‘I have nothing else to tell you,’ she said carefully, unnerved by the sexual tension that suddenly permeated the air between them.
‘I think you do.’
The way he looked at her tangled her insides up and twisted her emotions into a tight ball. He was so attractive with his shirtsleeves rolled up and the top button of his shirt loosened, the curl of chest hair overlapping the button screaming that he was all male. Something she already knew by heart.
‘And I think it’s past time we addressed the elephant in the room, don’t you?’
‘Elephant?’ She had a sick feeling she knew where this was heading. ‘There is no elephant.’
‘Then why are you so keen to avoid me every chance you get?’
Ruby hunted around for an explanation and went with what was uppermost in her mind. ‘If you must know, I don’t think we can work very well together.’
‘Why not?’
Now, there was a question she had no intention of answering. ‘The why, or why not, isn’t important.’ She hated that she felt so flustered and defensive and that only made her feel more so. ‘I respect you as a fellow lawyer and as my boss, I just don’t respect...’ Her eyes shot to his as she realised what she’d been about to say.
‘You just don’t respect what, Ruby?’ His voice was predator-soft. ‘You don’t respect me as a man. Is that what you stopped yourself from saying?’
Yes, it had been because how could she respect a man who had sex with random women whose names he didn’t even know? ‘I didn’t say that—you did. But I don’t see any point in letting this get personal between us. It will only make things harder.’
Sam gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think, angel?’ The tone of his voice had all the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end. ‘Things are about as personal as they can get between us, I’d say.’
Ruby tried not to overreact to the word ‘angel’, fighting to remain calm. ‘If you’re talking about how I wanted to leave the meeting, I—’
‘I’m not talking about that.’ He dismissed with a careless flick of his wrist, his gaze disturbingly direct. ‘I’m talking about Friday night.’
He waited a beat but Ruby found her tongue frozen to the roof of her mouth.
‘Last Friday night, to be exact.’ When she remained mute he gave her a sardonic smile that only elevated his good looks. ‘You know... You and me. Sizzling-hot sex outside at the Herzog party. Or are you going to tell me it wasn’t you in the lavender silk dress and black lace mask?’
Oh, God, she had been wrong.
He knew. He knew! The words reverberated inside her head, a stinging heat singing along her cheekbones as if she were being pricked by a thousand tiny hot needles.
Their gazes clashed and held and Ruby couldn’t look away from his gorgeous brown eyes to save herself.
‘I can see you’re still going to try and deny it,’ he said, the savage note in his voice letting her know that he was far from impressed with her. ‘Which is a little disappointing, to say the least.’
‘I’m not going to deny it,’ she said with asperity, mortification setting in as she recalled how she had begged him for more that night.
‘Well, that’s a start,’ he grated, his gaze penetrating every one of her natural defences in a way no man ever had before.
What was it about Sam that made him so lethally attractive to her? It just wasn’t fair.
‘A start to what?’ she asked, recognising for the first time that he was truly annoyed, but at a loss as to know why he would be. She hadn’t demanded anything from him, or called his phone off the hook like a love-struck fool. Shouldn’t he be rejoicing about that instead of scowling at her?
‘To you being honest. I did wonder if you were going to try and blame the alcohol. Maybe claim that you’d had so much to drink that you didn’t know what you were doing. That you didn’t know who you were doing it with.’
If only I could! But what did he want her to say? That she found him so completely and utterly irresistible that she hadn’t been able to stop? That she had wondered what it would be like to be intimate with him for so long that when it finally happened she hadn’t wanted to stop? ‘I knew what I was doing.’ She lifted her chin, determined that he would never guess how deeply she was affected by the intimacies they had shared—or how much she had enjoyed it. ‘And I’m not ashamed of what happened.’