An Exception to His Rule(40)

                Was this his retaliation for what she’d done last night?

                Why did she feel disbelief, though? she found herself wondering. Because she’d been convinced he would react differently to what had been—talk about incendiary!—another incendiary statement she’d made.

                All the same, a true statement, she reasoned with herself. She was deadly afraid that once she gave in to Damien Wyatt she’d be hooked. She’d be on a roundabout, in love with a man who didn’t believe in love, who didn’t believe in marriage...

                As if she hadn’t had enough trauma in that direction.

                * * *

                Damien Wyatt, after checking his property over thoroughly, and making sure the cook was in no position to do any more damage, climbed the stairs and walked into his bedroom but he didn’t immediately go to bed. He didn’t even turn the light on.

                He stood instead at the open window and listened to the sea crashing onto the beach. From the sound of it, he judged it to be high tide or close to it. And he could see a tracing of phosphorous lying luminous on the beach as each wave receded.

                But he was only registering the phosphorous absently. He was thinking of Harriet Livingstone. He could see her in his mind’s eye, serving up her paella and her lemon meringue with that slim tall figure in daisy-patterned leggings and a white blouse.

                Thinking of her last night as she’d looked lovely enough to stir any man’s blood. And had danced in her own way, a way that was enough to tempt any man.

                And tonight, soaked to the skin and her hands and face blackened, then clean and neat again in jeans and a track top.

                Hearing her saying the kind of things women who were not naïve couldn’t say with a straight face—she was an all or nothing person in that direction. Sex and relationships, in other words. Accusing him of being too good in bed for her peace of mind...

                He fingered the curtain then turned away and threw himself down in an armchair. The room was still in darkness but there was a lamp on the table beside the armchair. He pressed the button and soft light radiated from under the silk shade. And the bedroom came alive in its blue and gold trappings.

                He’d inherited the master bedroom when his parents had passed away, although he hadn’t moved into it until he’d married, and it still reflected his mother’s taste. A four-poster bed, flocked wallpaper, tapestries—if it wasn’t a superbly comfortable bed he’d have left the grandeur of this bedroom, which made him think it should belong in a French chateau, to darkness and silence after he and Veronica had separated.

                Or, he mused, maybe it wasn’t only the bed. Perhaps he continued to use the room as a warning to himself never to forget the trauma and betrayal Veronica had brought to him.

                Maybe...

                But where to place Harriet Livingstone in his scheme of things?

                He moved restlessly. It was unfortunate but true, he had to admit, that he was extremely attracted to her, even if he couldn’t quite analyse why.

                What was more unfortunate about it was that he believed her when she said she wasn’t built for affairs. Why he believed her, he couldn’t say. Why he didn’t see it as a ploy on her behalf to tell him she was an all or nothing girl, a ploy to set him on fire physically in a manner of speaking, he couldn’t say either.

                But what he’d considered the natural progression from a spontaneous attraction that had gripped them both was now fraught with all sorts of dangers...