The Rumours Collection

‘Pretending?’ Miranda sounded bitterly disappointed. ‘But why?’

‘I’m trying to win Myles back,’ Jaz said. ‘He wanted to take a break and I thought I’d try and make him jealous.’

‘But why did Jake agree to it?’ Miranda said.

‘I didn’t give him a choice.’ Jaz explained the situation about Emma briefly.

‘Gosh,’ Miranda said. ‘I was so excited for you. Now I feel like someone’s punched me in the belly.’

‘I’m sorry for lying but—’

‘Are you sure about Myles?’ Miranda said. ‘I mean, absolutely sure he’s the one?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Why else would I be going to so much trouble to win him back?’

‘Pride?’

Jaz pressed her lips together. ‘It’s not a matter of pride. It’s a matter of love.’

‘But you fall in and out of love all the time,’ Miranda said. ‘How do you know he’s the right one for you when you could just as easily fall in love with someone else tomorrow?’

‘I’m not going to fall in love with anyone else,’ Jaz said. ‘How can I when I’m in love with Myles?’

‘What do you love about him?’

‘We’ve had this conversation before and I—’

‘Let’s have it again,’ Miranda said. ‘Refresh my memory. List three things you love about him.’

‘He’s...’

‘See?’ Miranda said. ‘You’re hesitating!’

‘Look, I know you don’t like him, so it wouldn’t matter what I said about him; you’d find some reason to discount it.’

‘It’s not that he’s not nice and polite, handsome and well-educated and all that,’ Miranda said. ‘But I worry you only like him because you can control him. You’ve got a strong personality, Jaz. You need someone who’ll stand up to you. Someone who’ll be your equal, not your puppet.’

Jaz swung back from the window and paced the carpet. ‘I don’t like controlling men. I hate them. I always have and I always will. I could never fall in love with someone like that.’

‘We’ll see.’

She frowned. ‘What do you mean, “we’ll see”? I hope you’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking because it’s not going to happen. No way.’

‘Come on, Jaz,’ Miranda said. ‘You’ve had a thing for Jake since you were sixteen.’

‘I was a kid back then!’ Jaz said. ‘It was just a stupid crush. I got over it, okay?’

‘If you got over it then why have you avoided him like the black plague ever since?’

Jaz was close to Miranda but not close enough to tell her what had happened that night after she’d left Jake’s room. She wasn’t close enough to anyone to tell them that. Sharing that shame with someone else wouldn’t make it go away. The only way she could make it go away was not to think about it. If she told anyone about it they would look at her differently. They might judge her. Blame her. She didn’t want to take the risk. Her tough-girl façade was exactly that—a façade.

Underneath all the bravado she was still that terrified sixteen-year-old who had got herself sexually assaulted by a drunken guest at the party. It hadn’t been rape but it had come scarily close to it. The irony was the person who did it had been so drunk they hadn’t remembered a thing about it the following morning. The only way Jaz could deal with it was to pretend it hadn’t happened. There was no other way. ‘Look, I’m not avoiding Jake now, so you should be happy,’ she said. ‘Who knows? We might even end up friends after this charade is over.’

‘I certainly hope so because I don’t want Julius and Holly’s wedding, or mine and Leandro’s, spoilt by you two looking daggers at each other,’ Miranda said. ‘It’s bad enough with Mum and Dad carrying on World War Three.’

‘That reminds me. Have you met Kat Winwood yet?’ Jaz asked.

‘No.’ Miranda gave a sigh. ‘She won’t have anything to do with any of us. I guess if I were in her shoes I might feel the same. What Dad did to her mother was pretty unforgiveable.’

‘Yes, well, paying someone to have an abortion isn’t exactly how to win friends and influence people, I’ll grant you that,’ Jaz said.

‘What about you?’ Miranda said. ‘You mentioned a couple of weeks back you were thinking about meeting her. Any luck?’

‘Nope,’ Jaz said. ‘I might not be a Ravensdale but I’m considered close enough to your family to be on the black list as well.’

‘Maybe Flynn can get her to change her mind,’ Miranda said, referring to the family lawyer, Flynn Carlyon, who had been a year ahead of Jake and Julius at school. ‘If anyone can do it he can. He’s unlikely to give up until he gets what he wants.’

