скачать книгу бесплатно
She scrolled through her contacts and succeeded in contacting Luisa Messena. With her mom and help on the way, she tried to relax. But the instant she didn’t have anything to do, all she could think about was Ben. Embarrassed heat flooded her that she had actually rung him, which was at the top of her list of things not to do.
On top of that, the fact that he’d somehow gotten hold of her number and had never bothered to contact her made her mad, which was not good, because it meant she was obviously still harboring sneaky feelings for him.
While she was at home convalescing, her mother, who had figured out that she was struggling with lack of closure around her “relationship” with Ben, had suggested she have counseling and had recommended a therapist. Sophie hadn’t thought she would like the process, but she had taken to it like a duck to water, because the therapy had put the power back in her hands.
What she had felt for Ben was past tense and controllable. She did not have to feel disempowered by what he did or did not do. She was free and empowered to make her own choices.
A distant flash of lightning jerked her back to the present, and to Nick’s party, where, once again, she had managed to utterly embarrass herself.
The breeze lifted, blowing loose strands of hair around her cheeks. She was on the point of leaving and returning to the room Nick had reserved for her at the resort when a sense of premonition tingled down her spine. Ben. Her breath hitched in her throat, and for a crazy moment she wondered if she was experiencing one of Francesca’s feelings.
When she turned, he was there. The terrace lights glanced off the clean cut of his cheekbones, emphasizing the intriguing shadows beneath and highlighting the solid line of his jaw. He shrugged out of his jacket, which had water stains down the lapels, and tossed it over the wrought iron railing. The white shirt he was wearing was wet all down the front and plastered across his chest, making him seem even broader and more muscular than she remembered.
He dragged long fingers through his damp hair and wiped moisture from his chin. His gaze connected with hers. “I guess I deserved that.”
Sophie tried not to notice the way Ben’s skin glowed bronze through the wet shirt. She remembered the pretty blonde.
Stomach tight, she glanced past Ben’s shoulder. There were a few people strolling around the terrace, but none of them looked remotely like the girl with whom Ben had been dancing. “Shouldn’t you be looking after your date?”
He dragged at his tie, which she was gratified to see was also soaked. “I don’t have a date. That was Ellie, the daughter of my business manager. And before you ask, my business manager is also female, but fifty-something and happily married.”
Though Sophie wanted to stay angry and distant and cold, relief flooded her. A little desperately she reminded herself that Ben was still a rat, just not a big enough rat to bring a date to a party at which he knew she would be present.
“What makes you think I need to know anything about the women in your life?” She cleared her throat, which felt tight. “You’re free to date who you want, just as I am.”
Ben’s gaze zeroed in on her mouth as if he had picked up on the extra huskiness of her voice, the one sign she couldn’t control when she was upset. It was a reminder that he knew her too well.
Normally, when it came to men, it was easy for Sophie to keep them at a safe distance. But Ben had, literally, become part of the family for eighteen months, turning up for Sunday lunches, sharing celebrations and spending hours sailing with Nick. He had even been invited to family weddings and christenings, all of which, she now realized, had slowly worn away her defenses and changed the way she had thought about him.
She had begun to think of him as possible husband material.
He leaned back against the terrace railing, arms folded across his chest. “According to social media and the tabloids, you haven’t exactly been lonely.”
She stiffened at his clear reference to the guy she had flaunted in front of the paparazzi as her new man just days after Ben had walked out on her. Since then, she had kept up a steady stream of handsome escorts—most of them Francesca’s friendly exes—just to hammer home that she did not miss Ben in the least.
“So, who’s the lucky guy tonight?” Ben’s gaze narrowed. “He looks familiar.”
Probably because Ben had seen him when he was dating Francesca. Warmth flooded Sophie’s cheeks. For a heart-pounding moment she tried to remember the name of her date. “Oh, you mean, uh—Tobias.”
Ben’s expression seemed to sharpen even further. “Tobias Hunt, of Hunt Security?”
