Kitabı oku: «The Carides Pregnancy», sayfa 2

Her son responded to the urgent look with a languid smile which made his mother’s diplomatic expression wobble for an instant as she clenched her teeth. Her son, as she knew, could be very vexing when he chose.

‘Aunt Theodosia and I were just discussing the blushing bride, Mother.’

‘I know—I heard you. So did half the guests,’ Mia observed, waving graciously and bestowing a serene smile on the bride’s indignant parents.

Undeterred, Aunt Theodosia continued, ‘This family needs more babies. What is wrong with you young people nowadays? When are you going to have some babies, Christos?’

Christos bent and pressed his lips in a courtly gesture to the frail, age-spotted old hand. ‘When I find someone with as much spunk as you.’ Or, failing that, red hair. He blinked, wondering where that thought had come from.

The old lady tried to hide her pleased smile. ‘If you do,’ she predicted, ‘it might well be the making of you. That other girl—what was her name?’

‘Melina.’

‘That was it. I didn’t like her. She smiled too much.’

Across the aisle, Melina wasn’t smiling at all. In fact she was looking daggers at a girl with red hair, who Christos had barely taken his eyes from.

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHY do you encourage her, Christos?’ his mother reproached him as she walked down the aisle.

While he lent an attentive ear to his mother, Christos continued to watch the troublesome redhead as she sat down, concealing all but the top of her fiery head from his view.

‘Carl looked furious,’ Mia added in a hushed tone. ‘Especially as Sally is pregnant.’

The column was situated so that in addition to the top of her head he could see her neat feet, and as she crossed one leg over the other her ankle-length coat fell back to reveal a pair of worn denim jeans.

‘What’s the problem with security, Mother?’

‘There isn’t a problem,’ Mia admitted, blissfully unaware that she didn’t have her son’s total attention. ‘I just had to get you away from Aunt Theodosia before you made her say something else outrageous.’

Christos wondered if kissing the unknown redhead, fitting his mouth to hers and parting her moist pink lips, would be considered outrageous. If not, his fertile and overactive imagination was capable of conjuring several alternatives that almost certainly were!

Aware that he was breathing too fast, Christos made a conscious effort to slow his rapid, laboured respirations—not an easy thing to do when your head was filled with imaginings about the taste and touch of a woman.

‘I doubt if anyone has ever made Theodosia do or say anything.’

‘Your voice sounds strange, Christos,’ his mother said, reaching up and touching a cool maternal hand to his brow. ‘And you’re hot,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I do hope you’re not coming down with something. I have never considered air travel healthy.’

‘Well, if I die of something airborne you will have the satisfaction of knowing it was at your instigation I flew halfway around the world to be here.’

‘You,’ his mother retorted tartly, ‘are as bad as Theodosia.’

‘Thank you. I just hope I can grow old as disgracefully as she has.’

His mother cast him a reproachful look, before pausing to be charming to someone important.

‘You know, Mother, I think you’re wrong about the security problem.’

Mia’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘There is a problem? What?’

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Christos said, his eyes fixed on the top of that burnished head.

He began to work his way to the rear of the church. On auto-pilot, he returned the nods and smiles he received, all the time never losing sight of the redhead.

As she pulled the collar of her ankle-length coat up around her neck, to frame her face, the breath snagged in his throat. He had never seen her face before, yet somehow he felt as though he had known it all his life.

A man could only go on blaming jet lag for so long. Then he had to take responsibility himself.

A babe in arms chose that moment to cry, its whimper of complaint magnified by the building’s impressive acoustics. By reflex her eyes—like every eye in the place—momentarily turned towards the ear-splitting sound.

He stood with his tall shoulders braced against a stone pillar and pondered the mild electric shock that had passed through his body as those eyes, the deepest and most shocking shade of blue he had ever encountered, had connected with his. He doubted the moment had been shared. He had the impression she hadn’t even registered his presence.

The irony of being ignored was not lost on a man who was used to women pulling every trick in the book to capture his attention.

As he watched, the beautiful stranger raised a hand to her throat under the heavy overcoat, and he saw her chest lift as she exhaled and, biting her lower lip, began to stare straight ahead, an expression of rigid control and ferocious focus on her softly formed fine-boned features.

