as I recall, you were pretty insistent.’
‘You asked me to dance,’ she snapped.
She could still remember her shock, and the sharp tingling excitement as he’d held out his hand. For to her it had felt like the moment when Prince Charming had invited Cinderella to dance at the ball.
Her heartbeat stuttered now.
Maybe if she’d been more worldly she might have seen it for what it was. Thanks to his sister’s insistence that he make sure everyone had at least one turn on the dance floor, he had dutifully danced with practically all Alicia’s friends by that point. But as he’d pressed her closer she’d been so cocooned in an enveloping, intoxicating happiness that nothing had existed except the muscular hardness of his body and the restless, persistent pulse between her thighs.
His dark gaze rested on her face.
‘To dance, yes…’ he said slowly.
Her pulse froze, and before she could stop them the images fast-forwarded.
Their ‘duty’ dance over, she’d thought he would thank her and leave, but somehow they had been on the terrace, the music had faded, and as she’d shivered in the cool night air he’d shrugged out of his dinner jacket and settled it over her shoulders. The silk lining had been warm from the heat of his body, and it had still been warm a moment later, when she’d stood on tiptoe and kissed him…
Her cheeks were hot and her skin suddenly felt as though it was too small for her body. She might have been a virgin—she still was—but she hadn’t been completely clueless. There had been a couple of boys at parties, their clumsy lips pulling at hers like overgrown puppies with a chew toy, but nothing and no one had ever made her feel like that.
Her body had seemed to lose all its bones, to become one with his. It had felt as though she was melting into him, everything solid turning fluid, drowning all sense and reason—and, yes, she had been eager, frantic to finish what they’d started without any thought to the consequences.
But admitting that to Basa now wouldn’t change his part in what had happened.
He might be blessed with mouthwatering looks and limitless wealth, but that was where his resemblance to Prince Charming ended. Even before Charlie and Raymond had been caught embezzling he’d had no plans to marry a scullery maid—or, in her case, the stepdaughter of an employee. All he’d been interested in was a short, sweet sexual encounter, and that had rapidly lost its appeal when he’d realised he’d have to go hunting for condoms to make it happen.
Of course he’d made up some other excuse to leave, but she knew he hadn’t gone to get a bottle of champagne. The truth was that she just hadn’t been beautiful or desirable enough to make him want to stay.
‘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
