He spread his hands. 'Why did you have to thaw out?'
Stalemate.
Ginny groaned. 'This is getting us nowhere.'
'Fighting the inevitable is generally a waste of time,' Roarke pointed out, and Ginny rounded on him.
'Nothing is inevitable. We still have a choice. I choose to do nothing about it!' she insisted, and once again their gazes locked. An electric silence fell.
'How come I never noticed that your eyes are such a startling green before?' Roarke wanted to know. 'It would be very easy to drown in them.'
She knew the feeling. She only had to look into his to feel the same. 'I'll throw you a life preserver,' she returned a tad breathlessly.
'Hey, you two!' A voice right beside them made them both start. They looked round to find one of Roarke's brothers grinning at them. 'This isn't the time or place for what you two were contemplating! Besides, lunch is being served. The amount of electricity coming off both of you, you'll need to stoke the boiler or you might run out of steam just at the wrong moment!' he added, and walked away laughing and grinning from ear to ear.
'Thanks for the advice, Jack!' Roarke called after him, whilst Ginny stood there with beetroot-coloured cheeks. She was very much aware that others had heard what Jack had said, and they were smiling as they went past.
'Sorry about that,' Roarke apologised, taking her arm and joining in the exodus to the dining room. 'One day I expect him to grow up.'
'Why is it the ground never opens up and swallows you just when you really wish it would?' Ginny groaned, glancing round under her lashes. It came as no surprise to meet the Brigadier's inimitable stony look, and realise that he had overheard what Jack had said too. 'Oh, great!' she muttered. It never rained but it poured. Still, his opinion of her was so low, this would hardly make a difference.
'What's up?'
'The Brigadier heard everything.'
'Forget it. Some people have the unhappy knack of being where you least want them to be,' he passed it off, then shot her a look. 'Does it bother you that he heard?'
Ginny sighed. 'No … maybe a little. It's the child in me that somehow still hopes to win his approval. Not very rational, but that's the way it is.'
'Sweetheart, he's a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. He won't change. He doesn't want to. It's his loss, but he'll never see it that way.'
Once again he astounded her with his perceptiveness. 'You've known him five minutes. How can you understand him so well?'
'Because I meet people just like him all the time,' Roarke returned with a faint shrug. 'They tend to have no sense of humour. It comes from taking themselves too seriously.'
'Something you could never be accused of,' she quipped, to which he chuckled.
'Life's hard enough without being able to find the funny side of it. Look at us, for instance. Now, that is funny.'
'Highly amusing, but I don't see you laughing,' Ginny pointed out sardonically.
'Somebody up there is having a huge joke at our expense, wouldn't you say? We've been skirmishing since the moment we met, and yet since yesterday what I want to do is get you alone somewhere, rip our clothes off and indulge in some indoor pursuit that I guarantee will give us both a great deal of pleasure.'
Instantly, Ginny's mind was filled with the vision exactly as he had described it, and it sent her temperature soaring. 'You don't go in for false modesty about your prowess, I notice,' she managed to say reasonably calmly, when she felt anything but calm.
Grey eyes glittered rakishly. 'I've had no complaints.'
'Yes, well, there's always a first time.'
Roarke laughed huskily. 'You'll be too out of breath to complain!'
She very nearly choked at that. It had to be the most downright arrogant thing he had ever said. 'I'd watch my step if I were you, or you'll be tripping over your ego!'
'I'm just telling it like it is.'
'Well, cut it out. You aren't helping to cool things down.'
He shrugged. 'The curse of an agile imagination. My mind insists on seeing the possibilities in vivid Technicolor.'
Ginny held up a cautionary hand. 'Don't tell me. I don't want to know. But you're right about one thing-the joke's on us. What I wouldn't give for a bargepole right now!' she added with wry amusement.
Roarke laughed softly, and the sound tingled its way along her nerves. She liked the sound of that laugh, which only went to prove she was losing her grip. Somebody up there was most certainly having the time of his life.
