Tempting Taine (8 page)

The triumphant look on his face
wasn’t
dimmed in the slightest.
 
“You and I both know you’re lying.”

“It makes no difference whether I’m lying or not.”
 
She shrugged, and smoothed her sweater back over her breasts again.
 
“Okay, maybe I still feel a lingering attraction to you when you kiss me like that, but that’s all.
 
Memories.
 
Nothing more than that.”

“A lingering attraction?”
 
He gave an unbelieving snort.
 
“That kiss was more like a ten-alarm fire than a lingering attraction.”

She grabbed her handbag off the floor of the Jeep.
 
“Whatever it was, it’s not going any further.”

He reached out for a lock of her hair and wound it around his finger.
 
“Tell me you feel nothing when I kiss you like that,” he said, tugging her inexorably towards him.
 
“Look me in the
eyes,
if you can, and tell me you don’t want me as much as I want you.”

She brushed his hand away.
 
“That’s all over, Taine,” she said shakily, opening the car door and swinging her legs out into the rain.
 
She had to escape now, before she did something that she would regret, something like begging him to make love to her again, one last time.
 
“It was over ten years ago.”

He stopped her with a hand on her arm.
 
“Ten years ago you didn’t seem to mind sleeping with me.”
 
His voice had lost its persuasive quality and was back to icy coldness again.
 
“If I’m not mistaken, you even enjoyed it.
 
Just as much as you enjoyed kissing me now.”

So, he was taunting her now about having sex with him when she was too young to know
better?
 
She had had more than enough of him and of his kisses, too.
 
She threw his hand off her arm, grabbed her briefcase and got out into the rain.
 
“Ten years ago I was in love with you,” she spat at him through the open window, her anger
momentarily
getting the better of her.
 
“I’m not in love with you now.
 
I
don’t
even like you.
 
That makes all the difference.”

His eyes flicked towards hers for a moment and she thought she could read indecision, even hope, in their depths before the shutters went down over his mind again.
 
“Sure you were,” he sneered back at her.
 
“So in love with me that you turned your back on me without a word.”

She draped her wet raincoat over her shoulders.
 
“I had my reasons for leaving.
 
Reasons that I don’t expect you to understand.”
 

“I can hardly be expected to understand them if you never actually shared them with me in the first place.”
 
For the first time, he sounded genuinely curious.
 
“Tell me, why did you leave?”

She shook her head, scattering fine droplets of rain all about her.
 
She had tried desperately to tell him once, and he had brushed her aside.
 
His question was nine years too late.
 
“I grew up.”
 

She was too preoccupied with his kiss – and the reasons behind it - to keep her mind on her work all the rest of that day.
 
Taine had said that he wanted her and that he intended to have her.
 
The shock of his bold declaration had still not worn off.
 
Taine, who had treated her like dirt under his feet the last time they had met nine years ago, and who had ignored her very existence ever since then, had suddenly decided he wanted her.

He always had been a man for getting what he wanted.
 
And now
he wanted her.
 
Just as he had wanted her ten years ago.
 

She should be insulted that he thought she would fall into his hands like a ripe plum, but instead the thought sent a dart of fire shooting into the pit of her belly.
 

Heaven help her, but she lusted after him just as much as he did after her.
 
And
more.

She shuddered anew with the awful realization that she hungered for him, that she craved his touch on her body.
 
For all
that
her brain screamed ‘
DANGER’
whenever he was around, her body missed him.
 
Desperately.

She did not want to admit it, in
fact
she could hardly bear to admit it even to herself, but it was true all the same.
 
If he had not drawn away from her in the car that morning, she would have let him go as far as
he’d
wanted to go.

She put her head in her hands and sighed.
 
For the last nine years, ‘
STAY AWAY FROM TAINE HUNTER,’
had been the most important rule in her life.
 
Surely
the lesson must have sunk into her thick skull by now?
 
Surely
she was not doomed to repeat her past mistakes over and over again?

So
, she still lusted after him.
 
She could not deny that any longer.
 
Unluckily for him, she was older and wiser now, and knew not to act on impulse.
 
He had taught her a hard lesson about consequences – a lesson she was not likely to forget in a hurry.

She paced up and down in her small office, fretting over what she should do.
 
Life had a way of turning out the way she least expected it to.
 
She never would have credited it, but despite what she had done to him ten long years ago, he still had not let her go.
 
Physically, at least, he still desired her.
 

Even more unbelievably, despite her better judgement she wanted him, too.
 
His kisses had proven that much to them both.

What a pickle.
 
She could not avoid him altogether.
 
Not when she had agreed to take on his father as her patient.
 
