‘Oh? And what was that?’
‘Ramsey told me he’d employed a security company; it just never occurred to me that they would be monitoring the place so closely.’ He shrugged, summoned up the ghost of a smile. ‘Forget that; I wasn’t thinking about anything except getting you naked.’
She resisted the urge to fling herself at him again and, keeping her own smile low-key, said, ‘Ditto.’
His own smile deepened a fraction, but he shook his head.
‘Shall I tell you why I liked being with Toby?’ she asked.
‘No—’
‘He never patronised me,’ she said. ‘He never doubted that I knew what I was doing.’ Okay, he wasn’t that bright. If she knew what she was doing, she wouldn’t be this close to a man who made her self-preservation hard drive crash whenever she thought about touching him. About him touching her. ‘He never felt the need to protect me.’
‘He stole your job!’
‘He was paying me the ultimate compliment, Darius. He knew that I was strong enough, smart enough, to survive.’
‘Maybe, but I wasn’t patronising you. I was just doing that macho shit...’
‘I know.’ About to reach out, touch him, reassure him, she tucked the house keys in her pocket, sat down on the bench, took a flask out of her bag, keeping her hands busy.
She’d wanted him to share his pain. Maybe, while she had him on her hook, she could show him how.
‘I spent the first twenty-one years of my life being protected, Darius. It gets old.’ She unscrewed the cups from the top of the flask, looked up. ‘Have you got time for coffee?’
Darius recognised his moment to make his excuses and walk away. It was what he always did when things became complicated, involved—walking away from emotional entanglement. Something he’d been signally failing to do ever since he’d set eyes on Natasha Gordon in Morgan’s office.
He’d walked, but he’d hardly made it across the road before he was looking back, hooked on that luscious body, those eyes. Now, layered on that first explosive impact, was her sweet, spicy, delicious scent, the taste of her skin, her mouth entwining itself around him, binding him to her.
He should be running, not walking away, but he’d been running since he was seventeen years old. Running from the house behind him and yet here he was, because Natasha had needed him. Or maybe he’d needed the excuse she gave him to return, face it. Whichever it was, he barely hesitated before joining her on the bench, taking the coffee she’d poured for him.
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome,’ she said, but didn’t follow it up with an offer of something sweet to go with it. Just as well—‘cake’ would, in his mind, forever be a euphemism for sex and even he balked at a garden bench with half an acre of lawn in front of them.
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’m hooked. Tell me about the first twenty-one years of your life.’
‘All of them?’ she asked. ‘I thought you had to be somewhere.’
He leaned an elbow on the back of the bench, making it clear he was going nowhere. ‘Hospital visiting.’ Another hurdle to face. ‘Gary isn’t going anywhere.’