His eyes held hers, dark, uncompromising, daring her to refuse. Beside him, Alicia was staring at her, her own eyes soft and hopeful.
‘Please, Mimi. You’re two of my favourite people in the world, and I know you’re worried about what happened with your family and mine and that’s why you don’t want to film the wedding.’ She bit her lip. ‘Look, Philip and I are going to go now, but will you promise me that you’ll stay and talk? Please? For me?’
Mimi wanted to say no, to say that there was no point, because Basa wasn’t going to listen to anything she said. But the words wouldn’t form in her mouth. Not because she didn’t believe them or because they weren’t true—she did and they were—but because this was the first time she had found herself up against both Caine siblings and she knew she couldn’t fight the two of them.
Lifting her face to meet her friend’s, she forced her mouth into a smile, and beneath the blood roaring in her ears she heard herself say lightly, ‘Okay, I’ll stay and talk. I promise.’
CHAPTER TWO
WATCHING ALICIA AND Philip leave, Mimi felt as though she was being left in the playground by her mother on the first day of school. Unlike Basa, she thought, as he leaned back in his chair like a Roman emperor at a feast being held in his honour.
Her heart was thumping like a piston. This wasn’t the reunion she’d imagined with Basa—and she’d imagined quite a few of them. The majority had involved the man calmly sitting beside her and apologising, and then begging her forgiveness.
Unfortunately, as with most of her life, the reality was a long way from her fantasy. Her attempt to matchmake for her mother had ended in disaster, her one shot at becoming a film director was languishing in a lawyer’s office, and her seduction of Basa had been utterly humiliating.
Was it really so surprising that instead of sticking to her script he was coolly drinking coffee and playing mind-games?
Her breathing faltered. She already knew what it felt like to be played by Basa, and she was in no hurry to be on the receiving end of that treatment again. Clearly the most sensible thing was for one or both of them to make a dignified and swift exit. She would just have to square it with Alicia later.
Trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, she turned to face him. ‘Okay, I know we said we’d stay and talk, but I think we can both agree that was only for Alicia’s benefit, so please don’t feel you need to stay on my account,’ she said quickly. ‘Really, I’m not expecting you to.’
His dark eyes glittered. ‘What? Not even to pick up the bill?’
Her chin jerked up.
‘I didn’t come here for a free lunch, if that’s what you’re implying,’ she snapped, and then immediately wished she hadn’t, because she sounded defensive and cornered, which wasn’t at all the image she wanted to project.
Although, Basa’s opinion of her was so low anyway what difference would it make? He might not have said as much but his cool manner and even cooler gaze made it clear he’d made up his mind about her character back when her family had so nearly ruined his, and she doubted there was anything she could do or say to change his view. In his mind she was, and always would be, damned by association.
The waiter arrived with their coffee and she sat fuming, her mind belatedly conjuring up all the various smart put-downs she should have made to his last remark. He was just so insufferable. Sitting there and judging her as though he had the moral high ground, when his own behaviour had been utterly atrocious.
But why should she care what he thought of her anyway?
She watched him reach out and select one of the charming petit-fours the waiters had brought to the table with the coffee. Something in the tilt of his head seemed to tug at her memory, and her body tensed as time seemed to roll back on itself and she was in the ballroom at Fairbourne again. And standing on the other side of the dance floor, his dark, dishevelled hair accentuating the precision cut of his dinner jacket, his dark eyes fixed on her as though she was the only woman in the room, was Basa.
And that was why she cared.
In those few hours she had blossomed beneath his unblinking gaze, and then the miraculous, the unbelievable, had happened and he’d kissed her, said words she’d dreamed of hearing and—
Her fingers clenched into fists.
If she was going to indulge herself by reliving the past, the least she could do was do it properly and remember how, just when she’d started to believe he might actually mean those words, he’d got up and left her, and not come back.
The next time he’d seen her he’d looked straight through her. As if it hadn’t been him who had cupped her face in his hands, his tongue tangling with hers while his thumbs caressed her aching nipples.
Trying to still the jittery feeling in her chest, she watched mutely as he raised his hands in mock surrender, his dark eyes gleaming. ‘Someone’s a little touchy. Or did I hit a nerve?’
He leaned forward, his dark hair falling across his face, his mouth curving in a way that made her spine shrink against her chair.
‘I sincerely hope it wasn’t my presence that dragged you away from the charms of Zone Six. I know we had that little “entanglement” at Lissy’s birthday party, but if you’re thinking we have some kind of unfinished business I’m going to have to disappoint you,’ he said softly.
The handle of her coffee cup felt clumsy between her fingers. Her throat was tight and dry, and she was finding it hard to breathe normally.
Of all the arrogant—
Grinding her teeth, she stared at him in silence, a pulse of anger hopscotching over her skin. Did he truly think that was why she had come here? To offer herself to him? After the way he’d behaved.
