‘Oh, yes, it is!’ she retorted with blistering scorn, the defence system cracking wide open at being forcibly held. Wild hostility poured into wild accusation. ‘You’re acting like a feudal lord manhandling a servant girl who can’t fight back.’
The image was wrong. She could fight back. She was doing it with all her mental might. But for once in his life Ethan wanted to be a feudal lord, having his way with this woman. He knew he should release her yet his mind had lost all sense of civilised behaviour. Imposing this physical link with her was arousing a host of primitive feelings that demanded satisfaction.
‘You’re denying me the assistance I asked for,’ he argued.
‘With good reason,’ she hotly returned.
‘Nonsense! It’s totally unreasonable!’
‘What is the matter with you?’ she cried in exasperation. ‘Why bother with me when—?’
‘Because you bother me more than anyone here.’
‘What? Because I’m not seeking your attention? Are you so used to women hanging on your every word, your high and mighty ego is pricked by one who doesn’t?’
‘You did want my attention, Daisy Donahue,’ he slung back at her in burning certainty. ‘You were looking at me.’
She tried to explain it away, biting out the words with icy precision. ‘The model you were talking to had complained about coffee not having been served. I had intended to inform her it was on its way when I saw you with her.’ Her teeth were bared in a savagely mocking smile. ‘Mindful of my boss’s instructions and contrary to your arrogant assumption, I didn’t want to draw any more attention from you, Mr Cartwright.’
Ethan was not convinced. It wasn’t dismissal he’d felt coming from her. It had been a powerful bolt of passion aimed directly at him. It was still hitting him. His whole body was energised by it. His eyes derided her evasion of the truth as he attacked her reading of his character.
‘You can stick me with ego and arrogance as much as you like, but there’s more going on in your head than you’re telling me, and it has nothing to do with Lynda Twiggley’s instructions.’
‘What I think is my business,’ she whipped back.
‘Not when it involves me.’
Impasse.
She glared at him, the wheels of her mind going round and round in a fierce search for an exit line he might accept.
He wanted to drag her into his embrace and kiss her until all her resistance melted. Never had he been so aroused by a woman. For the first time in his life he was in total tune with the cavemen of old who simply hauled off the object of their desire and took their pleasure at will. Was it her hostility that excited him? Had he grown too bored with women who were only too eager in their compliance?
Intensity…the word leapt into his mind. That was what had been lacking in all his other connections with women. Daisy Donahue was transmitting it, hitting the same chord in him. Normally he channelled it into his work. It wasn’t a social asset. Intensity disturbed people. Too dark, Mickey said. But there was a dark side to Daisy Donahue, too, setting off a weird wave of exhilaration through his bloodstream. And a compulsion to explore it.
She dragged in a deep breath and tore her gaze from his, dropping it pointedly to the hand still grasping her arm. He softened his grip, rubbing his thumb along the underside of her wrist, finding the beat of her pulse, exulting in its rapid drumming.
She was excited, too.
Or was it fear?
‘I’m sorry I bothered you, Mr Cartwright,’ she said in a stilted little voice. Her beautifully feminine breasts lifted as she filled her lungs again. Her eyes met his in a plea that held a vulnerability he hadn’t seen before in her. ‘Please let me go.’
It made him feel like a cad for holding her against her will, yet he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. ‘You said we have nothing in common. I think we do, Daisy Donahue.’
She shook her head, agitation flickering into definite fear as she was distracted by something behind him.
‘Ah, Dee-Dee,’ came the smarmy voice of Lynda Twiggley who was obviously about to insinuate herself into the situation.
‘Miss Twiggley,’ she said in a shaky subservient tone as the woman stepped forward to part them.
It enfuriated Ethan that Daisy should feel it necessary to kowtow to her snaky employer. She was a natural-born fighter. It was wrong for her to be in this position.
‘Catering needs a prompt to get the coffee moving.’
It was a dismissive command.
Daisy tried to pull her arm free, anxious to avoid any more displeasure being heaped on her head.
Ethan tightened his grip, determined on keeping her with him.
‘Daisy has already done that,’ he coldly told the Twiggley who turned an ingratiating smile to him.
‘Then she can do it again,’ was the unbending reply.
Unreasonable, demanding bitch!
Ethan lost his cool. ‘Miss Twiggley…’ grated out from between gnashing teeth.
She fluttered her exquisitely painted fingernails and her false eyelashes at him. ‘Oh, do make it Lynda, please…’
It revolted him. Words shot out of his mouth in a stream of searing contempt without any thought to their consequences.
‘I think it’s time you stopped treating your PA like a slave who doesn’t warrant any consideration or courtesy.’
Her mouth gaped open in shock.
He felt a shudder run up Daisy’s arm.
The ensuing silence was impregnated with the hairprickling sense that a bomb had just gone off. Ethan revelled in its intensity. He was so off his coolly analytical brain—no number-crunching going on at all—he was actually looking forward to the fall-out.
CHAPTER THREE
DAISY’S mind was reeling. Her heart was galloping faster than any racehorse. Any second now her boss was going to throw a major tantrum and she’d bear the brunt of it. Ethan Cartwright was too important a person to cop the whiplash from his strike on her behalf.
Why had he done it?
Why, why, why…?
Even if he’d meant well, he should have known it would rebound on her. He just hadn’t cared. It wasn’t going to affect his life. He was an untouchable. Anger at not getting his own way with her had spilled over onto Lynda Twiggley. Never mind that Daisy was the one who would pay for it—the selfish, arrogant pig! She’d explained the situation to him, begged him to let her go, and what he’d done was put her job at risk—the job she had to keep or see her parents’ home go down the bankruptcy drain.