Annie's Secret. Кэрол Мортимер

      She sat up abruptly, her manner instantly defensive as she glared up at him from behind her brown sunglasses. ‘Are you following me?’

      Luc felt only amusement at the accusation. Knowing that the flush of heat on her cheeks, and the way her nipples had hardened against the material of her blue bathing costume, was due to physical awareness rather than the angry indignation she wished to convey.

      In truth, he’d had no idea she was even on the beach when he decided to indulge in a swim before his meeting later this afternoon. But as he had stood on the warmth of the sand looking for a place in which to place his towel, he had spotted that familiar chestnut-coloured hair that had seemed to glow a deeper auburn in the warmth of the midday sun.

      Having swiftly established that it was the little firebrand of earlier this morning, Luc had been unable to resist the impulse to join her. To annoy her further perhaps? She did look so very beautiful when she was scowling at him.

      The black business suit and white blouse she had been wearing this morning had not done her justice, Luc realised once he had crossed the beach to stand looking down at her from behind black sunglasses.

      Her bare skin was tanned a pale gold, the top of the blue bathing costume cupping full and exquisite breasts, the thin strip of material that connected the top to the bottom of the costume at the front revealing the toned flatness of her waist and stomach above enticingly curvy hips and long, shapely legs.

      ‘What if I were following you?’ He answered her accusation teasingly.

      A frown appeared between her eyes. ‘Then I really would have to report your harassment to the hotel management.’

      ‘Please feel free to do so,’ Luc invited as he dropped down onto the sand beside her.

      The fact that he seemed so unconcerned by the threat told Annie that he somehow knew she would be wasting her time in making such a complaint.

      Just as her inner feeling of panic also told her that she was completely aware—achingly aware—of the hard promise of Luc’s almost naked body so close to her own that their thighs were almost touching.

      So close that she could feel the warmth emanating from his body. So close that she could smell his delicious masculine scent. So close she could have easily reached out and touched one of those hard and muscled thighs…

      Her fingers clenched so tightly in an effort not to do exactly that, that her nails dug painfully into the palms of her hands. ‘What is it you want, signore?’ she asked instead. ‘Surely there are enough willing women at this hotel that you don’t need to harass the only one who isn’t interested in you?’ Annie hadn’t missed the openly lascivious female glances in Luc’s direction since he had joined her on the sand. ‘Or is that the challenge?’ she added in disgust.

      An amused smile curved those sculptured lips. ‘Are you not being a little unkind to these other women?’ He ignored her second taunt.

      ‘I prefer to think of it as being truthful,’ Annie retorted waspishly.

      He raised dark brows. ‘And are you always truthful?’

      ‘I like to think so, yes.’

      ‘Hmm,’ he mused softly. ‘So, are you truly not interested in me?’

      Annie felt her cheeks colour in a revealing blush. ‘I’m not interested in any man who, when he’s away on business, just wants a weekend fling while out of sight of his wife and family.’

      ‘And if the man has no wife? Or family?’ he pressed.

      Her mouth compressed. ‘Don’t they all say that?’

      ‘Do they?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes,’ Annie replied. She may prefer to spend most of her time at Balfour Manor but that didn’t mean that she didn’t occasionally accompany her father when he went away on business. Or that her father’s presence protected her from the advances of some of the business associates she met at those times. On the contrary; the often scandalous exploits of Annie’s sisters seemed to have given most of those men the impression that all the Balfour sisters were open to seduction!

      Luc gave her a hard look. ‘In my case it happens to be the truth.’ Children to inherit, and a wife to provide those children, would one day be necessary, Luc accepted. But he would choose his own time, and the correct woman, when it came to filling that position.

      ‘I’m still not interested,’ she announced.

      He arched mocking brows. ‘No?’

      ‘No!’ she said with finality. ‘And I very much doubt you usually have to try this hard to seduce a woman into your bed either,’ she added.

      It was true that Luc usually only had to show the minimum of interest in a woman in order to make love with her. But of late, he recognised with a frown, those easy conquests had started to pall. To become boring.

      To the point that boredom had succeeded in piquing his interest in this bristly brunette? A woman so unlike the tall and model-thin blondes he was usually attracted to? Perhaps.

      He moved restlessly. ‘You presume to know me that well?’

      Annie gave a derisive snort. ‘I know your type that well,’ she claimed.

      ‘Indeed?’ There was a dangerous edge to Luc’s voice now.

      ‘Indeed,’ Annie echoed tauntingly.

      Luc continued to look at her for several long seconds, the colour burning in Annie’s cheeks by the time he stretched his long legs out in front of him and leant back on his hands in the sand to turn dismissively and gaze out across the lake.

      Giving Annie the opportunity to study him at close quarters unobserved. To once again note the changes in him. What had happened in the past four and a half years to change Luc from that young man, who had met every challenge with a recklessness that bordered on dangerous, to this remote and ruthlessly unyielding man whose every word and action proclaimed contempt for the very wildness he had once possessed in such abundance?

      Why should she care what had happened to him, Annie instantly rebuked herself, when the same intervening years had taken their toll on her own life and emotions? When he didn’t even remember their time together that had resulted in those changes in her life. When he didn’t even remember her!

      ‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go for a swim.’ Annie didn’t wait for Luc to reply as she rose abruptly to her feet and began to walk down the beach to the water’s edge.

      Luc slowly turned his head, his gaze admiring as he watched her fluidity of movement as she walked across the sand, arms lightly swinging, shoulders straight, her back long and supple, her hips gently swaying—

      He sat forward suddenly, the darkness of his narrowed gaze arrested on her lower back. On the tattoo revealed just above the soft rise of her left buttock!

      Luc’s breath caught in his throat as he stared at that tattoo. As the memories of a lush body naked in bed beneath him, wrapped around him, riding him as the woman smiled down at him seductively and her breasts jutted forward temptingly, came crashing into his head.

      He rose quickly to his feet to cross the sand in three long, determined strides, before reaching out to grasp her arm and swing her round to face him. ‘Annie?’ he exclaimed as he pushed his sunglasses up into the darkness of his hair to look down searchingly into her face.

      Once again the memory of those golden limbs entwined with his flashed graphically into his head. As did the silky softness of her skin as he’d kissed and tasted every inch of her body—the length of her back, that distinctive tattoo, the full curve of her bottom—before he had turned her over and explored the curve of her neck, the hard pebbles of her breasts, the gentle slope of her belly, the tiny nubbin nestled amongst the auburn curls between her legs as she writhed beneath him in the throes of ecstasy…

      The sudden