Too Wise To Wed?

Not that she would ever have been tempted to try to appeal to this particular specimen of it, she decided, abruptly changing her mind about her admirer’s potential as she observed the smug satisfaction in his eyes—and the lack of humour or intelligence. She might not want to form any kind of permanent or emotional bond with a lover but she enjoyed the spine-tingling ritual of foreplay as much as any other woman, especially when it was spiced with intelligent conversation and laughter.

As she broke eye contact with him with a coolly dismissive look that told him he was wasting his time, she realised that she could still hear the whiny voice of the child behind her and her mother’s reproach as she demanded, ‘Oh, Ginny, why did you say you wanted the. bathroom if you don’t? Your father... Oh...’

Star frowned as the woman’s tone of voice changed, all its former irritation and lethargy replaced by an almost breathless note of sexual excitement and warmth as she exclaimed, ‘Oh, Kyle! Where did you come from? I didn’t see you. Clay is—’

‘I know where Clay is. I’ve seen him,’ Star heard a coolly incisive male voice interrupting, and she could tell from the way he drawled the words that he knew exactly what Clay had been doing and, moreover, did not approve.

The voice sounded interesting but the man, Star suspected, who not really her type. He sounded far too disapproving and moralistic.

She was just about to walk away and refill her glass with the rather good champagne cocktail that she had been enjoying when a purposeful quartet comprising the two adults she had just heard talking plus the two children—or, rather, a slightly uncertain trio shepherded by an extremely large and very determined sheepdog in the form of a man who would normally have caused her more than a single heartbeat’s recognition of his masculine appeal—crossed her line of vision heading towards the man who had just been trying to attract her attention.

There was really no comparison between the two men, Star decided. Clay now looked sulkily, almost seedily unappealing as he ignored his wife’s outstretched hand and frowned impatiently down at his two children, whilst the man who had sounded so determined to remind him of his marital and parental status looked...

He looked like the very best kind of sexy American male, Star admitted to herself.

Tall, lithe in the way he moved, he had a sheen of good health on his thick, well-cut dark brown hair and on his forearms where his flesh was exposed by the short sleeves of his snowy-white T-shirt.

She didn’t miss, either, the brief glance he gave her as he restored and reunited the small family group—a look which told her how thoroughly he disapproved of what had been going on.

In a flash, the automatic flare of sexual awareness she had felt was submerged by a much stronger flare of resentful anger as she recognised what he was doing. The fact that she herself had already decided that she wasn’t remotely interested in the sexual invitation being handed out to her was forgotten as she rose to the challenge of his interference.

Just what the hell did he think he was doing? Star asked herself wrathfully. She had a deeply rooted resentment of other people trying to make her decisions for her, to control her life for her, especially her sex life, and if he thought for one moment that if she’d really been interested in Clay she would have allowed him or that theatrical piece of byplay of his to stop her...

Frowning, she started to turn away, shrugging aside her irritation.

It wasn’t like her to let anyone get under her skin so easily, especially a male anyone...and especially a male anyone whom she didn’t even know and with whom she had barely exchanged more than one assessing glance.

Her frown deepening at the realization that she’d let herself waste time thinking about a man whom she was hardly likely to see again, Star was startled when the subject of her thoughts suddenly appeared in front of her, blocking her path.

Star focused cool aquamarine eyes on him without smiling.

‘We haven’t been introduced yet,’ he began, smiling at her.

His teeth, Star was surprised to see, did not possess the uniform perfection that she had grown used to seeing in American adults. In fact, one of the front ones had a small but very definite chip in it. His smile was slightly lopsided as well, making him look vaguely boyish—something which might appeal to those members of her sex who enjoyed having someone to mother, Star decided scathingly, but she personally preferred her men to be totally and uncompromisingly adult, thank you very much.

‘No, we haven’t, have we?’ she agreed in answer to his comment, with a pointed and wholly unfriendly baring of her teeth, but as she made to sidestep him he stepped with her, still blocking her path.

Star stepped the other way and again he followed her.

‘You’re in my way,’ she told him sharply.

‘Your glass is empty,’ he commented, ignoring both her comment and her hauteur. ‘Let me get you another drink.’

‘Thank you, I can get my own drinks and anything else I feel I might need,’ Star told him evenly.

To her surprise, instead of being offended, he laughed.

‘Ah, you’re annoyed with me over Clay,’ he said, knowingly shaking his head as he added, ‘I’m sorry about that, but you would have been rather disappointed. He isn’t—’

‘Really? You certainly are a very perceptive man,’ Star marvelled sarcastically, ‘if one look is all it takes for you to know immediately exactly what another person wants.’

