Her Christmas Fantasy. PENNY JORDAN

back at the end of the week. He didn’t want her walking into the flat and discovering that half her clothes are missing…’

      ‘No, I’m sure you…he…’ Lisa corrected herself tauntingly ‘…doesn’t…’

      She saw from the dark burn of angry colour etching his cheekbones that he wasn’t pleased by her deliberate ‘mistake’, nor the tone of voice she had delivered it in.

      ‘You have no legal claim over those clothes,’ he told her grimly. ‘The shop sold them without the owner’s permission.’

      ‘If that’s true, then it’s up to the shop to get in touch with me,’ Lisa pointed out. ‘After all, for all I know, you could want them for yourself…’ She paused. His temper was set on a hair-trigger already and although she doubted that he would actually physically harm her…

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she heard him breathe softly, as though he had read her mind.

      Inexplicably she realised that she was blushing slightly as, for no logical reason at all, she remembered exactly what she had been thinking about him—and his body—earlier in the day. Just as well he hadn’t second guessed her private thoughts then!

      ‘So you’re not prepared to be reasonable about this?’

      She be reasonable? Lisa could feel her own temper starting to rise.

      ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you that you could be putting someone’s whole relationship at risk by your refusal?’

      ‘Me putting a relationship at risk?’ Lisa gasped at the unfairness of it. ‘If you ask me, I’m not the one who’s doing that. If your relationship is so important to you, you should have thought of that before you lost your temper and decided to punish your girlfriend by selling her clothes—’

      ‘Emma is not my girlfriend,’ he told her with ominous calm. ‘As I’ve already explained to you, I am simply acting as an intermediary in all of this for my cousin. But then I suppose it’s par for the course that you should think otherwise. It goes with all the rest of your illogical behaviour,’ he told her scathingly.

      ‘If you ask me,’ she told him, thoroughly incensed now, ‘I think that Emma…whoever’s girlfriend she is—yours or your cousin’s…is better off without you. What kind of man does something like that…? Those clothes were virtually new and—’

      ‘Exactly. New and expensive and paid for by my cousin, who is a rather jealous young man who objects to his girlfriend wearing the clothes he bought her to attract the attentions of other men…’

      ‘And because of that he stole them from her wardrobe and sold them? It sounds to me as though she’s better off without you…without him,’ Lisa corrected herself fiercely, her eyes showing her contempt of a man—any man—jealous or otherwise, who could behave in such a petty and revengeful way.

      ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ she continued, patently anything but. ‘But explaining to Emma just exactly what’s happened to her clothes is your problem and not mine. I bought them in good faith—’

      ‘And you’ll be able to buy some more with the money I’m willing to refund you for them, especially since… Oh, I get it,’ he said softly, his eyes suddenly narrowing.

      ‘You get what?’ Lisa demanded suspiciously, not liking the cynicism she could see in his eyes. ‘Those clothes were virtually brand-new, this season’s stock, and I’d be very lucky indeed to pick up anything else like them at such a bargain price, especially at this time of year, and—’

      ‘Oh, yes, I can see what you’re after. All right then, I don’t like blackmailers and I wouldn’t normally give in to someone who plainly thinks she’s onto a good thing, but I haven’t got time to waste negotiating with you. What would you guess was the full, brand-new value of the clothes you bought today?’

      ‘The full value?’ A small frown puckered Lisa’s forehead. She had no idea at all of what he was getting at. ‘I have no idea. I don’t normally buy exclusive designer-label clothes, especially not Armani…but I imagine it would have to be several thousand pounds…’

      ‘Several thousand pounds.’ A thin, dangerous smile curled his mouth, his eyes so coldly contemptuous that Lisa actually felt a small, icy shiver race down her spine.

      ‘Why don’t we settle for a round figure and make it five thousand pounds? I’ll write you a cheque for five thousand here and now and you’ll give me back Emma’s clothes.’

      Lisa stared at him in disbelief.

      ‘But that’s crazy,’ she protested. ‘Why on earth should you pay me five thousand pounds when you could go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for her for that amount…?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I don’t—’

      ‘Oh, come on,’ he interrupted her cuttingly. ‘Don’t give me that. You understand perfectly well. Even I understand how impossible and time-wasting an exercise it would be for me to go out and replace every single item with its exact replica…even if I knew what it was I was supposed to be buying. Don’t overplay your hand,’ he warned her. ‘All that mock innocence doesn’t suit you.’

      Mock innocence!

      As she suddenly recognised just what he was accusing her of, Lisa’s face flushed a brilliant, furious scarlet.

      ‘Get out… Get out of my flat right now,’ she demanded shakily. ‘Otherwise I’m going to call the police. How dare you accuse me of…of…?’ She couldn’t even say the word, she felt such a sense of outrage and disgust.

      ‘I wouldn’t give you those clothes now if you offered to pay me ten thousand…twenty thousand,’ she told him passionately. ‘You deserve to lose Emma… In fact, I think I’m probably doing her a favour by letting her see just what kind of a man you are. I suppose you thought that just because you bought her clothes for her you had a right to…to take them back… If I were her… If I were her…’

      ‘Yes? If you were her, what?’ he goaded her, just as furious as she was herself, Lisa recognised as she saw the small pulse beating fiercely in his jaw and the banked-down fury in his eyes.

      ‘I wouldn’t have let you buy them for me in the first place,’ she threw emotionally at him, adding, ‘I’d rather—’

      ‘Rather what?’ he challenged her, his voice dropping suddenly and becoming dangerously, sensually soft as he raked her from head to foot in such a sexually predatory and searching way that it left her virtually shaking, trembling, her body overreacting wildly to the male sexuality in the way he was looking at her, the sensual challenge in the way his eyes deliberately stripped her of her clothes, leaving her body vulnerable…exposed…naked.

      ‘You’d rather what?’ he repeated triumphantly. ‘Go naked?’

      Lisa couldn’t speak; she was too shocked, too outraged, too aware of her feminine vulnerability to the blazing heat of his sexuality to risk saying anything.

      ‘But then in actual fact, according to you—since you refuse to believe the truth and accept that I am acting for my cousin and not for myself—you are wearing clothes that I have chosen…bought…’ he added softly, his glance slipping suggestively over her body for a second time, but this time more slowly, more lingeringly…more…more seductively, Lisa recognised as she felt herself responding helplessly to the sheer force of the magnetic spell he seemed to have cast over her.

      From somewhere she managed to find the strength to break free. Stepping back from him, putting a safer distance between them, averting her eyes and her over-flushed face from his powerful gaze, she demanded huskily, ‘I want you to leave. Now. Otherwise…’

      ‘You’ll call the police. I know,’ he agreed drily. ‘Very well, since it’s obvious I can’t make you see reason… I won’t forget how co-operative you’ve been,’ he added, sending a small shiver down her spine as she saw the look in his eyes. ‘Although I can