by Sami Lee
Holding his gaze out of sheer stubbornness, Hayley located the phone and closed her fingers around it. Her knuckles brushed against something else hard, and Mitch tensed further, his eyes turning as hot as the blue hearts of twin flames. Okay, so not completely unaffected. Hayley obtained some consolation from that as she took a step back and handed Mack the phone.
“Great, thanks, Hales.”
Mack gave her a quick hug. Over his sister’s shoulder, Mitch watched her in a way that did nothing to settle her racing heart.
“Mack, we need to get back to the table,” Aidan said. “I think my parents are going to leave soon.”
“Okay.” She released Hayley and waggled the phone at Mitch. “I’ll return this in the morning, if I’m feeling generous.”
Mack and Aidan took their leave, unaware of the situation they were walking away from. Mitch never took his eyes off Hayley, his attachment to his electronic devices apparently forgotten for the moment. If any other man had looked at her like that, Hayley might have smiled in invitation, let him take his best shot and see where it led.
But this was no ordinary man. This was Mitch, and as sure as she knew the sun would rise perfect and pink on the blue Pacific horizon in the morning, Hayley knew he would do nothing about the attraction that arced between them.
“Hello, Hayley.”
The gravelly rasp of his voice scraped over her skin like a welcome caress. He looked her up and down and there was no mistaking the appreciation in his perusal. Although she tried really hard, Hayley couldn’t keep the huskiness out of her own voice. “Hello, Mitch.”
“You look so…”
“So…?” Say it, Mitch. I look sexy and experienced, and you want to take me to a quiet corner right now and kiss me, touch me, slip your hand under my dress and—
His brows scrunched tight. “That dress is short.”
He didn’t sound the least happy about it. Didn’t seem he was going to take her to a corner and kiss her anytime soon. Figuring it would aggravate Mitch even more, Hayley stuck out her leg in a model’s pose and said, “Isn’t it, though? I may not have much leg, but I’ve decided what I have isn’t so bad.”
Mitch made a sound in the back of his throat, something like a growl. “We should dance.”
His brusque statement made Hayley lift a brow. “Should we?”
“Mack’s been insisting I have fun. You’d be doing me a favor.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t owe you any favors, Mitch.”
Remorse flashed in his eyes before he averted his gaze with a wince. For a moment Hayley felt sorry for him. It wasn’t his fault she’d fallen in love with him three years ago. As her boss and Mack’s eldest brother it had all been very awkward for him.
Hayley hardened her resolve and her heart. For him it had been awkward. For her it had been soul-destroying.
Mitch moved closer to her, as though he couldn’t resist the force that compelled him to be near her any more than she could tell herself to bolt before he enchanted her all over again. He reached for her hand, enclosing her slim fingers easily in his. “Let me start again. Hayley Bryant, will you do me the honor of dancing with me? I want to hear all about your trip.”
Oh hell. That softly persuasive tone was more effective than any order he could have given her. Hayley felt herself being drawn into his arms as though falling into a trance. His hand burned her lower back just as the reggae tune coming from the sound system segued into an old Nick Blackthorne ballad, a song about broken hearts and love lost.
Appropriate lyrics that made Hayley’s eyes sting. She stared at the front of Mitch’s white button-down shirt as he moved her against him, refusing to raise her gaze to his and show him all the emotion churning inside her. She took a breath, and the woodsy scent of his cologne filled her, as it had that night they’d almost made love.
Or had sex. That’s all it would have been on Mitch’s part. He’d made that patently clear with all his talk of inappropriate dalliances and workplace harassment and sexual misconduct. Talk about shattering a young girl’s romantic dreams.
By the end of her first week as an intern at Wood and Markham—the job Mitch had given her as a favor to Mack, who never had shucked the habit of offering Hayley a helping hand when she needed it—she’d been madly, hopelessly in love with her former mentor’s big brother. Occasionally she’d caught him gazing at her as though he felt the same way, but Hayley had waited a year for him to make a move and he never did. In the end she’d gotten up the courage to kiss him one night while they were working late.