He studied the strangely familiar face at his leisure. She had the pale, lightly freckled complexion of a natural redhead. Her small nose, in profile, was gently tilted at the tip, and though her wide mouth was drawn taut by the tension that held her entire body rigid, he imagined that under normal circumstances it would be soft.

He got hot as he began to think thoughts inappropriate for the inside of a cathedral. The thoughts concerned that mouth. He not been a victim of such mindless lust since his hormones went crazy in his teens—maybe not even then.

As the place began to fill up he took the seat directly behind the redhead, positioning himself so that he could see her profile. She remained unaware of his scrutiny.

By the time Becca had finally entered the Cathedral the light-headed sensation she had been suffering for the past hour had been joined by a constant low-pitched buzz in her ears. She’d had to thrust her hands into her pockets to hide the fact they were trembling.

Worrying that she might fall into a dead faint at any moment and ruin everything had made it hard for her to maintain the confident air she had adopted, working on the theory that if she looked as if she belonged it might delay the inevitable moment of discovery.

She suspected all her symptoms had a lot to do with her caffeine tolerance. The fourth cup of coffee she had drunk at the motorway services to keep her alert had been a mistake. Her trembling knees had made sitting down sometime soon a priority.

She’d been looking for a likely place to wait for her moment when she’d seen one of the uniformly handsome young men who were smoothly directing guests to their seats bearing down on her, all charm and slick efficiency. She’d frozen and looked wildly from left to right. Then, taking a deep breath and pinning on a painfully bright smile, she’d begun to wave at some invisible person in the crowd, before walking purposefully in that direction.

What am I doing?

As she had slowed to let an elderly lady in an incredibly large hat pass, the full enormity of what she was about to do had hit her. It had been like running full-tilt into a brick wall. The fact was that deep down, until that moment, Becca hadn’t expected to get this far.

Well, what were the odds? You just didn’t walk uninvited into the big society wedding joining the only daughter of one of Britain’s highest profile entrepreneurs to a scion of the fabulously wealthy Carides family.

The knot of anger lodged behind her breastbone had swelled as she’d thought of the family who imagined that money gave them the right to trample over the feelings of ordinary people. A person who had gone through life not hating anyone, Becca was now finding it surprisingly easy to hate anyone who carried the name of Carides.

Head down, avoiding eye contact she’d given a relieved sigh as she’d spotted an unoccupied pew, but as she’d taken her seat she’d realised why the spot had been avoided. A large stone pillar effectively blocked the view of the altar. Becca didn’t mind. She wasn’t here for people to see her. They just needed to hear what she had to say.

Just cause… Her wide-spaced blue eyes grew uncharacteristically hard now, as she thought about the ‘just cause’ that had brought her here. To seduce, impregnate and then dump an impressionable teenage girl was despicable enough—but to do it when you were engaged to another woman…! Well, that made Alex Carides a different class of slimy rat entirely.

An expectant hush fell as the first bars of the ‘Wedding March’ issued from the organ. Becca stiffened and drew in air through her flared nostrils. On her lap, her fingers twisted. She took a deep breath and told herself, You can do this.

But can I?

An image of her sister’s pale tragic face as Becca had driven her back from the hospital flashed into her head. It was enough to stiffen her resolve.

She had actually cleared her throat in preparation when the hand she had been expecting all afternoon finally fell on her shoulder.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I REALLY don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?’

Good idea? Becca reflected, as the quivering tension left her body in a debilitating rush. That had never had any thing to do with this.

This had always been about standing up, if only in a small way, for Erica and for every other woman who had fallen for that slimy creep’s lies. His future wife needed to know what sort of low-life she was getting married to, and the world needed to know what sort of man Alex Carides actually was.

Who am I kidding? This is about revenge—plain and simple!

The deep, interestingly accented voice, complete with sexy rasp, seemed very close to her ear as he added softly, ‘I don’t think you want to do this.’

Which, in conjunction with the heavy hand on her shoulder, translated as I’ll carry you kicking and screaming from the building if you try. Becca decided to retreat with a little dignity intact.

Chin up, and looking straight ahead, Becca responded to the pressure of those fingers on her shoulder and smoothly rose from her seat, moving up the aisle and walking with little fuss through the metal-studded oak door just to her right which she hadn’t even noticed was there.