It was suddenly hard to catch her breath. All the hurt and loneliness and confusion of that night rose in her throat, and when she looked down at her hands she saw they were shaking. Did he have any idea how it had felt? To lie there naked in his bed, her body quivering with longing, filled with disbelief that this beautiful, unattainable man had chosen her, only to discover that he’d changed his mind and not even bothered to tell her.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Basa,’ she said coldly, ‘but I didn’t actually know you were going to be here today. And even if I had known, any entangling with you really isn’t that much of an incentive for me to “drag” myself across the road, let alone into the West End.’
He stilled, not just his body but his face, even his eyes, and she felt her heart begin to beat out of time.
‘Funny... I don’t remember you being so reticent two years ago. In fact, as I recall, you were pretty insistent.’
‘You asked me to dance,’ she snapped.
She could still remember her shock, and the sharp tingling excitement as he’d held out his hand. For to her it had felt like the moment when Prince Charming had invited Cinderella to dance at the ball.
Her heartbeat stuttered now.
Maybe if she’d been more worldly she might have seen it for what it was. Thanks to his sister’s insistence that he make sure everyone had at least one turn on the dance floor, he had dutifully danced with practically all Alicia’s friends by that point. But as he’d pressed her closer she’d been so cocooned in an enveloping, intoxicating happiness that nothing had existed except the muscular hardness of his body and the restless, persistent pulse between her thighs.
His dark gaze rested on her face.
‘To dance, yes...’ he said slowly.
Her pulse froze, and before she could stop them the images fast-forwarded.
Their ‘duty’ dance over, she’d thought he would thank her and leave, but somehow they had been on the terrace, the music had faded, and as she’d shivered in the cool night air he’d shrugged out of his dinner jacket and settled it over her shoulders. The silk lining had been warm from the heat of his body, and it had still been warm a moment later, when she’d s
tood on tiptoe and kissed him...
Her cheeks were hot and her skin suddenly felt as though it was too small for her body. She might have been a virgin—she still was—but she hadn’t been completely clueless. There had been a couple of boys at parties, their clumsy lips pulling at hers like overgrown puppies with a chew toy, but nothing and no one had ever made her feel like that.
Her body had seemed to lose all its bones, to become one with his. It had felt as though she was melting into him, everything solid turning fluid, drowning all sense and reason—and, yes, she had been eager, frantic to finish what they’d started without any thought to the consequences.
But admitting that to Basa now wouldn’t change his part in what had happened.
He might be blessed with mouthwatering looks and limitless wealth, but that was where his resemblance to Prince Charming ended. Even before Charlie and Raymond had been caught embezzling he’d had no plans to marry a scullery maid—or, in her case, the stepdaughter of an employee. All he’d been interested in was a short, sweet sexual encounter, and that had rapidly lost its appeal when he’d realised he’d have to go hunting for condoms to make it happen.
Of course he’d made up some other excuse to leave, but she knew he hadn’t gone to get a bottle of champagne. The truth was that she just hadn’t been beautiful or desirable enough to make him want to stay.
‘It was a party. I’d been drinking,’ she said icily. ‘I just wanted to have a bit of fun,’ she lied. ‘That’s what girls want to do at parties, Basa—they want to have fun.’
Around them the air hummed with a kind of anticipatory stillness as his eyes rested steadily on her face. To anyone watching it probably looked as if they were having some kind of intimate tête-à-tête, she thought, her fingers tightening around her coffee cup. Only she could feel the waves of animosity seeping across the white tablecloth.
‘Mimi by name, and Me-Me by nature,’ he said slowly. ‘Look, I don’t give a toss what you wanted or didn’t want. Your life and how you live it doesn’t interest me. I just don’t want you dragging my sister down to the level of your family.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know how you have the gall to show your face—’
‘I’m not my family, and I would never do anything to upset Lissy.’ She felt angry tears spring into her eyes.
He looked at her as if she was an imbecile. ‘For obvious reasons I’m not about to take your word for that.’ Shaking his head, he leaned back against his chair. ‘Much as I want to, I can’t stop Alicia being friends with you, but don’t think for one moment that I can’t see you for the manipulative little hanger-on that you are. And clearly I’m not the only one.’
She stared at his face in confusion.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about...’
‘Of course you do,’ he said quietly. ‘Your little legal setback?’ His eyes flickered over her face. ‘My sister might be too sweet and trusting for her own good. Unfortunately for you, though, not all your friends are as naive as she is.’
Her heart bumping unevenly against her ribs, she glared at him. ‘They’re not my friends.’
‘I’m sure they’re not.’ His dark eyes locked with hers. ‘Not now. Not after you manipulated them into doing you a favour and then tried to exploit their success.’
She breathed out unsteadily. ‘You don’t know anything about them. Or me. And I don’t have to stay here and listen to this—’
Pushing back her seat, she made to stand up, but before she could move he said quietly, ‘Oh, but you do. You promised my sister we would talk. No, sorry—I forgot. That was just for Alicia’s benefit, wasn’t it?’
‘This isn’t a conversation. It’s just you making vile accusations,’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think that’s what she meant by us talking?’
