and her delicately arched eyebrows launched up her forehead into the soft brown curls that haloed around her head.
That had certainly shut her up. Although he wasn’t quite sure what he’d said that had put the shell-shocked look on her face. The unusual colour of her eyes had darkened to a vivid turquoise and all the pigment had leached out of her cheeks.
She covered her mouth with her fingers. ‘Jace the Ace.’
The words were muffled, but distinctive enough to make him tense. ‘How do you know my name?’ he asked, although no one had called him by that particular nickname for fourteen years. Not since he’d been kicked out of school when he was seventeen. The minute the thought registered, another more disturbing one hit him—and the insistent throbbing in his groin increased.
Damn it. That had to be it. What other explanation was there for his instant response to her?
She hadn’t replied, so he forced himself to ask the obvious next question.
‘Have I slept with you?’
He doesn’t remember me. Thank you, God.
Cassie tried to speak, but her tongue was too numb to form coherent words. Not all that surprising given that the punch of recognition had hit her squarely in the solar plexus and expelled all the air from her lungs. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered.
‘I definitely didn’t sleep with you?’ he asked as the unflinching emerald gaze that had broken a thousand female hearts at Hillsdown Road Secondary School searched her face.
She nodded.
His shoulders relaxed and she heard him mutter, ‘Good to know.’
No wonder she hadn’t recognised him straight away. The Jacob Ryan she remembered had been a boy. A tall, troubled and heart-stop-pingly handsome boy, who at seventeen had been the perfect mix of dashing and dangerous to a girl of thirteen with an overactive imagination and hyperactive hormones.
They hadn’t slept together. In fact, they’d never even kissed. She’d been four years younger than him, and when you were at school that might as well have been a fifty-year age difference. But she’d had a wealth of immature romantic fantasies about him—like every other girl in her year—which were now playing havoc with her heartbeat.
She shifted in her seat, feeling disorientated and a little light-headed, the damp velvet of her coat like a straightjacket.
Her stomach muscles clenched and released. Exactly as they always had all those years ago, if she’d spied him brooding in the dinner hall, or at the bus shelter busy ignoring all the girls giggling around him … Or during what had come to be known in the annals of Cassie’s teenage years as The Ultimate Humiliation. The excruciating moment when she’d disturbed him and head girl Jenny Kelty snogging on the back stairwell.
Cassie’s nipples tightened painfully, the impossibly erotic picture they’d made entwined on the dimly lit staircase still astonishingly fresh.
She’d been anchored to the spot, her thigh muscles dissolving as she gawped. His hand had been under Jenny’s blouse, his stroking fingers visible beneath the billowing white cotton. Cassie had watched transfixed, her teeth digging into her lip, as his other hand had skimmed to Jenny’s waist then moulded her bottom, grinding her against him. Then he’d raised his head and nipped at Jenny’s bottom lip. And Cassie had felt her own lip tingle.
As Jenny had groaned and writhed, warmth had flooded through Cassie’s system and her strangled gasp had slipped out without warning.
Jace Ryan’s sure steady gaze had locked on her face. She’d been trapped, like a deer about to be mown down by a juggernaut. Frozen in terror as reaction skidded up her spine.
But instead of looking angry at the interruption, he had curved his sensual lips into a confidential grin. As if they shared a secret joke that only they understood.
She’d grinned back, opened her mouth to say something, anything.
Then Jenny had spotted her standing there like an idiot and screeched, ‘What are you smiling at, you silly cow? Get lost.’
Hot humiliation had blazed through her entire body and she’d scrambled back down the stairs so fast she’d nearly broken her neck. The pounding of blood in her ears far too loud to hear the words Jace shouted after her as she ran.
He turned back to her now, tapped his thumb on the steering wheel. ‘So what’s your name?’
‘Cassie Fitzgerald.’
His forehead furrowed. ‘I don’t remember anyone called—’
‘That’s a relief,’ she interrupted, praying his memory loss lasted a lifetime. ‘That chartreuse blazer was not a good look for me.’
He chuckled. The low rumble of amusement did funny things to her thigh muscles. ‘Look, why don’t we start over?’ he said, his eyes darkening as his gaze rose to the top of her head, then settled back on her face. ‘I’ve got a suite at The Chesterton. Why don’t you come back with me? We can get your coat dry-cleaned.’ Reaching forward, he tucked a curl behind her ear. ‘It’s the least I can do for an old school chum.’
They hadn’t been chums. Not even close.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ she murmured, trying not to pander to the thrum of awareness that pulsed against her cheek where his finger had touched.
Jace Ryan had been dangerous to a woman’s peace of mind at seventeen. He was probably deadly now.
He sent her a conspiratorial wink. ‘Good is overrated.’
Cassie’s pulse sped up, then slowed to a sluggish crawl—and she completely forgot about not pandering to the thrum. ‘Is bad better, then?’
He smiled, the penetrating green gaze sweeping over her—and the thrum went haywire.
‘In my experience—’ his eyes met hers ‘—bad is not only better, it’s also a lot more fun.’ He glanced over his shoulder to check the traffic. ‘So how about it?’ he asked as the car pulled away from the kerb. ‘You want to come back to the hotel and we can raid the mini-bar together while I get your coat cleaned?’
‘Okay,’ she replied, before she had a chance to think better of it. ‘If you’re sure it’s not too much bother?’
He sent her an easy grin. ‘Not at all.’
Crossing her arms, Cassie pressed down on her treacherous boobs, which were still throbbing at the memory of Jace Ryan on that stairwell a million years ago, and studied his profile in the glimmer of the passing streetlights.
Maturity suited him: the light tan, the hint of five o’clock shadow, the thick waves of dark hair, the little lines at the corners of his eyes and the once angry red scar that had faded to a thin white line slashing rakishly across his left eyebrow. He’d grown into those brooding heartthrob features, his hollow cheeks defined to create a dramatic sweep of planes and angles. And from the powerful physique stretching the expertly tailored suit as he shifted gears, he’d also grown into his lanky build.
Cassie huddled in her seat as the powerful
