Jordan St Claire: Dark and Dangerous (8 page)

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—’

‘I didn’t say I had read them, only that I’d seen the headlines,’ she defended hotly.

He gave her a knowing look. ‘If you say so.’

‘I do!’

Jordan shrugged. ‘I’m not answerable for what the tabloids choose to print about me, Stephanie. Or to the women I’ve dated in the past.’

‘Don’t you mean currently?’ Stephanie accused. ‘That
was
Crista Moore who telephoned you this morning, wasn’t it?’

The name Crista really was too unusual for Jordan’s earlier caller to have been anyone else. Which meant he was probably still involved with the beautiful actress.

Which made letting him kiss her even more stupid on Stephanie’s part!

‘What if it was?’ he said.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Maybe you should just stick to one airhead at a time!’

‘I wouldn’t put you in the airhead category, Stephanie,’ he teased.

‘We aren’t dating!’

‘We aren’t anything yet,’ Jordan accepted dryly. ‘But if you insist on staying on here we’re most definitely going to be something.’

Stephanie’s cheeks blushed hotly. ‘You can’t possibly know that.’

‘Would you like me to show you?’

‘You arrogant, overbearing, self—’

‘Sticks and stones, Stephanie …’

‘No, it’s the truth,’ she maintained forcefully. ‘You may have—may have caught me slightly off-guard this morning when you kissed me, but it won’t happen again.’

‘No?’ He moved closer to her.

Stephanie stood her ground. ‘No!’

His eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘You seem slightly—flustered.’

‘I’m getting rather annoyed, actually,’ she flared back at him.

Jordan narrowed shrewd eyes. ‘Just not annoyed enough to leave?’

‘No!’

‘Fine.’ His mouth firmed as he finally stepped away from her, making her sigh inwardly in relief. ‘Have it your own way. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

It sounded more like a threat to Stephanie than a warning.

A threat of intent.

‘I’
M GOING
back to my study to work.’ Jordan reached for his cane to stand up from the table where they had just sat in total silence eating the warming soup.

It had been an uncomfortable silence. A silence full of awareness. Mental. Emotional. But most of all physical.

Jordan still had no explanation at to why he was even attracted to the determined and difficult physiotherapist. He had never been attracted to green-eyed redheads of medium height and medium build before now. He had certainly never found argumentative women in the least appealing.

Stephanie McKinley was all those things and more.

The ‘more’ being her mulish stubbornness in refusing to leave Mulberry Hall!

Well, just because
she
wouldn’t leave there was no reason for Jordan to have to stay in the same room as her. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon, but you can come and get me when dinner’s ready,’ he said autocratically as Stephanie stood up to clear the table.

‘Yes, My Lord.’ She turned to give him a mocking curtsy. ‘Certainly, My Lord.’

Jordan drew in a sharp breath even as his gaze narrowed on her suspiciously. He had assumed earlier that she knew nothing about the history of the St Claire family. She had certainly given no indication when they’d talked earlier that she had connected Jordan’s family with the Dukes of Stourbridge, or that she knew he really was a lord in truth.

There was no indication of that knowledge in Stephanie’s mischievous expression now, either—only a glint of mocking laughter in those expressive green eyes to go with that curtsy she had just given him.

Jordan relaxed. ‘If I really were a lord, and this were a few hundred years ago, then I would have put you out onto the streets to starve by now for your insolence.’

She gave a rueful shake of her head. ‘Then how lucky it is for me that the time of the feudal overlord is long gone.’

Perhaps someone should have mentioned that to Jordan’s older brother? Lucan was no more inclined to use his title than Jordan and Gideon were, but there was still no doubting that Lucan was every bit as arrogant as their aristocratic ducal forebears were reputed to have been!

‘Yes, lucky for you,’ Jordan agreed dryly. ‘As for dinner—I believe you said that eating a healthy diet was a necessary part of my treatment?’ he reminded her.

She smiled slightly. ‘Do I take it from that comment that it’s your intention to agree to accept only the parts of that treatment which suit you?’

‘Of course.’ He looked at her down his gorgeous nose.

Stephanie had never met anyone quite like Jordan St Claire.

Never before had she wanted to slap a man at the
same time as she so desperately wanted to experience the passion of his kisses!

She sighed. ‘I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.’

‘You aren’t afraid at all, Stephanie,’ he contradicted her flatly.

He had no idea! ‘What work are you doing in your study?’

‘None of your damned business,’ Jordan said evenly.

So much for trying to change the subject to something less controversial!

The real problem for Stephanie was that even when they weren’t engaged in one of these irritating conversations she was still aware of everything about him. Even sitting down and eating lunch with him had been something of an ordeal in self-restraint.

She had found herself looking at Jordan’s hands far too often as he ate, easily able to remember those hands caressing her back earlier. Igniting that fire of longing inside her.

Oh, God! she thought, almost groaning aloud. Maybe she should just leave here, after all? Admit defeat and just go. Before she was tempted into doing something she would most definitely regret.

No, she
couldn’t
leave.

Between the two of them, Richard and Rosalind Newman had been making Stephanie’s life in London a living hell. She simply refused to let her awareness of Jordan force her into returning until Joey could assure her that particular nightmare was over.

