He arched an ebony brow. ‘Not yours?’
‘Oh, I find you fascinating,’ she trilled, taking pleasure from the flicker of something that might have been unease she saw move at the backs of his eyes.
‘So you have been discussing me with my daughter.’
‘You know how it is when girls are together…’
He responded to this with a veiled look that made it impossible for her to read his reaction—was he worried…? She hoped so!
‘Don’t play games with me, Eve.’ For the first time his low voice held a thread of anger as he took a step towards her.
‘Am I meant to be scared?’ The adrenaline rush that sharpened all her senses to a painful degree made her respond in an uncharacteristically reckless fashion—though compared with the reckless steps she’d taken recently this one was fairly innocuous.
He reached out and took her chin in his fingers, tilting her face up to him. ‘Some people are.’ Power, which for Draco was a by-product of his financial success, not an aim in itself, meant he was used to seeing the fear and envy that was often behind people’s smiles. They saw the public image and not the man and he had no problem with that; he had no wish to be understood or universally loved. ‘Not you,’ he said positively.
There was no escape from his searching stare—the truth was Draco himself didn’t frighten her. It was the way he made her feel that was beginning to scare Eve witless…
Still resisting the possibility she had more in common with her mother than she was prepared to or could admit, Eve shook her head and countered, ‘Should I be?’
His hand fell from her face to her shoulder, where his thumb moved restlessly back and forth over her collarbone as he stared down into her face feeling a sudden surge of protectiveness.
‘Probably. I don’t want to hurt you.’ But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t be collateral damage in what passed for his love life. He felt a sudden knife thrust of anger at himself. She was not meant to be so vulnerable but she was—and he’d seen it right from the beginning.
She watched him warily. His honesty had finally drained all the anger from her; maybe he deserved some in return.
‘I thought you had planned it all,’ she admitted in a small voice.
Even though his hand fell away he remained so close that she imagined she could feel the warmth of his body.
‘After Josie told me about the custody battle and that your ex is using the emotional vacuum of what passes for your love life as leverage…’ Her eyes lifted. ‘No insult intended.’
The tension in his jaw relaxed as he read the sincerity in her face.
‘I decided that when you came to my office this morning you knew exactly what was going to happen…I mean…’
‘That we’d end up having wild sex in my study and my family would walk in on us.’
On the receiving end of his dark intense stare, she felt her temperature shoot up several degrees. ‘I’m trying to apologise.’
His eyebrows rose incredulously.
‘I can now see that it was—’
‘Spontaneous?’