His Best Mistake

by Lucy King

  “You have no idea,” she said, really not wanting to revisit her emotionally deprived childhood in the middle of all this. “And neither did I. The first I knew of Cora was when I answered her call on New Year’s Eve. That wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you.” Which had to be the understatement of the century. “I ended things with Brad immediately. My calls went straight to his voice mail so I sent him a text. He didn’t respond. Some would say I was just as much Brad’s victim as Cora was. I was just as hurt. I am not a callous, fiancé-thieving bitch. I’ve been something far, far worse – a stupid, naïve, blind idiot.”

  Something flickered for a second in the depths of Jack’s eyes but it was gone before she could identify it. “His version of events is somewhat different,” he said coldly.

  “Well, of course it is.”

  “He blamed the whole thing on you.”

  “I am extremely aware of that,” she said grimly. “Not only is he a liar, he’s a wimp and a coward too, and God, if I ever get my hands on him he’ll wish he was in hell. He’ll wish Hades was relentlessly flicking spoons at his forehead and Cerberus was barking at him incessantly because what I have in mind for him is ten times worse.”

  “You’d have to wait,” said Jack darkly. “There’s quite a queue.”

  “I can imagine.”

  He didn’t seem to have anything to add to that. He just looked at her steadily as if assessing what she’d said, and she had to fight the urge to squirm beneath his scrutiny since the last thing she wanted to reveal was how on edge he made her feel.

  “So what do you know about the ring?” he said so sharply it made Stella jump.

  “What ring?” she said, a bit thrown by the change in topic yet oddly thankful for it.

  “The signet ring.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s a family heirloom. Russian. Early twentieth century. Gold. Enamel. Diamonds. Very valuable.”

  “I see,” she said dryly. “And has that gone missing too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now there’s a coincidence.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She glared at him. “Well, I don’t have it.”

  Up went his eyebrows. “No?”

  “No! Anyway, why would you think I do?” She stopped, and then it hit her. “Oh, wait,” she said. “Let me guess. Brad again. Well, he was lying about that as well because I’ve neither seen nor heard of any ring, Russian or otherwise. He gave me nothing but a temporarily broken heart, but rest assured if I had it I’d return it to you, because I never want to have anything to do with him ever again. Search the house if you want. Search me too, if you really don’t believe me.”

  The moment the heated words left her mouth Stella wished she could reach out and stuff them back in because as they hung there, hovering in the space between her and Jack, there was an abrupt shift in atmosphere. The room seemed to close in on them. The silence suddenly throbbed, the air around them thickened, and she was instantly, alarmingly aware of every inch of her body in a way that had never happened before. She went all hot and prickly and, very oddly, her skin felt too tight.

  For one frozen second Jack didn’t move a muscle either, but then his darkening gaze slowly dropped from hers to her mouth, where to her consternation it stayed, and in response she could feel her lips tingle.

  And then, an all too vivid vision of him striding over to her and pulling her into an embrace slammed into her head, and, oh God, now she could practically feel his hands on her, the warmth of his breath on her skin, the heat of his mouth tormenting parts of her body that were suddenly burning up.

  What the hell was this? she thought, a confused sort of panic surging up inside her at the lack of control she appeared to have over herself. He loathed her. She wasn’t all that keen on him. Yet she wanted to touch him. Kiss him. Do a whole lot more than just that, and she got the oddest feeling that he wanted the exact same thing, which was insane.

  “This is all your word against his,” Jack said, his voice sounding strangely rough, and for a moment Stella didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Word? What words? They seemed to be communicating on a different level entirely. But no. They weren’t. Of course they weren’t. They couldn’t be.

  “I know,” she said, perversely relieved that he’d resumed the conversation since it was marginally easier to understand than the undercurrents that swirled between them.

  “Do you have any proof of what you claim?”

  “On my phone.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “At home in Somerset.” Where she’d deliberately left it to avoid the horrors of social media. Unfortunately.

  “What bad luck,” he said, and for the briefest of moments she thought she caught the flicker of triumphant satisfaction on his face but she had to be mistaken because that made no sense either.

  “You could just take my word for it.”

  “Not a chance,” he said with contempt, and quite suddenly she’d had enough. Of Jack and his infuriatingly bull-headed arrogance. Of Brad and his pathetic spinelessness. Of the entire lousy, sodding male sex.

  “You know, this attitude of yours is really pissing me off,” she said darkly, pushing herself off the counter and taking a step towards him as everything inside her, all the heat, the frustration and the lingering hurt, sort of coalesced into one white-hot ball of anger.

  “I’m pissing you off?” he said, coolly lifting his eyebrows.

  “Yes,” she said. “You, Jack. You said you wanted answers, but you don’t, do you? I mean, not really. You’re resisting the truth of what I’m saying with every breath you take, and it’s almost like you want to. Why would you choose to accept Brad’s word over mine when it’s so clear what sort of a man he is? Why is it so hard for you to believe me? And why come all this way if you never had any intention of doing so? Your sister deserves to know the truth and any idiot could see that I’m telling it, so what’s going on? Why the determination to think the very worst of me? What are you actually doing here?”

