I was trying to help you, too!”

“So how did you help us?” he asked softly, silkily. “What did you do?”

He’d done it. He’d trapped her, cornered her, and she’d all but confessed.

Horrified, Poppy tried to run, but Randall caught her by the wrist as she attempted to leave the table. His fingers tightened around her slender bones, and he pulled her toward his side.

“Tell me,” he said quietly, tugging her closer to his chair. “Let’s have the truth.”

She tried to pull free, but he was so much stronger than she was, and then he began to stroke the inside of her wrist with his thumb, lightly running the pad of his thumb over her wildly beating pulse. It was the most electric sensation, her nerves jumping, dancing, sending little rivulets of feeling everywhere.

“Sit,” he said, drawing her toward him, and then pulling her down so that she perched on the arm of his chair. “Talk. The truth now.”

But how could she think, much less say anything coherent, when his thumb was caressing her wrist, making her tingle all over?

She looked up into his eyes and her breath caught as she saw something in his eyes she’d never seen before.

Heat. A fierce, raw, masculine heat that was completely at odds with the man she knew.

But then his thumb caressing her pulse was equally at odds with Randall Grant, the Earl of Langston. The Earl of Langston was elegant, disciplined, restrained. The Earl of Langston did not want her.

“I can’t think when you’re doing that,” she said under her breath.

“And I can’t have you running off every time the questions get uncomfortable.” He moved his hand, sliding it from her wrist up over the flat of her hand so that they were palm to palm, his long fingers pressing against hers, parting them.

She shivered at the press of his hand to hers. It felt wildly indecent.

“I would say this is far more uncomfortable than any of your questions,” she whispered, trying to slip her hand out, but only succeeding in dragging her palm down his, sending sparks of sensation up her arm, through her breasts and into her belly below.

His fingers laced through hers, holding her still.

She looked down at their joined hands because there was no way she could look into his face right now. “I don’t think this is proper.”

“It’s a little late to worry about propriety, Poppy. So tell me what you did. You don’t need to tell me why. I think we both know the why.”

She closed her eyes, mortified, not sure if he was suggesting what she thought he was suggesting.

She prayed he wasn’t suggesting...

She prayed...

Just then the plane lurched and dropped, caught in a violent stream of turbulence, and Randall clamped his arm over her thighs, his hand locking around her knee, holding her steady. “I have you,” he said.

And he did, she thought wildly, eyes opening as heat and desire rushed through her.

He’d touched her before—a hand to her elbow as he assisted her across a gravel car park, or a touch to her shoulder when entering a crowded lift to nudge her forward—but never like this. Never anything like this, and she was suddenly riveted by the sight of his hand on her knee, his fingers as lean and strong and elegant as the rest of him.

She’d imagined this, though, hadn’t she?

Poppy smashed the little voice but it was too late, the little voice wouldn’t be silenced. It was beyond inappropriate to have feelings for him in the first place. Randall Grant was Sophie’s fiancé and her employer, and Poppy would rather cut off her right arm than embarrass Sophie, or Randall. But that didn’t mean the feelings weren’t there, suppressed. Buried.

She worked hard to keep them mashed down, too. And one of the ways she contained her feelings was by keeping a proper distance from him.

She didn’t let herself stand too close, or bend too low.

She didn’t look him in the eye more than was necessary.

She dressed conservatively, even frumpishly, so no one could accuse her of trying to play up her assets—not that there were too many of those.

And she called him Randall, not Dal like his other friends, because she wasn’t his friend. She was his secretary and on his payroll, and those were key distinctions.

She couldn’t ever risk forgetting herself.

She couldn’t risk dropping her guard, letting him see that beneath her professional demeanor was a real woman...a woman who wanted nothing more than to see him happy. Because Randall Grant was many things—brilliant, wealthy, strategic, successful—but he wasn’t happy. In fact, he didn’t seem to allow himself to feel emotions at all.

Perhaps that was what troubled her most. He would give the shirt off his back to someone in need, but he never asked for anything in return.

He never took anything from anyone, or wanted anything for himself.

He just existed in his space and sphere, brilliant and handsome and impossibly solitary.

Sophie had never seemed to notice. In her mind, Dal was just one of those introverts...a loner...and content to be alone, but Poppy didn’t agree. Of course she kept her opinion to herself. But instinct told her that Randall Grant hadn’t always been so alone, and that his isolation was perhaps the result of his being raised by a difficult father.

“I think you should let me go, Randall.” Her voice was soft, almost broken.

“Maybe, but I don’t think I shall.