Tall, Dark & Scandalous: Jordan St Claire: Dark and Dangerous

‘I’m coming.’ Stephanie picked up her jacket and slowly followed him outside.

She continued to inwardly bombard herself with self-recriminations as they walked back to the gatehouse in complete and uncomfortable silence. No matter how many times she went over the incident in her mind—whether she’d encouraged him or not—Stephanie knew that she shouldn’t have allowed that kiss with Jordan to happen. It didn’t really matter that she hadn’t planned it. Or that it still made her go hot all over just thinking about it!

The heat had completely dissipated by the time they had walked the half-mile or so back to the gatehouse, with the cold wind blowing through her wet clothing, and Stephanie’s teeth were literally chattering. Her face felt blue with the cold by the time Jordan unlocked the back door and allowed her to precede him into the warm and delicious-smelling kitchen.

‘You need to go upstairs and take a shower and put on some dry clothes,’ Jordan said again, as he saw how cold Stephanie was.

‘I—yes. Fine.’ She turned away to hang her coat on the back of one of the chairs. ‘You should do the same.’

‘I know what I need to do, Stephanie,’ Jordan scowled. ‘When you come back we’ll sit down and eat the soup you’ve made.’

She turned, her eyes wide. ‘But I thought you wanted me to leave.’

His mouth firmed. ‘Not before you’ve eaten something warm. I would hate for you to get back to London only to be admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia,’ he explained as she frowned.

Stephanie looked at him searchingly before nodding slowly. ‘Some hot soup would be nice.’

‘Fine,’ he said tersely. ‘Well?’ he added a second later, as she made no effort to leave.

She swallowed hard. ‘I—I just want you to know that I really didn’t do anything deliberate to make us both fall into the swimming pool,’ she told him, one last time before leaving to go up the stairs.

Jordan drew in a deep breath once he was alone, his hands clenched at his sides, his expression bleak, knowing that his accident had obviously robbed him of his sense of humour as well as the mobility in his right leg. At any other time he would have found it funny that the two of them had fallen into the swimming pool.

Stephanie was the first woman he had even attempted to make love to since his accident six months ago. Attempted being an accurate description of the fiasco it had turned into!

Stephanie’s sensuously lush mouth had been so delicious to kiss. Her body so responsive as it had moulded against his own. Jordan had been totally aroused as he’d kissed her—so aroused, in fact, that he had forgotten everything else. Including the weakness of his right hip and leg…

Jordan knew without a doubt that Stephanie wasn’t the one responsible for making the two of them lose their balance and fall into the pool. He was only too aware of why it had happened, and exactly why he had been so angry afterwards. He had unthinkingly put his weight onto his right hip, and it had just collapsed beneath him and toppled them both into the water.

It all went to prove that he couldn’t even kiss a woman any more without the embarrassment and utter humiliation of having his leg give way. It was more than a man could stand!

‘I’ve decided I’m not leaving, after all,’ Stephanie announced when she returned down the stairs half an hour later. She stood her ground determinedly in the kitchen doorway as Jordan turned to frown at her from where he stood in front of the Aga, stirring the soup.

He had obviously taken advantage of her absence to shower and change into dry jeans and a thin black cashmere sweater. The overlong darkness of his hair looked almost dry too, although there was a grim set to his mouth to add to his icy expression—an expression that Stephanie refused to be cowed by as much as she refused to leave.

She had run herself a bath rather than taking the suggested shower, deciding she needed to immerse herself fully in hot water in order to soak the chill from her bones. She’d had time to think once she had sunk her shoulders beneath the hot and scented bubble bath.

Okay, so she accepted that she shouldn’t have let Jordan kiss her. Nor should she have responded to that kiss. She also accepted that those things made continuing to stay on here awkward, to say the least. But awkward in a personal way, not a professional one.

She had no intention of allowing Lucan to actually pay her a wage until Jordan let her work with him professionally. Which meant that technically Jordan wasn’t her patient yet. He wouldn’t become so until Stephanie actually did something professional for or to him. Her constant arguments with him about his need for treatment really didn’t count. Neither did making him a nourishing soup for lunch.

