Bring the Heat

by Margot Radcliffe

  She gave the smallest gasp, then tried that bored look again. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I can’t help it if others feel the need to gossip about you Mortimers.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? What else do they say about me? What else has that brilliant brain of yours retained?’

  Her nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘Nothing worth repeating.’

  Unable to resist, I stepped closer. ‘Are you sure? I’m happy to hear you out, set a few things straight if you get anything wrong.’

  She didn’t reply. After an age of trying to decipher which I liked more on her skin—the scent of bergamot or the underlying allure of crushed lilies—I looked up to catch her gaze on my mouth.

  Hell yes, that insane chemistry was still very much alive and well—and sizzling, as usual.

  ‘Stop that,’ she said in a tight undertone.

  I raised my glass, took a lazy sip before answering. ‘Stop what?’

  ‘That extremely unsubtle way you’re looking at me,’ she hissed in a ferocious whisper, then glanced around. Thankfully, the music was loud enough for her words to reach my ears only. ‘The way you look at me every time we meet.’

  I laughed under my breath. ‘And how do I look at you, Wren?’

  ‘You might lure some women with those come-fuck-me eyes but I’m not one of them so stop wasting your time.’

  My laughter was a little louder, genuine amusement reminding me how long it’d been since I’d enjoyed the thrill of a chase outside the boardroom. ‘Come-fuck-me eyes? Really?’ I didn’t bother to keep my voice down.

  Several people stared but I watched Wren, keenly interested in her next move.

  She flashed the patently false smile she’d been doling out all evening but I caught the strain beneath the thousand-watt beam. Taking in the rest of her, I sensed tension in her lithe frame, in the fingers that clutched her glass a little too firmly. For reasons I suspected went beyond our conversation, Wren was wound extremely tight tonight.

  And I was curiously concerned about it. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?’

  I shrugged. ‘You seem a little...stressed.’

  Her chin notched upward. ‘You don’t know me well enough to make that assessment.’

  ‘Ah, but I’ve attended enough of these shindigs to see when the hostess is fretting about the vegan-to-carnivore ratio of her canapés, and when it’s something more. This is something more.’

  Her delicate throat moved in a nervous swallow, but her gaze remained bold and direct, swirling with a deep, passionate undercurrent I craved to drown in. ‘Even if it’s the latter, it’s none of your business. Now, if you’ll excuse me—’

  ‘Where’s Perry?’

  She froze mid-brush-off, her eyes widening fractionally. ‘What?’

  No, she wasn’t as carefree as she pretended.

  The rumours that Bingham’s was in trouble had been circulating for a few years now. The veracity of those rumours was partly why I’d initially been reticent about joining forces with them. But, hell, call me a sucker... I’d always had a thing for the underdog.

  Maybe it was a hangover from my daddy issues. Or a tool I used to my advantage when idiots underestimated me. Either way, my instincts hadn’t failed me thus far.

  There were certain family and board members who considered me, at thirty-one, too young for the position I was in, notwithstanding the fact that my older brother, Damian, and my cousin Gideon had been wildly successful in their newly minted co-CEO positions of the entire Mortimer Group despite being only a few years older. Or that my cousin Bryce was acing his similar position as President of New Developments in Asia and Australia. Even my sister, Gemma, and my cousin Graciela, who’d both resisted joining the board until recently, were excelling in their chosen areas of expertise.

  I was damned if I’d let Perry Bingham’s antics prove them right. Especially after going against all my business instincts and signing him onto my deal.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hearing, Wren. Where’s your brother?’ I steeled my voice because, however much I enjoyed this erotic dance with her, Perry was at risk of tanking everything I’d worked for during the last eighteen months.

  Several expressions filtered through her eyes—alarm, worry, irritation, mild disappointment. She finally settled on indignation. ‘Is that why you came?’

  ‘I told you, I accompanied Aunt Flo—’

  ‘A ruse to hunt down my brother,’ she interjected.

  ‘That implies awareness that he’s hiding. Is he?’

