Page 49 of Legal Seduction
Her brow furrowed. “The truth about what?”
He couldn’t tell her—not now. She was already mad at him. If he told her that he’d suspected her of selling secrets from Street Legal’s case files, she would be furious, so furious that she would throw him out of her place and out of her life.
And he couldn’t have that because then he couldn’t have her. Now that he’d learned her secret, he wanted her even more.
“I already told you,” he said. “I knew you were hiding something.” He just hadn’t realized that something was herself. “And you never answered me. You never told me why you were hiding from me. Are you afraid of me?”
* * *
Bette had never been as afraid of Simon as she was now. She was afraid that she was beginning to have feelings for him. She nearly laughed now over the irony of that. For days she’d wanted him to believe she was in love with him, so that he would cut her notice short. But now that she was actually falling, there was no way she wanted him to know.
She’d pretended to have feelings for him because she’d known it would horrify him. She didn’t want to horrify him. But she did want to be honest with him just as he’d been honest with her.
“I’m afraid of becoming my mother or my sister,” she said. “I don’t want to get so into some guy that I forget who I am and what I want out of life.”
He laughed again. But this time she didn’t mind that he was laughing at her. “I think you know exactly who you are, Bette Monroe,” he said. “It’s the rest of the world you don’t want to know you.”
“My friends know me,” she said.
“You don’t dress in the cardigans and skirts around them?” he asked.
He probably hadn’t seen much else in her closet.
“That’s as much a habit from how I was raised as a way to hide,” she said. “I had to dress conservatively when I was growing up.”
“But you’re all grown-up now,” he said, and his blue eyes darkened with desire.
“I’m still mousy Bette in so many ways,” she said.
And he laughed as if she’d told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Then he focused on her face and stopped. “You’ve got to be kidding,” he said. “You can’t really see yourself that way.”
“That’s how I saw myself for a lot of years,” she admitted. “So it’s a hard habit to break. Designing and wearing my lingerie makes me feel sexy, though.”
“And beautiful,” he added.
She smiled but shook her head. “And you told me you stopped conning people.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” he said. “You know the women I’ve dated.”
She nodded. “Models. Actresses. That’s why I know you’re lying.”
Anger flashed in his eyes now. He jerked her into his arms and tipped up her chin so she had to look into his face—his gorgeous face. “You, Bette Monroe, are a beautiful, sexy woman.”
Maybe he was a hypnotist as well as a con artist because she was beginning to believe him, especially since he kept repeating those words between kisses.
His mouth nibbled at her lips. “Women pay to have lips like these,” he said. “Full, silky, sexy...”
He tangled his fingers in her hair. “And this... It’s real, no extensions.” He pushed the robe from her body and skimmed his hand over her breasts. “Like these. You’re real, Bette.”
“I never knew that was sexy.”
“The sexiest,” he said.
And with the way he looked at her, she felt sexy, even without her lingerie. She felt sexy naked.
“And beautiful,” he added.
He pushed her back onto the bed. And he touched and kissed her with an almost reverence, as if she was a work of art. She believed him.