‘He’s a married man,’ he returned quietly, the good humour dying from his eyes. His eyes were a very deep, dense blue, shaded by thick dark blunt lashes which, for some odd reason, Star felt compulsively tempted to reach out and touch to see if they felt as soft as they looked.

‘Yes, I rather assumed he was,’ Star agreed. ‘Which was what attracted me to him in the first place,’ she added with blithe disregard for the truth. No one, but no one had the right to make her decisions for her and she was determined to make sure that this interfering would-be knight in shining armour was made aware of that fact.

‘Married men make by far the best lovers,’ she went on in deliberate provocation. ‘They’re normally so grateful to have a receptive, responsive woman in their bed after being frozen out sexually by their wives that they’ re only too willing to please, and, of course, once the fun is over you can send them home.’

‘Fun? You think of sex as fun—something recreational like baseball?’ he questioned sharply.

‘Yes,’ Star agreed, pleased to have pierced the armour of quiet self-assurance that he seemed to wear so easily and so irritatingly.

‘Don’t you?’ she challenged him mockingly.

‘No,’ he retorted immediately, ‘I don’t. So far as I am concerned, sex without emotion, without love, without all the things that bond two people together, is like a flower without perfume, initially appealing but on closer inspection a disappointment.’

‘That depends, surely, on your outlook?’ Star argued, adding when he looked questioningly at her, ‘On whether or not you want your flower to be perfumed. Some people don’t; some people are allergic to perfume.’

Trust her, she was thinking ruefully. Outwardly this man, whoever he was, had all the male attributes that most appealed to her. Pity that he’d had to go and spoil it all by opening his mouth and voicing his opinions. An amusing thought suddenly occurred to her, making her eyes sparkle warningly. He deserved to be punished a little for his interference and his high-handed, moralistic manner and she certainly deserved to have a little fun.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had devoted her energy to anything other than her work. Her last relationship had been over for—Oh... She was startled to realise that it was almost two years since she had told Jean Paul that their long distance affair was over.

She had been celibate for two years! Amazing... Oh, yes, it was high time she had some fun.

So he didn’t believe in sex without emotion, did he? Well, she didn’t believe him. No doubt he found it a good line with which to blind other women to the truth, but she was not like other women. No man really wanted commitment... No man really wanted a woman’s lifelong love. Oh, he might tell you he did at the start of a relationship, but sooner or later- he would revert to type—to want the challenge of someone fresh, someone new. Star had seen it happen so many, many times.

Yes, it would be amusing to teach this man a lesson, to let him believe that he had deceived her with his insincerity, and even more amusing to bring him to the point where he was forced to admit just how good sex could be—for its own sake—and she would make him admit it; Star was determined on that point.

‘It’s normally my sex who express those particular views,’ she told him, letting her voice soften and become slightly husky, her eyes sending deliberately sensual messages to his as she played with her empty glass. Then she breathed, ‘Perhaps I will have that drink after all.’

It never mattered how blatant you were or how insincere, Star reflected grimly as he fell into step beside her, guiding her through the crowd to a hovering waiter with a full tray of freshly poured cocktails. Men fell for it every time, greedily swallowing bait that surely in reality should have choked them.

There hadn’t been a man born yet whose sexual ego didn’t outweigh his brains, she decided as she accepted the full glass he was handing to her..

As she took the brimming glass from him a few drops fell onto her skin. Laughing provocatively, she made to lick them off, and then, looking straight into his eyes, offered him her wrist instead and whispered suggestively, ‘You do it...’

To her chagrin, instead of taking up her sensual invitation, he produced a large white handkerchief and carefully dried her skin, telling her quietly, ‘I’m afraid it’s going to stay slightly sticky. Did any spill on your dress? It might—’

‘No, my dress is fine,’ Star told him angrily, snatching her wrist away from him, her skin burning slightly with an emotion that she realised with shock was humiliation.

No man...no man had ever reacted to her like that...rejected her like that, and this one was certainly not going to be allowed to be the first.

Stifling her pride and staying where she was instead of turning on her heel and storming away from him proved harder than she had anticipated, but somehow she managed it.

‘Are you a member of Brad’s family?’ she asked him, subtly studying the contours of his body as she waited for him to reply.

Those muscles were certainly solid enough. What did he do? she wondered. Something that involved being outdoors a good deal of the time, perhaps.

‘No, I’m not. Are you related to Claire?’