Flirting with Danger by Bev Hardy (digital e reader TXT) 📖

to tempt her only minutes earlier and, as always, she had brushed him off.

He watched her hands, which had been pressed against his chest, abruptly spring away from him as if they had been stung.

His hands, nevertheless, didn't seem to want to relinquish their hold on her waist. He was close enough at that moment to experience a waft of some exotic bodywash she had obviously used in the shower. He recalled watching her pouring it onto that sponge and had a flashback to the sight of her showering behind that frosted glass screen.

"Luke?"

What was he doing?

"Hmm?" he echoed her earlier response.

She lifted her face to him.

"I don't think it's a good idea for you to be seen in my front garden like this," she said, glancing down again at his chest, still much too close for comfort.

Damn it, she had meant that to come out a hell of a lot more firmly. Instead, her voice had seemed far too soft to be reprimanding.

"Yeah, sure," he replied, gazing down at her.

Eh? What did that mean? Charlie was beginning to lose track of the whole conversation. For goodness sake, she should just forget it and get back upstairs.

"Hadn't you better take that shower?" she said, forcing herself to sound more in control as she returned her attention to his face again.

"Hmm," he replied again vaguely, caught in her gaze.

Man her eyes were blue... real blue!

"Adams? Move then," she said, trying her hardest to focus under his scrutiny.

"You move," he challenged.

She searched his face with confusion. "You'll have to let go."

He'd forgotten that he still had hold of her waist. Finally, he seemed to shake himself out of his trance. "Oh yeah, sure," he replied, dropping his hands.

Charlie made a quick dash for the stairs again, feeling Luke's eyes burning into her back as she climbed each step.

At last, she reached the sanctuary of her bedroom door and, with relief, turned to see Luke enter the bathroom.

Right, she had to force her chaotic mind back to practicalities. She had to get changed, go back to the club with Luke and then get back there to meet Richie later that afternoon.

Her bedroom was decidedly colder than usual that day, as the heating hadn't been used for a few days now, and Charlie's damp robe was becoming uncomfortably chilly. Searching through her drawers for a nightgown to pop on whilst she dried her hair and found appropriate clothes to wear, she was dismayed to realize that all of her practical nightwear had been moved to Richie's house earlier that week; all that remained were the flimsy, lacy lingerie that she rarely had occasion to wear. Oh well, it was better than nothing. Picking out a deep burgundy satin and lace night dress, she discarded her robe and slipped on the dry garment.

Strolling over to her dressing table, she picked up a brush and began untangling her hair. Once having eased the brush smoothly through one side of her hair, she turned her head to tackle the other. It was then that she caught a glimpse of Luke in her bathroom across the hallway, through her half open bedroom door. The sudden image of him in there half naked, about to strip completely, shocked her. Okay, she'd known he was in there, but actually seeing him in her bathroom ...it pressed home that Luke was back in her life, and in a more personal capacity than he had been before. Now they were no longer work colleagues; any time they spent together was because there was a willingness on both of their parts. So why was it again that she had been so willing? She had thought that she wanted him out of her life... hadn't she?

Why the bloody hell couldn't he have shut the door?

Turning from that disturbing sight, she tried, not for the first time that day, to bring her thoughts back to reality. He had been going to ask her to shower with him before by the banister. It wasn't as though he hadn't tried a similar thing again and again before. Of course, she'd always turned him down. Worryingly though, at that moment, she found her mind tiptoeing around the idea, like some trespasser, treading on ground that it shouldn't be going anywhere near. The idea was preposterous. If he could make her burn up by just the way he looked at her, how the hell would she cope with even a passionate kiss, let alone the intimacy of lovemaking! And he'd make the very most of her surrender too; she just knew it. He'd kiss her and tease her and drive her close to insanity with his touches. She'd be lost and utterly at his mercy. It could never happen.

She went to stand then decisively to close her bedroom door, but before she could rise from the stool, her legs failed her as the focus of her thoughts was staring directly at her from across the bathroom. Adrenalin shot through her at the expression on his face, and she was rendered motionless. Had he seen her watching him moments before? He couldn't have, surely. But then why was he staring at her like that? She had to break eye contact. She had to get up and close the bedroom door, but the nightslip she was wearing was so revealing. Too much for her to cope with Luke's gaze on her in it.

