Her lips parted in an angry gasp. 'Are you suggesting this is all my fault? You should learn to keep your hands to yourself!'
His lips twisted into a mocking smile. 'I would, if you didn't keep responding to me!'
Green eyes narrowed wrathfully. 'So it is my fault!'
'I didn't say that.'
'Not in so many words, but I got the message. Damn, none of this would be happening if you hadn't kissed me last night!' she exclaimed accusingly.
'Cut it out, Ginny. Neither of us expected the response we got. Besides, whilst we're on the subject, who was exploring whose body no more than an hour ago?'
Of course she had no answer to that. Roarke had been asleep. It had been all her own idea. All she could do was draw herself up to her full height. 'Thank you for throwing that back in my face!'
Roarke took an impatient step towards her, which she countered by taking a step back. 'I wasn't about to touch you,' he protested irritably.
'I wasn't taking the chance!'
'Now you're just being ridiculous. I have no intention of touching you … in that way … ever again,' Roarke snapped back testily.
'You can't know how happy I am to hear that!' Ginny snorted, fully aware that she was overreacting, but not seeming to be able to stop.
'Oh, for the love of God! Nobody has to take all the blame. We're both at fault. It turns out this response we have to each other isn't going to vanish as easily as we expected. We didn't ask for it, but we have to deal with it. We can't expect someone to always bang or knock on a door to stop us doing something rash.'
Ginny knew he was right. They had to get control of the situation. 'OK. No kissing, no touching-no anything. We keep our distance from now on.' How hard could it be? They would be leaving the next day, so there was something like twenty-four hours for them to get through. They could do this. All it would take was self-discipline.
'Fine,' Roarke agreed, dragging a hand through his hair.
'OK, then,' Ginny retorted, facing up to him.
An uneasy silence fell, during which time each observed the other warily. This was a new situation, and neither wanted to precipitate another incident. Roarke's eyes dropped, taking in her apparel.
'You can help by putting some clothes on, or are you going to stay like that all day?' he asked sarcastically, waving a hand at her nightdress.
Not for the first time, she was tempted to hit him. 'Of course not! I'm going to shower and change, and then we're going to see your sister,' she exclaimed, putting action to the words by heading for her dressing room. 'And if I don't murder you before the day is out, you can consider yourself lucky!' she added, before vanishing inside.
Of all the nerve, she thought, as she collected together underwear and the dress she intended to wear for the wedding. She had been respectably covered in her nightdress, whilst he had wandered around in a towel. Talk about a double standard. Obviously she had become Eve, the temptress, and he was the poor hapless male. Hah!
Gathering up her things, she re-entered the bedroom. Roarke was on the telephone. Ginny crossed to the bathroom without looking directly at him, but she felt his eyes on her all the way. Her spine tingled. Only with the bathroom door shut did the feeling go away. Setting her clothes down and hanging her dress on the door, she stripped off her nightdress and stepped into the shower. The warm water was refreshing and she stood under it, savouring the pleasure.
However, as she stood there, thoughts of Roarke and her response to him trickled back into her mind. There was no denying the response, but how had it happened? She would have bet anything that she would never feel anything for him. She disliked him and his attitude to women. Or did she … ?
Hadn't it always been the case that she disliked his attitude to women more than she disliked him? When she had first met him, hadn't there been a moment when he had set her nerves jangling? Before she remembered his reputation, and that he was exactly the kind of man she was determined to avoid?
If she was honest with herself, then she knew that attraction didn't just flare up. It had to have been there, unacknowledged. They had been fighting for so long that neither realised it had masked what they were now discovering was a pretty powerful mutual attraction. It had been hidden because neither wanted to acknowledge a response to the other. They called it dislike and fought like cat and dog. Now the blinkers were gone and they were left to face the passion.
Which they still didn't want, because they were the same people. Only it was going to be harder to ignore, because they had had a taste of what it could be like. Temptation hovered, however inconveniently. At least things hadn't gone too far. They could retrieve the situation. That, at least, they were agreed upon.
With renewed determination Ginny washed, then dried herself on the softest towel she had ever held, and dressed in the pale lavender shift dress. She emerged from the bathroom feeling much more confident, only to have that confidence tilted dangerously by the view she had of Roarke standing at the dressing table combing his hair. The action was stretching the cloth of his silk shirt over powerful shoulder muscles, and that reminded her of what he had felt like to touch. Her mouth went dry.
'Something wrong?'
Roarke's eyes met hers in the mirror, and she hastily shook her head. 'I was just wondering what I did with my shoes,' she lied, giving herself a mental ticking-off for allowing the erotic thought to enter her head. The few seconds it took her to retrieve her far from lost shoes allowed her to regain her composure.
'Will your mother be with your sister?' Ginny asked in concern, fixing tiny diamond studs to her ears as she emerged from the dressing room.
Roarke laughed at the mere idea. 'Mother never puts in an appearance until lunchtime. She'll make a concession today, but I still don't expect her to emerge before eleven. We should be able to get a short time alone with Caroline before her bridesmaids turn up, if we're quick. Are you ready?'
'Yes. I won't put on the matching jacket until we leave for the church,' Ginny added as they headed out of the door.
'I'm resisting wearing the rest of this monkey suit until the last minute myself,' Roarke remarked wryly.
'Morning dress suits you,' she felt compelled to admit.
He quirked an eyebrow at her. 'Are compliments allowed under the rules?'
'I've complimented you before,' Ginny pointed out, which caused him to grin.
'But that was before we discovered we were attracted to each other,' he countered, setting her nerves leaping.
Ginny winced. 'Comments like that are definitely out,' she declared.
'Hiding our heads in the sand isn't going to help.'
She knew that. All the same … 'Can we not discuss it right now?' she begged, hurrying to keep up with him. 'Where on earth is your sister's room-on the moon?'
'The other side of the house. Caroline prefers mountains to water. She has a morbid fear of it.'
'That's a shame!'
'It's a shame somebody didn't drown her father. He was the individual whose idea of teaching her to swim was to chuck her in the deep end!' Roarke explained, and clearly he had no love for his ex-stepfather.
Ginny felt a sympathetic anger too. 'He was husband number two, I take it?'
'Correct. He was a flautist of international renown, but a dead loss as a human being. Fortunately, Caroline inherited his talent and not his ego. Here we are.'
Roarke halted at a door and tapped out a particular series of knocks. Catching Ginny watching him in amazement, he shrugged. 'We all have our own knocks-that way, the person whose room it is knows whether to answer or not.'
Ginny's lips twitched. 'Who were you trying to avoid?'
'Mother, mostly.' He grinned unrepentantly, and looked so boyishly handsome that her heart skipped a beat and her breathing went awry.
Something must have shown on her face, for he frowned. 'You OK?'
'A touch of indigestion,' she invented hastily.
That brought his brows arcing. 'You haven't eaten anything.'
There were times when his persistence could be downright irritating. 'Must be an empty stomach, then,' Ginny countered and was relieved to hear the door open.
'Honestly, Roarke, where have you been? I expected you earlier,' Caroline complained as she looked out, then caught sight of Ginny. 'Oh!'
Roarke stepped forward, hustling his sister away from the door and back into her room. 'Caro, meet Ginny. Ginny, Caro.' He introduced them to each other as he did so.
'Pleased to meet you,' Ginny murmured politely, following them in and shutting the door at a jerk of the head from Roarke.
'Likewise,' Caroline returned, then pulled an angry face at her brother and slapped his hands away. 'Stop it!'
Roarke held up his hands repentantly, then bent and kissed her cheek. 'Sorry, darling, but we need to speak to you alone, and we don't want to be seen coming in here.'