Page 5 of Hidden Heir With His Housekeeper

‘You admit it then,’ he said. ‘Ididspook you in the bar.’

‘I’m so not answering that question on the grounds it will totally incriminate me.’

He laughed, the twinkle in his dark eyes full of genuine amusement for the first time. It had a weird effect on the rumba in her panties, which rose to wrap around her ribs. Why did she get the impression he didn’t laugh often, and very rarely without that sarcastic edge?

He dropped his head to one side, his all-seeing gaze searing her cheeks, but this time it didn’t disturb her, it only excited her. Which disturbed her even more.

‘Why did I freak you out?’ he asked again, the tone of his voice managing to be both coaxing and curious.

She shrugged and looked at her heels, trying to buy some time.

How on earth did she answerthat? When she didn’t know the answer herself.

She flexed her toes, aware of the pain in her feet.

On impulse, she eased her sore feet out of the shoes. Relief came first, followed by the sudden sense of freedom—and a single moment of devastating clarity.

She didn’t have to be the Medford Ice Queen, or her father’s puppet—any more than she had to wear the painful heels his stylist had chosen to ‘engage’ the interest of this man.

‘That’s better,’ she sighed. ‘High heels are the work of the Devil.’

The heady pulse in her abdomen accelerated when she looked up to discover she’d just increased his height advantage by another five inches.

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ he said. ‘I hardly ever wear them.’

She laughed, because the comment was so incongruous. From the little she knew about Mason Foxx, the last thing she would have expected him to be was remotely charming or self-deprecating.

But then he skimmed a knuckle under her chin to tip her face up.

A sizzle of awareness shot through her as his eyes narrowed.

‘Why won’t you answer my question?’ he said, the mocking light dying—as if her answer mattered but he wasn’t expecting to like it. ‘Why did you run away from me?’

She stepped back, and he let his hand drop. But something about the tiny glimpse of vulnerability had her blurting out the truth. ‘Because when you looked at me, I really liked it.’

Fire flashed in his eyes, then echoed in her sex. Alarmingly. Strictly speaking, his identity should have been a massive turn-off. But, judging from the streak now doing the macarena in her panties, that wasn’t happening.

‘And that’s a problem, why, exactly?’ he asked with the directness of a man who knew what he wanted and had no qualms about going after it.

His arrogance was intoxicating, though, because it spoke of a confidence she had always lacked. And suddenly she didn’t want to be that gutless princess any more, who wore uncomfortable shoes because her father demanded it.

Or the Medford Ice Queen, scared of her own desires.

Or the woman who would rather second-guess herself a thousand times than step outside her comfort zone.

Or the girl who had been so averse to any form of confrontation for so long she’d ended up at this event, primed to attract this man for her father’s benefit instead of her own.

Her father wasn’t here.

He never had to know she’d met Foxx and had found him... Extremely hot. So why on earth did it matter whether Foxx was at the top of his hit-list?

Mason Foxx was the first man to ever make her feel this fizzy, sparky, delicious awareness. How could she ever make a life for herself, take command of her future, if she didn’t even have the courage to own her own libido?

The way he clearly did.

‘I guess it’s not a problem,’ she found herself saying. ‘Per se.’

‘Per se?’he said, that mocking eyebrow shooting back up his forehead. But the devilishly naughty light dancing in his dark eyes only tempted her more, to do something so daring, so shocking, so wicked, it might finally dynamite her out of her comfort zone for good—and turn her into a woman as bold and brave and cool as Katie.

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