‘I guess a woman like you … you’d be used to men wanting to impress you.’ He flashed her a veiled look. ‘Do you receive a lot of offers?’

Not caring to boast, she made a non-committal, so-so sort of gesture. ‘Oh, well …’

‘I’m not surprised,’ he said warmly. ‘There are so many of those blokes about. Operators looking for a beautiful woman to hook up with.’ He nodded, sighing. ‘Yeah, I know the type. First they use the old sweet-talk routine to soften you up. Then they manoeuvre you into a clinch.’ He glanced at her, his eyes gleaming. ‘Or is that where they start these days? With a kiss?’

As if he didn’t know. Her heart bumped into double-time.

This conversation was heading in a certain direction, but it was undeniably thrilling. It had been ages since she’d felt on the verge of something truly dangerous and fantastic. All right, so he was an operator of the worst kind. She could be too, if she had to be. She hadn’t taken a celibacy vow yet, had she? Why else was she wearing a push-up bra?

About the Author

As a child, ANNA CLEARY loved reading so much that during the midnight hours she was forced to read with a torch under the bedcovers, to lull the suspicions of her sleep-obsessed parents. From an early age she dreamed of writing her own books. She saw herself in a stone cottage by the sea, wearing a velvet smoking jacket and sipping sherry, like Somerset Maugham.

In real life she became a schoolteacher, and her greatest pleasure was teaching children to write beautiful stories.

A little while ago she and one of her friends made a pact to each write the first chapter of a romance novel in their holidays. From writing her very first line Anna was hooked, and she gave up teaching to become a full-time writer. She now lives in Queensland, with a deeply sensitive and intelligent cat. She prefers champagne to sherry, and loves music, books, four-legged people, trees, movies and restaurants.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE ITALIAN NEXT DOOR …

DO NOT DISTURB

WEDDING NIGHT WITH A STRANGER

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

Keeping Her Up

All Night

Anna Cleary

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

GUY WILDER wasn’t on the hunt any more. He’d given up chicks with promises of forever on their honeyed tongues. These days he poured his emotions into songs. Often tear-jerkers in the key of tragedy, best wailed after midnight in haunts for the broken-hearted. But they were tuneful, sexy, and always with a deep and honest soul beat. Songs a man could believe in, with no bitter twists at the end.

Yep, he was still a single man, and it was all good. By day he built his company, by night he dreamed up songs, and the Blue Suede boys were keen to perform them.

However badly they murdered his lyrics, the Suede showed promise. So, on the night of his return from a work trip to the States, the boys’ need for an emergency venue persuaded Guy to let them into his aunt’s apartment above the Kirribilli Mansions Arcade. Auntie Jean wouldn’t mind. Well, she was trusting him to hang there for a week or two.

The thing was, the Suede could pound out a pretty stirring beat. Guy did give some consideration to the noise. When the boys crowded through the door with their instruments he eyed the flowery fanlight above the neighbour’s place, but the apartment was in darkness.

It wasn’t late enough for sleeping. Who’d have guessed anyone was home?

He ordered pizza, but once he and the guys started on the song dinner floated from their minds. It wasn’t until the tempo had hotted up and they were into laying down chords that the distant ding of the bell penetrated the boys’ enthusiasm.

Calling a halt, Guy abandoned the keyboard of his aunt’s fabulous old grand and headed for the door.

The pizza lad was out there, all right, but not at Guy’s door. At the neighbour’s.

‘I assure you it wasn’t me,’ the woman was saying in a low, melodious voice. ‘I never order pizza. It must have been whoever’s in there, making that awful racket. Did you try knocking? Though you might need a sledgehammer to make any …’

Impact. Guy finished the sentence for her in his head.

She swivelled around to look at him, as did the boy, and impact happened.

Violet eyes, dark-fringed and serious, and cheekbones in a piquant face. A mouth as ripe and sweet as a plum. Gorgeous, was his first dazzled thought. A gorgeous, desirable, tantalising—trap. She was five feet six or thereabouts, unless his expert eye was dazzled out of whack, with long, dark, lustrous hair tied back. Gloriously rich, long, dark and lustrous. And legs … Oh, God, legs. And heaven in between.