Neither could she give in to him.
 
He had burned her once already and she would be twice a fool to go back for more.

Besides, he only wanted to have sex with her, and nothing more.
 
Even if she were to give in to their mutual desire and sleep with him, the transitory pleasure would not be worth anything.
 
She had never yet had sex with a man without being deeply in love with him – and she was not about to start with Taine Hunter, of all people.

She would simply have to be strong enough to say no – and to mean it.

Taine strode around the farm, forcing himself to keep his mind on his task.
 
The river was rising fast with the heavy rain in the hills, and he needed to make sure the farmhands had followed his directions of that morning and had moved all the stock to high ground, especially the ewes
who
were getting ready to drop their lambs.
 

Only when he was confident that the animals
were protected
and the low-lying pastures evacuated, did he allow his mind to wander back to his meeting with Verity that morning.

For all her protests that the chemistry between them had died out ten years ago, she had been far from indifferent to his kisses.
 
He had felt the spark that
had been re-ignited
between them – and she had, too.
 
It had been so strong that not even Verity, lying little witch that she was, could plausibly deny it.
 

Whatever
lies
her mouth uttered, she still wanted him.
 
Her body did not lie in its subtle reactions to his caresses.
 
He had heard the quickening of her breath and felt the way her chest had risen and fallen against his.
 
He had felt the tightening of her nipples as they pressed against him and tasted the urgency of her tongue mating with his.
 
And
if he had delved into the
center
of her, he was sure she would have been as hot and wet for him as she had been ten years ago.

She desired him, all
right,
she just did not want to admit it.
 
What was the excuse she had come up with for not sleeping with him now?
 
That
ten years ago she had loved him – but she did not love him any longer?

He shook his head in denial as he shut the farm gate behind him and strode over to the house to wash up.
 
She had not loved him ten years ago.
 
She could not have loved him.
 
She’d
left him with barely a shrug of regret, when his heart and soul had been crying out for her, begging her to stay.
 
That had not been the work of a woman in love.

Fine.
 
So
she had never loved him.
 
That suited him just fine.
 
She had slept with him ten years before, when she had not been in love with him, so there was no reason for her not to sleep with him now.
 
No reason at all.

He just had to convince her of the fact.

He grinned to himself as he peeled off his muddy jeans and stepped into the shower.
 
Convincing her that nothing between them had changed would be the most fun he had had in a long time.

Half an hour later, showered and dressed, he was at the hospital door, waiting at the wheel of his Jeep.
 

At four o’clock, Verity poked her head out of the entryway, her face creased in a frown.
 

He wound down the window to call to her.
 
“Hop in.”

She hesitated in the doorway.
 
“I’m not so sure that coming out to your place this afternoon is a good idea.
 
It’s raining pretty hard.”
 

“The Jeep’s dry.”

Still she lingered, undecided.
 
“They were saying on the radio that the river’s rising fast, and the roads might flood.
 
I don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of the river tonight.”

He had heard the same weather report.
 
A rapidly rising river was
exactly
what he was counting on.
 
He needed her full attention, for as long as he could get it, if he were to persuade her back into his bed again.
 
And
what better way of having her to himself than getting the two of them stranded away from the rest of the world for a night or two?
 

He could hardly confess his ulterior motives to her though.
 
Instead, he opted for a shameless tug at her heartstrings.
 
“Dad needs your help.
 
He’s counting on you to be with him today.”

She shuffled from one foot to another uneasily, clearly unhappy about getting into the car with him.
 
“He’s not the only patient who needs me.”

“You made a big difference to him yesterday.
 
He’s expecting you to come back today.”
 
He paused for dramatic effect.
 
“I would hate for him to be disappointed.
 
I don’t know whether he would cope with very well with not seeing you, or if it would set back his recovery again.”

His words had the intended effect.
 
She heaved a weary sigh and clambered into the front of the Jeep next to him.
 
“Okay, okay.
 
I guess I’ll come see your father and take the risk of being stranded there by floodwaters.”

He suppressed a smile as he put the Jeep into gear and drove off through the driving rain.
 
He had won this first minor skirmish without any bloodshed.
 
How long his advantage lasted was in the lap of the weather gods now.

Verity sat in the Jeep, her arms folded protectively against her chest, as Taine drove through the rain to his father’s house.

The rain was still sheeting down in a torrent against the windscreen, but the foul weather was not what was bothering her.
 
Taine’s kiss was still the foremost worry on her mind.
 
Despite obsessing over
his kiss – and what she ought to do about it –
most of the day, she was still no closer to working out a plan of action.
 
Sure, she needed to be strong and keep him at a distance, but how was she going to do it?