‘Is there anything you want me to pass on to Lucan when I speak to him later this afternoon?’ She arched challenging brows.

Jordan scowled back at her. ‘I very much doubt that
my big brother expects you to give him an hour-by-hour report on my progress.’

‘Or otherwise,’ she shot back.

‘Or otherwise,’ he confirmed

‘No, probably not,’ Stephanie accepted lightly. ‘But as I have nothing else to do this afternoon …’

Jordan knew the little minx was challenging him. Attempting to hold the threat of Lucan’s displeasure over him. A totally useless threat as far as Jordan was concerned. ‘I ceased being in awe of my brother the moment I realised that he has to go to the bathroom like the rest of humanity.’

She grimaced. ‘I really didn’t need that image, thank you very much!’

Jordan shrugged. ‘Believe me, it’s a good leveller in almost any circumstances.’

‘In Lucan’s case, it’s one I could well do without.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Jordan drawled. ‘I usually like to eat dinner about seven.’

‘When you bother to eat at all.’

He gave a mocking smile. ‘As you’ve insisted on staying here, I expect to eat regularly and often.’

Stephanie wasn’t totally sure which appetite Jordan was referring to, but she had her suspicions.

She had worked with dozens of patients over the last three years. Young. Old. Female as well as male. Some of them had been extremely difficult to work with, yes—those were the cases she specialised in, after all—but none of them had been as impossible as the man standing in front of her now.

Her mouth firmed. ‘At the risk of repeating myself—I am not here for your amusement.’

‘Repeat yourself all you like, Stephanie,’ he said. ‘The only things you can do for me at the moment are
feed me or amuse me. I’ll leave it up to you which one you want to do at any given time …’

Stephanie stared at him furiously for several seconds. ‘Oh, just go away, will you?’ she finally huffed irritably. In all of her daydreams, all her fantasies about actually meeting Jordan Simpson, Stephanie had never once imagined herself telling him to go away!

‘I’ll take that to mean that you want time to think about what to cook me for dinner,’ Jordan said.

Stephanie shot him another frowning glare, only breathing a sigh of relief once he had left the kitchen. She heard the sound of him whistling tunelessly to himself as he walked down the corridor and then shut the study door behind him seconds later.

There
had
to be a way for Stephanie to get through to Jordan—to make him accept the professional help Lucan had hired her for. She just had no idea what it was!

‘Comfortable?’ Jordan asked sarcastically later that evening, as he entered the sitting room to find her curled up comfortably in one of the armchairs, the only illumination in the room coming from the warm and crackling fire she had lit in the hearth.

‘Very, thank you,’ she answered, and she sat up to swing her bare feet slowly to the floor, still wearing the dark green sweater and fitted jeans she had changed into earlier. ‘It isn’t seven o’clock yet, is it?’

Jordan’s jaw tightened, and his eyes hooded to conceal their expression as he took in how the firelight picked out every amazing colour in Stephanie’s plaited hair. ‘I’ve worked long enough for now. How was your afternoon?’ He leant heavily on his cane as he came further into the room, the pain in his hip and leg from
sitting down all afternoon making his tone harsher than he’d intended.

‘Boring,’ she admitted.

He raised dark brows. ‘Boring?’

She gave a shrug. ‘I’m simply not used to sitting around all day having nothing to do.’

Boredom was something that Jordan knew a lot about, after the weeks he had spent in hospital in the States before coming here. ‘There’s lots of books in here you could have read. Or you could have gone for another walk. Or another swim,’ he added dryly.

Stephanie gave a pained wince. ‘I’m not going back in the pool until you do.’

‘Then you’ll be waiting a long time,’ Jordan rasped, scowling as moved awkwardly to drop down into the armchair opposite hers, sighing in relief to be off his hip once again. He dropped his head back against the chair to turn and look at her. ‘Do you ever wear your hair loose?’

Stephanie put a self-conscious hand up to the slightly untidy plait. ‘Not really.’

‘Then why bother to keep it long at all?’

‘I—I’ve never really thought about it.’ She frowned, very uncomfortable under the scrutiny of that piercingly narrowed gaze.

Jordan looked predatory in the firelight, his eyes an amber glitter, every sculptured angle of his face thrown into sharp relief: the harsh slash of his cheekbones, the long aristocratic nose, his hard, sensual mouth, and the strong lines of his jaw darkened by a five o’clock shadow.

Stephanie sensed a waiting stillness about him. A coiled expectancy much like a jungle cat poised to spring. With Stephanie as its prey!

She stood up abruptly, needing to escape from all that leashed power for a few minutes, at least. ‘Would you like a glass of wine before dinner?’

Jordan gave a brief smile. ‘I thought you would never ask.’

Stephanie paused in the doorway. ‘You’re in pain again, aren’t you?’ She could see by the deepening of the grooves beside his eyes and mouth and the weary droop of his head that he was inwardly battling to keep that pain under his control rather than letting it control him.

He shot her a hard look. ‘Just get the damned wine, will you?’

She bit back her own angry retort, knowing by the dangerous glitter in Jordan’s eyes that now was not the time to argue with him on the subject of the pain he was suffering. Or the unsatisfactory method he chose to dull that pain. ‘Would you like red or white?’