The Devil and Miss Jones

‘And what would that “something” we have to do be? How exactly do you expect to manage…?’

‘Easy,’ Carlos drawled. ‘Nothing to it.’

He had enough experience of getting women out of their clothes to have some understanding of how female garments worked. Admittedly, the women concerned had been only too eager to help him. He had never had to plan on dealing with a woman’s clothing so that he could help her run away from another man.

But from his memory of dealing with silk dresses in the past, they offered little resistance to strong hands. Just how hard could it be to get rid of some of that unwanted material?

‘Leave it to me.’

In a moment he was on his knees on the wet road at her feet, long brown hands reaching for her dress, tanned skin dark against the pale material. He gathered it into his fingers, twisting, bunching slightly so that it pulled against her legs, making her take an awkward step back and then forwards again, forced to stay where she was, held prisoner by his firm grip.

‘Just stay there,’ he muttered, a note of command in his tone, one that made her freeze where she stood.

But the small movement she’d made had been enough to make him freeze too—though in a very different sort of reaction. In the same moment that she’d stepped back and forward he had bunched the fine silk of her skirt in his hands, lifting it ready to get rid of the constricting skirt. And that had exposed the slender length of her legs.

Infierno! She was actually wearing stockings and suspenders, the nervous twitch of her body taking the skirt up higher so that the delicate pale blue lace of a garter too was exposed. Clinging round the top of her thigh. For a couple of heart-thudding seconds Carlos’s throat dried shockingly, his hands tightening in the slippery material.

‘Stand still!’

His voice was gruffer this time, and he didn’t care if she thought he was ordering her around. The struggle for control of his own senses, his own body, had put the rough note into his tone. This Miss Jones was one of those women who believed that the pulse point at the back of the knee was a good spot to spray some of her perfume. And she was damn right about that too if the heady, spicy scent that hit his nostrils was anything to go by. Not for Miss Jones the delicate floral perfume the lace and silk of her clothing and the fine blonde hair might suggest. Instead she wore something that spoke more of enticement, of sensuality. Obviously she had been planning on sharing that sexuality with the man she was supposed to have been marrying.

It was damned difficult to concentrate on what he was doing with his body hardening in instinctive response to the closeness of her delicate flesh, the scent of her skin combined with that sensuous perfume. A hot wave of jealousy of the unknown man she had planned to share this delectable body with tonight swept through him, making his fingers clench even more tightly on the white silk. He had to be a total fool to have let her get away—to have driven her away from him.

Well, maybe the fool’s loss was his gain. Miss Jones as a prospective bride he would have had to leave well alone. This woman as a bride who had clearly had more than second thoughts about marrying the man she was promised to and who obviously wanted to put as much distance between her and her groom as possible was a very different matter.

‘I said stand still!’ he repeated as another twitch of her body brought that sexy scent to torment his senses all over again.

‘I am standing still.’

Martha had to mutter the words between clenched teeth in order not to betray the way she was feeling. She just wished he would hurry up and get the job done as soon as possible. She didn’t feel that she could take the screaming tension of her nerves and every one of her senses for many moments longer.

He wasn’t actually touching her, only the material of her skirt, and yet the surface of her skin seemed to tingle as if he was actually stroking it, as if his breath was warm against her exposed flesh. The cold, miserable dampness of the afternoon seemed to evaporate in a second, leaving her body heated from the inside so that she felt sure that she would actually see steam rising from her clothes where the warmth dried them. But she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the man at her feet. Looking down at his dark head as he bent over his task, her gaze was grabbed and held, drawn by a sensual magnetism, and her fingers actually twitched against her sides as she fought the impulse to reach out and touch, stroke the black, disordered strands back into smoothness against the strong bones of his skull.

She wanted to touch him. No, it was more than a want—it was something close to a need. She had to feel him, make some physical contact—something more than just the warm, strong comfort of his palm on hers, her hand held safely inside his. And yet she knew she had to hold back, because if she gave in to this wild, irrational need, broke through the natural, instinctive restraints that held them separate, then some intuitive feeling warned that it would never stay that way.

There would have to be more. She just knew it. No other man had ever made her feel this way. But what if he found her as unattractive as Gavin had done?

… even if I do have to lie back and think of the money. Maybe that will turn me on because she sure as hell doesn’t. She’s so big, it’ll be like sleeping with a horse…

She couldn’t bear it if another man found her so unappealing. It would be like presenting the other cheek after someone had slapped her viciously already.