‘But I thought the whole idea was to get her to go away,’ Jaz said. ‘Wasn’t that what Flynn was supposed to do? Pay her to keep from speaking to the press?’

‘Yes, but she wouldn’t take a penny off him. She hasn’t said a word to the media anyway and it’s been over a month,’ Miranda said. ‘Dad’s agent called him last night about putting on a party to celebrate his sixty years in showbiz in January. Dad wants Kat there. He says he won’t go ahead with it unless she comes.’

‘Sixty years?’ Jaz said. ‘Gosh. What age did he start?’

‘Five. He had a walk-on part in some musical way back. Hasn’t he shown you the photos?’

‘Nope,’ Jaz said. ‘I must’ve missed that bragging session.’

‘Ha ha,’ Miranda said. ‘But what are we going to do about Kat? She has to come to Dad’s party otherwise he’ll be devastated.’

‘Well, at least Flynn will have a few weeks to change her mind.’

‘I can’t work her out,’ Miranda said. ‘She’s a struggling actor who’s only had bit parts till now. You’d think she’d be jumping at the chance to cash in on her biological father’s fame.’

‘Maybe she needs time to get her head around who her father is,’ Jaz said. ‘It must’ve come as a huge shock finding out like that just before her mother died.’

‘Yes, I guess so.’ Miranda sighed again and then added, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Jaz—I mean with Jake? I can’t help worrying this could backfire.’

‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ Jaz said. ‘I’m using Jake and he’s using me.’

There was a telling little silence.

‘You’re not going to sleep with him, are you?’ Miranda said.

Jaz laughed. ‘I know he’s your brother and all that but there are some women on this planet who can actually resist him, you know.’

And I had better keep on doing it.

Jake was coming back in from a morning run around the property when he saw Jaz coming down the stairs, presumably for breakfast. She was wearing light-grey yoga pants and a baby-girl pink slouch top that revealed the cap of a creamy shoulder and the thin black strap of her bra. Her slender feet were bare apart from liquorice-black toenail polish and her hair was in a messy knot on the top of her head that somehow managed to look casual and elegant at the same time. She wasn’t wearing a skerrick of make-up but if anything it made her look all the more breath-snatchingly beautiful. But then, since when had her stunning grey-blue eyes with their thick, spider-leg long lashes and prominent eyebrows needed any enhancement?

He caught a whiff of her bergamot-and-geranium essential oil as she came to stand on the last step, making her almost eye-to-eye with him. The urge to touch her lissom young body was overpowering. He had to curl his hands into fists to prevent himself from running a hand down the creamy silk of her cheek or tracing that gorgeous mouth with his finger.

Her eyes met his and a punch of lust slammed him in the groin. The fire and ice in that stormy sea of grey and blue had a potent impact on him. It happened every time their eyes collided. It was like a bolt of electricity zapping him, making everything that was male in him stand to attention. ‘I told Miranda the truth about us,’ she said with a touch of defiance.

Jake decided to wind her up a bit. ‘That we have the hots for each other and are about to indulge in a passionate fling that’s been seven years in the making?’

She folded her arms like a schoolmistress who was dealing with a particularly cheeky pupil, but he noticed her cheeks had gone a faint shade of pink. ‘No,’ she said as tartly as if she had just bitten into a lemon. ‘I told her we aren’t engaged and we still hate each other.’

He picked up a stray strand of hair that had escaped her makeshift knot and tucked it safely back behind the neat shell of her ear. He felt her give a tiny shiver as his fingers brushed the skin behind her ear and her mouth opened and closed as if she was trying to disguise her little involuntary gasp. ‘You don’t hate me, sweetheart. You want me.’

The twin pools of colour in her cheeks darkened another shade and her eyes flashed with livid blue-tipped flames. ‘Do you get charged extra on flights for carrying your ego on board?’

Jake smiled crookedly as he trailed his fingertip from the crimson tide on her cheekbone to the neat hinge of her jaw. ‘I see it every time you look at me. I feel it when I’m near you. You feel it too, don’t you?’

The point of her tongue sneaked out over her lips in a darting movement. ‘All I feel when I’m near you is the uncontrollable urge to scratch my nails down your face.’