Christos was conscious of a slow-burning anger that had started to smoulder the moment he had realised what she intended to do. God knows what ‘just cause’ she had intended to produce, but there was only one logical conclusion to draw. The woman who was going to feature strongly in his fantasies for the foreseeable future was one of Alex’s cast-offs.

A cynical sneer twisted his mouth as he considered the opposite sex’s inability to see beyond his cousin’s winning smile and slick good looks.

The redhead had appalling taste—but she smelt very good! His eyes widened slightly as he recognised that he was angrier now than he had been when he had caught Melina with Alex.

If this wasn’t jet lag he had a serious problem!

Her captor led Becca into a small ante-room. As the heavy door closed it effectively sealed them off from the sounds of the service beyond. At that moment reaction started to set in—in a big way. Her knees began to shake, closely followed by the rest of her.

‘He’s really not worth it, you know.’

‘I know he’s not…’ As she spoke Becca turned her head, inhaled audibly, and added an unthinking and breathy, ‘Goodness!’

Which, under the circumstances—the circumstances being that she was inches away from the most sinfully gorgeous man she had ever seen—was quite restrained. If you were going to be caught, she reflected, you might as well be caught by someone breathtaking. And my goodness, she thought, still slightly stunned by the dark vision of brooding male perfection, he was gorgeous—and then some!

It was perhaps fortunate that the shaky hand she had lifted to her mouth stopped her saying something unconsidered.

Christos watched the colour rush to her cheeks and then fade quite dramatically away, leaving her marble-pale.

‘I think you could do with some fresh air.’ In his opinion that was the very least she looked as if she could do with.

Becca started, and realised that she had been staring at this stranger. Goodness knew how long she had been the prisoner of those hypnotic dark eyes and her own fascination.

She nodded awkwardly.

Her shoulders slumped as she followed the tall man with the longest eyelashes she had ever seen outside. Another minute—that was all she’d needed. She could have wept with sheer frustration. It was so unfair. Why was it that men like Alex Carides never paid the price?

Shame flooded through her. A great sister I am!

Outside, Becca sank down onto a conveniently situated bench that had been fashioned from a tree trunk. She was in no mood to appreciate its aesthetic properties as she bent forward and buried her face in her hands.

‘Later, when you’ve had a chance to think calmly about this, you’ll realise I’ve done you a favour.’

Becca’s head jerked up. ‘A favour?’ she echoed belligerently. ‘Look, I know you were only doing your job— though if you were any sort of security I wouldn’t have got as far as I did,’ she felt impelled to point out. ‘But don’t act as if your motives were altruistic.’

The tall, dark and gorgeous stranger looked startled for a moment, then gave a lop-sided sort of smile that made her undiscriminating tummy muscles quiver appreciatively.

‘I was tempted to let you do it,’ he admitted.

Tears of frustration sprang to her eyes. ‘I wanted…wanted…’

‘Calm down.’

He really was the most beautiful man she had ever seen—or even imagined! She ran the tip of her tongue across the outline of her dry lips and fixed him with a resentful glare. ‘You could have looked the other way.’

‘But then,’ he observed, ‘I’d have lost my job.’

Becca gave a distracted sigh. ‘I suppose you would,’ she agreed.

‘Did you really want to stand up and make a fool of yourself like that?’

‘This isn’t about wanting, it’s about…’ She stopped and took a shuddering deep breath as she struggled to regain control. After a few moments her darkened eyes lifted to the face of the man beside her. ‘Tell me, do you think it’s right that he gets away with ruining someone’s life?’

‘I think you should consider it a narrow escape,’ Christos observed drily.

Becca frowned at the platitude. ‘What would you know about it?’

‘I know quite a lot about Alex Carides.’

Which might, she mused, explain his expression of contempt.

‘How can you work for a man like that?’ The thought of being around such a creep made her skin crawl. The thought of being around any Carides full-stop made her skin crawl.

‘A man has to eat.’

She flickered him an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry—I didn’t mean to moralise. Goodness, I’m the last person to do that.’

Her self-deprecating remark wiped all expression from his face.

Confused, Becca watched his dark, cynical gaze drop, and wondered at the almost tangible waves of tension emanating from him. ‘Are you pregnant?’