His eyes rested on her face, and then, tilting his head to one side, he sighed. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t suppose it is.’ He ran a hand slowly over his face. ‘Look, Mimi, I’m here because I love my sister, and her happiness matters to me. For some unaccountable reason you being in her life makes her happy, so I’m willing...’
He hesitated, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say.
‘I’m willing, for her sake, to call a truce between us—but don’t think for one moment that means I want to kiss and make up with you.’
* * *
Actually that wasn’t true, Basa thought a half-second later. The kissing part anyway.
Picking up his wine glass, he glanced over at Mimi’s taut face and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Was she remembering that evening, that dance, that kiss? Or, like him, had her mind zeroed in on the moment in his bedroom when he’d slipped the straps of her dress over her shoulders and watched it pool at her feet...?
He shifted in his seat, wishing he could shift the memory of what had happened and what had so nearly happened at his sister’s birthday party, but he’d been trying to do that for the last two years and it was still etched into his brain like an awkward tattoo from a gap year in Thailand. And it wasn’t just her soft lips or the scent she wore that had burrowed into his subconscious.
Watching her that night, he’d found her beautiful and sexy. But, more than that, intriguing. As a teenager she’d been a regular visitor to the family home, and thanks to her tomboyish clothes, tied-back hair, clunky glasses and gauche manner, she’d been easily distinguished as apart from the ‘glossy posse’, as he’d christened the rest of his sister’s friends.
Of course he’d had no time for anything but work after his father’s stroke had forced him to take over the running of the family business. So he hadn’t seen her properly for several years when she’d wandered into the ballroom at Alicia’s party, looking as apprehensive as an antelope approaching a waterhole.
But that wasn’t why he’d done a double take.
Picking up his cup, he downed the rest of his coffee. He needed that hit of raw caffeine to counteract the impact of that moment when Mimi Miller had metaphorically ambushed him and wrestled him to the ground.
She had been wearing a long, high-necked white dress that had seemed to ripple over the heart-stopping silhouette of her body, and her waist-length blonde hair had hung loose over her shoulders like a golden cape. But it hadn’t been the duckling-to-swan transformation that had stopped him in his tracks, for at that point he hadn’t actually worked out who she was. No, it had been something else—a kind of hesitancy that tugged at a memory hovering at the edges of his mind,
And then, as she’d turned to pluck a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, he’d felt his heart stop beating. The dress had been backless, provocative without the overt sexiness of a low-cut bodice or short hemline, and, watching her cautious progress around the room, he’d felt a strange mix of resentment and responsibility and an inexplicable need to stay close.
Too close.
Close enough to feel the heat of her skin. Close enough to let his hand slide around her waist and press against the satin-smooth skin at the base of her back. Close enough to get burnt.
His lungs suddenly felt as though they were full of wet cement.
He’d told himself that it was just a dance, and a duty dance at that, but even before the music had ended, and even though he’d known by then that she was his sister’s friend, and therefore a complication he didn’t need and normally wouldn’t choose, he’d pulled her closer, moulding her body to his.
Lost in her scent, and the heat of her bare skin, he’d kissed her all the way to his bedroom. And there they would have finished what they’d started—only he hadn’t had any condoms on him. He’d gone back down to the party, to grab a bottle of champagne to console them both, but then, walking back through the ballroom, he’d switched his phone on—the phone he could remember Mimi taking from him and switching off—and the world as he had known it had crumbled to dust.
Gazing down at the list of messages from his lawyer and his accountant, each one growing increasingly frantic, he’d felt his heart turn to stone. A brief call to his lawyer had made it clear that he needed to leave the party immediately, but discreetly, so as not to alert Alicia, and just as he’d been finishing the call he’d caught a glimpse of Mimi.
At the time he’d assumed she’d come looking for him, and he remembered how guilty he’d felt at leaving her alone for so long.
His heartbeat stalled. Now he would be willing to bet his entire fortune that she hadn’t been looking for him, but he hadn’t known that at the time. Trusting idiot that he’d been, he’d set off on his way to follow her.
Only it had turned out she’d made other plans.
Mission clearly accomplished, she had been sneaking out through the back door.
Watching her clutch the arm of a floppy-haired young man as she climbed into his made-you-look orange Lamborghini, he’d been devastated.
He took another mouthful of coffee and swallowed, wishing it could wash away the bitterness in his heart.
It had only been later, when the scandal had broken and he’d had time to think, that he’d realised he had been set up. All of it—her kissing him, her taking his phone—had just been an attempt to distract him, and as soon as his back had been turned it had been time for her to go. She’d even made up some lame excuse to Alicia about feeling ill.
The fact that he had been so easily duped had bruised his ego, but it had been the disconnect between the seemingly sweet child he’d once known and the woman she had become that had been most unsettling.
He would never forgive Mimi and her relatives for what they had done. Their greed and duplicity had nearly ruined his family. But it was the knowledge of how close he’d come to having unprotected sex with her, and the possible consequences of that act, that had convinced him to come to this lunch.
This time he was going to protect his family—and teach her a lesson for taking him as a fool.
Craving His Forbidden Innocent Page 3