He unpeeled one of her hands from where it was tucked in around her middle and laid it flat against his jaw. ‘Go on,’ he said, challenging her with his gaze. ‘I won’t stop you.’

Her hand was like cool silk against his skin. A shiver scooted down his spine as he felt the slight scrape of her nails against his morning stubble but then, instead of scoring his face, she began to stroke it. The sound of her soft skin moving over his raspy jaw had an unmistakably erotic element to it. Her touch sent a rocket blast through his pelvis and he put a hand at the base of her spine to draw her closer to his restless, urgent heat. The contact of her body so intimately against his was like fireworks exploding. His mouth came down in search of hers but he didn’t have to go far as she met him more than halfway. Her soft lips were parted in anticipation, her vanilla-milkshake breath mingling with his for a spine-tingling microsecond before her mouth fused with his.

She gave a low moan of approval as he moved his mouth against hers, seeking her moist warmth with the stroke and glide of his tongue. She melted against him, her arms winding around his neck, her fingers delving through his hair, holding his head in place as if she was terrified he would pull back from her.

Jake had no intention of pulling back. He was enjoying the taste of her too much, the heat and unbridled passion that blossomed with every stroke and flicker of his tongue against hers. She pressed herself against him, her supple body fitting along his harder contours as if she had been fashioned just for him. He cupped her neat behind, holding her against the throbbing urgency of his arousal as his mouth fed hungrily off the sweet and drugging temptation of hers.

He lifted his mouth only far enough to change position but she grabbed at him, clamping her lips to his, her tongue darting into his mouth to mate wantonly with his. His blood pounded with excitement. His heart rate sped. His thighs fizzed with the need to take charge, to possess the hot, tight, wet vault of her body until this clawing, desperate need was finally satisfied.

Hadn’t he always known she would be dynamite in his arms? Hadn’t he always wanted to do this? Even that night when she’d been too young to know what she was doing. He had ached and burned to possess her then and he ached and burned now. One kiss wasn’t going to be enough. It wasn’t enough to satisfy the raging lust rippling through his body. He wanted to feel her convulsing around him as he took her to heaven and back. He knew they would be good together. He had always known it on some level. He felt it whenever their eyes met—the electric jolt of awareness that triggered something primitive in him.

Nothing would please him more than to see her gasping out his name as she came. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to have her admit she wanted him as much as he wanted her. To prove to her it wasn’t her ‘taking a break’ fiancé she was hankering after but him she wanted. The man she had wanted since she was a teenager. The man she said she hated but lusted after like a forbidden drug. That was what he saw in her eyes—the desire she didn’t want to feel but was there, simmering and smouldering with latent heat.

Jake slipped a hand under her loose top in search of the tempting globe of her breast. She hummed her pleasure against his lips as he moved her bra aside to make skin-on-skin contact. For years he had wanted to touch her like this—to feel her soft, creamy skin against his palm and hear her throatily express her need. He passed his thumb over her tightly budded nipple and then circled it before he bent his head and took it into his mouth. She gave another primal moan as he suckled on her breast, using the gentle scrape of his teeth and the sweep and salve of his tongue to tantalise her.

He slipped a hand down between their hard-pressed bodies, cupping her mound, his own body so worked up he wondered if he was going to jump the gun for the first time since he’d been a clumsy teenager.

But suddenly Jaz pulled back, pushing against his chest with the heels of her hands. ‘Stop,’ she said in a breathless-sounding voice. ‘Please...stop.’

Jake held his hands up to show he was cool with her calling a halt. ‘Your call, sweetheart.’

She pressed her lips together as she straightened her top, her hands fumbling and uncoordinated. ‘You had no right to do that,’ she said, shooting him a hard look.

He gave a lazy smile. ‘Well, look who’s talking. I wonder what lover boy would say if he’d been a fly on the wall just now? His devoted little “having a break” fiancée getting all hot and bothered with just a friendly kiss.’

Her eyes went to hairpin-thin slits. ‘There was nothing friendly about it. You don’t even like me. You just wanted to prove a point.’

‘What point would that be?’

She tossed her head in an uppity manner as she turned to go back upstairs. ‘I’m not having this conversation. You had no right to touch me and that’s the end of it. Don’t do it again.’

