Page 40 of Winter Vows

She stopped dead in her tracks. “Excuse me?”

“The high-and-mighty tone,” he explained. “You’re the one who asked what I wanted to do next.”

“So I did. Forget it.”

“No. I think we should talk about this. Aren’t you the one who insisted that this whole project was strictly business, that you were doing a job, not a favor?”

He didn’t like where she was heading with this one little bit. “Yes. So?”

“So that makes you my employee for all intents and purposes.”

“And you think that means you get to order me around like some loyal subject?” he demanded, ignoring the fact that he’d told her to do that very thing on Saturday.

“Of course not,” she said, her complexion flushed. She heaved a sigh. “Hardy, sometimes I don’t know what to make of you. I have no idea what you really want.”

Hearing her confusion, it was his turn to sigh. “Sometimes I’m not sure myself.”

He gazed into eyes the same shade of blue as the brilliant winter sky. “Except for this,” he murmured, bending his head to capture her lips beneath his.

Oblivious to their surroundings, oblivious to everything except the feel of satin under his mouth, he threw himself into the kiss.

He didn’t touch her, didn’t put a hand on her, but the swirl of heat from the kiss alone was enough to melt steel. His blood roared through his veins. His heart pounded. The mysterious, exotic scent of her teased his senses. He sank into the kiss, dragging her with him until they were both unsteady, both all but gasping for breath.

Her eyes were wide with shock when he finally pulled back. Her lips were swollen with the look of a mouth that had just been thoroughly, devastatingly devoured.

“Oh, sweet heaven,” she whispered, touching her trembling fingers to her lips as if she couldn’t quite believe how they had betrayed her.

“This isn’t supposed to...it can’t be...”

Hardy grinned at her incoherence. “Darlin’, I know you’re quite a talker, but I don’t think you can talk this away. Words aren’t going to change anything. And I don’t thinksupposed tohas anything to do with it.”

Her gaze narrowed. He caught the quick rise of temper.

“Are you pleased with yourself because you managed to get a physical reaction out of me?” she demanded.

That was one way of putting how he felt, Hardy supposed, but he sensed that he’d be smarter to deny it. “I enjoyed kissing you, there’s no question about that,” he said carefully. “You going to deny you enjoyed it?”

She looked as if she wanted to, looked as if the denial were on the tip of her tongue, but she was too innately honest to pull off the lie.

“Okay, it was a great kiss.”

“Just like the last one,” he suggested.

She scowled. “Don’t push it. The point is, a kiss is just a momentary phenomenon. In our case it also represents a lapse in judgment.”

Hardy couldn’t help it. He chuckled. “You are so cute when you get all prim and earnest.”

Practically trembling with rage, she stared at him. “This is not a game, Hardy Jones. I will not be another notch on your bedpost. If that’s what you’ve got in mind, you can take your little innuendoes and your flirting and your help and go straight to hell.” She flounced off before he could snap his mouth closed. She was two blocks away before he caught up with her. He’d figured it would take at least that long for her to cool down and listen to reason.

When he fell into step beside her, he noted that her color was still high, her mood still precarious. He opted for silence. Maybe after another block or two, he’d think of something to say to soothe her ruffled feathers.

“That’s not what this is about,” he finally said quietly.

She kept her gaze straight ahead and remained stoically silent.

“To tell you the honest truth, I’m not sure what it’s about,” he admitted. “I’ve broken every single one of my rules where you’re concerned.”

She finally stole a glance at him. “Oh?”

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