He couldn’t see much of the heaven through the sweatshirt, but all the signs were there. Hills. Valleys. Curves. Anyway, a man didn’t stare obviously at a woman’s breasts. Or any other parts they might choose to conceal.

But if she happened to be wearing a short flimsy-looking dress thing, frilling out from under the longish sweatshirt, naturally his eye was bound to be snagged here and there. Particularly if she also had satin slippers on her feet. Tied on ballerina fashion, with criss-crossing strings.

He drank her in to the full, and she gave him every reason to believe she was eyeing him right back—only hers was a sternish scrutiny that seemed not to be dwelling on his manly appeal.

He smiled. ‘I think they’re for me.’ He produced money and accepted the pile of boxes. ‘Thanks, mate. Keep this for your trouble.’

The lad disappeared via the lift, the stairs—or maybe he vanished through the wall.

‘Sorry if you were disturbed, Miss …?’

‘Amber O’Neill.’ Her tone was earnest. ‘I don’t think you realise how much the sound reverberates in these apartments. It magnifies, actually, and the walls are very thin.’

He lifted his brows. ‘Yeah? The sound magnifies. Now, that’s interesting. A unique accoustic. Thanks for mentioning it.’

Amber, he was thinking, riveted on her irises, drowning in the violet. And her mouth—so soft and full. A dangerous yearning stirred the devil in his blood. Oh, man, it had been a long, long time.

Apparently she still hadn’t noticed his charm, for her luscious lips tightened. ‘Some people have to work, you know. Some even have businesses to run.’

‘Do they?’ He smiled, refusing to be chastised at eight-thirty in the evening. Practically daylight. Enjoying stretching out the tease. Listening to her voice. ‘Tsk. Don’t those people ever play?’

Maybe he should suggest she throw him over her lap and spank him. Now, there would be an inspiration. And right next door, too.

At the exact moment his brain generated the backsliding thought, he noticed her flick a glowing little glance over his chest and arms and down below his belt buckle. Despite her indignation, her eyes betrayed an infinitesimal spark.

An intensely feminine spark that opened a Pandora’s box of frightening possibilities.

Whoa, there. The hot rush on its way to his loins faltered and screeched to a halt.

Like a madman he turned back into his flat and shut the door. Stood paralysed, breathing for a dozen thundering heartbeats, before he realised the craziness of the impulse and snatched it open again.

Too late, though. She’d gone.

Breathing hard, Amber stood under the skylight in her empty sitting room and tried to resuscitate the mood.

Once more the ethereal chords of ‘Clair de Lune’ drifted on the air. Usually every note was a drop of silver magic on her soul, but though she rose on her toes and held up her arms to the moon filtering through the skylight … arabesque, arabesque, glissé …

Hopeless. The magic was gone. Murdered.

She switched off the music. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so annoyed. No use attempting to dance her insomnia away now. She could still hear the appalling racket from next door, even though they’d toned down the volume a notch. The truth was she didn’t want to be aware of them in the slightest. Of him.

And it had nothing to do with his mouth, or the way he’d looked in those jeans. She was used to well-built guys with chests. She was up to here with them, if the truth be known. And no way was it his eyes. She’d seen plenty of large grey, crinkling-at-the-corners eyes in her twenty-six years.

No, it had been the mockery in them. That amused, ironic assumption that since he was a man and she was a woman she’d be keen. He was so sure of himself he hadn’t even bothered to finish the conversation.

How wrong could a man be? The last guy who’d persuaded her to take that plunge had reminded her of all a woman needed to learn about heartbreak.

She peeled off her slippers and crawled back into her bed. For a while she lay on her side, as tense as a wire. Tried the other side. Still no good. Tossed. Turned. And in no time at all her brain was back to its churning.

Money. The shop. The renovations. Aloneness. Men who mocked you with smiling eyes.

Usually by late afternoon, the Fleur Elise end of the Kirribilli Mansions Arcade was quiet. This day, surely one of the longest in Amber’s memory, not a shopper stirred. After three disturbed nights Amber welcomed the possibility of snatching a quick reflective snooze in the room where the bouquets were made up.