  A look flickered across her face, gone too quickly but revealing enough to intensify the unease knotting my belly. ‘Tell me where he is, Wren,’ I pressed. ‘He’s been avoiding my calls for almost two weeks and it’s getting really old.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to do your own hunting. I’m not Perry’s keeper.’ Her tense reply gave her away. As did the minuscule tremble in the fingers that held her glass. Both intrigued and disturbed me but before I could push for more, she added, ‘You’ve monopolised me quite enough. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Jasper.’

  Just for the hell of it, and because something wild and reckless yearned for another demonstration that she wasn’t immune to me, I brushed my fingertips down her arm. ‘This isn’t over.’

  She attempted to cover her tiny shiver of awareness with a wide sultry smile that diverted my attention to her luscious lips. ‘How can something be over when it didn’t start in the first place?’

  With that, she sailed away, her hips swaying in that unique way that’d held male and female gazes rapt during her modelling days. Since then, Wren had gained even more confidence in her womanhood, and left a swathe of admirers slack-jawed in her wake. I wracked my brain, trying to recall if she had a current boyfriend. The gut-tightening rejection at the idea of her being attached made me grimace into my champagne.

  Until my gaze fell on the woman who placed herself directly in Wren’s path before manoeuvring her away from the nearest guest.

  Agnes Bingham—Wren’s mother and powerhouse socialite in her own right.

  The tall, slim woman was what Wren would look like in thirty years. Except where Agnes’s beauty was classically cool, Wren was vibrant, passionate, even though she seemed hell-bent on suppressing it.

  Why?

  None of your business.

  But I wanted to make it my business. I wanted Wren in my bed and damn all the consequences to hell. And more and more I suspected I wouldn’t get over this fever in my blood until I’d had her.

  Tension of a different kind raced up my spine when mother and daughter glanced my way. The touch of rebellion in Wren’s gaze made me raise my glass in a mocking toast, even while I observed the animosity emanating from Agnes Bingham.

  Bloody hell.

  Family feuds, Perry Bingham going AWOL and now Agnes Bingham. Three stumbling blocks in my intent to have Wren. But despite the damning words my father had taken pleasure in decimating me with as a child, I wasn’t afraid of a challenge.

  All the same, my gut twisted as I made my way back to my aunt, the thought of broaching the subject of my father making my stomach curdle.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Aunt Flo asked, after smiling an excuse to the guest she’d been chatting to.

  I let her fondness wash over me for a moment before I pulled myself together. Wishing her warm concern came from a different female voice had been fruitless when I was a child. It was even more foolish now. The woman who’d given birth to me wasn’t interested in taking up her maternal role. Not for her first or second born, and certainly not for me, her third child. My arrival had spelled the end to her obligation and she couldn’t get away fast enough. Years of hoping, of saving my allowance in a childish hope of enticing her financially had been laughed off. I was no longer ten years old, fighting to stop myself fr
om crying as Damian advised me to give up my foolish hoping.

  ‘George Bingham. I need to know the full story,’ I said to Aunt Flo, my low voice brisker than she deserved.

  ‘What’s brought this on? You’ve never wanted to know before,’ she said after eyeing me in frowning silence.

  I shrugged, moving her away to the more private edge of the terrace. ‘I’ve never cared enough about the finer details. Now I do because whatever happened all those years ago is endangering an important deal and I’ve just about had it.’

  ‘Dear boy, money isn’t—’

  My bitter laugh stopped her. ‘Do me a favour, please, and don’t finish that sentence, Aunt Flo. We both know money is definitely everything to any red-blooded Mortimer.’

  She harrumphed. ‘Well, I don’t agree but, since you seem to have a bee in your bonnet about it, I’ll let it go. To answer your question, it was your father’s last deal before he and your mother stepped away from the company, and the family. He and George Bingham were supposed to go fifty-fifty but George messed up somehow and could only come up with a fraction of the investment by the deadline date. There was a clause in their agreement that it was fifty-fifty or nothing and that loophole gave your father the right to cut him out regardless of how much money he’d pumped into the deal up to then. He didn’t take it well. He wasted money he didn’t have trying to sue your father. But Hugh was a brilliant, if somewhat ruthless, businessman.’

