The Greek's Unwilling Bride by Sandra Marton Page B

handsome hunk we were talking about.”
    â€œMy...?” Laurel rolled her eyes. “What does it take to convince you? Damian Skouras isn’t ‘my’ anything. Don’t you ever give up?”
    â€œNo,” Susie said, with disarming honesty. She lifted her cup with both hands, blew on the coffee, then took a sip. “Not when something doesn’t make any sense. You are the most logical, levelheaded female I’ve ever known.”
    â€œThank you, I think.”
    â€œWhich is the reason I keep saying to myself, how could a logical, levelheaded female turn her back on a zillionaire Apollo?”
    â€œIt was ‘Adonis’ the last time around,” Laurel said coolly. “Although, as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter what you call him.”
    â€œYou didn’t like him?”
    â€œSusie, for heaven’s sake...”
    â€œOkay, okay, maybe I’m nuts—”
    â€œThere’s no ‘maybe’ about it.”
    â€œBut I just don’t understand.”
    â€œThat’s because there isn’t anything to understand. I keep telling you that. Damian Skouras and I went to dinner and—”
    â€œDo you know, you do that whenever you talk about him?”
    Laurel sighed, shook her head and gazed up at the ceiling. “Do what?”
    â€œWell, first you call him DamianSkouras. One word, no pause, as if you hardly know the guy.”
    As if I hadn’t slept with him, Laurel thought, and she felt a blaze of color flood her cheeks.
    â€œAha,” Susie said, in triumph. “You see?”
    â€œSee what?”
    â€œThe blush, that’s what. And the look that goes with it. They always follow, right on the heels of DamianSkouras.”
    Laurel rose, went to the sink and turned on the water. “I love you dearly, Suze,” she said, squeezing in a shot of Joy, “but you are the nosiest thing going, did you know that?”
    â€œGeorge says I am, but what does he know?” Susie smiled. “Men don’t understand that women love to talk about stuff like this.”
    â€œStuff like what? There’s nothing to talk about.”
    â€œThere must be, otherwise you wouldn’t turn into a clam each time I mention Damian’s name.”
    â€œI do not turn into a clam. There just isn’t anything to say, that’s all.”
    â€œListen, my friend, I was here that night, remember? I saw the way you guys looked at each other. And then, that was it. No further contact, according to you.”
    â€œHand me that spoon, would you?”
    â€œYou can’t blame me for wondering. The guy’s gorgeous, he’s a zillionaire and he’s charming.”
    â€œCharming?” Laurel spun around, her cheeks flushed. “He’s a scoundrel, that’s what he is!”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause—because...” Laurel frowned. It was a good question. Damian hadn’t seduced and abandoned her. What had happened that night hadn’t been a Victorian melodrama. She’d gone to his bed willingly and left it willingly. If the memory haunted her, humiliated her, she had no one to blame but herself. “Susie, do me a favor and let’s drop this, okay?”
    â€œIf that’s the way you want it...”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œOkay, then. Consider the subject closed.”
    â€œGreat. Thank you.”
    â€œIt’s just that I’m really puzzled,” Susie said, after a moment’s silence. Laurel groaned, but Susie ignored her. “I mean, he looked at you the way a starving man would look at a seven-course meal. Why, if Ben Franklin had come trotting through this place that night, he wouldn’t have needed a kite and a key to discover that lightning bolts and electricity are the same thing!”
    â€œThat’s good, Suze. Keep going like that, you can give up dancing and start writing scripts for George’s soap.”
    â€œYou make it