  He didn’t say anything, just looked down at her, his dark eyes deep and unreadable, and it suddenly occurred to her that as she’d been firing all those accusations at him she’d carried on moving, taking a step with every breath, and now, having come to an abrupt halt, she was standing very close to him indeed.

  So close, in fact, that she could feel the magnetic heat of his body. So close she could smell the deliciously intoxicating scent of him. So close that with one quick, sharp movement she could be kissing him. She could be rising up onto her tiptoes, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling herself against him and finding out if his mouth tasted as good at it looked.

  As her gaze instinctively dropped to his lips, her mouth went dry and her pulse leapt. She could hear her heart thundering in her ears, a buzzing in her head, and she could feel the tension radiating from his entire body, his tightly leashed strength, and now he was uncrossing his arms and leaning forwards and putting his hands on her upper arms and, God, he wasn’t going to kiss her, was he?

  What would she do if he did?

  What would she do if he didn’t?

  She burned where he touched her. Heat pooled between her legs and desire flooded every cell of her being. He bent his head closer and as her eyes fluttered closed, her lips parted and her tongue darted out to wet them, which she knew was a bad idea even as she was doing it although she just couldn’t help it.

  But he didn’t kiss her. Of course he didn’t. Why would he?

  Instead, he moved his head at the last minute, his lips skin-tinglingly close to her ear and said, in a low voice that turned the heat swirling around inside her to ice, “Get…the hell…out of my way.”

  Chapter Three

  Grabbing his coat, Jack stormed out of Stella’s house into the fading light of the afternoon, his gut churning and his head swimming.

  He needed air.

  Badly.

  Because what the h
ell was the matter with him? Stella had asked what he was doing here, and right now, he didn’t have a clue. All he did know was that he was wound so tightly he was on the verge of snapping. So hard he hurt. She’d started walking towards him, making all those disturbingly uncomfortable points, her colour high, her eyes blazing and he’d just watched and listened, trapped against the bloody Aga and so transfixed that he couldn’t have retreated even if he’d wanted to.

  The closer she’d come, the higher the lust had surged inside him, and then she’d looked at his mouth and licked her lips, the fury and indignation on her beautiful face morphing into something quite, quite different, and he’d been a nanosecond away from losing control and taking her up on her very obvious, very tempting invitation.

  In fact, if it hadn’t been for a last-minute ice-cold flash of reason he’d have done just that. He’d have pulled her into his arms and kissed her, for God’s sake. Stella Grant. The one woman on the planet he absolutely could not – should not – kiss, the one line he should not – would not – cross.

  And the appalling thing was, it hadn’t even come as a surprise.

  He’d been battling the insanely intense and highly inappropriate attraction from the minute he’d crossed her threshold and slammed shut the door. Bizarrely, it had felt then as if the entire outside world had just sort of disappeared. Stella had started pulling off her hat and unwinding her scarf and it had been like watching a present being unwrapped. The layers had come off one by one until she was down to tight-fitting jeans and one of those Scandinavian sweater things and she was fluffing out her hair, and then – ludicrously, horrifyingly – he’d found himself wondering how far she was going to go, hoping she wasn’t going to stop there – and quite suddenly the hall had been stifling. A bolt of desire had shot through him, its odd intensity making him momentarily dizzy, and his body had instantly responded in the most inconvenient way possible.

  But somehow he’d managed to hold it together, positioning himself at the far end of the kitchen, out of her mind-scrambling orbit, and had forced himself to focus on the reason he was here. With a much-loved sister to avenge he’d gone on the attack, looking for a shred of remorse or regret and becoming increasingly irked when neither seemed to be forthcoming, until Stella had flippantly suggested he search her, and just like that his concentration had evaporated.

  Automatically his gaze had roamed over her, and before he had time to stop it a vision had slammed into his head. Of him striding over and lifting her so that she sat on the counter, and then moving in close, his hands at her waist, pushing her sweater up and over her head. Of her, shaking out her hair, leaning back and giving him access and permission to do whatever he wanted.

  And he’d wanted, he’d definitely wanted, because if he was being honest she was gorgeous. It had been so long and the image had been so vivid and it still was, and –

  God.

  What the hell was he thinking?

  And why was he thinking it again?

  A blast of wind slapped him in the face, cutting straight through the heat swirling around inside him, smacking him back to reality, and he went cold. Shuddered. He hadn’t got up close and personal with anyone in four long, lonely years. He wasn’t going to start with Stella Grant, public enemy number one.

  But why, of all women, was he so badly attracted to her? And why now?

  She was unexpected, Jack told himself grimly, digging his hands into his pockets and setting off up the hill for what hopefully would turn out to be a punishing walk. That was what it was. For some reason, he’d had the woman who’d stolen his sister’s fiancé down as the femme fatale type, all big hair and slumberous eyes and a come-hither expression, wearing precious little clothing and a sultry smile. God knew why. Clearly in the absence of measured consideration, he’d resorted to cliché.

  In reality though, she had shoulder-length wavy fair hair, eyes the colour of cornflowers and a peaches-and-cream complexion. Her mouth was the only sinful thing about her, but the rest of her looked sort of wholesome, innocent even, and it had thrown him for a loop.

