‘I didn’t really get a chance to thank you for helping me earlier because you were working on the plane but …’ She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. ‘I feel really bad that I’ve imposed on you.’
‘Forget it. I was the one who made the situation worse.’
‘You were only trying to help me and I appreciate it.’
‘Good. Glad that’s straightened out.’
‘I just—’
‘Has that milk boiled yet?’ he asked brusquely.
‘Oh.’ She whirled around to the stainless-steel stovetop and checked the pot.
Aidan nearly groaned as her short skirt flared around her hips. He wondered what she would do if he walked up behind her and slid his hands around her small waist and pressed up against her. Before he could contemplate if he might actually follow through with that thought she turned and poked a wooden spoon in his direction.
‘See, I don’t get that.’
‘Get what?’ he asked warily, hearing the plaintive complaint in her voice.
‘One minute you’re nice and then the next you’re not.’
‘It’s not you.’
She snorted. ‘Now you sound like you’re breaking up with me.’
Aidan stretched his legs out in front of him, giving up on the spreadsheet. ‘It’s-not-you-it’s-me type thing?’
‘Exactly.’ Her smile lit up her face.
‘Used that line a lot, have you?’
She grimaced. ‘More like that line has been used on me.’
Aidan’s eyebrows shot up. ‘You’re kidding?’
She shook her head. ‘Unfortunately not. Lucilla has a theory that I date all the wrong kinds of men because I want them to reinforce my view of the world.’
‘Which is?’ Aidan’s eyes slid over her. He thought about all the reasons he shouldn’t go to bed with her and couldn’t come up with one. Yes, she was young, undoubtedly frivolous and impulsive, but so what? He didn’t want to marry her. He didn’t want to marry any woman.
‘She thinks that I’ve been let down by love too many times and now I only choose men who can’t commit.’
His eyes met hers. That just about summed him up.
‘Interesting,’ he murmured, surprised to find that he actually was. ‘And what do you think?’
She shrugged as if the whole topic meant very little to her. ‘I think that if there is a social climber or a social misfit within a ten kilometre radius, then I could find him if I was blindfolded and tied to a post.’
Aidan laughed with genuine amusement. ‘I can see why you thought you might damage my reputation. I’ve never been called a social misfit before.’
Cara giggled. ‘Well, obviously fake relationships don’t count.’
‘Lucky for me.’
‘That’s what I was thinking. So what about you?’
He looked back at her uneasily. ‘What about me?’
‘You don’t have a girlfriend right now, do you?’
Aidan raised an eyebrow. ‘I would hardly have brought you with me if I did. But no, women don’t seem to hang around long enough to become girlfriends.’
She tilted her head and her hair caught the light from the nearby lamp, the soft glow casting a strange intimacy over the room that was disconcerting.
‘Why not?’
This time he was the one who shrugged as if it didn’t matter. Only for him it really didn’t. ‘They say I work too much.’
‘And do you?’
She glanced at his computer in his lap and he laughed. ‘Possibly.’
Cara pointed the wooden spoon at him again. ‘See, now, I have a theory about that.’
‘Another theory?’ Wondering why he was still sitting on the sofa with a hot woman in the kitchen bantering with him Aidan seriously contemplated pushing his computer off his lap and replacing it with her.
‘Yes. I have a theory that when you meet the one—you know, that perfect person just for you—then you can’t not be with them.’
Aidan fought back a wry smile. ‘Drop everything, you mean. No work, no sleep, no food. Just twined in each other’s arms for ever and ever.’
‘No, of course not. I meant that you love that person so much you can’t bear to be away from them.’
‘True love,’ he mocked.
And there was the reason she was still across the room and not in his lap. The sixth sense that had stopped him from hauling her into his arms in the bedroom doorway and utilising that made-for-sex mouth of hers: she wanted everything he avoided. His worst nightmare of a woman.
She pouted. ‘You’re making fun of me.’