  There was no somewhat about it. I’d come across some of his deals while my father had actively worked in the family firm. His cut-throat antics were legendary. If you liked blood and gore with your negotiations.

  A memory shot through my head. ‘Was closing that Bingham deal part of my father’s walking-away package?’ I asked.

  Aunt Flo sighed. ‘Yes, it was. Back then, every deal closed by a member of the board came with a ten-per-cent profit bonus. Cutting out Bingham and making it an exclusive Mortimer deal meant Hugh received a bigger bonus. About two hundred million.’

  And he was probably in such a hurry to walk away from his family that he’d been unflinchingly ruthless. ‘I see.’

  ‘What’s going on, Jasper?’ Aunt Flo asked curiously.

  The cocktail of bitterness, anger and arousal swirled faster inside me as I looked over her shoulder to find Wren watching me. ‘It’s just business.’

  ‘No, it’s not. You’re not cut-throat like your father. But you’re just as dogged. I had my reservations when I heard about your deal with Perry, considering his problems,’ she murmured. ‘But knowing you, you’ll move mountains to make it work.’

  ‘Forgive me if I don’t welcome the comparison to Hugh,’ I rasped.

  Her eyes clouded with momentary sadness. ‘His blood may run through your veins but you’re your own man where it counts, Jasper. Whatever you’re getting involved in, just...protect your heart. I don’t want to see you hurt again.’

  Another harsh laugh bubbled up, but I swallowed it down. And just about managed to stop myself from telling her that, while I’d struck a deal with Perry Bingham in a moment of madness, perhaps even a sting of conscience and despite Perry’s rumoured drinking problem, somewhere in the mix was the reasoning that it would put me in a good position to strike a better deal with Wren in the near future. Business-wise and in other ways, too.

  ‘You have that gleam in your eye, Jasper. Am I wasting my breath by telling you to be a dear and spare my nerves?’ Aunt Flo asked.

  I couldn’t promise that. Hell, I knew there would be plenty more fireworks between Wren and me in the future. ‘I can promise dinner at The Dorchester as soon as my schedule lets up a little. I know how much you like their new chef. We can check out the competition in the process.’

  She smiled. ‘Cecil is a culinary genius. And very easy on the eyes. I’ll hold you to that promise,’ she said, just before another acquaintance snagged her attention.

  Briefly alone, I tried to suppress the tangled emotions churning through me.

  I don’t want to see you hurt again.

  As much as I wanted to put my parents out of my mind for ever, to rub them from my existence as much as they’d rubbed me from theirs, the ten-year-old boy’s anguish from relentless rejection, which I’d never been quite successful in smothering, wouldn’t let me. But it was a good reminder not to count on anyone but myself. Not to let frivolous emotion get in the way of business.

  I wanted this deal with Bingham because it was sound and profitable.

  I also wanted to fuck Wren Bingham, once she got over the pesky family-feud thing. The two were mutually exclusive enough not to cause me to lose any sleep.

  Which was why when Wren hurried away from her mother, her shoulders tight with barely-harnessed emotions, I followed.

  She was heading towards the far end of the grounds, her heels sinking soundlessly into the grass. She didn’t hear me until I was six feet from her.

  ‘Wren?’

  Her head whipped around. ‘Are you following me?’ she asked sharply. But then she trembled. A tiny reaction, but, coupled with the slight wobble of her mouth, it hastened my steps, the peculiar punch in my chest unsettling me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Other than the fact that you’re stalking me now?’

  ‘Hardly. You just seem—’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong. Just leave me alone, please?’

  I looked beyond her to the high hedges of what looked like an elaborate garden. ‘If everything’s fine, why are you running away from your own party?’

  ‘I’m not running away. And it’s not my party—’ She caught herself and snatched in a deep breath. ‘Why the hell am I explaining myself to you?’

