Say It With Diamonds by Lucy King Read Free Book Online Page A

stroppy drowned rat.
    ‘What do you want?’ she said, too fed up with everything to care that she was the one now sounding rude.
    ‘Would you like a lift?’
    Yes. ‘No, thanks,’ she said mutinously. ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘It’s pouring.’
    ‘I had noticed,’ she said, aiming for withering but finding withering annoyingly hard to do when her hair was plastered to her face, her arms ached from trying to protect her headwith her weighty equipment case and her feet squelched in her boots.
    ‘So get in the car and I’ll take you home.’
    ‘I’m happy to take the Tube.’ Bella sniffed and planted her feet a little deeper into the moral high ground. ‘Besides I wouldn’t want to put you to any more trouble.’
    Good. That was better. This time she had managed to inject a trace of sarcasm into her voice, she thought with a surge of satisfaction. Not that it appeared to be having any effect on him whatsoever, judging by the blinding smile he flashed at her.
    ‘You wouldn’t be putting me to any trouble. In fact you’d be doing me a favour.’
    Another one? ‘How?’ she said archly, even more irritated by the way her stomach flipped like a pancake at his smile.
    ‘You’d be saving me a phone call.’
    So now he was stingy as well as rude? Just as well she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. ‘Fabulous.’
    The smile turned into a broad grin, as if he was perfectly aware of her mood and completely unfazed by it, and Bella scowled.
    ‘I’d like to apologise for abandoning you at the bank like that,’ he said smoothly. ‘Preferably in the privacy of the car, although I’m perfectly happy to do it on the pavement if you really have something against accepting a lift.’
    Oh. Bella blinked and stared at him, feeling herself begin to waver as her indignation receded a little both at the smile and the look of sincerity on his face.
    Hmm. Right. Well. If he wanted to apologise, who was she to argue? It was the least she deserved. But as for making him do it on the pavement, well, while part of her quite wanted him to get the drenching she had, another part of her pointed out that if she kept on refusing to get into his car she’dsound like an idiot and Will would be perfectly justified in wondering if she wasn’t protesting just a bit too much.
    Besides she was soaking and shivering and the moral high ground was getting soggier by the second. The Tube would be steamy and crowded and horrible, and here she was being presented with a lovely warm, dry alternative.
    There wasn’t really any contest, she thought, lowering her case and dashing towards Will’s car. She might have lost most of her mind this afternoon, but it hadn’t yet gone completely.
    ‘I’ll ruin your upholstery,’ she muttered as he opened the door, unashamedly wishing she were a whole lot wetter so she could really do some damage.
    He ran his gaze over her and, dammit, if her body didn’t burn at his slow leisurely perusal. ‘Not a problem in the slightest,’ he said with another of those devastatingly sexy grins. ‘Fair’s fair, after all.’
    Five minutes later Will was beginning to wish that he’d never spotted Bella on the pavement. His intentions might have started out all chivalrous and noble, but they were rapidly galloping in entirely the opposite direction.
    The surge of triumphant satisfaction that had shot through him when she’d finally given in and slid into the car had long since vanished beneath a heat and a need that he’d thought he’d eradicated.
    Eradicated? Yeah, right. How he could have been so foolishly naïve to have thought that he had no idea. The minute she’d slammed the door and started peeling off her clothes every inch of him had leapt to attention, pulsating with an awareness that he couldn’t ignore, however much he’d like to.
    Bella’s case sat on the floor of the car that up until now he’d always considered to be quite spacious. Next to it lay her boots, which she’d unzipped and