Surprised to find that he felt a little hollow from the revelation he’d just made about her, he smiled faintly. ‘Just a little. But are you seriously telling me that you only date men you think are going to be the one?’
‘Well, I don’t go out with men I think aren’t going to be the one.’
And by that token she probably didn’t sleep with them either. Had he so completely misjudged her last night? ‘How’s that milk coming along?’ he asked, desperate now to have her return to her room.
‘Oh!’ She yelped and pulled the pot off the stove. ‘I forgot about it. But it’s okay.’ She looked up at him. ‘Do you want one?’
Aidan shook his head, bemused to have even been asked. ‘I’m good.’
‘It will help you sleep.’
Only a knock to the head would help him sleep after seeing her in that silk nightie.
‘So I take it you don’t believe in true love and have never been in love,’ she said.
He forced his eyes up from her small, high breasts. ‘I’ve dated a lot of women in my life and I can assure you that I’ve been happy to see every one of them go.’
‘Which proves my theory.’
‘I don’t see how but, pray, enlighten me.’
‘You’ve never been in love and you’ve always been happy when a relationship has ended. If you’d ever really been in love you wouldn’t be so happy right now.’
‘You’re right,’ he said coolly. ‘I’d be miserable instead. But I have to ask. Were you in love with that artist you ran off to Ibiza with when you should have been sitting your A-levels?’
He could see the question had shocked her but he needed a reminder of the kind of woman she really was, not the one she was intent on presenting to him.
‘I know the papers said I went there with the artist, but I didn’t. I went there for an artist.’
He shook his head as if that distinction was hardly worth noting. ‘I hope he was worth it.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said, a dull flush of colour highlighting her magnificent cheekbones. ‘I didn’t know him personally. I went to Ibiza to see his work because he was truly inspirational and he was dying. That exhibition was his last one and at the time I thought it was more important than a maths exam.’
Seriously unsettled by his lack of control over his libido Aidan didn’t want to hear her excuses. ‘Well, now you know better.’
‘Yes. Now I know that no matter what you do in life, if you make a mistake it will hang around like a bad smell and no one will forgive you for it.’ She placed her cup carefully on the bench. ‘I know you live your life completely mistake free, but the rest of us aren’t so lucky. We do things wrong occasionally. But the other thing that I know is that if everyone in the world forgave others for their inadequacies and their mistakes instead of trying to mould them into something they find acceptable, the world would be a happier place. It’s people who let pain turn into resentment and anger who do the most damage.’
She looked slightly embarrassed by her outburst and her lower lip quivered and made him feel like a heel. ‘Just go to bed, Cara.’
Outrage shone out of her eyes and for a minute he thought she might put him in his place for being such a judgmental fool but she didn’t. Instead she bid him a stiff good-night before walking off with her nose in the air.
Aidan released a long breath. It had been a long
time since he had sported a boner from just looking at a woman.
And now he realised that as well as trying to stop her tears and help her out earlier in the day by bringing her to Fiji, he’d also had an ulterior motive. He’d brought her here with the possibility of finishing what he had started at the casino the other night.
Her diehard belief in love and happy-ever-afters meant that his conscience was unlikely to let him follow through on that because he had nothing to offer her.
Which left him stuck on an island with a hard-on and a true romantic.
Great.
These next few days were likely to be a lesson in restraint. Something he should excel at.
The only bright spot he could see in having her around was that she took his mind off Martin Ellery. In fact, he hadn’t thought about the old man and how he had failed to carry out the revenge he’d harboured for so long since he’d dragged her out of the Mahogany Room and that was the way he wanted to keep it.
CHAPTER NINE
‘GREAT KEYNOTE SPEECH,’ Ben James, Aidan’s second-in-command and long-time friend enthused. ‘You were right to bring him in to do it. I had no idea Smithy was so insightful.’
‘Glad you enjoyed it.’
