Still Lake - Anne Stuart [42]
“Think what?” She bit into one of the small, wonderful cookies, her white teeth severing it, her tongue pulling the rich flavor into her generous mouth. Shit, he had to stop thinking about sex.
“I’m not letting you drive this car, no matter how much you appreciate it. No one drives it but me. It’s got too much power for most people, and besides, you probably don’t even know how to drive a standard shift.”
He’d managed to get her back up. Not much of an improvement over her dazed, erotic reaction to his car. Basically everything she said and did was turning him on.
“I like to drive stick,” she said in an ominous voice.
“Oh, yeah? You don’t look to me as if you’ve had much practice,” he murmured. “You strike me as someone who’s been cruising on automatic for years.”
He had no idea whether she knew they were talking in sexual innuendoes. If she did, she was staunchly ignoring it. Making him even hotter.
“I don’t think my driving experience is any of your business,” she said.
Maybe not ignoring it, after all. “I could make it my business,” he said in a low, seductive voice. “I could put you through your paces. See how you are on short hops, and how you stretch out on long, flat places. How smoothly you shift, and whether you throttle down with a rumble or a purr.”
“Cut it out!” she said, her voice severe. “I didn’t come with you to talk about cars.”
“Is that what we’re talking about?”
“What else?”
“I thought we were talking about sex.”
“Not likely,” she said. They were already on the road that wound around the lake, the Jaguar cruising perfectly.
“Then why are you here? Not for my charming company, I presume,” he said.
She fidgeted with the seat belt. Her hand kept creeping toward the leather for a surreptitious caress, then pulling back again.
“If I was looking for charming company it wouldn’t be with you. I know who you are and I know why you’re here, Mr. Smith.” Her use of his phony name was filled with sarcasm. “And I want you to keep away from my family.”
9
It wasn’t the reaction that Sophie was expecting, but then, the supposed Mr. Smith wasn’t anything like Sophie thought. He didn’t protest, didn’t get angry, didn’t do more than blink.
“Okay, who am I?” he said in a reasonable voice.
The car was vibrating beneath her, a beautiful velvet hum, and more than anything she wanted to lean back and close her eyes and absorb the sound and the feel of it. Clearly he was a man with unsuspected depths, to own a car like this one, but even that didn’t make him any less of a ruthless snake. A dangerous one.
“You know as well as I do that you’re a reporter, trying to dredge up interest in the old murders.” She concentrated on pleating the fabric of her flowered jumper. “People like you have no sense of compassion for the victims—it’s over and done with. Why do you need to start ferreting around in someone else’s pain?”
He didn’t bother to deny it. “I would have thought the victims would be past harming.”
“The three girls weren’t the only victims. Their families, the whole town suffered.” She couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice.
“You weren’t even here at the time. Why would you care?”
“How did you know I wasn’t here?” she asked suspiciously.
“If I were a reporter I would have done my homework, found out who still lived here so I could question them. As a matter of fact, though, you told me you’d just moved here a few months ago. Or had you forgotten?”
She couldn’t remember telling him any such thing, but that wouldn’t prove anything. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t used to summer here. I could have remembered it all.”
“You were probably not much more than ten,” he said. “And you weren’t here when it happened. Don’t waste your time trying to convince me you were.”
“So what are you doing here?” she persisted.
“I thought you’d figured all that out. I’m a reporter on the trail of a very old crime. Though why a reporter should care about ancient history is beyond me.”
Some of Sophie’s conviction started to fade. “It’s unsolved. People are always fascinated by unsolved mysteries.