Craving His Forbidden Innocent

‘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.

‘Okay, fine.’

Mimi’s voice pulled him back to the present and, tipping his head back, he met her gaze.

‘Okay fine, what?’ he asked softly.

‘I’m willing to call a truce if you are. But I don’t really see any point in us dragging this conversation out any longer.’

‘I disagree. We need to discuss you filming the wedding. She’s serious, you know?’ he added. ‘About wanting you to do it.’

She raised her chin, and he felt the shock of her forget-me-not-blue eyes zigzag through his body like a jolt of electricity.

‘I know she is, but whatever she said about it being your idea, I know it wasn’t, so you don’t need to worry. I’m not going to do it.’

She glanced away, and he felt his shoulders stiffen against the crisp white poplin of his shirt. Her desire to leave was so tangible it felt like a living, breathing thing on the table between them, and had this conversation been happening at any point up until a couple of days ago he would have been showing her the door. Hell, he would have been holding it open for her.

But that had been before he’d spoken to Alicia.

His jaw tightened. After his mother’s death, and the series of strokes that had left his father’s health permanently impaired, he had sworn to protect his sister and do everything in his power to make her happy. And he still felt the same way—perhaps even more so. It was, after all, partly his fault that their father was so fragile and that the business was only just now recovering its former strength.

Clearly he’d rather Mimi wasn’t within a hundred miles of the wedding, but Alicia’s happiness and his family’s reputation were all that mattered to him. Suggesting Mimi film the wedding had been the first thing to come to mind as he had tried to stem his sister’s tears and find an alternative to Mimi being maid of honour.

But now that he’d had time to think the idea of her filming the wedding was actually appealing on other levels too—for wouldn’t it be safer to have her fully occupied rather than just floating around unsupervised, as she had been at his sister’s twenty-first birthday party?

And who better to do the supervising than him? That way he could ensure her behaviour wouldn’t bring his family’s name into disrepute, and make her life as difficult and uncomfortable as she had made his.

‘It was my idea,’ he said softly.

She looked up at him, her blue eyes widening with scorn at what she obviously took to be a bare-faced lie.

‘Of course it was. I mean you love having me around. That was obvious after—’

She broke off, frowning.

‘After what?’ he asked slowly.

Inhaling a shaky breath, she shook her head. ‘So tell me, then, Basa, why exactly do you want me to film your sister’s wedding?’

He shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘What do you mean, “why not”?’

‘I mean why wouldn’t you do it?’ he said patiently.

She stared at him suspiciously. ‘You do realise you said that out loud?’

He smiled. ‘I am aware of that, yes.’

She bit her lip and, watching her bite into the soft pink flesh, he felt his heart-rate double as his brain unhelpfully offered up an image of those same soft pink lips parting beneath his mouth.

Suddenly the need to have her commit to the project became as intense as the ache in his groin.

‘She’s your friend—your best friend—and I know she doesn’t ask much from you because she doesn’t ask much from anyone,’ he said bluntly, watching a flush of colour seep over her cheekbones. ‘But she has asked you to do this one thing.’

He could see by her expression that she was confused by his words, and then abruptly her face cleared.

‘Oh, I get it. This is you trying to persuade me so that you can tell your sister what a good brother you are.’ Her chin jutted. ‘Well, if that’s all you’re worried about you don’t need to pretend. I’ll tell her you tried and I wouldn’t listen.’

‘I’m not pretending. I think you’d do an excellent job. You’re a good filmmaker.’

‘Right…’

She shook her head, and the defensive expression on her face chafed at something inside him.

‘And you know that how, exactly?’

‘Alicia showed me some of the films you used to make at school.’ His eyes met hers. ‘They’re clearly amateur, but you really capture that teenage sense of waiting and wanting. There’s not a wasted breath,’ he said softly.

There was a beat of silence, and then his breathing stalled as she looked up at him with such sweet, desperate hope in her blue gaze that for a few half-seconds he forgot the past, and everything that had happened, and he was simply fighting against the insane urge to reach over and pull her closer, until her body fused with his just as it had two years ago.

Across the room, a champagne cork popped, and they both blinked at the same time.

Tuning out the heat pulsing over his skin, he regulated his breathing. ‘Like I said, you’re a good filmmaker, and this is your chance to be a good friend as well. So please say yes and make some happy memories for my sister.’

