Taming the Last St Claire by Carole Mortimer Read Free Book Online

delicious curves of her hips and bottom. The slight vulnerability to those sensuously full lips when she wasn’t being smart-mouthed…
    Joey was very aware of the sudden tension that surrounded herself and Gideon. She was also aware, so close to him like this, that his chest appeared as hard and muscled as she had imagined it would be, and her senses were being bombarded equally with the heat of his body and his smell: an elusive spicy aftershave mixed with hot and heady male.
    She was almost afraid to breathe, and she resisted the impulse she had to step closer to him, to put her arms about his waist and feel the ripple of muscles beneath his shirt as her palms rested against his back. She was certain that he would feel good to touch. Hot and hard. Like steel encased in velvet.
    It was a dangerous impulse—especially after the erotic thoughts Joey had had about him earlier on today. And yet she couldn’t move away. Could feel the mesmerising pull of his seductive heat. Couldn’t take her gaze from those hard and chiselled features. Except they didn’t look quite so hard any more. Gideon’s mouth was more relaxed than Joey had ever seen it—lips slightly parted, his breath a warm caress against her brow—and his eyes…oh, God, his eyes.
    They were no longer just that dark and brooding bitter chocolate brown, but now had shards of gold fanning outfrom the pupil. That gold deepened, increased as his gaze shifted from her eyes to her parted lips. As if he too were imagining what it would feel like if they were to kiss—
    A knock sounded softly on the outer door before it was immediately opened.
    ‘Gideon, I—Oh!’
    Lucan’s secretary, May Randall, came to an awkward halt in the doorway, her eyes wide as she stared across the room and saw the two of them standing so close together.
    ‘I—I’ll come back later!’ Her cheeks were bright red as she turned away and shut the door behind her.
    May’s unexpected interruption had the same effect as a cold shower on Gideon, bringing him instantly to a sense of exactly what he was doing—and what he had been about to do.
    Damn it, he had been about to kiss Joey McKinley.
Joey McKinley,
for heaven’s sake!
    She was everything Gideon disliked in a woman.
    The women who briefly held a place in his life were chosen for having the same qualities as his favourite white wine: cool and crisp, with just a hint of seduction to tantalise the senses. Joey had all the explosive qualities of a rich and ruby-red wine: deep and fruity to the palate, with a headiness that attacked rather than tantalised the senses.
    Joey only had to take one brief glance up into Gideon’s expressive face to know that he regretted even this much of a lapse in the previous antagonism that had existed between them. It was there in the way he breathed deeply through his nose, in his eyes, now a dark glitter, his stiff shoulders, hands tightly clenched at his sides.
    Whereas
she
was still reeling from the very real and heart-pounding desire that had ripped through to hervery core as she’d become mesmerised by the intensity of emotion burning in the deep gold of his eyes.
    Eyes that had suddenly been the same colour as the beloved dragon sitting on her desktop…

CHAPTER FOUR
    ‘A ND how do you suggest we explain
that
touching little scene to May?’ Gideon barked.
    Coldly. Harshly. Disapprovingly. Typically!
    The warmth Joey had thought she’d seen as she looked up into the depths of Gideon’s gold-coloured eyes had to have been an illusion, she inwardly derided herself as she saw those eyes were now a deep and scathing brown.
    ‘What’s to explain?’ she dismissed flippantly. ‘We were only talking.’
    ‘We were obviously standing much too close to be discussing business contracts.’
    Gideon realised with self-disgust that after only a single morning of working with Joey he was already starting to lose his mind. What other explanation could there possibly be for even
thinking
about kissing