Unfortunately Ivy, the book-keeper she’d inherited along with the shop, had come in to help out.

‘… you’re going to have to make cuts. Amber? Are you listening?’

Amber winced. It wasn’t the first time she’d noticed the penetrating quality of Ivy’s voice. With only the mildest exclamation the woman could break windows.

Amber laid her aching head on the bunching table. Sleep deprivation had brought her nerves to a desperate state, thanks to that man. For two days now there’d been this throb in her temples. Maybe if she ignored Ivy she’d shut up.

As far as Amber was concerned this was not the moment to be raking over her failures with the accounts. She was tired. She needed to brood on what was happening in Jean’s flat night after night. The noise. The ructions. That—guy. She clenched her teeth. The sooner Jean and Stuart got back from their honeymoon the better.

She so resented the way he’d looked at her, with that scorching glance, that lazy smile playing on his cool, very, very sexy mouth.

Maybe he’d thought she’d be flattered. What men didn’t realise was that women knew when they weren’t looking their best. If a woman was wearing an old sloppy joe over her nightie and a man happened to show a certain kind of interest in her, it wasn’t flattering in the least. It immediately raised the likelihood that he automatically looked at every woman like that. In other words, he was likely to be the sort of chronic womaniser her father had been.

Oh, yeah. He looked the type, with that lazy grin. Typical narcissistic heartbreaker. If he saw her today, though, even he wouldn’t look twice. She was a train wreck.

She rested her head on her arms. One of the songs his band had been bashing out was grinding an unwelcome path through her brain. To add to her irritation, when she’d been bathing this morning she’d heard him in his shower, actually whistling the same tune in a slow, sexy, up-beat sort of way.

Why hadn’t Jean warned her? They were friends, weren’t they? She was the one who was supposed to be looking after Jean’s fish and watering her plants.

It was so unfair. With all she had on her plate, she shouldn’t have to be so distracted.

‘… cut your overheads.’ Ivy’s voice hacked through the fog of Amber’s musings like a saw-toothed laser. ‘That Serena’s a prime example.’

Shocked into responding, Amber said hoarsely, ‘What? Did you say I should sack Serena?’

‘Well, unless you cut your expenditure elsewhere.’

Amber was flummoxed. ‘Oh, Ivy. Serena’s our only genuine florist. Neither of us has her sort of talent. All right, I know she’s needed a bit of time off since she had the baby. But when she sorts out childcare that’ll get better. She really needs the work. She and the babe depend on her hours here.’

‘I’m not running a blessed charity,’ Ivy muttered. ‘Next you’ll be talking again about opening up the side door to the street and spending a fortune on redecorating.’

Amber felt her muscles clench all over. Ivy wasn’t running anything. Fleur Elise was her shop. Her inheritance from her mother. The words burned on her tongue but with a supreme effort she held them back. That business course she was studying strongly advocated the need to stay calm in times of conflict. Maintain her cool professionalism.

She drew a long, cooling breath. Several long breaths. She needed to remind herself her mother had had a great deal of faith in Ivy. Ivy’s legendary ability to avoid outlay was an asset, her mother had said. And it almost certainly was. Anywhere but a flower shop.

Amber’s flower shop, at least. Her shop should be spilling over with blooms. Poppies and tulips, snapdragons and violets, jonquils, forget-me-nots. Masses of everything—and roses, roses, roses. She dreamed of her rich, heady fragrances drawing people in from the street and following them throughout the arcade.

All right, she was the first to admit she might not be quite up to scratch yet as a businessperson—she was still in the early stages of her course—but instinct told her Ivy’s miserly cheese-paring approach wasn’t the way to go.

What would attract the customers was a mass of colours, textures and tantalising smells. The sort that would appeal to any sensuous, voluptuous femme like herself.

The self she could be, that was. On a good day. When she’d had sleep. When her brain hadn’t been tormented by noise. Today her sensuous, voluptuous quotient was at rock-bottom.