Becca blinked, confused by the speed with which his manner had transformed from sympathy to frozen condemnation. As she read the distaste in his face twin circles of angry colour appeared on the apples of her pale cheeks.

‘You think that I—’ She bit back her hasty rejoinder. She didn’t owe a total stranger any explanation—though knowing that he believed she had slept with a Carides made it hard for her to hold her tongue. ‘Your boss makes a habit of getting women pregnant, does he?’ she countered.

‘Then there is a baby?’ he said, looking sterner than ever.

‘Not any more.’

‘A termination?’ he said bleakly.

Becca’s voice grew husky with emotion as she corrected him. ‘A miscarriage.’

The security guard drew a deep breath and, framing her face in his hands said urgently. ‘What is your name?’

The peculiarity of his manner stood out as very strange in a day that had possibly been the strangest in her life.

‘Your name?’ he repeated.

‘Becca.’

‘Don’t move, Becca. I’ll be back.’

He didn’t have the faintest idea if she had registered what he’d said. It was hard to tell from the glazed expression in her eyes if she was taking in anything much at all. He didn’t like to leave her, but the strength of his feelings meant he had to act on them.

His timing was perfect. The main participants, along with the photographer, were emerging from the vestry, their symbolic signatures having been duly witnessed. They all stopped when they saw him.

Without responding to the varied greetings directed at him, Christos grabbed his cousin by the shoulders and pulled him away from his bride.

‘What’s wrong?’

Christos smiled, and his cousin looked alarmed. ‘This is for Becca!’ he said, and landed a sharp but controlled jab on the younger man’s nose.

The groom yelled and clutched at his nose, blood oozing between his fingers. ‘Who the hell is Becca?’ he screamed indignantly. So Christos punched him again, and Alex went down.

She had moved. Cursing softly under his breath, Christos ran down a side path and saw her almost immediately.

‘I told you to stay put.’

Becca looked at the long brown fingers curled around her upper arm. Until he touched her she had been feeling a lot better. Now her sensitive stomach was quivering violently. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she said.

Considering the advice she had dished out on the subject to her sister, she couldn’t go down the road of reacting to arbitrary and dangerous sexual attraction without being a total hypocrite!

‘More to the point, what are you doing?’ he queried suspiciously.

‘Is that any of your business?’ she countered frostily. ‘And, thank you, but I can find my own way.’ Her eyes slid to the hand on her arm, but he didn’t react. ‘I don’t need an escort.’

‘The head of security might have other ideas,’ he retorted drily.

‘That’s not you?’ Her frowning regard travelled the length of his tall lean person. No reason, of course, that he had to be the boss. He wasn’t wearing a badge or anything. But he didn’t act like a man who was used to obeying orders.

On the other hand it was easy to picture him issuing them, and having people fall over themselves to obey. An accusing frown settled on her upturned face.

‘You act as if you are.’ No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t she see him slotting into any hierarchy of command. This man didn’t look like a team player to her.

‘I’m new to the game,’ he admitted glibly.

‘Which probably explains why you’re taking your duties too zealously,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve not committed a crime or anything. You’ve got no right to restrain me against my will. In fact,’ she added, ‘That—’ her nod indicated the hand on her arm ‘—is probably assault. Actually, I don’t think there’s any probably about it.’

He smiled, and Becca lowered her eyes as she experienced a spasm of sexual awareness that made her knees quiver. What is it with me? You’d think I’d never seen an attractive man before!

‘Perhaps we should let the police decide?’

The silky suggestion brought her horrified gaze back to his face. ‘You’re joking?’

He shrugged and looked infuriatingly enigmatic.

Becca couldn’t stop the quiver of doubt entering her voice as she added, ‘I’ve told you, I’ve not committed a crime or anything.’

‘You don’t think so?’

He made no attempt to prevent her as she pulled her arm free of his grasp and folded it across her heaving chest, glaring up at him defiantly.

‘I don’t think. I know.’

Despite her confident assertion Becca couldn’t prevent a shade of worry entering her voice as she reviewed her gate-crashing.

‘Unless this is a question of one law for the rich and another for the rest of us.’

His dark eyes narrowed on her scornful face. ‘You have a problem with people being wealthy?’

She lifted a hand to her aching head. ‘No, I have a problem with spoilt parasites like the Carides.’

