A reluctant grin slanted Bella's mouth. 'You really do have the gift of the gab, as my Irish mother used to say. Women must drop like ninepins around you in receipt of all that flattery.'

In Edward's experience, women were infinitely more aggressive in their desire to catch his eye and share his bed. His sculpted mouth quirked at her innocence. He dropped his shirt on the floor, ropes of abdominal muscle flexing across his torso below her admiring gaze. Bella dragged her attention from him in embarrassment and shimmied out of her jeans, blushing at the schoolgirl knickers she sported beneath. She had never had the money to buy prettier underwear. That random thought took her brain off the disturbing truth that she was succumbing to Edward's magnetism all over again. Was that wrong?