Too Wise To Wed?. PENNY JORDAN

but no one had the right to make her decisions for her and she was determined to make sure that this interfering would-be knight in shining armour was made aware of that fact.

      ‘Married men make by far the best lovers,’ she went on in deliberate provocation. ‘They’re normally so grateful to have a receptive, responsive woman in their bed after being frozen out sexually by their wives that they’ re only too willing to please, and, of course, once the fun is over you can send them home.’

      ‘Fun? You think of sex as fun—something recreational like baseball?’ he questioned sharply.

      ‘Yes,’ Star agreed, pleased to have pierced the armour of quiet self-assurance that he seemed to wear so easily and so irritatingly.

      ‘Don’t you?’ she challenged him mockingly.

      ‘No,’ he retorted immediately, ‘I don’t. So far as I am concerned, sex without emotion, without love, without all the things that bond two people together, is like a flower without perfume, initially appealing but on closer inspection a disappointment.’

      ‘That depends, surely, on your outlook?’ Star argued, adding when he looked questioningly at her, ‘On whether or not you want your flower to be perfumed. Some people don’t; some people are allergic to perfume.’

      Trust her, she was thinking ruefully. Outwardly this man, whoever he was, had all the male attributes that most appealed to her. Pity that he’d had to go and spoil it all by opening his mouth and voicing his opinions. An amusing thought suddenly occurred to her, making her eyes sparkle warningly. He deserved to be punished a little for his interference and his high-handed, moralistic manner and she certainly deserved to have a little fun.

      She couldn’t remember the last time she had devoted her energy to anything other than her work. Her last relationship had been over for—Oh... She was startled to realise that it was almost two years since she had told Jean Paul that their long distance affair was over.

      She had been celibate for two years! Amazing... Oh, yes, it was high time she had some fun.

      So he didn’t believe in sex without emotion, did he? Well, she didn’t believe him. No doubt he found it a good line with which to blind other women to the truth, but she was not like other women. No man really wanted commitment... No man really wanted a woman’s lifelong love. Oh, he might tell you he did at the start of a relationship, but sooner or later- he would revert to type—to want the challenge of someone fresh, someone new. Star had seen it happen so many, many times.

      Yes, it would be amusing to teach this man a lesson, to let him believe that he had deceived her with his insincerity, and even more amusing to bring him to the point where he was forced to admit just how good sex could be—for its own sake—and she would make him admit it; Star was determined on that point.

      ‘It’s normally my sex who express those particular views,’ she told him, letting her voice soften and become slightly husky, her eyes sending deliberately sensual messages to his as she played with her empty glass. Then she breathed, ‘Perhaps I will have that drink after all.’

      It never mattered how blatant you were or how insincere, Star reflected grimly as he fell into step beside her, guiding her through the crowd to a hovering waiter with a full tray of freshly poured cocktails. Men fell for it every time, greedily swallowing bait that surely in reality should have choked them.

      There hadn’t been a man born yet whose sexual ego didn’t outweigh his brains, she decided as she accepted the full glass he was handing to her..

      As she took the brimming glass from him a few drops fell onto her skin. Laughing provocatively, she made to lick them off, and then, looking straight into his eyes, offered him her wrist instead and whispered suggestively, ‘You do it...’

      To her chagrin, instead of taking up her sensual invitation, he produced a large white handkerchief and carefully dried her skin, telling her quietly, ‘I’m afraid it’s going to stay slightly sticky. Did any spill on your dress? It might—’

      ‘No, my dress is fine,’ Star told him angrily, snatching her wrist away from him, her skin burning slightly with an emotion that she realised with shock was humiliation.

      No man...no man had ever reacted to her like that...rejected her like that, and this one was certainly not going to be allowed to be the first.

      Stifling her pride and staying where she was instead of turning on her heel and storming away from him proved harder than she had anticipated, but somehow she managed it.

      ‘Are you a member of Brad’s family?’ she asked him, subtly studying the contours of his body as she waited for him to reply.

      Those muscles were certainly solid enough. What did he do? she wondered. Something that involved being outdoors a good deal of the time, perhaps.

      ‘No, I’m not. Are you related to Claire?’

      He sounded more polite than genuinely interested but Star refused to be put off.

      ‘No. I’m actually a friend of Sally, Claire’s stepdaughter,’ she explained. ‘In fact we’ve been friends since our schooldays; but I’m not just here as a friend—I’m here on business as well. I’m a consultant and Brad’s been asking my advice on how to improve the image of their British distribution arm...’

      A slight exaggeration of the truth but justified in the circumstances, Star excused herself. She was not normally given to exaggerating her own importance—in any area of her life. It was not normally necessary and she recognised that she was being far more forthcoming, supplying him with far more information about herself than she would normally have done.

      But then this was not just about sex, just about meeting an attractive and very sexy man and wanting to go to bed with him, it was about proving a point, about confirming one of life’s realities, about making him back down and admit that he was lying when he pretended to be so emotionally correct and right on!

      Engrossed in her own thoughts, Star missed the sudden, startled flare of recognition that darkened his eyes as he listened to what she was saying.

      ‘So...you won’t be attending the family dinner later this evening, then,’ Star commented, and offered temptingly, ‘Neither shall I.’

      In point of fact she had been invited but she knew that Sally and Claire would understand if she didn’t go.

      ‘No... No, I shan’t,’ he was agreeing, his impossibly dark blue eyes—in a woman Star would have instantly suspected coloured contact lenses but something told her that this man would never fall victim to such vanity—meeting hers and causing her pulse to race a little faster. Oh, yes, he was quite definitely her type, physically at least.

      ‘So both of us will be at a loose end,’ Star prompted. She was beginning to wonder if she had imagined the intelligence she had seen in his eyes earlier, he was so slow on the uptake.

      ‘Yeah, I guess it looks as though we will...’ he agreed in a slow drawl.

      ‘We could have dinner together,’ she persisted, ‘at my hotel; I’m staying at the Lakeside,’ she added, mentioning the town’s most luxurious hotel.

      ‘The Lakeside...’ He glanced at his watch—a plain, no-nonsense affair with a worn leather strap, Star noticed. ‘I could meet you in the foyer at eight?’

      ‘Eight will be fine.’ Star assured him, wondering what on earth she was letting herself in for.

      She said as much to Sally a few minutes later when her dinner date had excused himself and she had bumped into her and Chris walking across the lawn.

      ‘I hope I don’t have to work as hard in bed as I had to do to get him to have dinner with me,’ she told her friend feelingly.

      Sally laughed, although Star could see that Chris looked slightly uncomfortable. Men didn’t like it when a woman was sexually aggressive, it made them feel uneasy... threatened.

      ‘Where is he?’ Sally demanded.