Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere. Abigail Gordon

foot in it.

      Mike’s eyebrows lifted. ‘Are you suggesting we might continue on there for lunch, together?’

      ‘Well, I...’ Did she want that? To meet his parents? It seemed perfectly pointless and futile under the circumstances, but in an odd sort of way, yes, she did want to, did want to fill in the hazy picture of Mike’s background. It seemed sad to love a man and not really know him.

      ‘If you like,’ she said lamely.

      ‘I don’t like,’ he snarled.

      She blinked shock at his attitude.

      ‘You don’t know my mother,’ he went on testily. ‘One look at you and she’ll start knitting baby-bootees.’

      Salome blinked again.

      ‘My dear Salome...’ he tipped up her chin with a single fingertip, looking deeply into her eyes with a dry, cynical expression ‘...all Italian Mammas want their sons married with a whole brood of children to spoil. You might not realise it but, dressed as you are today, you look the image of wholesome womanhood, ripe for marriage and babies!

      ‘So much for images,’ he muttered and, sliding his hand around under the weight of hair at her neck, he captured her mouth in a kiss not intended to convey anything wholesome.

      Salome wished she hadn’t responded, wished she had kept her lips pressed firmly together, her tongue still. But her love doomed her to failure. She moaned under his seductive onslaught, which only made matters worse. Impassioned by the sound of her arousal, his fingers tightened in the soft flesh of her neck, his mouth increasing its pressure, his free hand sliding up under her jumper to cover a single lace-cupped breast, to tease her nipple to rock-like hardness.

      When he let her go she staggered back against the car. ‘I think, perhaps, you’d better get in,’ he ground out. ‘Or shall we forget the whole damned business and go back up to bed?’

      She stared at him. He meant it. He actually meant it. And, worst of all, she was tempted. God, what was she coming to, accepting this man’s derision in the same breath as his kisses? Surely love didn’t demand that a woman give up her self-respect, did it?

      Yet if she tried to convince him he was all wrong about her he wouldn’t believe her. Not that she could entirely blame him for that. She had dug her own grave with her behaviour at his restaurant over the years. Even as late as last night, she had implied that she had taken various lovers since her divorce, ones which she didn’t even bother to go out with.

      Then there was the way she had acted with him in bed, with such uninhibited abandon. How could she explain that away if she was to claim relative innocence? By admitting she loved him? He would laugh. Or, even worse, use her admission to corrupt her further to his wishes. For he didn’t want her love, only her total submission. Which, from the way he could make her feel with a simple kiss, was not far off anyway.

      Even now he was looking at her with a smug, expectant look on his face, waiting for her to agree to a return to bed.

      With great difficulty Salome dredged up a semblance of a smile, letting her eyes cool as they looked up at him. They landed on his smouldering eyes, drifted down to his beckoning mouth, dropped further to his taut virility, all without so much as a visible flicker.

      Once again, she was struck by her capacity to act a part. Thanks to her treacherous husband! But how well she had learnt her lessons, managing to go from tortured, aroused woman to controlled sophisticate in twenty seconds. ‘They say pleasure is increased by the waiting, Mike,’ she said in a voice designed to dampen even the hottest lover. ‘Let’s wait.’

      She turned away and lowered herself gracefully into the car, sliding the seatbelt across her breasts, trying to ignore their swollen state and the way her nipples were jutting hard right through her soft bra to be outlined against the lemon wool. Her cheeks pinked under the feel of Mike’s searing glare, but she refused to look up. Finally, he swung the door shut, striding around to unlock his side and climb in behind the wheel. His sidelong glance was savage as he shoved the key into the ignition, fired the engine and slammed the gear-stick into reverse. But the car remained stationary, his hand curling over the gear-stick, his knuckles whitening as he again looked daggers at her.

      ‘That was what the fiasco in the lift was last night, wasn’t it?’ he pronounced harshly. ‘A game of tease. You always planned to give in eventually, didn’t you? Tell me, did it titillate you further, hone your undeniably voracious sexual appetite, to make me wait?’

      She stared back at him and gulped. This was taking her role-playing too far. ‘No,’ she denied. ‘It wasn’t like that at all!’

      He seemed taken aback by her vehemence. ‘What, then?’

      ‘I—I was embarrassed...confused... Drunk!’ she added in desperation.

      He made a scoffing sound. ‘Not that drunk.’

      She threw her head back to stare straight ahead. ‘You don’t have to believe me,’ she said stiffly.

      ‘I sure as hell don’t! One day, Salome,’ he growled, ‘you’ll play your sexual games with the wrong partner. In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if poor old Charles might not have been on the end of a few of them.’

      Her head snapped around in automatic outrage. ‘Charles needed no encouragement,’ she protested. ‘You don’t honestly believe I’d let a man like that touch me, do you?’ An involuntary shudder rippled through her, revealing the shaken, vulnerable woman she was.

      Mike frowned across at her, then shook his head. ‘God knows what I believe any more. You’ve got me stumped.’

      Salome wanted to cry. She had him stumped? She was the one who was stumped! Well and truly. A crazy laugh escaped her lips before she could snatch it back.

      ‘And what does that mean?’ he flung at her.

      Now she couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Nothing... nothing.’

      He muttered something decidedly obscene, and backed out like a madman, screeching up the ramp from the basement like a teenage hoodlum showing off. But he wasn’t showing off, Salome realised as her hysteria died and she saw the evidence of real pain on his face. He was hurting, hurting badly.

      It shocked her. Shocked and puzzled her. Why should it bother him to believe bad things of her? He wanted her badly, didn’t he? Her thoughts confused and depressed her, and she sat in silence as Mike weaved his way through the busy lanes, eating up the miles between McMahon’s Point and Killara in record time.

      She sagged with relief when the Jaguar screeched into the kerb outside Molly’s. But, with the engine suddenly dead, the silence and tension between them was excruciating. Mike made a frustrated sound and turned towards her. ‘Salome...’

      Her green eyes carried true bewilderment and unhappiness as they reluctantly faced him. ‘Yes?’

      He sighed when he saw them. ‘I’m sorry. What I said...I didn’t really mean it. I—I know you didn’t lead Charles on. I know your fear and shock last night was genuine. And I know you weren’t deliberately teasing me in the lift. It just happened between us, didn’t it? Though why you had to run away afterwards, I’ll never understand.’

      Tears rushed into her eyes. Tears of relief. She hadn’t realised how much his vile accusations had been tearing her apart.

      ‘Please don’t cry,’ he rasped.

      ‘No,’ she agreed, blinking furiously.

      ‘I said I was sorry. There’s no reason to cry.’

      No reason to cry? she thought wretchedly. No reason? Oh, Mike...if only you knew...

      They both sat in silence for a minute as she got herself under control, drawing a tissue from her handbag and wiping her nose.

      ‘Shall we go inside?’ he finally suggested. ‘I’ll make the call to my parents while