  And then there was the time of year. Late January. Bleak, sad, and preferably spent in a blessedly numbing drunken stupor. The anniversary of his wife’s death four years ago this week always made him edgy and unpredictable. What few emotions he hadn’t shut down could be volatile, and he was self-aware enough to know he harboured a whole load of undealt-with rage and grief, guilt and regret over what had happened. Fifty-one weeks of the year he had it all under control. One week? This week? Not so much.

  Was that why he’d charged up here to Scotland, then, no questions asked, instead of hitting the bottle? Because if he was being brutally honest it hadn’t crossed his mind that Stella might be as innocent in all this as his sister. He’d just witnessed Cora’s distress and leapt to conclusions without considering the alternatives.

  Had he, then, welcomed what had happened to his sister? No. He’d never, ever have done that, but undeniably it had given him a focus and presented a distraction that he’d relished. And it had meant that Cora had been too preoccupied to issue her customary annual suggestion that he talk to someone, which was a relief because since he didn’t deserve absolution he didn’t see the point. It even – possibly – gave him a stab at atonement because here was a woman he loved in distress, in trouble, and this time he could do something about it.

  Scowling into the distance, Jack turned up his collar and ploughed on as other equally uncomfortable truths began to slap him round the head. Such as what Stella had said about fairness. That grated because, annoyingly, she was right. He did value fairness. In his world, where the amounts of money made and lost in a day could be staggering, it seemed important. That was why he donated fifty per cent of his company’s net profit to charity every year. And a defendant did generally have an opportunity to put forward their case before being judged and found guilty, something he’d initially denied her.

  As snippets of their confrontation flashed though this mind, Jack recalled the attack and fire with which Stella countered every one of his possibly not-so-valid accusations, and now he found himself thinking that perhaps the attack was justified and perhaps the fire was understandable because as much as he might wish otherwise he had the niggling feeling he might, in fact, believe her.

  His instinct – the same instinct that had made him a millionaire by the age of twenty-four and a billionaire by the age of thirty – was certainly pushing him in that direction. There’d been no averting of her gaze. No fudging of answers. Stella had been frank and open, even when what she’d had to say showed her in a poor light, and in his opinion none of these were the traits of a scheming arch manipulator. On the contrary, he valued and admired every trait she’d exhibited so far. And she certainly sounded genuine enough in her loathing of her and Cora’s ex. Besides, he’d always thought there was something a bit off about the man. Brad had been too smooth, too charming, and the glint in his eye hadn’t seemed entirely trustworthy.

  It therefore looked as if he’d got everything about Stella wrong, he thought, his gut tightening with guilt and more than a little self-reproach as he reached the brow of the hill. For the first time in years he suspected he’d made an error of judgement. A bad one. A grossly unfair one.

  Which meant he owed her an apology.

  *

  Standing at her bedroom window that looked over the fields that lay beneath a fine smattering of snow, Stella watched the figure striding up the sheep-and-rock-dotted hill in the fading light and wondered if it would be too much to hope he carried on walking and didn’t come back. If he did then she could wipe the last hour from her head. OK, so she’d never know whether she’d convinced Jack to change his mind about her, but on the upside she’d never have to think about how she’d actually swayed towards him right there at the end, the insane desire no doubt written all over her face.

  How could she have done that? she wondered. The memory of just how ready for a kiss she’d been flew into her head an
d a fresh wave of mortification and bewilderment washed over her. After everything that had happened recently, after everything she’d been through, how on earth could she actually have wanted to kiss him? Or any man? What was wrong with her? And what had ever made her think Jack might comply? He despised her. He would never want to kiss her, even if he did think her mouth was pretty.

  Since his disappearance over the brow of the hill was unlikely, though, the best she could hope for was that he hadn’t recognised how much she’d wanted him in that moment, because otherwise she was in for a very awkward evening.

  And not just because of the uncontrolled way her body seemed to respond to his. As she revisited their confrontation it occurred to her that in amongst all those outrageous accusations he’d raised some pretty uncomfortable questions. Such as, how could she have missed what was going on with Ben/Brad? How could she not have realised that all was not as it had seemed? Her work depended on her being able to read people and interpret signs, and she’d always considered herself more perceptive than most. Was she so desperate for a happy stable relationship that she’d wilfully ignored the signs and been blind to what was there to be seen?

  She didn’t like to admit it but it was perfectly possible, because, come to think of it, Ben/Brad had behaved suspiciously on the odd occasion. He’d cancelled on her more than once, and always at the last minute. Then there was the constant checking of his watch and his phone. When she’d asked him about it he’d told her he was just busy and had to keep his ‘finger on the pulse’ and she’d blithely believed him. He was a high-end estate agent – at least that was what he’d told her he did for a living – and so it made sense that he couldn’t make it some Saturdays because he had viewings.

  That he’d never invited her to his place, though, should have rung bells. They’d dated for three months and she hadn’t been to his flat once. He’d always come to hers. He’d said he liked to escape London but in reality he must have been keeping her away. Keeping her a secret.