Still Lake - Anne Stuart [56]
“Why would someone want to break in?”
“People do all sorts of strange things. Maybe someone’s developed a mad passion for you.”
“Thanks a lot,” she said wryly. “The notion is not that strange.”
She couldn’t see his expression in the shadows. The moon was behind him, silvering him with an almost eerie light. He had bony shoulders. She liked bony shoulders. Oh, God, she liked him, she realized with sudden horror. Not his personality or his presence or anything about him. Except his body. And his mouth.
Why the hell was she reacting like this to the most disturbing man she’d ever met? At this time in her life?
She didn’t show a glimmer of what was racing through her mind. “I better get home,” she said after a moment.
He was watching her. He leaned against the porch, lazily, as if he hadn’t a care in the world except to bait her. Maybe it was only her crazy emotions, roiling around beneath her determinedly calm exterior, or maybe he was just as tense as she was despite his negligent pose. She couldn’t tell what was going on under his enigmatic exterior.
“Yeah,” he said, not moving. For her to leave, he’d have to move out of the way. But he showed no signs of moving. “Tell me something. What the hell are you wearing?”
Presumably he couldn’t see the blush that warmed her face. She pulled the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. It was a warm night for late August, she was wearing a voluminous Edwardian nightgown, and he was making her feel naked.
“It’s a nightgown. Haven’t you ever seen one before? I would have thought a man of your vast experience would have seen women in nightgowns before.” Shit. In her effort to be arch and cool she’d inadvertently brought up the subject of sex. Obliquely, but it was there, between them, and she didn’t want to talk about sex with John Smith or whoever the hell he was.
The slight curve of his mouth, his very sexy mouth, was his only reaction. It was enough. “I have to admit that most women I sleep with are naked. They certainly don’t wear things like that. You look like a doomed bride. All you need is a bouquet of dead flowers and a tattered veil and you could haunt this place quite nicely.”
Ghosts weren’t any improvement over sex as subject matter. Not when she had to walk by what had once been a murder scene.
“It’s a nightgown, and I’ll have you know it came from Victoria’s Secret!”
“Not the Victoria’s Secret I know. Trust you to consider that sexy.”
“I don’t consider it sexy!” she protested.
“Then why are you wearing it?”
“Because I don’t care about sex.” Shit. He’d trapped her into it. And in fact, it was a lie. She hadn’t cared about it before. All he’d had to do was kiss her, and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. And why the hell didn’t he put on more clothes—his chest, his stomach, everything about him was distracting her, making her think about things she didn’t want to even consider.
He pushed away from the post, and she thought he was going to let her leave. She was wrong. He came right up to her, and there was no place for her to retreat. The screen door was pressed against her back, and he was blocking her way with his body. His moonstruck shoulders. His mouth.
“Oh, yeah?” he said mildly enough. He reached out and took the shawl in his hands, pulling it from her. She made a futile grab at it, but it was too late. He let it drop on the porch floor, at her bare feet beneath the ruffled nightgown. Then he began to unfasten the pearl button at her throat. She was having trouble breathing. “Prove it,” he whispered, unfastening the second button.
She finally looked up at him, stricken. “What are you doing?” she demanded in a strained voice.
“Seducing you.” He sounded remote, almost clinical, as his long fingers moved down the front of her nightgown, parting one button after another. It had too many buttons. “I would have thought a woman with your vast experience would have figured that out by now.”
“But…why?”
His low laugh was even more unnerving. “Because I want to.”
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