Rumours on the Red Carpet

CHAPTER THREE

‘CYN...?’ LUCIEN QUESTIONED for the third and last time—and that was twice more than he would have allowed any other woman.

If Cyn Hammond ignored him for a third time then he would take it that she was a willing participant in Miller’s abusive treatment. It wasn’t to Lucien’s personal taste, but that was Cyn’s business—not his. No matter how much he might desire her himself...

‘Thia?’ Jonathan Miller looked totally confused by this whole encounter.

Lucien’s eyes moved past Cyn to the other man, hardening to steel as he pinned Miller with his razor-sharp gaze. Bruises were already forming on Cyn’s arm where Miller had held her too tightly just minutes ago, and her wrist looked red and sore. An unforgivable assault, as far as Lucien was concerned, on the perfection of that pearly unblemished skin.

‘You hurt her, Miller,’ he rasped harshly, his own fingers curling reassuringly about Cyn’s elbow as he felt the way she still trembled. An indication that she really wasn’t happy about Miller’s rough treatment of her...

The other man’s face flushed with anger—an emotion he quickly masked behind the boyishly charming smile that was currently holding American television audiences so enrapt, but succeeded only in leaving Lucien cold.

‘Thia and I have had a slight misunderstanding, that’s all—’

‘It was your misunderstanding, Jonathan, not mine.’ Cyn was the one to answer coldly and Lucien felt her straighten determinedly. ‘Mr Steele has very kindly offered to drive me home, and I’ve decided to accept his offer.’

There were two things wrong with that statement as far as Lucien was concerned. One, he knew he was far from kind. Two, he had offered to take Cyn for a drink somewhere quieter than the Carews’ apartment—not to drive her home. Especially if that ‘home’ should also happen to be Miller’s apartment...

But the details could be sorted out later. For the moment Lucien just wanted to get Cyn away from here. He could still feel the slight trembling of her slender but curvaceous body. Those cobalt blue eyes were dark, there was an enticing flush to her cheeks, her pouting lips were moist and parted, and those deliciously full breasts were once again swelling temptingly against the bodice of her gown as she breathed.

And Lucien could think of a much better use for all that pent up emotion than anger...

‘How do the two of you even know each other?’ Jonathan Miller scowled darkly.

‘If you’ll excuse us, Miller?’ Lucien didn’t spare the other man so much as a glance, let alone answer him, as he turned to give Dex a slight nod of his head. He held Cyn to his side by a light but firm grasp of her elbow as he walked away, the other guests immediately clearing a pathway for them to cross the room to the Carews’ private elevator in the hallway.

‘What the hell is going on—?’

Lucien gave a cold smile of satisfaction as he heard Miller’s protest cut short, knowing that Dex would have responded to his silent instruction and, in his own inimitable and deadly style, prevented the actor from attempting to follow the two of them. Lucien’s smile hardened, his eyes chilling to ice as he thought of the conversation he was going to have with Jonathan Miller tomorrow. A conversation that would now include a discussion on the other man’s treatment of the delicately lovely woman at his side...

* * *

Thia had no idea what she was doing, agreeing to leave the Carews’ party with the dangerously compelling Lucien Steele, of all people. Especially when he had made his physical interest in her so obvious during the time the two of them had been outside on the balcony together!

She just wanted to get away from here. From a Jonathan she no longer recognised. And from the curious glances of all the other guests as they observed the tension between the three of them—some surreptitiously, some blatantly.

But was leaving with the dangerously attractive Lucien Steele, a man who was so arrogant she wasn’t sure she even liked him, really the answer...?

‘Shouldn’t we say goodbye to the Carews before we leave?’ she prompted hesitantly as Lucien Steele pressed a button and the lift doors opened.

‘Dex will deal with it,’ he dismissed unconcernedly.

‘I—then shouldn’t we at least wait for him...?’ Thia made no move to enter the lift, her nervousness increasing the longer she spent in this man’s compelling company.

‘He’ll make his own way down.’ Lucien Steele released her elbow as he indicated she should enter the lift ahead of him.

Thia still hesitated. She wanted to get away from Jonathan, yes, but she now realised she felt no safer with Lucien Steele—if for a totally different reason!

‘Changed your mind...?’ he drawled mockingly.

Her chin rose at the taunt. ‘No.’ She stepped determinedly into the lift, her gaze averted as Lucien Steele stepped in beside her and pressed the button for the mirror-walled lift to descend.

Thia shot him several nervous glances from beneath her lashes as he stood broodingly on the other side of the lift, feeling that now familiar quiver trembling down her spine as she found herself surrounded by numerous mirrored images of him. This man was impressive under any circumstances, but she stood no chance of remaining immune to him in the confines of a lift.

Lucien Steele was sin incarnate, right from the top of his glossy hair—so much blacker than Thia’s own, like shiny blue-black silk, the sort of tousled, overlong hair that made Thia’s fingers itch to thread their way through it—to the soles of those Italian leather shoes.

He was a man so totally out of Thia’s league that she had no business being there with him at all, let alone imagining threading her fingers through that delicious blue-black hair.

‘Ask.’

Thia’s startled gaze moved from that silky dark hair to the sculptured perfection of his face. Once again she felt that jolt of physical awareness as she found herself ensnared by the piercing intensity of those silver eyes. ‘Um—sorry?’

He shrugged. ‘You have a question you want to ask me.’

‘I do...?’

His mouth twisted ruefully. ‘You do.’

She chewed briefly on her bottom lip. ‘Your hair—it’s beautiful. I—I’ve never seen hair quite that blue-black colour before...?’

He raised a brow equally as dark. ‘Are you sure you want that to be your one question?’

Thia blinked. ‘My one question?’

He gave an abrupt inclination of his head. ‘Yes.’

She frowned slightly. Surely he wasn’t serious...? ‘I’ve just never seen hair that colour before...’ she repeated nervously. ‘It’s the colour of a starless night sky.’

His mouth twisted derisively. ‘That was a statement, not a question.’

Yes, it was. But this man unnerved Thia to such a degree she couldn’t think straight.

Lucien Steele sighed. ‘Somewhere way back in my ancestry—a couple of hundred years or so ago—my great-great-grandfather is reputed to have been an Apache Indian who carried off a rancher’s wife before impregnating her,’ he dismissed derisively. ‘The black hair has appeared in several generations since.’

Dear Lord, this man really was a warrior! Not an axe-wielding, fur-covered Viking, or a kilt-wearing, claymore-brandishing Celt, but a clout-covered, bow-and-arrow-carrying, bareback horse-riding Native American Indian!

It was far too easy for Thia to picture him as such—with that inky-black hair a long waterfall down his back, his muscled and gleaming chest and shoulders bare, just that clout-cloth between him and the horse he rode, the bareness of his long muscled legs gripping—

‘Surely I haven’t shocked you into silence?’ he taunted.

Thia knew by his mocking expression that he wanted her to be shocked, that Lucien Steele was deliberately trying to unnerve her with tales of Apache warriors carrying off innocent women for the sole purpose of ravishing them.

In the same way he was doing the modern equivalent of carrying her off? Also for ravishment...?

Her chin rose. ‘Not in the least.’

Those silver eyes continued to mock her. ‘My father is a native New Yorker, but my mother is French—hence I was given the name Lucien. My turn now,’ he added softly.