

‘You didn’t think!’ he echoed scathingly. ‘Oh, I can believe that! But it wasn’t your mind that was driving you, was it, Miss Elliot?’

That brought Leah’s head up in a rush, wide, shocked eyes going to his face. How did he know her name? Where…?

But as her gaze focused on his strongly carved features the question in her mind never got past her lips. Instead it was stopped by her own hand, her fingers coming up to cover her mouth, the shock that kept her silent turning her eyes dark as pansies.

It was only now that she realised he had kept part of his face turned away from her. When he had opened the car door, and again when he had held out a hand to help her, she had only seen his right profile, the left staying hidden by the darkness. The rest of the time she hadn’t been looking at him and—hot colour flamed in her cheeks—she had kept her eyes closed when he had kissed her.

‘Sean!’

Now, for the first time, she could see all of his face, and the sight made her breath catch harshly in her throat. In spite of the darkness, there was no mistaking the devastating effect of the raw, jagged line that ran down his face from the corner of one eye, angling away from his mouth to end just on the strong, forceful jaw.

The barely healed scar was obviously recent, clearly the result of some dreadful accident. The handsome looks that had won Sean Gallagher so many fans were ruined; the face that adorned thousands of publicity photographs was destroyed for ever.

Watching her intently, Sean had seen the direction of her gaze, the response she couldn’t disguise.

‘Pretty, isn’t it?’ His cynicism was brutal.

‘Oh, Sean!’

Shock and sympathy drove every other thought from her mind. Reacting purely instinctively, she moved forward impetuously, only realising as he flinched back, away from her, that she had actually lifted a hand as if to touch his damaged face.

‘No way, lady!’ he warned roughly. ‘I don’t fall for that trick twice in a row.’

‘It was no trick!’

Furious at the way he had misinterpreted her gesture of concern, Leah actually stamped her foot hard, regretting her impulsive act instantly as it sent a spray of freezing snow over her feet and legs.

‘What sort of person do you think I am?’

‘The sort of female…’ deliberately he emphasised his use of a different noun ‘…who throws herself at any available man without a thought for the one she’s left behind.’

The arrogance of the man! He actually believed that just because he was a TV star any and every woman must be crazy about him, available solely for his pleasure! But then the exact words Sean had used hit home with a worrying clarity.

‘What do you know about any men in my life?’

She just managed to get the words out before the truth exploded inside her head with a force that made her head reel.

It didn’t matter how Sean Gallagher knew about Andy—if in fact he knew anything, and wasn’t just making a lucky guess. What mattered was that she hadn’t spared the other man a thought at all, not since Sean had appeared so unexpectedly.

Leah bit down hard on her bottom lip as her conscience reproached her bitterly. For the shock of the accident to have temporarily driven all thought of the man who had asked her to marry him from her head was one thing. But to discover that the man she had parted from only that evening had been completely wiped from her mind was quite another. How could she be so foolish—so shallow?