  ‘Because sometimes it helps to vent.’ Not that it’d done me much good. Ever. All my good intentions had ended in disaster, the repercussions of which I still lived with. But this wasn’t the time or place to examine old scars. ‘Or so I’ve heard, anyway.’

  ‘Do you go around dishing out inexperienced advice?’

  I shook my head, unwilling to drag my far from delightful childhood into this moment. ‘We’re not talking about me.’

  ‘You’re right, we’re not. In fact, I’m going to pretend you’re not here at all. Feel free to make that a reality,’ she suggested, right before she turned on her heel and marched away from me.

  And since I was far too intrigued to heed her brush-off... I followed.

  If she gave even a hint of needing comfort, I’d offer her a shoulder, and other parts of my body, to cry on.

  Bloody hell. I cringed at my own crassness. Then shrugged it off. I am who I am. And that person wanted Wren Bingham any way he could get her. Besides that, though, I was here on Mortimer business. Technically.

  She ignored me until she reached a bricked pathway. Then she turned and stared at me for several seconds without speaking. For a moment, a deep yearning flitted over her face, then her expression blanked. ‘You’re really not going to leave me alone, are you?’ she murmured.

  ‘Not until you tell me what’s wrong.’ Before she could reply, I jerked my chin at the hedge. ‘What’s behind there?’

  Her eyes narrowed, her fingers twitching against her thighs. ‘Nothing interesting. Just the garden. A pool. Gazebo. The usual.’

  She was lying. Or at least holding something back. ‘What else?’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ she demanded, then flinched as someone laughed loudly nearby.

  ‘You look like you need a breather. What’s out there?’

  ‘A maze,’ she confessed with reluctance. ‘I go there sometimes...to think.’

  Before my brain could growl its warning that this was a bad idea, I stepped closer. ‘Show me.’

  She tensed. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I’d like to see this maze. A quick tour. Then, if you still insist, I’ll leave.’

&n
bsp; Something flickered in her eyes, undercurrents of lust zinging between us. Her gaze dropped to my lips and I almost wanted to crow in triumph. ‘Fine. Let’s go.’

  She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck and I stopped myself from mourning the loss of the sight of her satiny skin.

  Even in the cold, my libido was racing feverishly. I cleared my throat. ‘So, what was that with your mother?’

  Stubborn fire lit her eyes. ‘I’ll allow you to stay on condition we don’t talk about my mother. Or any member of my family.’

  I didn’t protest her condition. Families like mine were complicated and she didn’t need to vocalise her feelings towards hers for me to get it. Why that little commonality turned me on, I refused to contemplate.

  In silence we walked along a dark red-bricked pavement until we reached a tall iron gate set into a walled-off section of the garden. Pushing it open, we followed the path until we reached a tall hedge the size of a barn door that remained full and thick despite the low temperatures. Wren’s hand disappeared between the leaves and a section of the hedge sprang open.

  With another glance at me, she stepped inside. I followed and stepped onto two diverging paths. She took the left one, her footsteps barely making a sound on the grass as we walked between tall hedgerows. Further chunks had been cut out intermittently and lower hedges transformed into shapes of animals, with a large space transformed into a picnic area with benches and seats.

  We went deeper into the maze, her head bent forward as if weighed down by her emotions. I wanted to reach out and cup my hand over her nape, test the suppleness of her skin, feel that electricity between us. Instead, I shoved my hands into my pockets, willed the urge to pass. Jumping her right now would be the wrong move.

  Eventually her steps slowed. ‘We’re almost at the centre,’ she said, her voice low, as if she didn’t want to speak.

  ‘How big is this place?’

  She shrugged. ‘Big enough when you’re a child seeking adventure. Not big enough when you’re a teenager, attempting to flee from your demons.’

  I wanted to ask about her demons but her pursed lips suggested she already regretted her revealing statement. I tried a different tack, hoping to take her mind off whatever was bothering her. ‘Tell me one good memory you have of your maze.’