Just for a Night Read Free Page B

any man other than Shane.
    Not that she’d had anything to do with any man other than Shane lately. She’d taken compassionate leave from her teaching position after her mother’s death and had stayed at home ever since, helping Shane with the administrative side of running the riding school. For the last few weeks her life had revolved around her fiancé and the astonishing things he could make her feel.
    Her frown deepened as she tried to make sense of her unbidden responses to the Earl of Winterborne. Was her recent sexual awakening able to be transferred to any attractive man who came along? Had she turned into an ogler of male flesh? A female fantasiser?
    The prospect appalled her. She’d never liked theway some women talked about men and sex all the time when they were together, as though there was nothing else in their lives. Or the way they stared openly at certain parts of the male anatomy.
    Marina’s eyes drifted down from those broad shoulders to where Lord Winterborne’s suit jacket outlined what looked like a nicely shaped derrière .
    You’re doing it now, that annoyingly honest voice piped in her head—the one which Marina could never deny.
    And enjoying it, another sarcastic voice inserted slyly.
    The first voice came to the rescue with a vengeance.
    And what’s wrong with looking? it challenged belligerently. There’s no harm in looking!
    She wants to do more than look. She’d like to touch, too. She’d like to see if an English earl makes love like an Aussie stablehand. She’d like to—
    â€˜Oh, do shut up!’ she muttered aloud.
    â€˜Pardon?’ The object of her mental warring glanced over his shoulder, slowing his stride at the same time.
    Marina almost cannoned right into him. She stopped herself just in time, rocking backwards and forwards on her toes as she hitched the tapestry bag higher on her shoulder for added balance.
    â€˜Nothing,’ she said with a blithe and decidedly false innocence. There was definitely nothing innocent going on in her mind at that moment. ‘Just talking to myself.’
    â€˜You do that often?’ His drily amused smile didwickedly attractive things to his mouth. Marina decided she preferred him dead serious.
    â€˜All the time,’ she admitted, wrenching her mind back from the path to hell with great difficulty. ‘I was an only child, and only children often talk to themselves. I used to talk to a tea-towel as well.’
    â€˜A tea-towel ?’ He laughed, and Marina gritted her teeth. Laughing did to his whole face what that smile had done to his mouth: transformed it from merely handsome to lethally sexy.
    â€˜Why a tea-towel? Why not a doll? Or a teddy?’
    Marina pulled a face. ‘It’s difficult to explain. The tea-towel wasn’t another person, or a pretend friend. It was me. Or another side of me. My…secret side.’
    â€˜Sounds fascinating. Do you still talk to tea-towels?’ he asked as he walked on, more slowly this time, so that she fell into step with him by his side.
    â€˜Not since I was eighteen.’
    â€˜What happened to you at eighteen?’
    â€˜I left home to go to teacher’s college. I didn’t think my new flatmates would indulge my peculiarities like my mother did. Since then, any conversations with my secret side take place in my head.’
    He slanted a thoughtful glance across at her. ‘And how often do these conversations take place?’
    â€˜Not that often nowadays.’ But she had an awful feeling they were about to pick up frequency.
    â€˜Do you tell anyone about them?’
    â€˜Lord, no!’
    â€˜Not even your fiancé?’
    Marina hesitated a fraction.
    â€˜That is an engagement ring on your finger, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Yes.’ Marina had pretty well decided on the flight over that she’d blown the incident before leaving home way out of proportion, that of course she