His Scandalous Mistress: The Master's Mistress / Count Toussaint's Pregnant Mistress / Castellano's Mistress of Revenge

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_d82fa2ce-36cb-5ee1-ac01-0938545619ca)

‘YOU can’t possibly believe that?’ Elizabeth gasped incredulously, when she could finally speak at all, her cheeks pale and her eyes wide as she stared across the width of the table at Rogan.

Not surprising, really, Rogan accepted grimly. It couldn’t be every day she heard a man accuse his own father of being responsible for killing his mother!

He stood up abruptly. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he rasped.

Elizabeth Brown continued to stare at him as she rose unsteadily to her feet, belatedly turning back to pick up her shoulder bag at she realised she had forgotten it in her obvious shock at his statement.

‘Rogan?’ she prompted shakily once they were outside on the pavement.

Rogan’s fingers curled about the top of her arm, his face stern as he walked across the square to where Elizabeth had parked the car. ‘Brad wasn’t standing behind my mother pushing her when she fell off the cliff to her death,’ he explained. ‘But the adulterous snake might just as well have been!’ he added coldly.

Elizabeth’s head was buzzing with the things Rogan had just said about his parents. But not so much that she wasn‘t completely aware of the touch of those lean fingers wrapped strongly about her upper arm… ‘I—I don’t know what to say… ’

Rogan’s mouth twisted derisively as he watched her fumbling in her shoulder bag for her car keys. ‘That must make you unique amongst your sex!’

Elizabeth was aware that Rogan was probably being flippant as a means of alleviating the intensity of their conversation, but that didn’t make his deliberate taunt any less insulting. ‘You really are a male chauvinist, aren’t you?’ she muttered as she finally found her keys and unlocked the doors.

Rogan quirked an eyebrow. ‘If I was a male chauvinist I wouldn’t allow you to do the driving.’

Elizabeth frowned at him over the top of her bottle-green Mini. ‘It’s my car!’

He gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘I believe chauvinists are only concerned with their own fragile egos rather than ownership.’ He opened the passenger door and climbed inside.

Leaving Elizabeth with no choice but to do the same. All the time aware that there was nothing in the least fragile about this man’s ego!

She gave Rogan another frowning glance before switching on the ignition and driving out of the town square and on to the coast road that led back to Sullivan House.

The coast road consisted mainly of high cliffs that dropped down to the beach or the rocks below. The same high cliffs from which Rogan’s mother had fallen to her death… ?

For some reason Elizabeth had thought that Maggie Sullivan’s premature death had been from some unnamed illness. To learn that she had actually fallen to her death from these high cliffs because her husband had been an ‘adulterous snake’ was more than disturbing in view of the behaviour of Elizabeth’s own father, and her mother‘s response to it…

As a result of that, Elizabeth had deliberately kept her own adult life free of emotional entanglements; she certainly didn’t welcome anything that reminded her of the pain and disillusionment that had been so much a part of her own childhood.

Perhaps it might be better if she postponed cataloguing the library at Sullivan House for now and came back later in the summer, when things might be less emotionally fraught?

When Rogan had returned to NewYork and was no longer present at Sullivan House to disturb her, for instance…

And she was once again disturbed—by his close proximity in the confines of her car!

Barely leashed power oozed from every pore of Rogan’s muscular body, sending out a purely physical challenge that heightened Elizabeth’s senses, both sight and smell. Her fingers tightened about the steering wheel as she resisted the urge to reach out and touch the lean strength of his hands where they lay clenched on his powerful thighs.

She’d never reacted to a man in this way. At least… she never had until Rogan Sullivan’s sudden appearance at Sullivan House last night. Since then her nerve-endings—and every other part of her!—had been on constant alert.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he suddenly wanted to know.

Elizabeth’s fingers gripped the steering wheel even tighter. ‘I was simply wondering if your long hair is a reaction to being in the army for so many years, or if you’ve just forgotten to go to a barber recently.’

‘Liar,’ Rogan murmured huskily, well aware that Elizabeth had been shooting him surreptitious glances from beneath those sooty lashes for the last few minutes. And he was experienced enough to know that Elizabeth Brown was aroused by what she saw when she looked at him.

Her eyes were fever-bright. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breathing was soft and uneven. Also, her breasts were full, with the nipples showing hard and aroused against the soft material of her blouse.

Every starchy inch of Elizabeth Brown was aware of him, and he found that knowledge delicious!

She bristled at the accusation. ‘I—’

‘You’re clenching your left hand again, Elizabeth,’ he warned softly.

She frowned at the observation, but instantly lessened the tightness of the grip she had on the steering wheel. ‘You—’

‘Admit it, Liza.’ He deliberately gave her that sexy smile as he used the name he knew she objected to so strongly. ‘When you look at me, you like what you see!’

Her jaw tightened disapprovingly, although the blush in her cheeks and the catching of her breath in her throat told a completely different story… ‘I told you not to call me—’

‘I like calling you Liza.’ Rogan turned in his seat so that he could look at her fully. ‘With your eyes shining brightly, and that colour in your cheeks, you’re much more of a Liza than you are a stiff and unapproachable Elizabeth,’ he said appreciatively.

‘Stiff and—!’ She gave an impatient shake of her head. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’

He quirked dark brows. ‘Am I succeeding?’

‘Very much so!’

He grinned unrepentantly. ‘Enough to make sure that you definitely decide to high-tail it out of Sullivan House as soon as you can make the appropriate excuses?’

That blush in her cheeks deepened as she gasped softly. ‘How did you know… ?’

‘That’s what you were thinking about doing a few minutes ago,’ Rogan finished dryly. ‘You’re pretty easy to read, Elizabeth.’ He gave an unconcerned shrug. Rogan hadn’t just learned to analyse computers over the last fifteen years; he had learned to read people too.

Although this woman was a little more complicated than most. No, make that a lot more complicated!

Why did a beautiful woman in her late twenties bury herself in academia? To such an extent that she even chose to occupy her vacation time buried in the wilds of Cornwall, cataloguing a private library? Did she ever let anyone past that spiky exterior? Rogan wondered. More to the point, had she ever let a man past that bristly exterior and into her body… ?

Elizabeth wasn’t sure she liked Rogan finding her ‘easy to read’—especially considering some of the thoughts she had been having about him since first setting eyes on him the previous night!

Her mouth firmed. ‘I have no intention of “high-tailing it out of Sullivan House”, as you put it.’ Not any more, she didn’t. Not when he seemed to have so easily guessed that he would be the reason for her leaving! ‘Your father engaged me to catalogue his library, and if you still want me to continue, then I will fulfil that obligation.’

His mouth twisted. ‘Big on obligation, are you?’

Elizabeth stiffened at the taunt she heard in his tone. ‘I believe that once given a person’s word should be honoured, yes.’

Implying, Rogan would guess, that someone close to her—or someone she had allowed close to her?—had once let her down pretty badly.

He nodded. ‘Are you hoping to find even more valuable first editions?’

‘It’s possible, yes,’ she acknowledged cautiously.

Rogan chuckled softly. ‘You don’t have to be so cagey, Elizabeth, I’m not about to steal any of them and sell them off for a huge profit!’