Offhand she could not remember Tobias’s surname; he could be from the royal line of Kadir for all she knew. She had met him for only the third time this evening, and all she had was a phone number and a first name, both of which Francesca had supplied. “We’ve only just started dating,” she said smoothly.
Technically, this was a first date, even as she instinctively knew it would also be the last, because Tobias, despite his masculine presence and good looks, was an oddly lackluster companion.
“So, not serious yet?”
“Not so far.” She met his gaze squarely. “Tobias and I are just good friends. Not that it’s any of your business.”
For a disorienting moment Ben’s gaze burned into hers. “It used to be my business.”
Sophie’s heart pounded in her chest. In a moment of clarity she realized that Ben was suffering from the same kneejerk reaction that had affected her when she had seen him dancing with the young blonde; he was jealous. If he was jealous, that meant that he did still feel something for her, something real enough that it had lasted through a year of separation. She even had the sense that he was on the brink of saying that he was sorry he had walked out on her and that he wanted her back. Then his expression seemed to harden and he broke their eye contact.
She thought grimly that he was regretting the momentary lapse. And suddenly her rage was back, which was a relief, even if she was beginning to feel like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. “As I recall, we didn’t exactly date. We slept together one night, then you disappeared.”
His brows jerked together. “You have to know that I didn’t intend to sleep with you that nigh—”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better? That you slept with me by mistake?”
“It wasn’t a mistake. It was the night of my farewell. I was leaving for Miami, with no plans to come back to New Zealand. That’s not exactly great timing for starting a relationship.”
Though wanting to stay furious because it felt so much stronger and more empowering than feeling dumped, Ben’s use of the word “relationship” literally took the wind from her sails. It meant he had been thinking about her in relationship terms. Although, clearly, he had not been thinking very hard. “We had chemistry for months before that—”
“Babe, if I’d made a move on you earlier, that would have meant we would have been dating. Then I would have been answerable to Nick.”
Babe. There it was again. A secret thrill she absolutely did not want to feel coursed through her. Obviously, where Ben was concerned, she was more vulnerable and needy than she had thought. The fact was she could not afford to weaken because he had called her babe…as if he still saw her as girlfriend material, as if they still had an intimate connection. “What does Nick have to do with any of this?”
Ben leaned on the railing beside her, suddenly close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin. His clean masculine scent teased her nostrils, spinning her back to the one night they had spent together and the heated, addictive hours she had spent locked in his arms. Out of nowhere, the intense awareness that, a year ago, had burned her from the inside out was back.
His gaze touched on hers, and for a fractured moment the air turned molten and she had the crazy thought that Ben was just as affected as she.
“Nick was my boss,” he said flatly. “When he knew I was interested, he spelled it out chapter and verse. Unless I was ready to make a commitment, as in marriage, I should leave you alone.”
Sophie’s startled gaze clashed with Ben’s. The word “marriage” was faintly shocking. It also invested what Ben had just said about Nick with the ring of truth. When it came to the Messena women, Nick and her other three brothers—Gabriel, Kyle and Damian—were territorial and overprotective. It was the kind of medieval, macho behavior that gave her warm fuzzies and a wonderful sense of security when she did need protection. She knew that, hands down, if anyone tried to bother her or touch her when she didn’t want to be touched, he would have to deal with four large, muscled brothers and their version of the law of the jungle.
The downside to the Messena men was that they could be macho and controlling, and could totally overstep the mark by interfering with her life.
The reasons for Ben’s abrupt departure and lack of communication were starting to come clear, although not entirely. “Nick can be overbearing, but that still doesn’t explain your behavior after you slept with me.” No apology, no phone call, not even a text message explaining why he didn’t want to stay in contact, just that shabby little note thanking her for their night together…
Ben shrugged, his expression remote and unapologetic. “Like I said, I was leaving for the States. I was taking on a new business. There was no way I could afford to start a relationship.”
Relationship. There was that word again. Despite her determination to not allow Ben to affect her, the fact that he had seen her as potential relationship material, but in the wrong time and place, was quietly riveting. It raised the possibility that, maybe, there could be a right time and place.