It was never any use arguing with Ivy, anyway. Nothing would shift her from her fixed position on any subject. If Amber hadn’t been so punch-drunk with fatigue she’d have remembered that and kept her mouth shut. As it was …

‘I’m thinking of getting a bank loan.’ She yawned.

Oh, wow. Wrong thing to say. She’d have been better throwing a grenade. Ivy’s short neck could stretch right out and swivel when she was outraged, alarmed and aghast.

Like now.

The small woman’s mouth gaped into an incredulous rectangle. ‘Are you out of your mind, girl? How will you pay it back if something goes wrong with the trade?’

‘Oh, what trade?’ Amber growled, incensed at being called ‘girl’. For God’s sake, though she might dress like it, Ivy was hardly her grandmother. She was only thirty-eight.

Amber pressed a couple of cooling roses to her temples. ‘Do we have to talk about it now, Ivy?’ she moaned. ‘I have a headache.’

And she needed to brood. About men and betrayal. Love and pain. Passion unrequited. She wasn’t sure why these things had to occupy her mind right now, when she was so tired and noise-battered, but for some reason lately they’d been looming large.

For three nights, in fact. Ever since she’d laid eyes on that—hoon next door.

It wasn’t that she found him so hot. Oh, all right, he was sexy—in a down-and-dirty, unshaven sort of way. Those jeans he wore should be dumped on the nearest bonfire. And as for that ragged old tee shirt she’d seen him in yesterday morning at the bakery … It looked to her as if someone had tried to claw it off him. Some desperate person.

No, not like her at all. She wasn’t desperate. She simply had a distinctive personality type that could be deeply affected by the sight of sweat glistening on bronzed, masculine arms. She was a highly sensual woman, with a sensual woman’s needs.

Very much the Eustacia Vye type, in fact.

She’d discovered Eustacia yesterday, during a few guilty moments of escapist reading in the shop. Well, there were never any customers at that time. If Ivy hadn’t insisted on coming in to help out this afternoon Amber might have had a chance to learn more about her exotic heroine. As it was she’d had to hide the book in her secret cache behind the potted ferns.

Eustacia was a woman so sensuous, so voluptuous, that if ever a dangling bough happened to caress her hair whilst she was rambling under the trees in the Wessex woods, the bewitching creature would turn right back and ramble under them again.

Fine. Amber accepted that she wasn’t all that beautiful or bewitching. Unless swathed in tulle and feathers, that was. On stage, illuminated in a pool of magic light. She could be pretty bewitching then. Just stick her in front of the footlights with an orchestra swelling to a crescendo and Amber O’Neill could bewitch the pants off a sphinx.

And her hair craved caresses. Ached for them. Though preferably administered via a lean, masculine hand rather than a twig.

She yawned again. Weren’t musicians supposed to have skinny arms and hollow chests?

‘Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.’ Even a tongue click from Ivy could attack the cerebral cortex like an ice-pick. ‘Have you been hiding these bills, Amber?’

Amber felt herself getting hot. ‘Not hiding. I just … may have … put them aside for a … Look, Ivy, I don’t feel like doing this now.’

But Ivy would show no mercy. Once she had her sharp little teeth into something she held on like a terrier until she’d pulled out all the entrails.

She waved a bunch of invoices in front of Amber’s face. ‘You know what I think? You’re going downhill. You’ll just have to face it, girl. Your best option is to sell. Do you want to be declared bankrupt?’

The word scrambled Amber’s insides like a butter churn.

She tried to breathe. ‘Ivy, try to understand. This was Mum’s shop. She loved this shop.’

But the humourless round eyes beneath Ivy’s straight brown fringe were as understanding as two hypodermic syringes. ‘Your mother managed to pay the bills. Your mother knew how to take advice.’

Amber flinched. For a small woman, Ivy could pack a lethal punch. Amber knew very well Lise hadn’t always been able to pay the bills. But she wasn’t about to argue over her mother’s faults or otherwise.

Her mother was in the cold, cold ground. And it scraped Amber’s heart every time Ivy dragged her name into the conversation. She couldn’t handle it with her loss still so fresh and piercing.

Amber drew a long, simmering breath. Lucky for Ivy, she was ace at controlling her temper. That was one thing she could do well. If left in peace. That was all she really craved now. Peace, and hours and hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep.

