Read Online Jordan St Claire: Dark and Dangerous by Carole Mortimer - Free Book Online Page B

dry too, although there was a grim set to his mouth to add to his icy expression—an expression that Stephanie refused to be cowed by as much as she refused to leave.
    She had run herself a bath rather than taking the suggested shower, deciding she needed to immerse herself fully in hot water in order to soak the chill from her bones. She’d had time to think once she had sunk her shoulders beneath the hot and scented bubble bath.
    Okay, so she accepted that she shouldn’t have let Jordan kiss her. Nor should she have responded to that kiss. She also accepted that those things madecontinuing to stay on here awkward, to say the least. But awkward in a personal way, not a professional one.
    She had no intention of allowing Lucan to actually pay her a wage until Jordan let her work with him professionally. Which meant that technically Jordan wasn’t her patient yet. He wouldn’t become so until Stephanie actually did something professional for or to him. Her constant arguments with him about his need for treatment really didn’t count. Neither did making him a nourishing soup for lunch.
    If Stephanie left now then she would be admitting professional defeat. She was guilty of nothing of a personal nature except finding the ‘magnetically handsome’ Jordan Simpson magnetically handsome! Something that any woman with an ounce of red blood in her veins would have to admit to, surely?
    She would be admitting that professionally she was as incapable of getting anywhere with the stubbornly determined actor as all the other physiotherapists who had tried to work with him these last six months. That sort of defeat had never been an option as far as Stephanie was concerned. She wouldn’t accept it now with Jordan, either.
    She entered the kitchen fully. ‘I said—’
    ‘I heard what you said,’ Jordan drawled as he considered her through lowered lids. ‘I’m just surprised that you still think it’s your decision to make.’
    ‘Actually, it’s your brother’s,’ she acknowledged lightly. ‘Once I start working for him. Which I’m not doing at the moment,’ she added sweetly.
    Those gold-coloured eyes glittered icily. ‘And you don’t believe that attempting to drown his brother is reason enough for Lucan to want to dispense with your services altogether?’
    ‘Attempting to drown—?’ Stephanie gave a disbelieving shake of her head, her gaze incredulous. ‘Don’t you think that’s a slight exaggeration?’
    ‘Perhaps. Except you couldn’t have known whether or not I could actually swim when you pushed me into the water.’ He arched challenging brows.
    ‘I did
not
push you in.’
    ‘Prove it.’
    Her cheeks were flushed with temper. ‘I can no more prove that than you can prove otherwise!’
    Jordan shrugged. ‘All of that aside, you must know as well as I do that the two of us staying here together is even less feasible now than it was before.’
    ‘I’m not leaving,’ she repeated stubbornly.
    Impasse,
Jordan acknowledged in sheer frustration. Stephanie was refusing to leave, and this morning had certainly proved that he sure as hell couldn’t make her! At least, not physically.
    Jordan deliberately crossed the kitchen so that he stood only inches away from her. Close enough to feel the heat of her body in the close-fitting green jumper and blue jeans she had changed into. ‘If you stay on here then I guarantee that what happened between us this morning will happen again,’ he warned her huskily.
    Those green eyes widened in alarm even as her cheeks warmed with colour. Evidence that she wasn’t as self-possessed about what had happened earlier as she wished to appear, he thought smugly.
    She shook her head. ‘Not if I don’t want it to.’
    ‘But you
do
want it to, Stephanie.’ Jordan held her gaze with his as he curved his hand about one of those over-heated cheeks. He saw with satisfaction the way the blood pulsed at her temples. His gaze moved down and he watched the way she moistened