Still, Sophie knew that timing and geography weren’t the only issues with Ben. From her online research she knew that he had also been burned by a past relationship and now seemed chronically wary of commitment.
Previously, she had dismissed Ben’s past. He was a big boy; he should be able to get over a broken engagement. However, that had been a serious mistake, because commitment was obviously still a problem.
The moment she had realized he’d had her number when she had been sitting in her SUV at the bottom of bush-choked gully burned through her again. “You had my number. You could have phoned me.”
“If I’d done that we’d be right back where we are now.” Ben’s gaze seared her.
With slow deliberation, he picked up her hand and threaded her fingers with his. Heat shimmered from that one point of contact, making her heart pound and her stomach tighten. Memories she had worked hard to bury flooded back. Ben’s mouth on hers, heat welding them together as they’d lain together in his bed. The intense emotion that had poured through her with every touch, every caress, along with a bone-deep certainty she had never experienced before and which had been the reason she had consented to sleep with him in the first place. The uncanny conviction that after years of disinterested dating, she had finally found The One.
With a jerky movement, she withdrew her hand.
Ben pushed away from the railing and dragged off his tie as if it was suddenly too tight. He draped it over the railing next to his jacket. His brooding gaze dropped to her mouth. “I didn’t call you because I didn’t think you were serious about wanting a real relationship.”
She frowned. He could only be referring to the fact that she was naturally wary and standoffish when it came to relationships and that it had taken her eighteen months to admit to him that she found him crazily attractive. “It’s not as if I’m in the habit of having one-night stands!”
He shrugged. “I was also not in a position to offer any kind of commitment.”
Sophie met Ben’s gaze squarely. She could barely concentrate on Ben’s struggle with his emotional past when she was coping with her own very present struggle and the startling revelation that he still wanted her. “You could have asked me what I wanted instead of talking to Nick. It’s not as if my brother is any kind of a love doctor.”
To put it succinctly, Nick had had a serious issue with commitment, which had been resolved only when the woman he had married, Elena, had taken a risk on him and he had ended up falling for her hook, line and sinker. It had just taken some time.
Suddenly all the breath seemed to be sucked out of Sophie’s lungs. Elena and Nick’s relationship had been a bumpy affair, but Elena had persevered and she had won out in the end. Sophie believed that Elena had won Nick because what they shared had been real and true in the first place. But the relationship could easily have failed if Elena hadn’t taken the initiative and risked herself by sleeping with Nick in unpromising circumstances. Twice.
Sophie took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, which was difficult because her mind was going a million miles an hour. Usually she was guarded, logical: smart. She did not let emotion carry her away. She did not try to win a man, especially not an alpha male like Ben, because alphas were dominant and predatory and they preferred to do the hunting.
But this was different. They were on a darkened terrace, with the perfumed night pressing in around them. Heated awareness pulsed through her as she grappled with the dangerous knowledge that Ben still wanted her.
It wasn’t love, not even close.
But it was a start.
If Elena had worked with Nick—who, let’s face it, had been an extremely unpromising boyfriend—Sophie could work with Ben. In that moment a world of possibilities opened up and a year of wallowing in victimhood was gone. She was back to her normal ultraorganized, controlling self with a project to manage, and that project was Ben Sabin.
She closed the distance between them. “Let’s not worry about the commitment issue right now,” she said smoothly, her palms gliding over his shoulders.
Three (#u3bddaf24-b794-5cac-afc5-be7220590aac)
A jolt of pure sensual awareness hit Ben with all the force of a freight train. But, as Sophie wound her arms around his neck, he also couldn’t help noticing the odd expression on her face, as if she was assessing him for a position in one of her successful luxury fashion stores. As if he was an employee with hidden potential she was determined to unlock.
Keeping a tight leash on his control, he stared down into a face that had fascinated him from the moment he had first seen Sophie two-and-a-half years ago. He had just taken the job as construction manager with Nick. With liquid dark eyes, cheekbones to die for, a firm chin and a distractingly husky voice, Sophie Messena was drop-dead gorgeous in anyone’s language.