That one fiery kiss they’d shared was burned in her memory. She’d wanted so much more, yet to Mitch, finishing what they’d started would have been nothing other than a lewd fuck on his office desk, something he would need a lawyer to clean up.
“It’s been a long time, Hayley.”
His rumbled words reminded her that she was supposed to have grown up and grown stronger over the long time Mitch referred to. Hayley straightened her stance, forcing distance between their bodies. You’re not a twenty-two-year-old idiot with a crush any longer, Hales.
“I had no idea you’d be gone two years.”
Was that a note of censure she detected in his voice? “My around-the-world ticket was open ended. I told you that when I resigned.”
“Everyone was sorry to see you go. I was…”
Hayley’s heart skipped a beat at the unfinished sentence. Had Mitch regretted her abrupt departure from his company, from his life?
Not likely. Her leaving let him off the hook, after all.
“You were an excellent employee,” Mitch finally finished. “You haven’t been easy to replace.”
“But not impossible, right?”
Mitch ignored her barbed query. “Mack tells me you’re back on Australian soil permanently.”
“I loved traveling but I missed home,” Hayley admitted truthfully. “I missed my family.”
“Are you going back to Newcastle?”
“To visit Mum and Dad, yes. I’m not sure I want to move back. I grew too used to the Queensland sun the year I spent here.”
She’d gotten used to a lot of things that she’d had to get un-used to in the past couple of years. Her sporty red car. A full wardrobe of clothes. Mitch’s smiles.
“Do you have a job lined up?”
Trust Mitch to think of that immediately. Work was never far from his mind. “Not yet. I’m considering my options.”
Drawing back, he searched her face, his expression calculating. “Who’s made you an offer?”
Hayley would have laughed, but his nearness made her too breathless. He actually thought she was fielding job offers from his business rivals. What was he going to do—give her her old job back? She couldn’t possibly accept. “So far only Kylie.” At his perplexed look she elucidated. “She said I could waitress here for a while if I wanted.”
“Waitress.” Mitch stared at her. “But you’re a business graduate.”
“Who’s been supporting herself slinging drinks and running tables for two years.”
“No one will hold that against you. You’re a smart woman, well qualified. You could get a good job.”
“You mean a real job, don’t you?” Hayley bit out. “One that consumes my life, like yours does.”
“It doesn’t consume me.”
“Your company is the most important thing in the world to you.”
He stared at her, clearly surprised. “That’s not true.”
“It keeps you from doing so many other things.”
He arched a brow. “Like?”
“Like traveling. And you used to talk about taking time off to learn to sail and scuba dive, but you never did it.”
“I will.” A note of defensiveness crept into his voice. “One day, when the business is rock solid.”
Mitch’s hotel development company was thriving, even in this economy. Hayley knew because she hadn’t been able to resist checking up on him any time she’d come across an
internet cafe on her travels, even as she called herself every kind of fool for being unable to quit the habit.
“It keeps you from having a meaningful relationship.”
Hayley made the accusation before she could think better of it. It brought them too close to dangerous, familiar ground. It had kept him from pursuing a relationship with her, because protecting the business from scandal had been more important than exploring what existed between them.
Or perhaps Mitch had merely used their working relationship and her history as Mack’s friend as convenient excuses. Perhaps he hadn’t burned for her as hotly as she had for him and he hadn’t known how else to let her down.
Blandly, Mitch stated, “I have a perfectly adequate social life.”
“So who is the flavor of the month right now, Mitch? Is it a Miranda, a Vanessa, or perhaps Samantha? Have you ever noticed how most of your girlfriends’ names end in a?” In the twelve months she’d worked for him, Mitch had dated six different women. It wasn’t difficult to work out that two months in was when they started to push for a bigger commitment, one that Mitch wasn’t prepared to give. “I guess that’s why I didn’t get a look-in.”
