Megan’s fork paused halfway to her mouth. She must have noticed his expression of masculine appreciation. She almost set the last piece of cake down in her embarrassment, but took one look at the delicious morsel and thought better of it. She ate it with relish. Christian chuckled.
“How is it that you manage to make everything about sex?” Megan asked a moment later, half in amusement and half in irritation. She sipped a cup of coffee and watched him eat his cake, if not with as much heat as he’d watched her, at least with a tight focus.
“Honey, it was you that was doing that.” He chewed and swallowed a bite of cake unhurriedly before he finished. “There’s not a straight male in existence that wouldn’t have gotten hot watching you eat chocolate.” When he saw her chin go up defensively, he made an offensive strike, pointing at her with his fork. “It’s completely natural, Megan. There’s nothing weird about it…nothing twisted. Aren’t you at least a little glad that I find you so attractive?”
“That’s not what—”
“Aren’t you?”
Her stiff posture melted by slow degrees. “Yes.”
Christian retreated a little, knowing he’d won a small victory. He set down his cake and walked over to the bookcase. When he returned, he handed Megan a brown wrapped package and sat down next to her on the couch.
“What’s this?” she asked, wide-eyed.
“It’s a present. For you.”
“You’re giving me a present?”
Christian rubbed one of her curls through his thumb and forefinger. “That’s what I just said,” he murmured, distracted by the silky sensation of her hair against his skin. “It’s not a big deal. It’s actually used, but lightly, and only by yours truly. I thought you’d like it.”
She tore off the brown paper eagerly. The look on her face when she examined the oversized book on Chinese sculpture pleased him inordinately. She began to pour over the pages. He couldn’t recall ever enjoying giving someone a gift so much. “I bought it at this cool English bookstore in Hong Kong. It was at my house in L.A., so I brought it for you when I came back. Have you ever been to Hong Kong?”
A tiny alarm started going off in his head when he saw her happy expression collapse at his words.
* * * *
Megan shook her head in reply to Christian’s question, but she was hardly aware of responding. She was struck dumb by his reference to the fact that he lived in Los Angeles. It was the first time that he’d ever mentioned it. For some reason, his casual reference to the fact that he lived across the country struck her as hypocritical. Anger pierced her awareness, the sharp tip on an arrow of hurt.
“You’d love the sculpture there. We should go sometime. What’s wrong?” Christian asked slowly.
“Nothing. Thank you so much for the book. It was very thoughtful of you.”
“Megan, I asked you a question.” His voice carried a gentle threat.
Emotion blocked her throat, but she hoped Christian didn’t notice it when she said, “Hilary told me last night that you didn’t actually live in Chicago. You’d never said anything to me about it, so I was sure she must be mistaken.”
His jaw clenched. “I wasn’t trying to keep it a secret, Megan.”
She opened the book and flipped through a few pages. “I never said you were.”
“You’re certainly implying it.”
“All right. Maybe I was.”
She saw Christian’s eyes widen slightly in surprise at the anger in her voice. Good, she thought. Let him know that you’re not going to roll over and pant whenever he snaps his fingers.
“It’s not like you didn’t have the opportunities to tell me,” she accused. “You could have said something when Father Gregory introduced us, or at the American Girl Place, when I asked you about how long you’d lived at 748. Why are you acting so secretively?”
She noticed that he had the good grace to at least look sheepish. “I didn’t want you to make the wrong assumptions about me.”
“That’s ridiculous! What kind of wrong assumptions would I make about you, Christian?” she asked, her irritation bubbling to the surface.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he began smoothly. It took her a moment to recognize his rising tension as he spoke. “Maybe the kind of snap judgments that idiots make when they see a ludicrous lie about me while they’re standing in the check-out line at the supermarket. The kind of dead wrong assumptions that people like your bitchy sister and a hell of a lot of other people make without knowing the most basic things about me. And all because certain people have nothing better to do with their lives than to feed their ignorance and lasciviousness with the sleazy shit that the media cranks out to appease their endless appetites. I wouldn’t have thought that you were like them, Megan. But hell, that’s what I get for making assumptions, right?”
Megan felt like all the blood drained from her head. Her heartbeat began to throb in her ears in the taut silence that followed. She closed the beautiful book that Christian had given her with a calmness she was far from feeling. She’d obviously struck at a very raw nerve without realizing it. Christian’s eyes were blue fire. Not with the desire she’d seen light them in the past, but with pure, unmitigated fury.
And hurt, Megan realized. It struck her that Christian’s tendency to reveal so little about himself was a protective mechanism against pain.