He was also aware that it was not just how Sophie looked that attracted him, because she had an identical twin who looked and sounded exactly the same. And he didn’t feel a thing for Francesca.
When he was near Sophie, something happened. It was like being plugged into an electrical outlet; every cell in his body tightened and all brain function stopped. She could have a bag over her head and he would still recognize her.
“I thought you didn’t want this,” he ground out, “that you weren’t a glass half-empty girl.”
And it was a fact that, with Sophie, half a glass was all he could afford to offer. As mesmerizingly attractive as she was, she was exactly the kind of pampered, spoiled rich girl on the hunt for a wealthy husband or a trophy affair he usually went out of his way to avoid.
Six years ago when he had established his first construction business, he had done the one thing he had promised himself he would never do, after being caught up in the messy breakup of his parents’ marriage: he had fallen for a rich man’s daughter. Even knowing the pitfalls, he had worked to attain her and to hold her. Then, when a financial crash had almost bankrupted him, Melissa had walked the same day. She had handed him back his engagement ring and smoothly told him that she could never marry someone poor. To rub salt in the wound, within the week she had moved in with an extremely wealthy and older business competitor.
Since then Ben had worked hard to rebuild his finances, climbing corporate ladders as he managed construction for other firms. In that time his experiences with women had done nothing to change his mind. He knew how it worked; money married money.
Sophie, who had been born with a diamond-encrusted spoon in her mouth, wouldn’t have looked at him twice if he hadn’t been successful. And the stakes had recently gotten a whole lot higher. When he had started working for Nick Messena, there had been an eighteen-month period during which Sophie had kept a cool distance despite the attraction that had sizzled between them.
A year ago, he had inherited a multibillion-dollar construction and real estate business and Sophie Messena had slept with him. He had to consider that her main focus wasn’t him, personally, but his inheritance.
It didn’t feel that way right now, though. She lifted up on her toes and fitted herself against him as if their last passionate encounter had been just hours ago and the past year of separation hadn’t happened. Close enough that there was no way she could miss exactly how much he still wanted her.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Sophie murmured, a husky catch to her voice.
Ben’s body tightened on a powerful surge of desire. Maybe he could have kept his perspective, he thought grimly, if he hadn’t seen her on Tobias Hunt’s arm. Something fierce and primal had risen up inside him. And it had only grown worse when he learned who Tobias was. Ben’s cool, controlled plan to seduce Sophie Messena in order to put to rest the fatal attraction he had so far failed to shake had crashed and burned.
If Hunt had been one of the normal run of men Sophie had been dating—soft, manicured men who took orders and drove desks—Ben could have maintained his aloofness. However, there was nothing ordinary or even remotely domesticated about Hunt despite the fact that he had spent several months working for Gabriel Messena, presumably to gain experience with playing the financial market. Aside from being the scion of an international manufacturing conglomerate, which, among other things specialized in high-tech military equipment, Hunt was ex-military.
Even though Ben was aware that he was being seduced, his hands, of their own volition, settled at her hips, pulling her closer still. There was his problem, he thought. This encounter with Sophie was following a familiar, conflicted pattern. He couldn’t resist her, and he couldn’t trust her.
But damned if he’d stand tamely aside and let Hunt move in on her.
Sophie’s gaze was oddly considering, giving him the inescapable feeling that he was being evaluated in some way. She brushed her lips against his, sending a rush of heat through him that tightened every muscle in his body.
“About that glass,” she said huskily. “Half a glass will do for now.”
Francesca stepped out onto the terrace and stopped dead. Sophie was kissing Ben Sabin, and it was not just a casual peck.
For long seconds she was frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Usually, Sophie was extremely careful with men. She almost never let any of the men she dated so much as kiss her. Francesca knew for a fact that Sophie had not slept with anyone until Ben. She also understood why Sophie was so picky.