“Hayley.” Her name was a pained sound wrenched from his throat. “When you were in a room, I could barely stop looking at you. It made work almost impossible.”
“And we couldn’t have anything getting in the way of your work, right?”
“What would you have had me do? Fire you so we could see each other?”
“You would never have done something so unprofessional,” she snarled. “And I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of your two-month wonders, anyway.”
“Hayley, stop it. You were never a flavor of the month.” His voice hissed with suppressed vehemence. “I could never have dated you, could never have made love to you and then walked away.”
“Right. Because when a relationship with the boss goes sour, harassment suits might be filed. I remember.”
Mitch muttered a foul curse, one Hayley had never heard come out of his mouth before. Mitch was Mr. Controlled, the consummate professional. Business Review Weekly’s young businessman of the year two years running did not drop F-bombs around the boardroom table. It wouldn’t be fitting.
He didn’t appear in control now. His blue eyes flashed, fire raging in their depths. His mouth was set in a grim line. The tension radiated from his body in waves of heat that engulfed Hayley. She sensed frustration, anger and something far more difficult to define in his stance.
“Thank you for the dance, Mitch.” Hayley stilled as the song ended. “But I think our time is up.”
When she made to extricate herself from his embrace, Mitch surprised her by tightening his hold. The hand that had rested on the small of her back throughout the dance was a hot brand as it drew her closer, until her lower body rested intimately against his. The rigid length that pressed into her abdomen made Hayley gasp. His chest rose and fell with his labored breathing, but he never lost that grim expression.
“You don’t understand. I could never have made love to you and walked away.” He ground into her, a subtle flex of his hips that sent a very unsubtle message. He wanted her. The turgid bulge in his cargo pants was no accident. He was hard—hot and hard—for her. “Don’t you know what losing you has done to me?”
“Mitch, you never had me. You wouldn’t allow it.”
“And you hated me so much for trying to protect you that you ran off for two years?”
“Protect me?” Hayley was incensed. “I’m not a child. I wasn’t one then, either. I knew what I wanted, and it wasn’t your protection.”
“Hayley, you don’t know me as well as you think you do. Having an affair with me wouldn’t have made you happy.”
“That wasn’t for you to decide.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” he surprised her by conceding. His small smile tripped her heart. “You were always as smart as a whip. It was one of the things I liked most about you. That and your easy smile, your positive outlook, your pretty green eyes and your—”
“Mitch, don’t.”
He leaned down and whispered in her ear. “God, I’ve missed you, Hayley. Every day, every hour since you left, I’ve missed you.”
Hayley melted. She’d missed him too, missed the promise in his blue gaze, the potential in the heat that throbbed between them whenever they were together. It should have diluted during the time she’d been away but it hadn’t. Her body still sang because he was close. Her heart still galloped. She still wanted him with every part of her that was feminine.
“There’s no one in my life, Hayley. No one whose name ends in a or e or any of the other vowels. I haven’t brought a plus one.”
His lips caressed her ear. Lust thickened his words, turning them from a mere statement of fact to a promise. A shiver raced over her body and desire, explosive desire, bloomed inside her. But the words plus one niggled at Hayley’s memory. There was something she was forgetting in the ordeal of seeing Mitch again. Plus one, plus one…
Warm lips caressed the ear Mitch wasn’t whispering in just as Hayley remembered what she was supposed to remember—or who she was supposed to remember. “Hey there, Hales. You trying to replace me?”
“Ty!”
His name came out as a surprised sound. Hayley turned toward Ty, who stood behind her with an amused smile lifting lips used to that position. One brow arched, disappearing into his shaggy, light brown fringe. Eyes the warmth and hue of single malt whisky sparkled with devilment. Although he’d gone out of his way to make his presence known, there was no hostility in his interruption.
Not so in Mitch’s case. His voice was laced with aggression as he faced Ty. “Something I can do for you?”
