Back in the Lion's Den by Elizabeth Power Read Free Book Online Page B

more than it was broken already to find that her son’s wife was cheating on him? Don’t you think she was devastated enough?’
    Emotionlessly, because she would never give Niall’s brother the satisfaction of knowing how much she had been through herself, she uttered, ‘Your discretion becomes you.’
    ‘Which is more than could be said for your morals.’
    ‘Yes, well …’ Heated colour crept across her cheeks. ‘That was what you wanted to believe. You wouldn’t listen to anything I said when I tried to explain.’
    ‘That you and this Timothy Leicester were just good friends?’ He laughed again, more harshly this time. ‘It’s a worn-out cliché.’
    ‘No, we were more—much more than that, Conan.’ Her gaze glanced across his, hard and defiant. She recognised from the rigidity of his jaw the danger that lay in provoking him, and yet it was a danger unlike any she had known before …
    It would be sheer folly to antagonise him, or to deliberately fuel his hostility towards her, and so she burst out truthfully, ‘I was never unfaithful to Niall. I loved him!’ It was wrung from the anguished depths of her heart.
    ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t wholly acknowledge the authenticity of that statement. After all, we both know your capacity for telling lies.’ They were walking again, and with a courtesy that was incongruous with the harshness of his words he stopped to lift a low branch of oleander that was growing over the path, its stems heavy with pink blossoms, their sultry scent impinging on the air.
    Sienna moved under it and felt her hair lightly brush his arm. The contact was unwelcome, unwanted and electrifying.
    ‘Which brings me to the other reason.’
    ‘Other reason?’ She dragged her gaze from the blue water of a pool she had spotted on another level of the garden, glancing warily up at him as he let the branch go and fell into step beside her. ‘For what?’
    ‘For why you’ve always made every excuse under the sun to limit the time you spend alone with me.’
    Had she? She hadn’t been conscious of it.
    Heart beating erratically, she responded, ‘Simple. I just don’t like your company.’
    ‘That goes without saying. But it isn’t just my company that disturbs you, is it, Sienna?’
    What was it then? she wondered, glancing out at the last of the sailboats that were still within her vision on the sparkling water. Because she wasn’t sure. Even when she’d been married to his brother Conan had disturbed her beyond belief. It was that raw animal energy that positively crackled from him that she found so unsettling, even without the dark enigma of his character, or the penetrating green-gold of eyes that seemed to strip her of her every secret—along with her floundering self-confidence—on those few occasions that she had come in contact with him. Eyes that assessed, judged and unhinged her so much that she was always glad to escape.
    His ability to unsettle her, she realised despairingly, had only intensified with the years. But now, striving for equanimity, she murmured, ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
    ‘Don’t you?’ His smile was feral. ‘Oh, I think you do.’
    She wasn’t sure when they had stopped walking, but now she felt the snare of those glacial green-gold eyes holding her as though in an invisible trap.
    ‘I’m talking about sex, Sienna.’
    With her heart suddenly hammering against her ribcage, she echoed, ‘Sex?’ She uttered a brittle little laugh. ‘With you?’ Her mouth contorted at the concept of such an idea, masking the furore of wild sensations going on inside her.
    Conan’s lips moved wryly, mocking, unperturbed. ‘Well,I wouldn’t have put it quite so graphically as that,’ he stated, watching the colour rise in her cheeks and seeming to relish every ounce of her discomfiture. ‘I was talking chemistry—unlikely though I know that seems. But then since when did physical attraction ever have anything to do