The Taming of Xander Sterne(33)

                She frowned. ‘I don’t think I care for the way you keep calling me that.’

                His eyes flashed darkly. ‘And I don’t think I care for being lied to.’

                Her mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘Then maybe you should stop asking questions I obviously don’t want to answer.’

                Xander felt some of his rising tension leave him as he smiled ruefully. ‘Now that was honest.’

                She frowned. ‘I am invariably honest. You just keep asking me questions that are none of your business, and then won’t accept it when I refuse to answer them.’

                ‘Would you please sit down and enjoy your brandy?’ he invited huskily as he patted the leather seat cushion beside him.

                Samantha walked further into the room, but she made no effort to sit beside him as she instead picked up one of the glasses of brandy from the coffee table and took a large swallow, only to then draw her breath in sharply as the fiery liquid caught the back of her throat. ‘Whoa,’ she gasped breathlessly, her cheeks becoming flushed, tears blurring her vision.

                Xander chuckled softly. ‘You’re supposed to sip a fine brandy, Samantha, not glug it back like cheap wine.’

                ‘And what would you know about cheap wine?’ she scorned as she moved to sit in one of the armchairs, bending her legs at the knees before tucking her bare feet beneath her, the glass of brandy cradled in both her hands.

                ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he acknowledged dryly. ‘So who was he, Samantha?’

                ‘Who was who?’ She tensed guardedly.

                A very revealing guardedness and tension.

                ‘The man at the hotel. Was he a past lover?’ Xander pressed. ‘Or maybe a current one, that you discovered was out on the town with another woman behind your back?’

                ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snapped crossly.

                ‘Which part of what I said was ridiculous?’ Xander raised his brows. ‘The old lover or the new lover?’

                ‘Both,’ she dismissed. ‘I don’t have any old lovers, and I’m too busy working and being a mother to Daisy to have the time for any new ones either.’

                Interesting...

                Did that mean that Daisy’s father had been the only man ever to share her bed? To touch every naked inch of her?

                That seemed a little hard to believe when he knew that Samantha had been divorced for the past three years. Was she saying she also hadn’t had sex with anyone for the past three years?

                Xander didn’t think he’d ever gone three months without a woman in his bed, let alone three years.

                He looked across at her now through narrowed lids. ‘How old are you?’

                ‘I— What?’ She looked nonplussed by the question.

                ‘How old are you?’ Xander repeated with a shrug. ‘It’s a simple enough question, I would have thought.’

                Simple maybe, but Sam didn’t see what her age had to do with anything, let alone their present—and deeply personal—conversation. ‘How old are you?’ she countered challengingly.