Jake waited until she was almost to the top of the stairs before he said, ‘What about when we’re out in public? Am I allowed to touch you then?’

A circle of ice rimmed her flattened mouth as she turned to glare at him. ‘Only if it’s absolutely necessary.’

He smiled a devilish smile. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

CHAPTER FIVE

JAZ STORMED INTO her room and shut the door. She would have slammed it except she had already shown Jake how much he had rattled her. She didn’t want to give his over-blown ego any more of a boost. She was furious with him for kissing her. How dared he take such liberties? A little voice reminded her that she hadn’t exactly resisted but, on the contrary, had given him every indication she was enjoying every pulse-racing second of it.

Which she had been. Damn it.

His kiss had made her face what she didn’t want to face. What she hadn’t wanted to face for seven years. She wanted him. It was like it was programmed into her genes or something. He triggered something in her that no other man ever had. Her body sizzled when he was around. His touch created an earthquake of longing. How could a kiss make her feel so...so alive? It was crazy. Madness. Lunacy.

It was just like him to make a big joke about everything. This was nothing but a game to him. He enjoyed baiting her. Goading her. Tempting her. Why had she allowed him to get that close to her? She should have stepped back while she’d had the chance. Or maybe she hadn’t had the chance because her body had other ideas. Wicked ideas that involved him touching her and pleasuring her in a way she had never quite felt before. Why had his touch made her flesh tingle and quake with delight? Why had his kiss made her heart race and her pulse thrum with longing?

It was just a kiss. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been kissed before. She’d had plenty of kisses. Heaps. Dozens. Maybe hundreds... Well, maybe things had been a bit light on that just lately. She couldn’t quite recall the last time Myles had kissed her. Not properly. Not passionately, as if he couldn’t get enough of her taste and touch. Over the last few weeks their kisses had turned into a rather perfunctory peck on the cheek at hello and goodbye. And as to touching her breasts, well, Myles wasn’t good at breasts. He didn’t seem to understand she didn’t like being pinched or squeezed, like he was someone checking a piece of fruit for ripeness.

Jaz let out a frustrated breath. Why did Jake have to be the expert on kissing her and handling her breasts? It wasn’t fair. She didn’t want him to have such sensual power over her. He could turn her on by just looking at her with that glinting dark gaze.

Of course it would be so much worse now. Now he had actually kissed her and touched her breasts and her lady land. God, she’d almost come on the spot when he’d cupped her down there. How could one man’s touch have such an effect on her? She didn’t even like him. She loathed him. He was her arch-enemy. He wasn’t just a thorn in her side. He was the whole damn rose bush. Unpruned. He was everything she avoided in a partner.

But he sure could kiss. Jaz had to give him that. His lips had done things to hers no man had ever done before. His tongue had lit a blazing fire in her core and it hadn’t gone out. The hot coals were smouldering there even now. Her body felt restless. Feverish. Hungry. Starving for more of his electrifying caresses. What would it feel like to have him deep inside her? Moving in her body in that hectic rush for release?

Sex had always been a complicated issue for her. She put it down to the fact her first experience of it had been so twisted and tangled up with shame. She had taken a drink from a young man at the party, more to get back at Jake for rejecting her. She had flirted with the man, hoping Jake would see that not all men found her repulsive. But she hadn’t factored in the amount of alcohol she had already consumed or her overwrought emotional state. She couldn’t quite remember how she had ended up in one of the downstairs bathrooms with the man, sweaty and smelling of wine as he tore at her clothes and groped and slobbered all over her until she’d finally got away. All she could remember was the shame—the sickening shame of not being in control.

Now whenever she had sex that same shame lurked at the back of her mind. Although she enjoyed some aspects of making love—the touching and being needed—she hadn’t always been able to relax enough to orgasm. Not that any of her partners had seemed to notice. She might not be a proper Ravensdale but she sure could act when she needed to. Pretending to orgasm every time hadn’t been her intention. But once had turned into twice and then it had been far easier than explaining.