Aidan, himself, hadn’t heard anything past the opening joke. And now they were walking towards the next session and he had no idea which one it was.
Ordinarily he would sit in on one or two but this morning he couldn’t seem to concentrate.
Cara’s outburst the night before had both surprised and disturbed him. He’d known immediately that she hadn’t been just talking about the social fabric of the world they lived in but something far deeper. It was in the flash of vulnerability when she’d believed he was judging her. He hadn’t been. Not initially. He’d been honest when he said that her bad-girl reputation didn’t bother him. What did bother him was the stab of jealousy he had felt when he’d imagined her blissfully happy while she was coiled around some dodgy artist on a sun-soaked futon. The image had rocked him and then he’d taken the double hit of being faced with her trembling lower lip. That sure-fire sign that she was hurt twisted his insides into huge knots.
Which was why the less time he spent with her the better because not only was his emotional and physical reaction to her a shocking thing to witness, but her talk about forgiveness had sliced something open inside of him. Like a scythe through the very heart of his memories.
Forgiveness was not a concept he’d spent a great deal of time dwelling on before. His father, now that he thought about it, hadn’t been a forgiving man. He’d harboured a justified hatred of Martin Ellery right up until he had died and often bitterly pronounced that he just hadn’t seen it coming.
Now, looking back, Aidan wondered if not only had his father not forgiven Ellery, but if he’d never forgiven himself for not noticing what had been happening right under his nose. Had he stopped living, stopped functioning as a man, because of that one simple flaw? And what did it say about Aidan, himself, when he had taken up the mantle of his father’s resentment?
And why was he suddenly questioning himself now?
Cara Chatsfield, that’s why, he realised darkly. Talking to her was just as dangerous as looking at her.
The beat of the sun high in the sky made its presence known as soon as he and Ben exited the main building. The soft sandy path and lazy insects buzzing around the exotic plants making a mockery of their suits and black leather shoes. They should be wearing shorts and flip-flops. Casual wear, like the surfer who just passed them on his way to the beach.
The world-class wave that broke on the island was what had first drawn Aidan to the area. Ten years ago it had held nothing but a poor, dilapidated village. Aidan had taken one look at that wave, seen the potential and known he’d have done anything to put a resort on it. And it had paid off. The island was one of the most profitable in the whole of the Fijian archipelago.
Spying the beach the surfers used to paddle out from he saw a flash of bright pink and caught the sweet sound of feminine laughter. Tensing he stopped and saw Cara in nothing but a gold bikini standing beside a surfer who was waxing his board. Her hands were on her hips and her body—that marvellous body—was being eaten up so much by the surfer’s eyes that he’d be waxing the sand next if he wasn’t careful.
Finally appeased to find an outlet for his agitation Aidan told Ben he’d catch up with him later and stalked towards the unsuspecting couple.
As he drew closer he recognised the man as a top-notch surfing sensation and a top-notch womaniser.
Wondering why his gaze was riveted to Cara’s middle Aidan glanced down and saw one of the sexiest tattoos he had ever seen. Circling Cara’s belly button was a ring of—were they flowers? No, they were hearts. Tiny red hearts almost overlapping one another.
He swallowed and felt a rush of heat tighten his muscles. Dammit if that surfer wasn’t imagining running his tongue around that sexy little tattoo of hers.
Containing his temper as best he could he wasn’t at all mollified when Cara glanced at him warily.
The surfer nodded at him when Cara made the introductions but Aidan didn’t return the gesture. Instead he stepped closer to Cara in a purely possessive move that was designed to let the other man know she was off-limits.
The man got the message and with the trace of a smile loped off towards the water.
‘What have you been doing all morning?’
She looked at him quizzically. ‘Caught up on emails. Finally texted Christos and my sister.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘I took your advice and said nothing. I told them that I was fine and would explain everything later.’