She turned her head then, breaking their gaze and busying herself with brushing the rest of her hair. She would shut the door when he got in the shower and wasn't looking.

Had Charlie really been watching him just then?

Luke's head had too many thoughts racing around it. It didn't help that, the moment he stepped under the steamy water of the shower, the scent of Charlie hit him like a tonne of bricks. It was as if she were all around him, there in the shower, the steam intensifying the scent of her. She had after all, only just left not so many minutes before, and he had, after all, got a fairly good picture of what she might look like if she was there with him. Not a perfectly clear picture, but his imagination was doing pretty well at that moment filling in the missing details!

Hoping to clear his head, he ducked it under the stream of water, smoothing his hair back afterwards and turning around to douse the rest of his body. That was the second shower he had taken that day, and the second time that he'd spent most of it with Charlie dominating his thoughts. He was confused though.

When he'd flown back, he had known he would try to find Charlie immediately. There were too many things left in the air in the way that he'd been forced to leave, and besides which, he just wanted to see her again. But he hadn't been under any illusions that she would want anything more than just a casual friendship with him, if that. She had been given the opportunity to contact him when he had left a phone number with the boss, but she had chosen not to. It had hurt, but he had grown to accept it in the years that had followed.

In the time before he realized that she wasn't going to contact him however, he had thought many times about that conversation between himself and the boss the first time she had left MI5. Those couple of months before he left for New York had been pretty damn good. He'd somehow been more aware of every little touch, every time their gazes had crossed, the smiles between them. The thought that the boss could have been right, and that she might actually really care for him deeply, had been beyond exciting. This was why he was so shocked that she hadn't tried to phone him. Obviously the boss had been wrong all along. That was the reason he hadn't returned to the UK sooner, but, with the Borelli situation worsening, it made sense to return and at least try to patch things up with her.

During those seven years apart though, and with the thought that she hadn't wanted contact with him, he must have forgotten what it felt like to be in her company. He had been totally unprepared for the effect seeing her again would have on him...and what's more, he was sure it wasn't one-sided either. That was what confused him so much. But to him, all the chemistry between them was still there, the same as before, as if no time had passed at all. He hadn't expected that. Was he just going nuts and imagining all of this, or what?

Right, he had to look at the evidence. The chess game. She had been seriously flirting with him then. Okay, so maybe she was just trying to put him off but... alright, alright, not concrete evidence. So, what else? The dance. She'd let him touch her quite boldly before she'd suddenly freaked, but she hadn't moved away immediately; he'd got his hand down her dress for goodness sake. Damn it, he was beginning to ache again at the thought of it. The invitation to share the sofa with her too; that had been pretty hot. Not to mention the way they had woken up in the morning, and he was sure that she had been awake sooner than she had let on. He sensed her alertness; it was only because the cleaners had interrupted that he didn't get the chance to find out if she really had been awake or not. Then there was when they had bumped into each other just before and she hadn't moved away; she sort of froze and everything went kind of fuzzy, the way it sometimes did for a moment or two when they were close.

Weighing up all that evidence, together with the fact that she was, at that moment, in her bedroom dressed in that sexy lingerie, grrrr, hesitant eyes taking sneaky little glances at him, the little minx...wait a minute, with all that evidence, any cop, agent, PI...guy...whatever, anyone would be nuts not to conclude that she wasn't hot for him. Knowing Charlie though, she was probably trying her best not to let it get the better of her. She always followed the rules, and was most likely thinking of Richie. Clearly she didn't want him though, or she wouldn't have turned him down and be flirting with Luke.

What should he do? Then other instances from the day before kept popping up in his head, strengthening his conviction that Charlie really was hot for him. The time when she'd glanced at his lips and he was sure she'd wanted him to kiss her. Adrenalin began to pump the more excited he got at these thoughts... hell, how could he have forgotten the way she'd looked at him when Sue and whatever his name was, were having sex in the other room? She'd been burning up, real turned on. Damn it, he knew how she felt! This was nuts…

Turning off the shower suddenly, Luke grabbed a towel from off the rail and climbed out of the bath, briefly drying himself before wrapping the towel around his waist.

He was going to face Charlie once and for all and make her admit the heat between them! Then they'd share that bath she'd been so keen on having!

Chapter 15