As if sensing her thoughts Carlos suddenly paused, turned his head, and looked up, straight into her eyes. A burn like a bolt of lightning went straight through her as she saw the new darkness in that green gaze. A darkness that mirrored the way she was feeling, the stinging sensitivity that flooded every nerve.

And that was too much. Already way off balance with all that had happened that day, she could barely cope with her own response. The prospect of having to cope with the fact that he might be feeling something of the same was more than she could handle. For a moment the world seemed to swing round her, the ground rocking beneath her feet and making her feel desperately insecure. In a panic she actually stamped her foot hard on the wet surface of the road.

‘What exactly are you doing?’

‘This…’ His response was as curt and raw-toned as her own as he turned his attention back to the task in hand.

She felt a sharp tug, heard a faint sound of something ripping and suddenly there was a rush of cold air around her ankles, her calves. She wasn’t quite sure what he had done until she saw him toss the white frill of silk to one side, having ripped it right off the bottom of her dress. Now she could move more easily. She could walk, might even be able to clamber onto that powerful beast of a bike.

‘Thanks—’

Testing, tentative, she took a step towards it—another—then froze, another thought stilling her feet.

If she got onto that bike then she would have to sit behind him. Close behind him. She would have to wrap her arms around that lean, tight waist, rest her chest, her breasts, against the broad, strong back, feel the heat of his body reaching hers. She would have to open her legs wide, spread them to accommodate…

‘No!’

‘What the hell now?’

Carlos was getting to his feet, wiping his hands down the taut length of his denim-covered thighs. The strange connection there had been between the two of them seemed to have evaporated in a rush and his voice held a thread of irritation that grated uncomfortably on her nerves.

‘Lady, make your mind up. What is it?’ he demanded again.

‘I—I’m scared.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say of what because she couldn’t even start to explain it to herself.

‘I’m a perfectly safe driver.’

‘I’m sure you’re a fantastic driver!’

But that didn’t mean that she would feel safe with him anywhere. And… From nowhere came another thought. One that shook her right through to the very core of her being.

If she felt like this now, with this complete stranger, how could she ever have thought that Gavin was the man she wanted to marry? How could she have been so blind as to think she felt enough for him to say yes to his proposal?

But after three long lonely years of nursing her mother through her last illness, she had been looking for love—for a family—for a future. And she had fallen into his grasp like a ripe little plum. A ripe, stupid, easily deceived little plum. She had needed to be loved, had been in love with the idea of love. At least she had seen sense before it was too late.

‘Isn’t there a law about wearing a helmet on a motorbike?’ she hedged, expecting and seeing his impatience at her reaction.

‘I thought you wanted to get out of here.’

‘I do—but only…’

‘Only if you can do it legally…’

The mockery in his eyes and his tone was open now. And never before had she wanted so desperately to throw off her careful, conventional personality, cast caution to the wind and just go with what life offered her. Being careful had led to her engagement to Gavin and look where that had landed her. She shuddered at the thought of what might have happened if she hadn’t seen sense…

What life offered her now was the chance to escape with this man, this Diablo. She should grab at it with both hands. But even as she opened her mouth to do just that Carlos had tossed his helmet towards her so that she only just caught it, managing to grab it before it hit the ground at her feet.

‘Here—will that suit, señorita?’

The exasperation in his voice was making her see this situation from his point of view, and with that came a strong sense of the absurd. What must he have thought when he had come speeding down the road and seen her—a vision in white silk and lace, in jewelled slippers that were rapidly approaching the consistency of damp tissue paper? She’d chosen those slippers so that she didn’t tower over Gavin, she recalled. There would be no such need with Carlos—he must be—what—five inches—more?—taller than her five feet eight.

‘But,’ Carlos continued, a hint of amusement lightening his tone, ‘there is no way that helmet is going to fit over that…’ He gestured towards the ornate hairstyle, the veil held in place by a delicate tiara.

‘I know—so please…’

Meeting his eyes was a big mistake. With that new warmth in them, it only threatened to set off her thudding pulse all over again. Her heart kicked so hard in her chest that she felt sure he must see it under the fine silk, the delicate lace. And the rush of heat along her veins meant that her throat had dried painfully and somehow she couldn’t swallow to relieve it.