Aware of an expression in her captor’s dark eyes that made her uneasy, she bit her lip to cut short this flow of bitter confidences.

‘It’s a little late to be discreet.’

‘I really don’t want to debate this with you. I just want—’ She broke off and winced as the bells overhead broke into a triumphal peal. Face pale and composed, she lifted her eyes to his face. ‘I just want to go home.’

‘An excellent plan,’ he said, falling into step beside her.

Becca tilted her face and studied the hard angles and intriguing hollows of his dark, lean and exasperatingly sexy features. ‘What,’ she demanded, expelling a gusty sigh, ‘do you think you’re doing now?’

‘Making sure you go home.

‘Are you going to escort me all the way to Yorkshire?’

‘I’m going to stick to you until I’m sure you can’t double back and wreak the destructive vengeance your soul craves.’ His eyes locked with hers. ‘I take it that is what this is about?’

‘I suppose you’re going to tell me revenge wouldn’t make me feel better?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that,’ Christos responded, thinking of the groom with his bloody nose.

There were times in life when a man had to stop being cerebral and get physical—though he imagined there were a few people inside who might disagree with him at that moment. It would be a long time before he was forgiven for ruining the wedding. But it would be interesting to hear how they explained away the groom’s face…

Becca pursed her lips and looked at him with mute dislike. She saw he was smiling. ‘You have my word that I won’t crash the reception or spoil the wedding photos.’

‘Your word…’ he mused, dragging a brown hand through his dark collar-length hair. ‘You do see my problem there?’

Becca planted her hands on her slim hips and inhaled wrathfully. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘Not as such. But,’ he qualified, ‘I do think you’re not thinking straight right now.’

‘Don’t patronise me.’ She gritted her teeth as she reflected on his comment. ‘Not a liar, but mentally unbalanced. Gosh,’ she observed bitterly, ‘I feel better already.’

He met her angry eyes and released a low, husky laugh. Becca regarded him with growing frustration, but could see that it might be hard to remain angry with a man who possessed a laugh that warm and attractive. Fortunately she wasn’t going to be within laughing distance long enough for it to become a real problem!

‘Go ahead—enjoy the joke.’ She gave a bleak wintry smile. ‘I can see your point. What’s a ruined life…? So long,’ she added on a bitter quaver, ‘as it isn’t your life!’

‘I know it feels like it to you now, but your life isn’t ruined.’

She looked different, but she obviously wasn’t. She was like any number of women who were willing to overlook the fact that his cousin was a total bastard.

Becca’s electric blue eyes narrowed. She had never had the sort of fiery temper that was meant to accompany auburn hair, but his confident assertion had made her see red. As she swallowed hard, trying to contain her feelings, an image of her sister’s shadowed eyes flashed into her head.

‘What would you know about it?’

Jaw taut, she allowed her hostile eyes to linger on his lean face. Actually, it wasn’t a conscious decision. The truth was that once she started looking she found it disturbingly hard to stop.

‘You have to put this behind you.’ And I have to stop talking in platitudes.

‘I’d settle for putting you behind me. A long way behind me,’ she muttered.

‘Not going to happen,’ he said, planting a hand lightly on her shoulder and directing her to the other side of an ancient gnarled yew tree that grew beside the six-feet-high wall. ‘There’s a side gate.’

There was. It was covered in ivy and easy to miss if you didn’t know it was there. On the other side of the gate, Becca found herself in a narrow cobbled side street with expensive-looking cars parked down one side.

The dark-suited figure patrolling up and down with a walkie-talkie in his pocket spotted her immediately. He advanced, his intention clearly to intercept her—until he saw the man beside her. He nodded in a manner that could only be described as deferential, and walked on to meet them.

As the two men began to speak, Becca, staring straight ahead, walked past them. The narrow lane led to the main road, where people were waiting behind barriers for a glimpse of the bride. She had not quite lost herself in the crowd when she heard a distinctive footfall beside her.

‘Look!’ she snapped, swinging back. ‘I’m not going to crash the reception, or scream abuse at the bride, so will you just back off?’ No, I’m going to sneak back home with my tail between my legs and tell my little sister I did nothing! ‘This has all been a massive waste of time and energy,’ she admitted, her shoulders slumping with weary defeat.