Several hours later, having consumed good food and good wine, with an appetite she hadn't expected, Ginny was feeling much more relaxed and at ease with the world. Fortunately, the seating arrangement had been traditional, so Ginny's family were on the top table, along with Roarke's. They themselves were on a table sufficiently far away to allow Ginny to forget them temporarily. The other guests at their table turned out to be distant cousins of Roarke's, and were a friendly group who had plenty of tales to tell about him, which he listened to with wry good humour, and kept the laughter bubbling.
They had just finished the inevitable speeches and toasts, and now the wedding guests began to mingle once more and let their hair down. A band arrived and began playing dance music, and slowly couples began to filter on to the floor. Ginny found herself in constant demand by Roarke's male relatives, and for most of the next hour she was barely off the dance floor for long. Finally she pleaded exhaustion and returned to the table. Roarke was already there, though she had seen him dancing occasionally as she circled the floor.
He watched her flop into her chair and take a much needed drink from her glass of now tepid white wine. 'I had no idea you were so popular,' he observed coolly, and Ginny looked at his set expression and burst out laughing.
'I do believe you're jealous!' she gurgled, emboldened by the wine, though she was not even close to being tipsy.
'Not jealous, but I didn't find the sight of you being fondled by so many of my male relatives amusing,' he corrected smoothly, though Ginny thought she detected an edge to the words.
'I wasn't fondled, as you so delicately put it. I tell a lie-one of your uncles tried to grope me, but he had had too much to drink.' She pooh-poohed the idea immediately.
'You should have slapped his face,' Roarke declared, and she stared at him in total surprise.
'He was just being friendly.'
'He was being familiar, and I didn't like it.'
Her jaw dropped. 'Then you slap his face,' she rejoined smartly. 'Roarke, you're being ridiculous,' she added irritably, yet inside she experienced a tiny glow of satisfaction at his reaction. Which then confused her because of course she didn't want him to be jealous. He was nothing to her, their recently discovered attraction to each other notwithstanding.
He was not impressed. 'May I remind you you're supposed to be here with me?'
She was beginning to get annoyed. 'I am with you, Roarke, but you're starting to make me regret it,' she told him bluntly.
'Lovers' tiff?' Jenna's catty question took them both by surprise. They had been so involved in their argument that they hadn't heard her arrive.
Ginny swung round on her chair. 'Do you make a habit of eavesdropping on private conversations?' she charged the other woman, eyes flashing angrily.
'Actually, darling, your conversation doesn't interest me in the slightest. I came to ask Roarke to dance with me,' Jenna responded disdainfully. She gave him her most alluring smile. 'One dance, Roarke, for duty's sake. What possible harm could there be in that?' she cajoled, leaving him very little choice.
He rose to his feet with a tight smile. 'Never let it be said I refused to do my duty,' he said, standing back so that Jenna could precede him on to the floor. The other woman left with a wave of her fingers and a smug smile.
Ginny decided she was coming to seriously dislike Jenna Adams. The woman was trouble and, judging from Roarke's past experiences with her, there were few lengths to which she wouldn't go to get her man. However, there was very little she could get up to on the dance floor with all the family around them, so Ginny took the opportunity to visit the ladies' cloakroom. She was sitting at one of the vanity units when the door opened again and Lucy came in.
'I thought I would never get the chance to talk to you,' Lucy said after the sisters had greeted each other with a hug. 'This is the one place even Dad wouldn't dare to go!' she added with a laugh.
Ginny laughed too, but she realised they didn't have much time, and there was something she desperately wanted to know. 'So, what were you going to tell me this morning? Why had things turned bad?'
Lucy sighed heavily. 'I met someone, Ginny. His name is Peter McMillan, and he's a law student in his final year. He's wonderful, and … I love him, Ginny, so much it hurts,' she said fervently, holding on to Ginny's hands.