“Yeah,” Ty responded breezily. “You can let me cut in. You don’t mind me dancing with my date, do you?”
With that, Ty looped an arm around Hayley’s waist, drawing her out of Mitch’s suddenly lax embrace and into his. Ty Butler—champion pro surfer, rock-climbing enthusiast and experienced skydiver—never did anything by halves. He not only spun Hayley out of Mitch’s arms, but lifted her hard against his body and gave her a resounding slap on the rear that caused a squeal to tumble out of her.
Ty Butler.
Her plus one.
Chapter Three
“You’re not telling me that was the guy, are you?”
Right now, Hayley heartily regretted that vodka-soaked night back in Bali when she’d told Ty about Mitch. When she’d practically begged him to come to Bilby Island as her date for Mack’s wedding so she wouldn’t have to face her ex-boss and one of his sophisticated girlfriends by herself. Turned out she needn’t have worried about that. Mitch had come alone.
Trying not to acknowledge the relief Mitch’s single status generated within her, Hayley narrowed her gaze at Ty’s dubious expression. “What’s so unbelievable?”
Ty let out a wry chuckle. “He’s not your type.”
“He was. Once.”
Still is, Hayley silently admitted. Her blood continued to buzz with the effects of the closeness they’d shared while dancing. She might be walking lazily along the shore with Ty, but Hayley’s mind was stuck back in Bar Evoke. She could see Mitch’s hard expression following her every move as she danced and laughed with Ty, perhaps a little more loudly than she needed to. She’d downed shots and followed them up with tequila sunrise chasers, chatted with all her old friends and generally tried to act like she could care a jot that Mitch was on the other side of the room, looking like he wanted to murder her plus one and dismember the body.
“I don’t see the two of you together. You and me, on the other hand…”
Ty’s gaze coasted over her short green dress. The balmy night had cooled as a breeze came in off the ocean. The slight temperature drop mixed with the male appreciation in Ty’s eyes sent hot chills racing over Hayley’s skin, raising goose bumps. The wind whipped the silky dress against her frame, and Ty’s gaze lingered on her chest meaningfu
lly.
Hayley glanced down to see her pebbled nipples were clearly visible against the silk. She gave Ty’s shoulder a shove. “Perv.”
“Something wrong with perving on my hot date?”
“You’re not my date…exactly.”
Ty brought his hands up to his chest, cupping his heart as though it was broken. “You wound me, fair lady.”
Hayley laughed at such words forming on Ty’s broader-than-broad Australian accent. “You do have your qualities, Ty. I’m sure you’ll find some nice young girl to appreciate them, breed a few Butler babies in your image.”
“Stop it, you’ll jinx me.” The very idea of marriage was anathema to Ty, as Hayley well knew. “This is no way to speak to the friend who agreed to be your buffer for this week.”
“Yes, and a hard job it is too.” Hayley glanced around at the isolated stretch of beach, the softly lapping waves gilded by the moon and giving off the faint aroma of salt. To the right the lights of the resort twinkled, warm and inviting. “A trip to one of the most idyllic spots in the world, and you have to act like you like me. Must be torture.”
“Come on, Hales.” He wound his arm around her shoulders and brought her in close. His lips were warm, the stubble that always graced his jaw pleasantly rough against her temple. “I do like you.”
Hayley smiled, warmed by his statement. She liked him too. “You smell like rum.”
“You like rum. You got plastered on mai tais that night in Hawaii.”
And hadn’t that led her to do the craziest, wildest thing she’d ever done? “Precisely why I don’t like rum anymore.”
Ty’s chuckle vibrated against her ear as his lips became mobile. “You’re not going to let that deter you…right?”
Ty’s hand slid down her arm, moving up and down as he ran his tongue over the shape of her ear. Hayley shivered, responding to his familiar caresses and the enveloping heat of his body. “I haven’t decided,” she teased.
Ty pouted, letting her feel the movement of his lips against her cheek. “I was promised sex, Hales.”