‘Well, most women in your situation would have contented themselves with a kiss-and-tell story in the tabloids. Though that lucrative option is still open to you,’ he admitted.

When she didn’t respond to this blatant provocation he tried another tack.

‘Have you considered what would have happened if you had stood up and done your piece—dramatically stalled the wedding?’

Becca, about to walk away, swung back and blinked in owl-like confusion up at his face. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We are talking stalled, not stopped. The wedding would have gone ahead,’ he elaborated brutally.

Becca shrugged. ‘She’s welcome to him.’

‘Yes, every time I look at you I feel great waves of indifference.’ In his experience a woman didn’t travel halfway across the country because she was indifferent.

Stung by his blatant sarcasm, Becca had opened her mouth to deliver a biting retort when involuntarily her eyes dropped over the length of his lean, striking person. Indifference, she reflected, aware of the telling leap in her pulse-rate, would not be the most predictable response this man normally excited in the opposite sex.

‘Or maybe this isn’t about revenge?’ he suggested softly.

His comment diverted Becca from the direction her own troubled thoughts had taken. The awful part was, he was right. She hadn’t thought this thing through. And now he had forced her to do so she could see that she had almost set into motion a chain of events that would have ended up with the tabloid press camped on her sister’s doorstep!

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, feeling sick when she thought of how close she’d come to making things ten times worse for Erica.

‘Maybe you thought he’d take one look at you and realise that he’d made a terrible mistake—that you were the one he wanted all along.’ As he watched her shake her head in angry denial he experienced a rush of anger. ‘It wouldn’t have happened,’ he informed her harshly. Because I wouldn’t have let it happen.

Becca took a startled step back when, without warning, he reached across and ran a long finger down the curve of her cheek. After making a moment’s startled contact with his dark, strangely compelling gaze she swept her lashes down against her cheek and stayed that way until she had taken several deep, restorative breaths.

‘You sound very sure,’ she said, feeling normal again bar the strong urge to reach up and press her own fingers to the tingling area on her cheek.

Christos was drawn by the intense china blue of her wide eyes. It occurred to him that being forced to compare this face with that of his prospective bride might have caused even his avaricious cousin to experience a stab of regret.

A muscle in his lean cheek clenched. ‘Look, maybe you were special.’

To Becca his shrug suggested he had lost interest in the subject. ‘Are you trying to make me feel better?’ she joked, her eyes hostile as she sketched a grim smile. ‘Because I have to tell you you’re not very good at it.’

Her observation made his lips quiver slightly. ‘You’re certainly not Alex’s usual type.’

‘Really? What do they have that I don’t?’

Other than no personality? Christos thought as he grimly ticked off the attributes that normally attracted his cousin on his fingers. ‘His usual types are young, low-maintenance blondes, with long legs, a lot of ambition, and virtually no talent for anything but wearing and buying clothes and spending his money.’

This cynical analysis made her eyes flash angrily. ‘It sounds like you know the boss pretty well.’ And don’t like him much, she thought, but didn’t add.

‘Boss?’

Becca looked his curling lip and couldn’t help but think he must be awfully good at what he did for any employer to put up with his disdainful manner.

‘Well, isn’t that what he is?’ she challenged. ‘Or does it hurt your macho pride to admit you’re a lackey, like the rest of us?’

‘And who are you in servitude to?’

‘I’m a primary schoolteacher.

‘I never had a teacher that looked like you.’

There was an insolent sexual quality to his appraisal that ought to have repelled her. Instead she felt a shiver of excitement slide down her spine.

‘Actually,’ he added, before she could respond, ‘Christos Carides is the head of the company which paid for the wedding security today.’

Becca shrugged. The technicality changed nothing as far as she was concerned. ‘He’s a Carides.’

His dark brows lifted. ‘So you tar everyone of that name with the same brush? Is that fair?’

‘Don’t lecture me on fairness,’ she snapped back, tired of being the voice of impartial reason.

‘Are you always this forthright?’

‘Say what you mean—you think I’m mouthy?’

The retort drew a reluctant grin from Christos. ‘You know, Alex is even more of a fool than I thought he was.’

‘If that is meant to be a compliment, save it.’ It was not good to start wondering how someone who looked like a sleek predator would kiss. ‘I have no taste for insincerity.’ Or beautiful but predatory men, she reminded herself.