There was a beat of silence and then her shoulders slumped. He knew he’d won even before she began to nod her head.

‘Okay, I’ll do it.’

‘Good.’ Brushing aside the relief warming his skin, he glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll get your number from Alicia and then my PA can call you and talk flights—’

‘Flights?’ She cut across him, her eyes narrowing. ‘What flights? To where?’

‘Buenos Aires,’ he said calmly. ‘Don’t worry, I’m paying. First class ticket, and obviously you’ll stay at the house before we go to Patagonia.’

She began to shake her head. ‘No, no, no. I’m not doing that. I’m not going to Argentina.’

‘Really?’ He frowned. ‘So, have you got some kind of satellite camera on loan from NASA? Because London to Buenos Aires is one hell of a long shot.’

Ignoring her outraged expression, he pulled out his phone and swiped casually through his diary.

‘I can’t do anything for the next couple of days, but I can fly down from the States on Friday.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘I don’t care if you can fly to the moon and back. I’m not going to Buenos Aires on Friday. Or on any day you care to mention, in fact.’

‘Oh, but you are—and I’ll explain why. The wedding is in less than three months, and Alicia is flying out with my father in a few weeks to settle in. She’s going to have enough on her to-do list without you wandering in at the last minute with a hundred and one questions that could have already been answered in advance. By me.’

He was impressed by the plausibility of his words, and he could see they had taken the wind out of her sails.

‘It’s got nothing to do with you,’ she managed finally. ‘It’s not your wedding and you don’t know anything about film making.’

‘Oh, I think it’s got everything to do with me,’ he said mockingly. ‘Given that the whole event is going to be happening in my homes, and I have very specific and inflexible house rules.’

He saw her teeth clench.

‘You can’t expect me to make up my mind now. I’ll need time to think about it.’

‘I’m not selling you a car, Mimi.’ He let his gaze drift over her face, enjoying the mix of frustration and fear in her blue eyes. ‘Look, I’m a busy man, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to work around my schedule—and that means you coming to Buenos Aires this Friday.’

‘What about my schedule?’ she snapped.

‘I think Crema will probably be able to fill your shifts quite quickly, don’t you?’

He’d deliberately made his voice condescending, and it was a measure of her fury that she didn’t even register the fact that he knew where she worked.

She glared across the table. ‘You are so unspeakably arrogant.’

‘No, I’m just honest—but I guess that’s a bit of an alien concept to you.’ Their eyes locked, hers furious, his taunting. ‘How are Charlie and Raymond, by the way? Still enjoying their stay at Her Majesty’s pleasure?’

She stared at him, a flush of pink spreading like a sunset over her incredible cheekbones. ‘You are a horrible man.’

‘And you are bad news.’ He held her gaze, ignoring the pull of her scornful pout, wishing she didn’t look quite so sexy when she was angry. ‘So, if we’re done trading insults, let me tell you how this is going to work. The last thing my family needs on my sister’s wedding day is a scandal.’

And it wasn’t going to happen on his watch. He’d learned his lesson two years ago, when his hasty, mismanaged, ego-led decision to employ Charlie and Raymond had so spectacularly backfired. He’d been responsible for that disaster, and the collateral damage it had caused, and it was his job—his duty—to prevent anything like that happening again.

He looked up, his eyes holding hers. ‘Particularly one involving you. So I need you to conduct yourself in a proper manner. That means following my rules, and it’ll be easier to explain those rules on-site. But if you don’t think you’re mature enough to handle one little fully paid trip to Buenos Aires, then call Alicia.’ He held out his phone. ‘And break her heart.’

She stared at him mutely. ‘You really are quite something. All that guff about moving forward was just for Alicia’s benefit.’

‘Don’t push it, Mimi. I’m not going to fall out with my sister over this, but if you think that means you get a free rein in my home then you really don’t know me at all.’

‘Thankfully, no,’ she spat. ‘But if you feel that strongly about me then why don’t I just stay in a hotel? Don’t worry. I’ll pay.’

Her skin was flawless, and the soft curl of her mouth was making him lose concentration. She was beautiful and angry and he badly wanted to kiss her.

And that was what gave him the strength to lean back in his chair.

‘Sadly, that wouldn’t work for me,’ he said softly. ‘You see, I prefer to keep my friends close but my enemies closer.’

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