Was that so much to ask? Ever since she’d relinquished twirling around on her toes to care for her poor mother, she couldn’t seem to find those essential things anywhere.

‘Have you seen the price of those long-stemmed roses?’ Ivy carped. ‘Why can’t you just go for the cheaper produce? Why can’t you ever …?’

The words prodded Amber’s insides like red-hot needles. She held her breath.

‘Just look at this item here. Why order freesias out of season? You can’t afford them.’

Amber gritted her teeth and said steadily, ‘You know Mum loves—loved freesias, Ivy. They’re—they were her favourites.’ Inevitably a lump rose in her throat and her eyes swam. Her voice went all murky. ‘It’s important to have flowers with fragrance.’

‘Fragrance, crap. Fragrance is a luxury we can’t afford.’

There were still ten minutes to go before closing. Amber knew Ivy was only trying to teach her the ropes, was doing her best according to her own weird lights, but Amber felt an overpowering need to escape. And quickly. Before she let loose and annihilated the little terrier with a few well-chosen words.

She staggered to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Ivy, I can’t deal with all this now. I have a killer migraine. I’m going upstairs. Do you mind locking up?’

Ivy’s jaw dropped, then she snapped her sharp little teeth together. Even so, her unspoken words fractured the fragile air like a clarion horn. Your mother never left early.

This was hardly true, but why should it matter? Amber wondered drearily. There’d barely been any customers then and there wouldn’t be any now.

She shoved her way through the potted ferns and the sparse display of bouquets and made her escape into the arcade before the book-keeper had time to lash her with any more advice. As she stumbled down the arcade to the lifts, past all the other glossy shops, she felt her migraine escalate.

In truth, she was starting to feel slightly sick every time she thought of Fleur Elise.

The ninth floor was blessedly silent. Amber unlocked the door to her flat and was met by a wave of hot, musty air. Resisting the temptation of the air-conditioner, she lurched around opening the windows and balcony doors. Then she tore the pins from her hair and let it fall to her waist. Dragging off her clothes, she collapsed at last onto the bed, her nerves stretched taut as bowstrings.

She closed her eyes. If she’d still been in the ballet company she’d be on the tram now, heading home after a beautiful day of music and extreme exercise, humming Tchaikovsky, her muscles aching, her spirit singing with endorphins.

Would she ever feel like that again in her life?

A frightening thought gripped her by the throat. What if Centre Management acted on their rules? What if next she lost the shop?

Fatigued though she was, it seemed like an age before her panic wore itself out. Eventually, though, exhaustion started its work. Her anxiety released its grip, and the pain in her temples lightened a little. A merciful cooling breeze from Sydney Harbour rustled the filmy curtains either side of the balcony doors and whispered over her skin like balm, and she felt herself start to drift down that peaceful river, dozing towards sleep.

She was nearly there, soothed at long last into blissful oblivion, wrapped in sleep’s healing mantle, when a heavy crash jarred through the floorboards and straight through her spinal cord. Her eyes sprang open and her jagged nerves wrenched themselves back into red alert.

The sound came from the other side of the wall.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’

Amber leaped up and tore open her wardrobe to drag out a skirt and the first top she could lay her hands on. There was no time for shoes. In a fury she flew out of her flat to hammer on her neighbour’s door.

Her fist halted in mid-crash as the door opened abruptly.

It was him, of course. All six foot two of him. His stubble had progressed, and somehow his lashes seemed blacker too, though his grey eyes still held the same silvery glint. Leaning a powerful shoulder against the frame, he cast another of those long, slow, considering looks over her—like the king of the pride contemplating a plump little wildebeest.

‘Well, well. Amber,’ he said, in his deep growl of a voice. ‘Nice of you to drop by.’

Was he trying to be funny? No doubt in his black tee shirt and the artfully scruffy jeans clinging to his bronzed, muscled frame he was exactly the sort of testosterone machine certain women might have enjoyed bouncing a bit of stimulating repartee back and forth with …

She wasn’t one of them.