If Stephanie left now then she would be admitting professional defeat. She was guilty of nothing of a personal nature except finding the ‘magnetically handsome’ Jordan Simpson magnetically handsome! Something that any woman with an ounce of red blood in her veins would have to admit to, surely?

She would be admitting that professionally she was as incapable of getting anywhere with the stubbornly determined actor as all the other physiotherapists who had tried to work with him these last six months. That sort of defeat had never been an option as far as Stephanie was concerned. She wouldn’t accept it now with Jordan, either.

She entered the kitchen fully. ‘I said—’

‘I heard what you said,’ Jordan drawled as he considered her through lowered lids. ‘I’m just surprised that you still think it’s your decision to make.’

‘Actually, it’s your brother’s,’ she acknowledged lightly. ‘Once I start working for him. Which I’m not doing at the moment,’ she added sweetly.

Those gold-coloured eyes glittered icily. ‘And you don’t believe that attempting to drown his brother is reason enough for Lucan to want to dispense with your services altogether?’

‘Attempting to drown—?’ Stephanie gave a disbelieving shake of her head, her gaze incredulous. ‘Don’t you think that’s a slight exaggeration?’

‘Perhaps. Except you couldn’t have known whether or not I could actually swim when you pushed me into the water.’ He arched challenging brows.

‘I did not push you in.’

‘Prove it.’

Her cheeks were flushed with temper. ‘I can no more prove that than you can prove otherwise!’

Jordan shrugged. ‘All of that aside, you must know as well as I do that the two of us staying here together is even less feasible now than it was before.’

‘I’m not leaving,’ she repeated stubbornly.

Impasse, Jordan acknowledged in sheer frustration. Stephanie was refusing to leave, and this morning had certainly proved that he sure as hell couldn’t make her! At least, not physically…

Jordan deliberately crossed the kitchen so that he stood only inches away from her. Close enough to feel the heat of her body in the close-fitting green jumper and blue jeans she had changed into. ‘If you stay on here then I guarantee that what happened between us this morning will happen again,’ he warned her huskily.

Those green eyes widened in alarm even as her cheeks warmed with colour. Evidence that she wasn’t as self-possessed about what had happened earlier as she wished to appear, he thought smugly.

She shook her head. ‘Not if I don’t want it to.’

‘But you do want it to, Stephanie.’ Jordan held her gaze with his as he curved his hand about one of those over-heated cheeks. He saw with satisfaction the way the blood pulsed at her temples. His gaze moved down and he watched the way she moistened her lips nervously. He glanced even lower and saw the unmistakable signs of her nipples pressing against the soft wool of her sweater. ‘Don’t you?’ he murmured knowingly.

There was a look of panic in her eyes now. ‘No, I—’

‘Yes, Stephanie,’ Jordan insisted gently as he ran the pad of his thumb lightly across the soft pout of her lips and felt the way they quivered beneath his caress. ‘Your response to my touch clearly says yes.’

She swallowed hard. ‘You’re still trying to force me into leaving.’

‘Is it working?’ Jordan taunted. He knew damn well that it was; he wasn’t so out of practice that he didn’t know when a woman was responding to him! ‘I won’t stop at kissing next time, Stephanie,’ he warned her. ‘Next time I’ll kiss and touch you until you’re so aching and wet for me that you’ll be begging me to make love to you!’

He spoke so forcefully, so graphically, that Stephanie had no trouble whatsoever in imagining them naked in bed together, skin moving on skin, their breathing ragged and their bodies entangled as they caressed and kissed each other to completion.

Just thinking of the possibility of it made Stephanie aroused all over again.

She had made her decision to stay on here when she was upstairs, well away from Jordan’s physically disturbing presence. Calmly. Coolly. But they weren’t emotions Stephanie could maintain when she was actually in his presence.

She raised her chin stubbornly to meet the mockery of his gaze head-on. ‘Just because the tabloids often scream out headlines about the “eligible and sexy Jordan Simpson” as he escorts his latest airhead somewhere, it doesn’t mean that every woman you meet is going to fall down adoringly at your feet. Or any other part of your anatomy, for that matter,’ she added scathingly.

He gave a hard smile. ‘No?’

‘No!’ Stephanie snapped as she heard the deliberate challenge in his tone.

‘Flattered as I am that you’ve bothered to read those tabloids—’