She shifted her feet and sand flicked up over the edge of his shoes. They both glanced down and he felt like an idiot standing fully dressed beside a woman in a tiny bikini.
‘As a general rule I don’t mind what you get up to,’ he began, ‘but I would ask that you don’t flirt with other men while you’re here.’
‘I wasn’t flirting,’ she defended. ‘I was talking.’
‘This is my resort, Cara, and to all intents and purposes you are here as my partner. Please conduct yourself as such.’
‘I didn’t know it was your resort. Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘It wasn’t relevant.’
‘Well, I wasn’t flirting. Jon-Jon said he would give me a surfing lesson later on today.’
Like hell.
‘It’s too dangerous for you out there.’
‘It looks fun. Maybe you should try it, too. You know, live dangerously. Cut loose.’
Her tone told him that she didn’t think he had it in him and his ego rebelled. He knew how to ‘cut loose’.
He used to ride a Ducati and go heli-skiing in the Alps. Hell, he had even planned to participate in the treacherous Sydney to Hobart yacht race one year. No, he was just driven. Focused. There was a difference. Not that Cara would probably recognise it. She was so intent on having a good time.
‘Sometimes there’s more to life than having fun,’ he shot at her.
‘I know that.’
Her quiet pronouncement annoyed him. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes. In fact, I was thinking of finding you and asking if you needed any help while we were here, but I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’
‘Help?’ He couldn’t stop his eyes from dropping to her bikini. ‘Dressed like that?’
Because the only help he could think of her offering right now was the kind that came with them both naked and sweaty on his bed.
‘Yes.’ She shoved her hands on her hips and stared at him mutinously. ‘In case it escaped your notice almost everyone on the island is dressed like this. Even some of your conference attendees are wearing shorts.’
Were they? He hadn’t noticed.
‘Why do you want to help?’
Some of her anger seemed to leave her at his question. ‘I don’t know … I like to keep busy. I can’t stop thinking about tha
t horrible bet.’ She checked herself and smiled faintly. ‘Plus, you helped me out yesterday and after I took your limousine I feel like I should do something to make up for it. With your PA having quit … oh, never mind. I can see by your face that you think it’s a stupid idea.’
Unable to remember the last time a woman had offered to help him out, Aidan paused. Women usually approached him for a job in his office or a job in his bed.
Sometimes both.
They didn’t just offer to do things for him whether they owed him something or not. It was just expected that because he had the monetary resources he would provide for them. Which he didn’t mind. It was just that Cara Chatsfield of all people offering to help him out …
Again he wondered if he hadn’t misjudged her and it wasn’t easy to get his head around because, yes, part of him still harboured the belief that deep down she was just a grubby little socialite with a lofty sense of entitlement.
‘What can you do?’ he asked gruffly.
Her face immediately brightened. ‘I could answer your phone for you while you’re in sessions.’
‘No one has this number unless they’re important.’
‘Okay, well, maybe I could check your emails and tell you if there’s anything urgent.’
‘The information in my emails is sensitive.’
‘Oh, right. Well, do you need any typing done?’
He was curious. ‘Can you type?’
‘Of course.’ She scrunched her nose. ‘But if you mean fast, then … no.’
‘Can you use Excel?’
‘On second thought, forget I asked. There isn’t anything I would be any use to you for so … I’ll just sit on the beach.’
Aidan wasn’t at all sure he wanted her sitting on a beach in that bikini without a chaperone.
‘There is one thing you can do for me. I need someone to check the building of the school in the local village.’ It wasn’t true. He had a surveyor coming at some point who would carry out an independent assessment of the work done, but hell, there was only so long he could look at those long golden legs without wanting to wrap them around his hips. His very naked hips. ‘Last year the school needed to be rebuilt because of flood damage. It’s been a massive undertaking and I haven’t had a chance to look it over to assess whether the work carried out was adequate. You could go down there, wander around and give me your impression of how it looks. Nothing formal, just … impressions.’
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