‘Yes… you’re probably right,’ Miranda agreed, ‘but since I’m not involved with anyone else…’

The shock of what had happened was just beginning to sink in, making her snappy and edgy. Her tension showed in her voice, but she didn’t care. All she wanted to do right now was to go home where she could be safe and alone.

‘I think possibly you mean that you weren’t,’ Ben Frobisher informed her thoughtfully.

He was standing facing her, looking down the corridor, and as he spoke she sensed that he was focusing on something or someone behind her, but only a small part of her brain registered this fact, the rest of it being busy getting ready to refute his extraordinary statement.

However, before she could do so, to her utter disbelief, for the second time that evening she found herself held hard by a pair of male arms as Ben took hold of her, not roughly as Ralph had done, but gently, tenderly almost, she realised as she grappled with her shock; more as a lover would have done than an aggressor. And it seemed that her body too sensed that difference, so that when Ben drew her firmly against him it had no compulsion to resist the pressure of the hands which lingeringly moulded her body to his before one of them settled in the small of her back while the other slid beneath her hair to caress her nape and then her jaw, sliding against her skin, tilting her head, bending his own, his face completely in the shadows, so that she could see nothing of his expression, only the brief gleam of his eyes catching her gaze and holding it transfixed, in much the same way as the total unexpectedness of his actions had transfixed her brain, paralysing her ability to think or reason.

When he brushed her lips slowly with his own, once, twice and then a third time, she couldn’t fight the compulsion to close her eyes, to move closer to him, to cling to the soft pressure of his mouth, stilling its tormenting movements. She made a soft sound of pleasure when his mouth remained on her own, and then quivered slightly as he framed her face with both his hands, and then kissed her slowly and deliberately, taking his time over the exercise, lingering over it, as though the softness of her mouth beneath his own was a sensation, a warmth, a pleasure he couldn’t bear to relinquish.

The simple sensual pleasure of being kissed so gently and yet so erotically was so shockingly intense and unexpected that Miranda completely forgot that this was a stranger kissing her; a man who while she might initially have found him physically attractive, was someone with whom, not so very long ago, she had felt completely at odds.

All she knew was that the way he was kissing her, the way he was holding her, the response he was arousing within her were so very different from anything she had ever experienced before, so illuminatingly pleasurable, that she never wanted him to let her go.

And yet that was exactly what he did, gently easing his mouth away from hers, and then, although still holding her, slowly moved away from her body so that she shivered as she felt the chill of the night air touching her warmly aroused flesh.

Reluctantly she opened her eyes and focused on him. What had happened had been so unexpected, so uninvited. Could he, like her, have felt that same frisson of awareness, of desire when they had first met? Had for some reason her disclosures about the unwanted attention of Ralph Charlesworth compelled Ben to break all the rules of convention and take the risk of kissing her?

But, even as these wild incoherent thoughts whirled through her mind, Ben had started to speak, apologising gravely as he told her, ‘I’m sorry if I startled you, pouncing on you like that, but it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. After what you’d been telling me, I saw Charlesworth watching us… well, as I said, I suspect he’s the kind of man who, although he might not hesitate to try and bully a woman, will quickly back off if he thinks there’s another man involved.’

That was why he had kissed her!

Reality, so very different from her foolish imaginings, was like a shock of cold water, not only immediately dousing the desire she had been feeling but also turning the soft warm feeling of wellbeing and happiness inside her to one of seething bitter resentment, as she reflected angrily on the humiliation she could well have suffered if she had been the one to speak first; if she had allowed him to see that the kiss, which he had instigated purely as a counter-measure to Ralph Charlesworth’s desire for her, had been something which she had mistaken as physical evidence that he shared the attraction she had felt the first time she had seen him.

It was mortification and not embarrassment that turned her face red and made her step back from him, but fortunately, he didn’t seem to be aware of it, apologising briefly, ‘I’m sorry… but there just wasn’t any time to warn you. I saw Charlesworth watching us.’

‘Yes,’ Miranda intervened, now as eager to escape from him as she had been earlier from Ralph, although for very different reasons.

‘Well, let’s hope it does the trick,’ Ben told her. ‘I hadn’t realised he was such an unsavoury character,’ he added, frowning slightly. ‘His wife is connected to Helen?’

‘Yes, her niece. Yes,’ Miranda agreed shortly. How could he stand there and calmly discuss something as mundane as Helen’s relationship to Susan Charlesworth when she…? She gritted her teeth, acknowledging that she was still having trouble functioning on a normal plane. Her mind might have realised that there had been nothing personal in Ben’s kiss, but her body, her senses… they were being extraordinarily recalcitrant and rebellious about doing so. They were still clinging dreamily to the pleasure he had given them.

‘I think we’d better go and rejoin your father. He’ll be wondering where we are.’

Privately Miranda doubted it, but she allowed Ben to head her back towards the others. He obviously didn’t want to spend any more time alone with her than he had to.

As they re-entered the ballroom, the first person Miranda saw was Ralph Charlesworth. He was standing with a small group of people, and as she and Ben walked past them Miranda could feel him glowering at her.

She couldn’t bring herself to look at Ben, although she knew from the way he drew her imperceptibly closer to his side that he too was aware of him.

As they headed for their table she wondered shakily how it was that her body should have become so aware of him in such a very short space of time that it had actually reacted to the closing of that small conventional gap between them—the gap that said they were acquaintances and not lovers—by becoming dangerously fluid and soft, as though her flesh actually yearned for physical contact with his.

All in all, Miranda was glad when the evening had finally come to an end, and she was free to escape to the solitary security of her own home, having firmly refused to join Helen, her father and Ben in a final cup of coffee before they finally declared the evening ended.

CHAPTER FOUR

MIRANDA woke up, tensing in the warm darkness of her bed, until she realised that the sound which had awakened her was just the wind.

It was still dark, her alarm showing that it was just gone three in the morning.

She had been in bed for just over an hour, and now she moved restlessly beneath the bedclothes, reluctant to admit that it wasn’t so much the sound of the wind which had woken her but the dream she had been having.

She shivered a little, sitting up in bed and hugging her arms around her knees. Her dream had been so real that just for a moment when she had first opened her eyes she had been shocked to discover that Ben Frobisher wasn’t actually with her.

Ben Frobisher. Drat the wretched man. Wasn’t it enough that he had already invaded her conscious life without him invading her subconscious and her dreams as well?

And now, instead of closing her eyes and going back to sleep, she was sitting here half-afraid to do so just in case she started the dream again.

The dream. She tensed and swallowed. It had been so real… so… so wantonly erotic, a small voice whispered tauntingly. Despite the fact that she was completely alone, she knew that she was blushing.

With anger, not embarrassment, she told herself sharp

ly, but it wasn’t entirely true. If she closed her eyes, would she once again find herself in Ben Frobisher’s arms, being kissed as he had kissed her in reality earlier in the evening, only this time…?

She tensed again but it was too late to head off her rebellious thoughts. Even without closing her eyes she could recall it all so vividly, the sensation of being held in Ben’s arms; the heat and power of his body against hers, the delicious frisson of sensation that raced over her skin as her body yielded instinctively to the sensual demand of his.

The soft brush of his lips against hers, a tantalising preliminary to the pleasure she knew was to come, was teasingly provocative and yet held a promise that lured her deeper and deeper into the enmeshing need he was feeding inside her.

In her dream there had been no reason for her to resist the warm ardour of his mouth; no need to warn herself that it would be folly to allow herself to feel such intense desire.

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