‘That noise you’re making,’ she rasped. ‘I’m trying to sleep and it’s disturbing me.’

He lifted his black brows. ‘At six in the evening? You should get a life, sweetheart.’

He started to close the door, but Amber was quick. She shoved her foot into the space. ‘Now, wait a minute. I have a life. A busy life. And it’s because you’ve been assaulting Jean’s piano …’ She shook her head, outraged at the scandal of it. Jean’s beautiful Steinway … ‘You and your friends with those stupid drums … That’s why I need to sleep at six in the evening.’

He looked at her for a long, considering moment, his strong brows still raised in disbelief. ‘You don’t like music?’

Her? Whose first steps had been a dance? She clenched her teeth. ‘I like music, mister. When I hear it. I’ve already asked you politely. Now, if you don’t keep your noise down …’

‘Ah. Here it comes. The threat.’ He tilted his head to one side and made a thorough appraisal of her from head to toe.

The full scorching force of bold masculine interest lasered through the thin fabric of her clothes. She grew conscious that in her rush she’d chosen a close-fitting top with a deep neckline, she wasn’t wearing a bra, and her feet were bare. Only with difficulty did she prevent herself from crossing her arms over her breasts.

‘I love women who talk tough,’ he said, with a lascivious twitch of a black brow. ‘What will you do to me?’

Wild words rocketed to her tongue. The frustrations and anxieties she’d been repressing over days seethed inside their cage. She wanted to rip open his arrogant jugular with her teeth and nails, claw at his lean face, draw his insolent blood.

He broke into a laugh and flash of white, even teeth lit his face. ‘Don’t do it. Why don’t you come in and we’ll see if we can work something out?’

She drew herself up. ‘Look, Mr …’ she hissed.

‘Guy. Guy Wilder.’ His sexy mouth broke into a smile, but she didn’t care that it illuminated his rather harsh face like a sunburst and made him handsome.

‘Whatever.’ Her breath came in short bursts, as if Vesuvius was seething inside her, alive and molten. ‘I came here to ask if your band can practise somewhere else. If you can’t be more considerate I’ll report you to the Residents’ Committee.’

Amusement crept into his voice. ‘We seem to be getting a bit heated.’

‘Does Jean even know you’re here?’

At her escalating pitch his black brows made an eloquent upward twitch. ‘Not only does my dear aunt know I’m here, she wants me to be here. I’ll give you her address, all right? You can check up. Set your mind at rest.’

‘I know Jean well, and I know she would strongly object to your upsetting her neighbours. She would never have agreed to your setting up your band in here night and day.’

‘It isn’t here night and day.’ His quiet, measured tone made a mockery of her emotion. ‘I write songs. The band you’ve been privileged to hear the last couple of nights—in the early part of the evening, let me remind you—were unable to use their usual venue. They have a gig coming up so they needed a run-through. That means …’

‘I know what it means,’ she snapped. ‘And it was no privilege. You might as well know now—your band sucks.’

His black eyebrows flew up and his eyes drifted over her in sardonic appreciation. ‘I’ll make sure I pass your critique on to the guys.’

She could hardly believe she’d said such a rude thing, but it gave her a reckless satisfaction. Even if he was Jean’s nephew, he’d made her suffer.

If he was. She had some vague recollection of Jean’s stories about various family members. There was the brilliant one who wanted to direct movies, the scientist who’d fallen in love on a voyage to Antarctica, the boy whose girlfriend—the love of his life, Jean had said—had stood him up at the altar and run away with a soldier. She couldn’t remember any mention of a musician.

The guy moved slightly. Enough for Amber’s critical eye to catch a glimpse of the indoor garden Jean kept in her foyer. Shocked by what she saw, she couldn’t restrain herself. ‘Just look at those anthuriums. Jean would be furious if she knew you were letting her precious plants die. Surely she explained her watering system to you?’

He gave a careless shrug. ‘She may have said something.’

‘And what about her fish?’

‘Fish?’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t been feeding them? That aquarium is Jean’s pride and joy.’ She glared at him—at the grey eyes alight in his dark unshaven face, his black eyebrows tilted in quizzical amusement. She’d never in all of her twenty-six years wanted so much to do violence to someone.

