Page 53 of Legal Attraction
That he’d been wrong?
Would a man like Ronan—a man that stubborn and proud—ever admit that he had been wrong?
She had been wrong, too, though, and she hadn’t contacted him. Who was the coward now? Or maybe she was so used to things just falling in her lap, like Arte had pointed out, that she expected Ronan to do the same?
She sighed and glanced into the mirror again. And this time it wasn’t her face she saw in the glass. It was his...
She met his reflection’s dark-eyed gaze and asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you to be done,” he said. “Everyone else left.”
“You were here for the shoot?” she asked. “I didn’t see you.” And she looked for him at every one of them, hoping he’d show up like he had that once.
“I couldn’t watch,” he said.
She turned toward him then. “Why not?” This shoot hadn’t been for Bette’s Beguiling Bows. It was a perfume campaign. She had been wearing an evening gown instead of lingerie.
“I couldn’t watch another man touch you,” he said. A muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw, and he spoke through gritted teeth. “Like that model was touching you...”
She laughed at his outlandish claim. “You were jealous?” She couldn’t believe that a man with Ronan’s confidence would ever be jealous of another man.
Unless he still believed all those lies about her. Didn’t he think Arte had finally told the truth?
“Is that what this is?” he asked, as if he had a horrible taste in his mouth. “I’ve never felt like this before.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I never cared.”
It wasn’t a declaration of love. But coming from Ronan , it was nearly as monumental. Muriel’s heart rate quickened, and it was suddenly hard to breathe. She parted her lips to drag in some air.
And then his mouth was there, moving hungrily over hers. He kissed her as if he was consuming her, his lips and teeth nibbling at hers. He suddenly pulled back and uttered a deep groan.
“Why do you affect me like no one else ever has?” he asked her.
She could have asked him the same question, but she just smiled with the pleasure his comment gave her. Even if she followed the cardinal rule of gossip and only believed half of what she’d heard, he’d had a lot of lovers. So it was good to know that she was special to him.
“You don’t have to be jealous because of me,” she assured him. “Because you’re the only man I want.”
He tensed, and she saw that look of fear pass through his dark eyes. Instead of her words reassuring him, she’d scared him. And she remembered he was a man who would never let himself fall in love—because he didn’t want to wind up like his father.
But she was not like his mother. And she wanted him to know that. “I only sleep with one man at a time,” she said. “And you’re the only man I want to sleep with now.”
Yet they had never slept together. He always took off right after they had sex.
“Is that why you withdrew your complaint?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Sorry, you did not seduce me into that.”
“Why did you do it then?” he asked.
“Because Arte told me the truth.”
“And the rest of the world, too,” Ronan remarked. He studied her face. “How did you get him to do that?”
She shrugged. “He must have realized it was the only publicity he was going to get.”
“It’s bad.”