Ever since their father had been killed in a car accident with his alleged mistress, Sophie had been fragile about relationships. Maybe that was because Sophie had always had an unusual character. She tended to be black-and-white in her thinking. When it came to trust it was all or nothing. Added to that, she had been Daddy’s girl, then the father she had adored had tipped her world upside down by betraying her twice. The first time by dying, the second by apparently having a mistress, which Sophie had viewed as an utter betrayal of the entire family.
Consequently, when it came to relationships, she practically interviewed a potential date before she committed. Then she micromanaged the “relationships” because she hated anything unscripted or creative happening.
The droves of men who fell for her didn’t understand what they were letting themselves in for. It was like watching an assembly line, with no hope that any of them would make the grade.
Until Ben.
A little anxiously Francesca skulked in the shadows of a large potted ficus, trying to stay out of sight. She was glaringly aware that with her platinum-blond hair, it was terminally difficult to hide because she practically glowed in the dark. She tucked herself more firmly behind the plant, ignoring the discomfort as a branch scraped her jaw and caught in her hair. Her stomach tightened as one kiss morphed into a second, then a third.
Seconds later, Sophie took Ben’s hand and led him down the steps into the garden. Francesca had to steel herself against rushing after Sophie. The only thing that stopped her was that Sophie seemed to be taking the lead and not Ben She frowned, tossing up whether or not to call Sophie and try to talk some sense into her. Although, given the way they had kissed, she didn’t hold out much hope!
A faint sound made Francesca straighten with a start. She almost died on the spot when she realized that the person who had busted her for spying on Sophie was the guy she’d had a crush on for the past couple of years, John Atraeus. She attempted to shuffle out from behind the tree but a strand of hair had caught on a branch of the ficus.
She pulled on the strand, which stayed stubbornly tangled.
“Wait. Let me do that.” John stepped close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell the tantalizing scent of his gorgeous cologne. His jaw brushed her forehead, sending a hot zing of awareness through her as he worked on the silky strand, which was so blond it still startled her.
“All done.” His gaze met hers for a long moment, then he frowned. “Damn. What have you done to your jaw?”
She registered the faint sting, touched the area and felt the dampness of blood. She vaguely remembered a scrape from one of the branches, but she had been so intent on worrying about Sophie she hadn’t paid it much attention.
As she stepped away from the tree, John produced a snow-white handkerchief. She stared at the beautifully folded linen and embarrassment burned through her, along with an uncharacteristic thread of panic. This was not the way it was supposed to be. She had wanted to be cool and sophisticated, more like Sophie, less like Jane of the jungle with pieces of tree caught in her hair. “I can’t use that.”
John glanced around the terrace, which held a few scattered groups of people. “The only entrance to the bathrooms is inside, which means you’ll have to walk back through a party crowd that’s crawling with media.” He lifted a brow. “If you’ll hold still for a second or two, I’ll press the handkerchief against the cut until it at least stops bleeding.”
Horror struck Francesca at the thought of how many media personalities and reporters there were, every one of them with a camera and longing to catch her looking bad. “Okay.”
Another half step, and he tilted her head slightly to one side and pressed the folded handkerchief against her jaw. Francesca knew she should be concentrating on how happy she was to have a practical solution to fixing her face, but with John’s fingers firm on the sensitive skin of her jaw and the clean scent of him in her nostrils, all she could think of was that finally, even if it hadn’t happened exactly as she’d planned, she was close to John.
John lifted the pad, refolded it, then pressed it against her skin again. His breath feathered across her forehead, and for a long, dizzying moment she wondered what would happen if she closed the oh-so-tiny gap between them, clutched the lapels of his jacket, went up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth.
Taking a deep breath, she met his gaze boldly, but in the instant that she made the quarter step toward him, a vibrating sound emanated from his jacket pocket.
“That’ll be the call I was waiting for.” Leaving her holding the handkerchief, John stepped away, cell held to one ear.
Francesca teetered, just a little off balance. She had actually been on the verge of kissing him. Her cheeks burned even hotter. Had he noticed? she wondered. In any event, she no longer had to die wondering why John had been on the terrace. He had not come looking for her as she had hoped; he had been waiting for a call.
