Page 20 of Bound By Her Baby Revelation (Hot Winter Escapes)

‘That’s true. And I really do feel a bit grubby. If you wouldn’t mind running a bath for me, then yes, that would be helpful.’

‘Does this mean that you’re not going to argue with me about it?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Because you’re argumentative?’

‘Weirdly, I’m not at all.’ But she didn’t want to return to the subject ofwhyshe was so argumentative when she was with him. She didn’t want to get bogged down, yet again, in the business of trying to get him to understand her point of view. That ship had sailed. He’d made that patently clear and she would just have to deal with the fallout of his decision.

This brief truce between them felt too good to endanger. She reached for him as he leant to scoop her up and relaxed as he carried her up the stairs. She was five-ten, but he made her feel petite and light as a feather.

‘I’ll run a bath for you.’ He stood back, having settled her on the comfy chair by the window. ‘Try not to get the compress wet, but it might be tricky.’

‘I’ll manage,’ Kaya told him gruffly. ‘I can drape my leg over the side of the bath and it’ll be no problem wriggling my way out. I’m pretty athletic.’

Leo grunted.

Did she have any idea what images she was generating in his head? He pictured her naked in the water, bubbles not quite covering her belly and her breasts... Her legs apart with one resting on the lip of the bath...

If he wasn’t careful he’d be having a cold shower at roughly the same time as she was having her hot bath.

Leo had never been turned on by pursuit of the inaccessible. He had built his life around work with everything falling into place around it. And that included the relationships he had. They came and went and they never interfered with his work. When it came to pursuit, he was really only interested in the kind that involved the acquisition of power and money. Neither was essential, per se, but having lived his life deprived of both they certainly held quite a bit of appeal.

Certainly for him.

As far as he was concerned, time involved chasing a woman made no sense. Bed was the final destination and sooner or later boredom was the eventual outcome. So why waste time on courtship?

Maybe he was lazy when it came to the opposite sex. Maybe all his considerable energies were held in reserve for his primary focus. That was something Leo didn’t dwell on.

What surprised him was just how much air time he was giving Kaya, a woman he had only just met. More than that, she was definitely inaccessible, yet he couldn’t stop himself from wanting her. What was that all about?

He finished running the bath and then backed out, leaving her to her own devices, muttering something about preparing food for her.

Watching him edge hurriedly out of the bedroom, making sure to shut the door behind him, Kaya wondered whether he could be more obvious in his sudden desire to be rid of her company.

She debated whether to lock the bedroom door but why? She didn’t know. He wasn’t going to barge in on a tide of lust, that was for sure.

The bath was perfect. He’d managed to get the temperature just right and she took her time getting all her clothes off, manoeuvring slowly to avoid jarring her ankle, which felt better with the compress.

When she was naked, she stood, balancing on one foot, and looked at her own nakedness in the mirror. It wasn’t something she usually did. What she saw was a tall and slender woman with small, high breasts and a neat waist. A strong, toned body.

When she examined herself through a guy’s eyes, though, the picture was different. Too tall...too flat-chested...too boyish and athletic. Did men like strong women? At a push she could probably lift up a lot of the guys she knew. Was that sexy?

She took her time in the bath because she was thinking, while the time passed by. Thinking about Leo and this curling desire inside her that was so alien, so exciting and so difficult to deal with.

She feverishly turned over in her head the way he had backed out of the bathroom earlier, as though the hounds of hell had been snapping at his heels.

In her mind, she played over every word spoken that evening, every look exchanged, and wondered whether she was reading meaning into things that had been insignificant.

She cursed her own inexperience, which was crazy, because there was no way she could go back in time and adjust her life to fit this one moment.

What shocked and unsettled her too was the fact that Julie Anne and the huge secret she had kept to herself, which had preyed on her mind for all the time she’d been in New Zealand, had somehow ended up taking second place to Leo. How could that be? She was terrified to think that she could be like her mother—drawn to a rich guy who knew how to talk the talk and walk the walk but would always be as unreliable as the day was long.

Sheneededreliability. It was part of her emotional foundations.

Only when the water was getting tepid did Kaya realise just how long she’d been in the bath. She made to move and winced as her ankle took the brunt of her weight as she levered herself up.

The water sloshed around her as she gripped the sides of the bath. Every ounce of effort was focused on the time-consuming business of getting out and protecting her sore ankle at the same time, and the chill of the air on her skin was bringing her out in goose pimples.

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