Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

and that’s why you’ve already prejudged me. You want to think the worst of me. You want to believe that I’m...I’m...’

      ‘A blackmailer,’ Luke supplied relentlessly for her. ‘You condemned yourself with your own words, Bobbie.’

      ‘That was a private conversation,’ she told him angrily, ‘and one that you’ve completely misinterpreted. Ruth abandoned my mother when she was less than a couple of days old. Have you any idea what that meant? No, of course you haven’t. My mother was rejected at birth by her own mother—totally and completely abandoned. Something like that hurts and goes on hurting all through a person’s life....’

      ‘And so you decided to make Ruth hurt, as well, but through her bank account rather than her emotions,’ Luke taunted her cynically.

      ‘No, that’s not true,’ Bobbie denied fiercely. ‘Ruth is my grandmother,’ she reminded him. ‘You surely don’t think...’

      ‘The grandmother who didn’t want you, who rejected your grandfather and your mother,’ Luke pointed out cruelly. ‘In a world where it isn’t unknown for children to murder their parents to get their hands on their money, why should I believe that you have any warm feelings for Ruth, why should anyone? In fact—’

      ‘You want to believe the worst of me,’ Bobbie cried out passionately. ‘You’ve been antagonistic towards me, suspicious of me, right from the start.’

      ‘With good reason,’ Luke told her curtly. ‘As it happens, it never occurred to me that you might be a potential blackmailer but I did rather wonder, in view of your suspicious curiosity about the history of our family, if you were thinking of attempting a similar bogus claim as a client of mine was subjected to last year when someone turned up claiming to be his illegitimate son.

      ‘Fortunately we were able to prove that his claim was totally fictitious, but the stress of what he was put through caused my client to suffer some acute anxiety and it also placed a great deal of strain on his marriage since this young man was claiming that he had actually been conceived during the early years of the marriage.’

      ‘It does happen.’ Bobbie observed.

      ‘Maybe, but in my view that isn’t any justification for the havoc that the result of some unfortunate liaison can cause.’

      ‘The result. You’re talking about human beings,’ Bobbie told him passionately. ‘People with feelings ...with needs, with emotions...but, of course, that’s something you wouldn’t know anything about, isn’t it?’ she flung at him furiously.

      ‘On the contrary, I know exactly what it means,’ Luke corrected her softly.

      An electric tension suddenly seemed to have filled the room, making it difficult for Bobbie to breathe properly. She could hear the rapid shallowness of her own breathing and was even more conscious of the heavy unevenness of Luke’s making an agonizingly sensual counterpoint to her own.

      She could see a small betraying pulse beat under Luke’s skin as he hardened his jaw and, like a forest fire spreading over dry, desperately thirsty timber, all it took was the merest breath of air, the smallest indrawn breath, to fan and spread the dangerous flames Bobbie could feel leaping so fiercely to life inside her; all that was needed was the merest spark to set alight the raging conflagration of passion they had shared earlier, and for her, in making that verbal reference to it, Luke had supplied that spark.

      Hungrily she focused on his mouth and was unable to make herself look away. Think about Mom, then about Sam...think about how Luke has insulted you, misjudged you...hurt you, she warned herself, but it was no use. The fire was already burning out of control and she was consumed by it and with the searing heat of her own need—a need she knew instinctively that Luke shared.

      ‘My God, you know what you’re inviting...inciting... don’t you?’ Luke warned her rawly, but he was still coming towards her, closing the gap between them, taking hold of her with the same bruising grip he had used earlier but which they both knew had nothing to do with wanting to imprison or hurt her.

      Bobbie didn’t even try to escape or move. She simply stood there watching... waiting... knowing...

      ‘You realise that this time I’m not going to be able to stop, don’t you?’ Luke told her thickly. ‘You know what’s going to happen between us...what’s destined to happen between us....’

      ‘You hate me,’ Bobbie reminded him, making a last feeble bid to drag them both back to sanity and reality.

      ‘Yes,’ Luke agreed bleakly, ‘I hate you. I hate myself, too. In fact, I loathe and despise the pair of us. You, and myself even more so for knowing what you are and yet still wanting you. Wanting you,’ he groaned and then said savagely, ‘Dear God, if only it were that simple. I shouldn’t have brought you here!’

      ‘Then let me go,’ Bobbie said simply. She wasn’t going to plead with him, to beg to be set free and besides... It was her pride that was stopping her from doing so, she assured herself heatedly. That was all. Her pride...nothing else and most certainly not the twisting, aching, crying need for him that was tormenting her so painfully.

      ‘I can’t,’ Luke told her broodingly, focusing abruptly on her as he added, ‘You know that and you know why....’

      ‘Because...because of Ruth,’ Bobbie whispered, her mouth suddenly dry, her heart pounding with heavy, slow strokes that made her feel breathless and light-headed.

      She stiffened as Luke’s tortured gaze dropped to her mouth. He lifted his hand and dragged the hard pad of his thumb along her bottom lip.

      The sensation of the slight roughness of his skin moving against the sensitive flesh of her mouth, already swollen from the passionate kisses they had exchanged at Queensmead, made Bobbie’s whole body shiver in sensual pleasure—a reaction which she knew Luke had to have registered.

      His thumb stopped moving, the air between them so charged with their mutual tension that Bobbie could hardly breathe.

      ‘You do know what you’re doing to me, don’t you?’ Luke demanded roughly before his head came down.

      Instinctively Bobbie tried to protect herself from what she knew was going to happen, trying to sink her teeth into his thumb in a defensive action born out of panic; only instead of withdrawing from her in angry pain, Luke pressed his thumb deeper into her mouth, caressing the soft, swollen, exquisitely responsive inner flesh of her lip.

      ‘Look at me,’ Bobbie heard him commanding her rawly. ‘Look at me and see what you’re doing to me.’ She battled and failed to control the soft moan of tormented pleasure that escaped her. ‘Look at me, Bobbie.’

      Helplessly she did so, her own eyes widening in shocked recognition of the desire, the arousal, the fiercely male pleasure she could see burning so darkly in his eyes.

      It was impossible for her to look away, impossible, too, for her to prevent him from seeing in her own expression her feminine counterpoint to his arousal.

      Weakly she gave in to the need overpowering her, touching his flesh with the tip of her tongue, savouring the taste and texture of it before wantonly drawing it deeper into her mouth, stroking and sucking on his thumb with a rhythmic urgency she was far, far beyond controlling.

      Through the heat haze of her own passion, she heard Luke mutter something beneath his breath and then he was kissing her mouth with the kind of passion that sent her own body into a tumultuous response, wrapping his arms around her and still kissing her; picking her up and carrying her through to the bedroom.

      Bobbie had a vague impression of cool neutral colours and natural fabrics, a large bed with polished wooden headboard and footboard, a couple of matching, very masculine chests, the clean, fresh smell of cedar warmed by sandalwood as though the creamily soft bedlinen had been stored in an antique armoire.

      As he laid her on the bed, Bobbie could see the entwined initials embroidered onto the pillows, a legacy, no doubt, from some past Crighton’s bride’s lovingly prepared