Modern Romance March 2015 Collection 1. Кэрол Мортимер

      It was certainly a more plausible explanation for the heated encounter than the one Samantha had just given him.

      That flare of temper Xander had felt—and so feared feeling again—when he first saw the guy manhandling Samantha had now settled into a deep-down coldness.

      He still wanted to strangle the man, for daring to put his hand on Samantha, but it was in a cold and measured way, rather than down to a heated lack of control.

      Whether or not that control would last was anyone’s guess!

      ‘Fine,’ he agreed tersely to Samantha’s suggestion as he and Daisy stepped into the lift beside her, deciding to let the conversation go. For now.

      But he had every intention of making Samantha tell him the truth about the man who had accosted her.

      And sooner rather than later.

      * * *

      ‘Daisy okay?’ Xander enquired as Samantha hovered in the doorway of the sitting room after bathing her daughter and putting her to bed.

      ‘Already fast asleep.’ Samantha nodded. She’d changed into a thin blue sweater and faded jeans, her feet were bare, and her hair once again secured at her crown.

      ‘Join me for a nightcap.’ Xander held up a decanter of brandy, having removed his morning jacket and cravat, and unfastening the top button of his wing-collared white shirt. ‘And before you even think about saying no thank you, in your oh-so-polite manner—’ his voice hardened as he poured the brandy into two crystal glasses ‘—it wasn’t a request.’ He looked across at her challengingly.

      Sam felt an uneasy lurch of her stomach as she recognised Xander’s uncompromising expression. ‘I’m tired.’

      ‘It’s only a little after ten o’clock.’

      ‘And it’s been a long and exciting day.’

      ‘Then a brandy will help relax you before you go to bed.’ He left his walking stick beside the fireplace as he limped slowly across the room to place the two glasses of brandy down on the coffee table before sinking down onto the cream leather sofa.

      ‘I’m already relaxed.’

      ‘Liar.’ Xander could literally feel Samantha’s tension, and he could see it too, in the way she held herself so stiffly.

      She frowned. ‘I don’t think I care for the way you keep calling me that.’

      His eyes flashed darkly. ‘And I don’t think I care for being lied to.’

      Her mouth set in a stubborn line. ‘Then maybe you should stop asking questions I obviously don’t want to answer.’

      Xander felt some of his rising tension leave him as he smiled ruefully. ‘Now that was honest.’

      She frowned. ‘I am invariably honest. You just keep asking me questions that are none of your business, and then won’t accept it when I refuse to answer them.’

      ‘Would you please sit down and enjoy your brandy?’ he invited huskily as he patted the leather seat cushion beside him.

      Samantha walked further into the room, but she made no effort to sit beside him as she instead picked up one of the glasses of brandy from the coffee table and took a large swallow, only to then draw her breath in sharply as the fiery liquid caught the back of her throat. ‘Whoa,’ she gasped breathlessly, her cheeks becoming flushed, tears blurring her vision.

      Xander chuckled softly. ‘You’re supposed to sip a fine brandy, Samantha, not glug it back like cheap wine.’

      ‘And what would you know about cheap wine?’ she scorned as she moved to sit in one of the armchairs, bending her legs at the knees before tucking her bare feet beneath her, the glass of brandy cradled in both her hands.

      ‘Absolutely nothing,’ he acknowledged dryly. ‘So who was he, Samantha?’

      ‘Who was who?’ She tensed guardedly.

      A very revealing guardedness and tension.

      ‘The man at the hotel. Was he a past lover?’ Xander pressed. ‘Or maybe a current one, that you discovered was out on the town with another woman behind your back?’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she snapped crossly.

      ‘Which part of what I said was ridiculous?’ Xander raised his brows. ‘The old lover or the new lover?’

      ‘Both,’ she dismissed. ‘I don’t have any old lovers, and I’m too busy working and being a mother to Daisy to have the time for any new ones either.’

      Interesting...

      Did that mean that Daisy’s father had been the only man ever to share her bed? To touch every naked inch of her?

      That seemed a little hard to believe when he knew that Samantha had been divorced for the past three years. Was she saying she also hadn’t had sex with anyone for the past three years?

      Xander didn’t think he’d ever gone three months without a woman in his bed, let alone three years.

      He looked across at her now through narrowed lids. ‘How old are you?’

      ‘I— What?’ She looked nonplussed by the question.

      ‘How old are you?’ Xander repeated with a shrug. ‘It’s a simple enough question, I would have thought.’

      Simple maybe, but Sam didn’t see what her age had to do with anything, let alone their present—and deeply personal—conversation. ‘How old are you?’ she countered challengingly.

      ‘Thirty-three,’ he answered without hesitation.

      That put Sam in the position of looking petty if she didn’t reciprocate.

      She sighed. ‘I’m twenty-six.’

      His brows rose. ‘You must have been very young when you married?’

      She grimaced. ‘What does age have to do with anything when you fall in love?’ Or believe you’ve fallen in love.

      ‘I can’t answer that, as I’ve never fallen in love.’ Xander shrugged. ‘That means you could only have been twenty-one when Daisy was born.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And just twenty-three when you and your husband separated and then divorced?’

      Sam felt her tension deepen as she wondered exactly where this conversation was going. ‘Yes.’

      ‘And you’re saying that you haven’t had sex even once since then? Not even with your ex-husband, for old times’ sake?’ Xander seemed to remember reading that a high percentage of separated couples did that.

      Samantha’s face paled, her hands shaking as she tightly gripped the glass of brandy. ‘Don’t be disgusting,’ she finally managed to gasp.

      Xander’s eyes were narrowed as he gave a slow shake of his head. ‘I don’t buy the story you gave me earlier, Samantha. I believe you did know the man who spoke to you at the hotel. That you know him very well.’

      ‘Did you know him?’

      ‘Me?’ Xander frowned as he brought an image of the man back into his head. ‘I couldn’t see his face properly, because he was turned away from me, but I didn’t know him, that I’m aware of.’ Although it was interesting that Sam had asked. ‘I still think that you did, or still do, know him very well indeed.’

      She sat forward to slam the bulbous brandy glass down onto the table beside her with such vehemence that some of the alcohol spilt over the rim of the crystal glass. ‘How did we progress from me telling you I’m tired, to you accusing me of having once been intimate with some stranger I met in a hotel who mistook me for someone else?’

      Considering