She’d barely had enough time to consider his proposal before he’d pushed up from where he was leaning and moved closer to her, sliding an arm around her waist. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened as she drew a quick breath. She watched his eyes lower to it. He only needed to dip his head—it was barely five centimetres away—and she would know if she could really feel that scar during a kiss...
He moved his mouth until it was next to her ear and whispered, ‘Kyle’s watching, so you might want to make that decision quickly.’
JACQUES COULDN’T DENY enjoying the way the woman he’d only just met shivered in his arms. Or the look her ex—a man he had a very low opinion of—was aiming at him. But those things were irrelevant to him at that moment. What was relevant was an opportunity to do just as his PR firm had advised. An opportunity that had just fallen into his lap, and would get him exactly what he wanted if he used it properly.
Lily shifted, reminding him that the opportunity wasn’t an it but a who.
‘If I say yes, will you let go of me?’
She asked it in a shaky tone, and he looked down into uncertain eyes. They became guarded a moment later, and he frowned, wondering where the spirit he’d admired earlier had gone.
‘I’ll let go of you regardless, Lily.’
He spoke softly, but forced his heart to harden. He couldn’t feel anything for her—including empathy. It would make using her a lot more difficult.
It sounded harsh, even to him, but he knew he would do it if it meant he could redeem himself from the mistakes he’d made in the past. He’d been trying to do that since he’d realised he was only proving people right—specifically his father—by acting the way he had during the year after his suspension.
The realisation had had him channelling the ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ motto he’d been known for during his rugby days into building a sporting goods company. Into making it a success.
Now it was. And yet people still thought of him as the bad boy who’d beaten up his opponent seven years ago, and it grated him. So when he’d heard that his old rugby club was being sold, he’d known it was an opportunity. He could go back to the root of it all—to where his problems had started.
The irony was that he needed a better reputation to get the club he believed would change his poor reputation. And Lily was the key to that.
‘Let’s do it.’
The words were said firmly, surprising him after the brief moment of vulnerability he’d just seen, but he simply asked, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
She gave a quick nod, and then moved her mouth so that it was next to his ear, just as he had done to her earlier. It made it seem as if she was responding to his question—something her action made seem suggestive—and he would have appreciated the strategy if a thrill hadn’t gone through his body, distracting him.
‘We’ll have to tell Caitlyn about this. If she sees us and thinks we’re together she’s going to freak out.’
She pulled back and laid a hand on his chest—an intimate gesture that had his heart beating too hard for his liking.
‘That would probably be best,’ he answered stiffly.
It took him a moment to figure out whether his tone came because of the effect she had on him or the prospect of speaking to his brother.
A fist clenched at a piece of his heart as it always did when he thought of Nathan, but he tried to focus on his task. He took Lily’s hand and led her through the crowd of people he no longer cared enough about to know to where his brother and Caitlyn were standing.
Holding Lily’s hand sent awareness up and down his arm, but he ignored it. Attraction wasn’t something new to him. There’s more with her, a voice taunted, and again he tried to think of something else. But his options seemed limited to things he didn’t want to think about, and he sighed, realising he would have to face at least one of them.
His brother won, Jacques thought as they reached the circle of people Nathan and Caitlyn were surrounded by. The easy air that Nathan carried around him—the way it translated into ease around people—had always been something Jacques had admired. Sometimes envied. Until he’d realised that people were overrated. One day they saw you as a hero, doing things they admired—the next those very things were criticised and that was how they defined you.
But Jacques knew it was also the easy way Nathan approached their less than stellar parents. How he was still in touch with them when Jacques hadn’t seen them in years. How he could still want to be a part of their family after all they’d had to deal with growing up...
He stopped that train of thought when he saw they’d attracted Nathan’s attention, and with a slight nod of his head Jacques indicated they go to a quieter corner of the room.
‘I’m glad you came,’ were the first words from his brother’s mouth.
‘You knew I would.’
Nathan sent Jacques a look that had a lance of guilt piercing his chest. It made him think about how he hadn’t seen either of his parents there that evening—Surprise, surprise, he thought, despite the relief coursing through him—and he realised it was disappointment, not accusation, that had Nathan doubting Jacques. And that it wasn’t exactly Jacques, but their whole family.
While Jacques sympathised with his brother, that feeling was capped by the memory of the thousands of times Jacques had warned Nathan to stop hoping with their parents. Jacques had learnt a long time ago that it would get him nowhere. His anger about it had ended his career, after all. Had taught him to stop trying. And, since he hadn’t seen them in seven years, he figured he’d succeeded in that.
‘Congratulations,’ Jacques said, remembering that this was the first time he’d seen his brother and his fiancée since they’d got engaged.
He brushed a kiss on Caitlyn’s cheek, enjoying the smile that spread over her pretty face, and then went in for the obligatory handshake and pat on the back with his brother.
‘While that was both amusing and touching,’ Lily interrupted with a small smile, ‘I know you both have to do the rounds, so we just wanted to tell you we’re going to pretend to be dating so that I can make Kyle feel a fraction of what I felt when I walked in on him and her—’ she nodded a head in the woman’s direction ‘—naked.’
By the time she was done Jacques could tell that she was out of breath. Which didn’t surprise him, since with each word the pace with which she’d spoken had increased. What did surprise him was what she had said—that Kyle had cheated on her. While he’d been amused at being roped in to being a pretend boyfriend earlier, he understood why she’d done it now. And he no longer felt amusement over the situation.
There was a stunned silence, and then Caitlyn said, ‘Honey, are you okay?’
‘I’m fine.’ Lily brushed one of her delightful curls from her face. ‘We just wanted to warn you in case you wondered. Or got asked about it.
