offering comfort; something he wasn’t entitled to—making it the last thing he wanted.
‘You’re sure of this?’ he ground out.
She nodded and he was left reeling. Until he remembered he was a King. ‘Well I can give you my answer now. It’s a resounding “no”.’
‘And since when has a King ever taken “no” for an answer?’
The question hung in the air, and Jared realised that his little sister had grown up, inheriting a few of the old man’s traits along the way. He breathed out slowly. ‘I don’t care if you take it or not. My answer won’t change.’
He felt himself being assessed once more and wasn’t at all comfortable it was his baby sister doing it.
‘Look, I realise this must have come as a bit of a shock, but aren’t you a bit old to still be cultivating the tortured, bad-boy image?’
Jared withdrew his fist from the table and stretched it out on his thigh. Image? He’d always assumed he’d sealed his reputation when he’d left, without a backwards glance for the sisters who’d once looked up to him, who’d once believed in him.
As the waiter arrived to place piping-hot dishes on the rotating glass plate at the table’s centre Jared kept his expression deliberately blank.
He needed a moment to adjust, that was all.
Shock could do strange things to a person.
Something he knew for a fact when he turned his head slightly to the woman doing the siren-like slow-mo walk through the maze of tables towards him, and briefly imagined that it was Amanda.
Cataloguing sexy high heels, black pencil skirt and form-fitting black sweater, long chestnut hair and flawless creamy skin… all his thoughts lurched to a stop when he zeroed in on the pair of twinkly, button-brown eyes.
Alright. Okay. There had to be a really good explanation as to why Amanda Gray had walked in wearing something so far removed from her usual garb. He couldn’t help but look at her in a thoroughly off-limits way and if he didn’t stop staring in the next ten seconds, all hell was going to break loose.
Nobody blind-sided him twice in one day.
‘On your way somewhere special?’ he asked, inwardly cursing the gravel-like quality to his voice as he rose automatically from his chair to greet her.
She shrugged her shoulders as if it wasn’t important and yet a part of him, the part which had sat up to take notice as soon as she’d entered the room, wanted to beg to differ. Shock had got a hold of him. Simple as that, he cautioned, as displacement therapy played dirty with his mind, telling him it was perfectly okay to respond to the sweet temptation of Amanda leaning into him.
He felt some of his famous constraint shake loose. Felt the devil-may-care attitude he’d stamped so forcefully from his personality ten years before resurface with a thud to beat a rhythm over his consciousness and awaken the Jared of old.
Amanda caught the watchful, sexy glint in Jared’s eye and had a little wobble. From the moment she’d entered the restaurant and seen Jared’s beautiful companion give what could only be described as an impassioned speech she’d suspected this particular Limpet was going to be more difficult than usual. She’d watched, mesmerised, as Jared’s hand had withdrawn from the woman’s and an expression of complete control had fallen across his features blotting out any trace of weakness. It had had her itching to photograph the change in him, itching to capture such a remarkable skill.
She’d seen his mask slip into place only once before, when she’d awoken in the small hospital room to find him bent over her brother’s bed, desolation, guilt, anger and grief etched across his features. She must have made a sound intending to comfort because the moment he’d realised she was there, his face had suddenly turned impassive and emotionless. BAM! The shutters were down!
Now, as she leant into him in greeting and watched him watching her, the words ‘playing with fire’ were practically tattooed onto her brain—which was ridiculous. This was Jared; her friend Jared. This was just a game to get him out of an awkward situation. This was not the time to engage heart over head. But as Jared’s hand snaked out to wrap around her waist and steady her, as she was enveloped in the solid heat of his embrace, his breath fanning against her cheek and raising a thousand skittering goose-bumps over her flesh, Amanda felt compelled to dismiss the wobble, and go with her gut—bypass subtle flirting and head straight to staking a claim.
Eyes welded to his, she rose up on tiptoes and brushed her lips lightly over his.
Any remaining sense of perspective promptly vanished.
Shocked, she withdrew her lips a fraction, her eyes moving uncertainly from the fullness of his lips to check his expression. As she saw that he had closed up, she was driven, if only to salvage a little pride, to revisit his lips with the soft glide of her tongue against his lower lip.
She heard the quick hiss of his indrawn breath and she responded instantly. Every last bit of her melted as his hand plunged deftly into the ponytail at the base of her neck, anchoring her so that he could take control and deepen the kiss. His tongue stroked masterfully over and under her tongue and she clung to him; one hundred per cent complicit in becoming a banquet on which he could greedily feast.
She didn’t think about the fact that she’d gone so far past subtle flirting she was lost somewhere that she’d never visited and possibly would never wanted to leave. She didn’t think about the fact that there would surely be consequences once Jared remembered what he was doing and who he was doing it with. Or, that there was someone sitting at the table beside them, or about the rest of the diners. She didn’t think at all. Not until the moan forming at the back of her throat escaped and she was suddenly, unceremoniously, set free and left teetering on her heels.
Breathing hard, not knowing what to do about the completely new and assessing look in Jared’s eyes, she glanced about her in desperation.
In the absence of any other idea she reached across the table, picked up his chopsticks, dunked some food in sweet chilli dipping sauce and placed the whole lot in her mouth.
As the silence stretched unbearably Amanda frowned at Jared’s Latest Limpet. She’d expected indignant shock at the kiss, not quickly masked confusion and then the same carefully blank expression that Jared was usually so good at. Then, suddenly, Jared did what he was famous for; taking control.
‘Amanda Gray,’ his British accent clipped out, ‘Meet Leonora King—Nora. My sister.’
Amanda couldn’t be sure, but she thought she might just have emitted a thoroughly unladylike snort. But with every synapse short-circuited after the kiss, she could be forgiven, right? His words began to truly register, as she picked up on the tension emanating from Jared and the woman sitting across from him. She became uncomfortably aware of her stupid heart beginning a very definite journey north to her mouth. Swallowing hard, she managed, ‘You’re serious?’ At the woman’s perfectly pleasant smile she sat down at the table with a jolt and turned an accusatory stare to the man sat beside her. ‘You let me think this woman was one of your … ’ She closed her eyes to aid breathing, thinking; functioning. Well, this was bad on so many levels; to have actually kissed Jared in the first place …
To discover it was in front of his sister!
She couldn’t help it, she looked at Nora and then back to Jared and ended