How could she explain her behaviour that night? The rational part of her knew the man at the party had some responsibility to acquire proper consent before he touched her, but how did she know if she’d given it or not? It would be his word against hers, that was, if he’d actually remembered. She’d seen him the next morning as the overnight guests were leaving but he had looked right through her as if he had never seen her before. Had she agreed to kiss him in the bathroom or had he come in on her and seized the opportunity to assault her? She didn’t know and it was the not knowing that was the most shameful thing for her.

Jaz wasn’t into victim blaming but when it came to herself she struggled to forgive herself for allowing something like that to happen. She had buried her shame behind a ‘don’t mess with me’ façade and a sharp tongue but deep inside she was still that shocked and terrified girl.

And she had a scary feeling if she spent too much time alone with Jake Ravensdale he would begin to see it.

Jaz was doing some work on Holly’s dress in her room and when her phone rang she picked it up without thinking. ‘Jasmine Connolly.’

‘Jaz. Finally you answered,’ Myles said. ‘Why on earth haven’t you returned my calls?’

‘Oh, hi, Myles,’ she said breezily. ‘How are you?’

He released a whooshing breath. ‘How do you think I am? I turn my back for a moment and my fiancée is suddenly engaged to someone else.’

Jaz smiled as she put her needle and thread down. It was working. It was actually working. Myles was insanely jealous. She had never heard him speak so possessively before. ‘You were the one who suggested we take a break.’

‘Yes, but dating other people is not the same as getting engaged to them. We’d only been apart twenty-four hours and you hooked up with him. No one falls in love that quickly. No one, and especially not Jake bloody Ravensdale.’

Jaz hadn’t really taken in that bit. The bit where Myles had said they were free to date other people. She’d thought he was just having some breathing space. Her ‘engagement’ to Jake wouldn’t have the same power if Myles was seeing someone else. What if he fell in love? What if he got engaged to someone else? ‘Are you seeing other people?’

There was a short silence.

‘I had a drink with an old friend but I haven’t got myself bloody engaged to them,’ he said in a sulky tone.

Jaz twirled a tendril of her hair around her finger as she walked about the room with the phone pressed to her ear. How cool was this, hearing Myles sound all wounded and affronted by her moving on so quickly? Didn’t that prove he still loved her? The irony was he’d been the first to say those three magical little words. But he hadn’t said it for weeks. Months, even. But a couple more weeks of having Jake Ravensdale brandished in his face would do the trick. Myles would soon be begging her to take him back. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘Jake is taking me out to dinner.’

‘I give it a week,’ Myles said. ‘Two at the most. He won’t stick around any longer than that. You mark my words.’

Two is all I need. The winter wedding expo in the Cotswolds was the coming weekend. It was her stepping stone to the big time. She hoped to expand her business and what better way than to attend with a heart-stopping, handsome fiancé in tow? There was no way she wanted to go alone. She would look tragic if she went without a fiancé. She couldn’t bear to be considered a fraud, making ‘happy ever after’ dresses but failing to find love herself. But if she took Jake Ravensdale as her fiancé —the poster boy for pick-ups—it would give her serious street cred. Besides, it would be the perfect payback to him for humiliating her. It would be unmitigated torture for commitment-phobe Jake to be dragged around a ballroom full of wedding finery.

She smiled a secret smile. Yes, staying ‘engaged’ to Jake suited her just fine.

Jake was scrolling through his emails in the library—thankfully none were from Emma Madden—when Jaz came sashaying in, bringing with her the scent of flowers and temptation. His body sprang to attention when she approached the desk where he was sitting. She had changed out of her yoga pants and top and was now wearing skin-tight jeans, knee-length leather boots and a baby-blue cashmere sweater with a patterned scarf artfully gathered around her slim neck. Her honey-brown hair was loose about her shoulders and her beautiful mouth was glistening with lip-gloss, drawing his gaze like a magnet. He could still taste her. Could still feel the way her tongue had danced with his in sensual heat. He saw her gaze drift to his mouth as if she were recalling that erotic interlude. ‘Forgiven me yet?’ he said.

She tossed her hair back over her shoulders in a haughty manner, giving him an ice-cool glare. ‘For?’

‘You know exactly what for.’

She shifted her gaze, picked a pen off the desk and turned it over in her slender hands as if it was something of enormous interest to her. ‘I was wondering what you’re up to next weekend.’