One Night with Morelli(20)
Draco didn’t even blink. ‘Always good to know.’ He turned back to the weeping woman, who had backed into a corner, her face tear-streaked and her eyes red and puffy.
Marriage had given Draco a deep distrust of female tears. Clare had been able to turn them on and off like a tap and she had perfected the art so that they never smudged her make-up or gave her a blotchy nose. Her weeping was aesthetically perfect.
Comparing Clare’s artistic weeping with the sobs that intermittently shook this woman’s whole body despite her obvious efforts to control them was like comparing a spring shower with a monsoon. The emotions were genuine, he was conscious of that, along with a twisting of something close to sympathy in his chest, though if he’d been asked to put a name to it he’d have called it indigestion.
Draco had no desire to know the source of this emotional outpouring; he just wanted her to stop crying. In not one of the fantasies he had indulged in to get him through this long and interminably boring day had he pictured her like this.
He had imagined her many other ways, including wearing the striking lingerie, which a few casual enquiries had confirmed she actually designed, and also clad in nothing but an expression of passionate surrender.
His glance drifted over her face, heart-shaped, firm-chinned, her abundant warm-coloured hair springing from a high forehead. He liked his women well groomed and set the bar high, so it was surprising that, even now she was blotchy and tear-sodden, he still found much to please him about her.
He pondered the reason behind his fascination, and decided that the stubborn definition of her soft chin gave her face character and the generous defined line of her arched brows framed eyes that, when not bloodshot, were an almost unique shade of deep green. And of course the mouth that was fuelling his lust-filled fantasies… His wandering gaze stilled on the lush curves and he berated himself mentally after his first thought was about parting those soft pink lips and exploring their moist interior. At his side his long fingers flexed as he pictured himself tenderly brushing aside the curls that clustered around her face.
‘I’m fine.’ If being totally mortified counted as fine, she thought.
It was some comfort to Draco that she appeared to be gaining a semblance of control.
Maybe you should follow her example, suggested the sardonic voice in his head.
Hard to argue with when he was conscious of the heat pooling in his groin.
She struggled to pull in a deep breath as he continued to stare, making her skin prickle with heat. ‘Will you go away?’ She injected as much coldness into her voice as was possible while fighting another sob.
More accustomed to having women deliver responses designed to please rather than repel him, Draco took a few seconds to formulate a dignified response.
‘I would like nothing better.’ It ought to be true, but actually there were several things he would have preferred to do, though none of them was an option while his daughter was outside the door. ‘Look, you don’t want me here and I don’t want to be here—’
‘Then go away,’ she hurled, wiping her face on her forearm and wishing the floor would open up and swallow her when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror behind him. Mortifying enough to make a spectacle of herself but to do it with this man as a witness made it a million times worse.
‘My preferred option also,’ he bit back, losing his patience. The woman might have a supremely sexy mouth but there were limits to what he was prepared to tolerate to look at it. ‘My daughter came to me for help, and Josie retains a childlike belief in my ability to achieve the impossible. I struggle to keep the illusion alive.’