Demon Rumm Read Online Free PDF Page A

them.
    “Celebrities don’t awe me,” she said. “I was married to one. He was human and so are you.”
    He was human, all right, he thought. His entire body was quivering with the desire to demonstrate basic human needs. He wanted to press her cool, white clothes against his sun-warmed skin, to cup her hips in his hands and draw her against that part of him that was tenting the towel despite his efforts to keep it relaxed.
    “You resent my being here, don’t you?”
    “Yes,” she responded bluntly.
    “Then why did you let me come?”
    “I was under pressure from Mel.”
    “Your attorney?” He laughed shortly. “I only met him once, but it’s obvious that he’s gaga over you. He would take a flying leap out his twenty-story office window if you asked him to.”
    “I listen to his advice and this is what he advised me to do.”
    “Under the threat that I might leave the picture?”
    “You admit that that was a possibility?”
    “I’ve done it before.”
    “Well, I didn’t want to be responsible for it happening this time. I want the movie to be finished as soon as possible.”
    “I see. Your sacrifice was for the sake of the movie.”
    “Yes. I’ll cooperate with you, because I want you to get what you came for and leave as soon as possible, but don’t expect me to entertain you.”
    She was doing it again, assuming that superior tone that grated on him like a metal file. He’d have to break her of it, but how? She didn’t like to be teased, and the honest and forthright approach hadn’t worked. Shock maybe? He decided to let her talk without interruption, giving her some slack before he yanked the rope hard.
    “As I see it,” she concluded haughtily, “the only way we can make the best of this awkward situation is to keep our dealings with each other on a strictly professional level.”
    “That’s the way you see it, huh?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    “Hmm. Then I have a suggestion.”
    “Well?”
    “Start wearing a bra.”
    “Wha—”
    “Because I find it hard to think of you on a strictly professional level when I can see your nipples through your shirt.”
    He’d gone this far. He decided to go for broke. It would serve to show her that he didn’t respond to bitchiness and at the same time gratify an impulse that had been tempting him all afternoon. He raised both hands and lightly raked the backs of his fingers over her breasts, over the prominent crests of them.
    Her reaction was almost violent. She swatted his hands aside and spun away from him, then faced him with her arms as straight and rigid as flagpoles at her sides and her fists clenched. She was breathing harshly. “Don’t ever do anything like that again.”
    “You didn’t like it?”
    “Obviously I didn’t.”
    His gaze moved down to her chest. Her nipples were hard, making dark, pointed impressions against the soft cloth of her shirt. “Obviously,” he said hoarsely.
    She marched from the room, but her bare feet were soundless on the tile floor and robbed her royal exit of its impact. She made up for it by slamming the door behind her.
    “How long has she been resting?”
    “She was in her room with all the shutters drawn when I came home,” the housekeeper, Alice, told Rylan.
    “Maybe you ought to check on her.”
    The look she gave him was scolding. “I made her take two aspirin for her headache and—”
    “She had a headache?”
    “That’s what she said. I put a cold compress on her forehead and told her to lie down until dinner.” Alice wagged a carrot stick a few inches from his nose. “She’s working too hard on that book, that’s what’s wrong with her.”
    Rylan was unsure that hard work was all that was wrong with his hostess. Hard work and a headache weren’t solely responsible for driving her into the privacy of her bedroom. He was. What he’d done.
    Where did he get off, touching her like that? he asked himself. He wasn’t a fanny pincher. Lechery had always disgusted him. It made him