The pulse at her throat pounded. She gripped her hands together. It wouldn’t help. It might be possible to do ‘uncomplicated’ when it came to a fling, but refused to risk it.
If only that knowledge could cool the stampede of her blood!
He swung around. ‘You might have your heart under lock and key, Mia, but you have no right to command mine.’
He wasn’t promising her his heart. Heat gathered behind her eyes. He wasn’t promising anything more than a quick roll in the hay, and they both knew it.
‘You’re forgetting the ground rules. We promised!’
‘Just because I wanted that photo it doesn’t mean I want you.’
But they both knew he desired her in the most primitive way a man could want a woman. And they both knew she desired him back. They were balancing too narrowly on a knife-edge here, and she couldn’t let them fall.
She clamped her hands to her elbows. Wrapped up in his attraction for her were feelings of pity, a desire to make things better, and perhaps a little anger. It was an explosive combination in a man like Dylan—a nurturer with the heart of a warrior. He knew as well as she did that they could never fit into each other’s lives. But hard experience had taught her that the heart didn’t always choose what was good for it.
He leaned in so close his breath fanned her cheek. ‘Did you destroy the photo?’
She wanted to say that she had.
No lying. No stealing.
She pulled in a ragged breath. ‘No.’
‘You will give it to me, you know.’
She shook her head. ‘I have no need of your money.’
He ran the backs of his fingers down her cheek, making her shiver. ‘I didn’t say anything about buying it from you, Mia. I meant that eventually you’ll give it to me as a gift.’
She wanted to tell him to go to hell, but his hand snaked behind her head and he pulled her mouth close to his own and the words dried in her throat.
Dear Lord, he was going to kiss her!
‘The girl in that photograph is the woman you’re meant to be. I know it and you know it.’
He was wrong! She didn’t deserve to be that girl. She deserved nothing more than the chance to live her life in peace.
His breath fanned across her lips, addling her brain. She should step away, but she remained, quivering beneath his touch, hardly knowing what she wished for.
He pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth. Her eyes fluttered closed as she turned towards him...
And then she found herself released.
‘You want me as much as I want you.’
Her heart thudded in her ears. She had to reach out and steady herself against a chair.
‘I don’t know why the thought of being happy scares you.’
Disappointment and confusion battled with relief and her common sense, and it took a moment for his words to sink in. She pushed her shoulders back, but didn’t lift her chin in challenge. She didn’t want him to take chin-lifting as an invitation to kiss her.
‘I am happy.’
Easing back from him, she seized her glass of water and took several steps away.
‘Liar.’
He said the word softly, almost like a caress. He had a point. The thing was, she didn’t need happiness. She just needed to stay on track.
She kept her back to him. ‘I don’t mean this to sound harsh, Dylan, but my happiness is not dependent on my sleeping with you.’
‘I’m not talking about myself, here, Mia, or my ability to make you happy. I’m removing myself from the equation.’
‘How convenient.’
‘I think you’re just as imprisoned now as you were when you were in jail.’
She spun around at that, water sloshing over the side of her glass. ‘If you believe that, then it just goes to show how naïve you are.’
He blinked and then nodded. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound glib.’
She didn’t say anything. She just wanted him gone.
‘Was it really so awful?’
She closed her eyes at the soft question. ‘Yes.’ She forced her eyes open again. ‘I am never going back. And happiness is a small price to pay.’
His eyes throbbed at her words.
‘I think it’s time you left, Dylan.’
He stared at her for a long moment, but finally he nodded. ‘Are you still okay for Saturday?’
For reasons known only to himself, Dylan had booked her and Carla in for a day of beauty treatments at a local spa. In the evening Mia, and presumably Thierry, were to dine with the Fairweathers at their coastal mansion.
Despite her curiosity about Dylan’s home, she wasn’t looking forward to either event. But she’d promised.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Carla and I will collect you at ten.’
‘I’ll be ready.’
She’d need to go shopping before then. She had a feeling that she owned nothing appropriate for dinner at the Fairweather estate.
* * *
‘You’re very tense.’
Mia did her best to relax beneath the masseuse’s hands, but found it almost impossible. She’d been poked and prodded, scrubbed and wrapped, and waxed and tweezed to within an inch of her life.
People did this for fun?
What she’d really like was to ask the masseuse to hand her a bathrobe, find her a cup of tea and leave her alone to soak up the glorious view on the other side of the picture window.
The spa was located on the sixth floor of an upmarket beachside hotel that boasted a sweeping view of Newcastle beach. It would be a relief and a joy to spend half an hour contemplating gold sands and blue seas.
‘It’s probably because of all the hard physical work she does,’ Carla said from the massage table beside Mia’s, her voice sounding like nothing more than a blissed-out sigh. ‘Isn’t this a gorgeous treat, Mia?’
‘Gorgeous,’ she murmured back. She might have made a no-lying promise, but in this instance the lie was lily-white. She had no intention of dampening Carla’s enjoyment. That had been the one good thing about all this—spending time with Carla.
So Mia didn’t ask for a bathrobe and a cup of tea. She gritted her teeth instead and endured a further forty minutes of kneading, pummelling and rubbing down.
* * *
‘Change of plan,’ Carla announced, waving her phone in the air as she and Mia moved towards Dylan in the hotel bar.
Mia swallowed and nodded in his direction, not able to meet his eye, glad to have Carla there as a buffer.
He turned on his bar stool. ‘Change of plan?’
Mia glance up to find him staring straight at her. All she could do was shrug. She had no idea what Carla’s change of plan entailed.
Meeting his gaze made her mouth go dry. Looking at him had the oddest effect on her. She should look away. If she could, perhaps she would. Instead, she gazed at him hungrily. He wore a pair of sand-coloured cargo shorts and...and a Hawaiian shirt that should have made him look silly, but didn’t.
It