‘I’m not sure how the fish are doing,’ he said smoothly. ‘Why don’t you come inside and check them out? You can take inventory while you’re here, in case I’ve damaged something.’

She caught the sarcasm but didn’t allow it to deter her. She pushed past him into Jean’s beautiful, immaculate flat and halted in the middle of the sitting room.

Twilight had invaded. Only one lamp was lit, casting a soft apricot glow, but with the skylight in the foyer and the glow from the aquarium it was enough for her to see the damage. Newspapers were thrown carelessly on the coffee table beside a functioning laptop, more scattered on the rug. A sheet of Jean’s expensive piano music had been tossed on the floor as well, near to where a couple of her Swedish crystal wine glasses rested against the rumpled sofa.

‘Better, don’t you think?’ The guy’s smug, complacent gaze shifted from the disaster scene to connect with hers. ‘Some rooms are like some people. Just cry out for a little messing up.’

Words failed Amber. Too late to try resolving this conflict without the use of aggression. This man deserved aggression—he begged for it—and she was in too deep now to pull out.

She snatched up Jean’s precious sonata from the floor, then marched over to the aquarium. It was almost annoying to see the tank as tranquil as ever. No bloated bodies floated on its placid surface.

She glanced back and saw him watching her with his thumbs hooked into his belt, a quirk to his mouth. ‘You have been feeding them, haven’t you?’ In her aggravation she rolled Jean’s sonata—rolled it and rolled it into a tighter and tighter cylinder. ‘This was just a ploy to get me in here, wasn’t it?’

He spread his hands. ‘Aha. You’ve guessed my master plan.’

She made a sharp, repudiating gesture with the sonata. ‘Don’t you mock me. I have every right to complain about your noise.’

‘Sure you do.’

He moved a couple of steps, so his big, lean body was close. Close enough for her to feel the heat of him. She couldn’t step backwards without crashing into the fish tank, so she stood her ground, her heart rate escalating.

His growly voice was deep and smooth as butter. ‘All right, I’m sorry to have stirred you up, Amber. I can see you’re a woman of strong passions. I think maybe you are a bit tired. People get overwrought.’ He drew his brows together and looked narrowly at her. ‘Amber? Are you sure that’s your name?’

‘What?’

‘I think it should be Indigo. Or Lavender. Your oldies must have been drunk.’ Missing her unamused glare, he shrugged. ‘Never mind. I accept your apology. How about a drink?’

‘I’m not apologising.’ Her voice trembled as she lost the final vestiges of control and reasonable behaviour. ‘And I don’t want a drink. Just look what you’ve done to Jean’s lovely home. You have no right to touch her precious piano. You’re a—a vandal. I don’t want to know you, or see you, or hear any more of your awful, awful noise.’

He studied her with a solemn, meditative gaze. But she knew, damn him, it was an act. Underneath he was dying to laugh. At her.

‘You’re a bit wired up.’

He advanced further, so that his chest was a mere five centimetres from her breasts. She inhaled the clean, male scent of him and sensed something else in him besides laughter. A high-voltage buzz of electricity that charged her own nerves with adrenaline.

‘You should calm down.’

His sensual gaze touched her everywhere, caressed her hair, her throat, lingered on her mouth.

‘I think I know a way I can help you to relax.’

‘Oh.’ Fury must have overheated her brain, because she lifted Jean’s sonata and whacked him across the face with it.

Danger flashed in his eyes like a lightning strike. She watched, aghast, as a thin red line appeared where the rolled up edge of the paper had struck his cheekbone.

How could she have?

The universe shuddered to a stop. There was a moment when they both stood paralysed. Then in a quick, shocking movement he caught hold of her arms.

‘You need to learn some control,’ he said softly, steel in his voice, his eyes.

Her heart took a violent plunge as his hands burned her upper arms. The breath constricted in her throat.

‘Let go of me,’ she said, trying to sound calm while her thunderous heartbeat slammed into her ribs. She blustered the first thing that came into her head. ‘Don’t … don’t you even think of trying to kiss me.’

