“Oh? Is he having problems with his eyes?”
“Obviously. Only a blind man would let you out of his sight, especially if he knew you planned to be alone on a moonlit terrace. Any plonker could be out here, waiting to ravish you.”
She’d been so wrong. Other than a similar accent, James’s voice was nothing like Will’s. Will had yet to lose the ice while James breathed pure fire when he spoke.
“Good thing his moral, upstanding brother is the only one out here. He wouldn’t dare lay a finger on me.”
Maybe James needed a reminder that Bella and Will were supposed to get married, too. After all James had been the one to cool things off between the two of them, which had absolutely been the right thing to do.
“Yeah? While Will’s having his eyes examined, maybe I’ll get my IQ checked, then,” James said silkily.
“Feeling a little brainless this evening?”
“I definitely feel like my brain has turned to mush. I think it’s that dress. Your bare back framed by that little bit of fabric...it makes me imagine all sorts of things that probably aren’t very smart.” The frank appreciation in his voice floated through the still night, wrapping around her deliciously. “Let me see the front.”
“No.” Feeling exposed all at once, she crossed her arms. “I didn’t wear this dress for you.”
“Shame. I’m the only one here who fully appreciates what’s underneath it.”
In a flash, her core heated with the memory of being in James’s arms on the beach, his hard body flush with hers.
“You shouldn’t speak to me like that,” she said primly, and nearly gasped as he drew achingly close to her back. She could sense his heat and it called to her.
“Because you don’t like it?” he murmured, his mouth not two inches from her ear in a deliberate tease that shot sensation down the back of her throat.
Her breath caught and she gripped the railing lest her weak knees give out. “Because I do.”
He laughed and it spiked through her with fingers of warmth.
“That’s right,” he said smoothly, as if recalling something critically important. “You’re weak and liable to give in to temptation. Everything I’ve always wanted in a woman.”
“That’s so funny. I’d swear you brushed me off at our last meeting,” she couldn’t help but reply. It still stung, despite all the reasons why she suspected he’d done so.
“I did,” he admitted in an unprecedented moment of honesty. Most men she’d ever met would have tried to pass it off, as if she’d been mistaken. “You know why.”
“Because you’re not interested.”
The colorful curse he muttered made her smile for some reason. “You need your IQ checked if you believe that.”
“Because my father scared you off?”
“Not even close.”
“Because I’m supposed to be with Will,” she said definitively and wished it hadn’t come out sounding so bitter.
“Yes.” James paused as if to let that sink in. “Trust me. It was not easy. But he’s my brother.”
“So you’re okay with it if I marry Will?”
She imagined Christmas. That would be fun, to sit next to her boring husband who was screwing another woman on the side while the man she’d been dreaming about sat across the room. As Mr. Rowling carved the turkey, she could bask in the warm knowledge that she’d furthered a bunch of male ambition with her sacrifice to the royal cause.
“Is that what you want?” he asked quietly, his voice floating out on the still night air.
The question startled her. She had a choice. Of course she did. And now she needed to make it, once and for all.
The night seemed to hold its breath as it waited for her to speak. This was it, the moment of truth. She could end this dangerous attraction to the wrong brother forever by simply saying yes. James would walk away.
Something shifted inside, warring with all the sermons on responsibility and family obligations. And she couldn’t stand it any longer.
She didn’t want Will.
Whirling, she faced James, greedily drinking him, cataloguing the subtle differences in his features. He and Will weren’t identical, not to her. The variances were in the way James looked at her, the way her body reacted. The heat in this man’s gaze couldn’t be mistaken. He was all James and 100 percent the object of her desire.
She let her gaze travel over his gorgeous body, clad in a tuxedo that fit like an extension of his skin, fluid and beautiful. And she wanted nothing more than to see the secrets it hid so carefully beneath the fabric.
He raked her with a once-over in kind that quickened her core with delicious tightness. That was how a man should look at you in such a dress. As if he’d been presented with every last fantasy in one package.
“The back was good,” he rasped, his voice clogged with undisguised desire. “But the front...”
Delighted that she’d complied with Isabella’s fortuitous request to wear red, she smiled. “I do like a man at a loss for words.”
Moonlight played over his features and glinted off the obscenely expensive watch on his wrist as he swept up her hand and drew her closer. So close, she could almost hear his heart beating.
“Actions speak louder and all that.” His arm slid around her waist, pulling her to within a hairsbreadth of his body and she ached for him to close the distance. “Plus, I didn’t want to miss your answer.”
“Answer to what?”
He lowered his head to murmur in her ear, “What it is that you want.”
* * *
If she wanted Will, Bella had about two seconds to say so, or James would be presenting the woman in his arms with some hot and heavy temptation. He preferred to get on the same page before that happened because he had a bad feeling he might be the weak one on this terrace.
With so much forbidden fruit decked out in a mouthwatering dress that screamed sin and sex, he’d rather not put his ability to resist Bella to the test. But he would resist if she said no, regardless of whether he’d been baiting her in hopes of getting her to break first. Because then he’d be in the clear if she came on to him, right?
The sharp intake of her breath and a sensuous lift of her lips gave him all the nonverbal communication he needed. Then she put the icing on it with a succinct, “Will who?”
The gap between their bodies slowly vanished until their torsos brushed, but he couldn’t have said if he closed it or she did. This was not what he’d planned when Bella had inadvertently joined him on the terrace, but it was certainly what he’d fantasized might happen if she’d given him the slightest encouragement.
With her lithe little body teasing his, her curves scarcely contained by that outrageous dress, he could hardly get his mind in gear long enough to form complete sentences. “You could have just said that from the outset.”
“You could have said call me instead of Will on the boardwalk.”
Not if he’d hoped to sleep at night he couldn’t have. Of course, he’d done little of that anyway, tossing and turning as he imagined this gorgeous, vibrant woman with his brother.
He nodded in concession, hardly breathing for fear of alerting her to how very turned on he was. “It was my one noble gesture for the decade. Don’t expect another one.”
She