His brows swept up in surprise, then his rainwater eyes sparkled like diamonds. As if she’d said something funny.

His lashes flickered half the way down. ‘Are you sure you really mean that, Amber?’

Knowing her Freudian slip was flashing a bright neon, while her traitorous lips still tingled with … Well, for goodness’ sake his lips were the most ravishing pair she’d encountered at close range for months. Her chaste, unkissed mouth was making a purely kneejerk and understandable chemical response.

Then, in an avalanche of bodily betrayal, her nipples joined in. She could feel a definite weakening arousal in them of a warming kind and wouldn’t you know it? More arousal, all the way south.

At the exact instant those sensations registered with her a high-voltage, purely sexual flare lit Guy Wilder’s eyes.

‘Take your hands off me.’ His grip slackened at once and she twisted away. ‘Thank you.’ Rubbing an arm, she hissed, ‘There may be women who buckle at the knees when they meet you, Guy Wilder, but I can assure you I’m not one of them.’

The heat intensified in his gleaming gaze. He gave a knowing, sexy laugh. ‘If you say so.’ He crossed to the foyer in a couple of long strides and held the door wide. ‘You’d better run home, little girl, and cool down. The wicked, wicked man might tempt you into doing something you enjoy.’

She brushed past him, racking her brains for a parting gibe. Then, with an insolent smile, she pointed to the angry patch on his cheek. ‘Better put something on that.’

He touched the wound with his fingers. A smile curled the edges of his mouth as he retorted softly, ‘Be seeing you, sweetheart.’

The door clicked to behind her.

Guy stood like a man who’d just been slammed somewhere strange by a tornado. It took some time for his aggravated pulse to ease. The fiery little exchange had stirred him in more ways than one.

He whistled. Whew. What a spitfire.

Nothing like a tempestuous woman to whip up a man’s blood. His creative spirit was zinging. The way she held herself with that straight, proud back. If only he could get her in front of a camera.

He groaned, thinking of the way she’d glided across the room with that lithe, graceful walk. He felt aroused and at the same time amazingly energised, his whole being like an electric rod.

His blood quickened. How long since he’d felt this way?

God, it felt great.

Safe inside her flat, Amber buried her face in her pillow, her mind churning with images of his handsome, taunting face. The things he’d said. The things she’d said.

Run home, little girl. The sheer arrogance of that. She clenched her teeth and tried to think of a hands-off way to murder the beast. Though with what she’d done so far, maybe hands-on would be more fitting. Why had she done such a terrible thing?

She should be wrung with shame, but to be honest she couldn’t even feel very sorry. What was wrong with her? To have actually used violence like some wild virago was completely out of character for her. No one who knew her would believe Amber O’Neill, meek and mild as honeydew, could be capable of behaving with such a lack of restraint.

Well, no one now.

She’d once disgraced herself by pouring a glass of beer over Miguel da Vargas’s handsome, lying head, but that was ancient history. Blood under the bridge. And he’d deserved it. This was all about sleep. If she didn’t get some soon she’d have to be locked up to keep the public safe.

She punched her pillow, tossed and turned, but all to no avail. It was no use. She’d acted like a fool and she knew it. What had happened to her resolve to stay calm in a conflict situation? He’d been the one who’d stayed cool, while she …

She writhed to think of how easily he’d wiped the floor with her. Run home, little girl.

There had to be a way of salvaging her feminine honour.

Suddenly she froze on her bed of nails. She could hear him. He was in there, singing to himself like a man without a care in the world. Or … The thought stung through her agony. A man gloating.

Where was her feminine spirit? Was she just to lie down and take this?

She scrambled off the bed and took a minute or two to whip on a sexy push-up bra and some shoes with heels. She considered changing the rather deep-cut top, then discarded that idea. She didn’t want him to think she’d gone to any trouble.

She smoothed down her skirt, ran a brush through her long hair. A little strategic eyeliner, a spray of perfume. Flicked the puff from her compact over her nose. Then, more presentable this time, more together, more herself—she took a fortifying swig of Vee juice from the fridge, and sashayed to his door for a second time.

Striding up to the bell, she gave it one imperative ring.

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