‘I fell for the virgin ploy once. Don’t push your luck, koukla mou,’ Jax advised as he thrust back his chair and began to rise. ‘Born-again virgins push the wrong buttons with me.’
‘Don’t call me that... I’m not anyone’s doll!’ Lucy protested, aware of the meaning of those words because her father used them around Bella.
‘Don’t push your luck, Tinker Bell,’ Jax stabbed instead.
And the sound of that once familiar pet name hurt like the unexpected swipe of a knife across tender skin. It turned her pale because it took her back to a place she didn’t want to go, to a period when she had fondly believed herself to be loved and safe and cherished. But it had all been a lie and a seriously cruel lie at that. It hurt even more that she had adored that lie and longed for it to last for ever and ever, just like in the fairy tales.
‘You still haven’t told me what this is about,’ Lucy argued as she drank down her wine with desperate little swallows that pained her throat. ‘I’m staying here.’
A long silver limousine purred along the kerb. They were in a pedestrian zone and the car shouldn’t have been there but the two police officers lounging across the street did nothing to interfere with its progress.
‘Get in the car or I’ll throw you in it!’ Jax bit out in a driven undertone, what little patience he had taxed by her obstinacy.
He had made a mistake, he thought furiously, turning his head and unexpectedly encountering Zenas’s shocked appraisal, registering that the other man had heard that threat.
Incredulous, Lucy giggled. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she told him.
And he did. He picked her up off the chair and shoved her into the back seat of the limo as if she were a lost parcel he was retrieving, aware throughout that his bodyguards were watching him as if he had gone insane. But it was entirely Lucy’s fault. She would never ever do as she was told. She would never ever accept that he knew best. And the whole situation was going to hell in a hand basket fast and he could blame himself for that because he should never have arranged to meet her in the first place. Why the hell did what had happened two years ago even matter to him?
So, she had lied to engage his sympathy and ensnare him, pretending to be younger and more innocent than she actually was. He already knew why she had done it. She had lied to impress him because he was rich and there was nothing more complex behind her behaviour back then than greed and a desire to rise in the world. He had been cunningly targeted and chased by hundreds of other women for the same reasons. Why was her deception still raw?
As he swung into the car, radiating blazing tension, his dazzling eyes splintered like green lightning with anger and Lucy stared at him.
‘You still have a terrible temper,’ she complained. ‘And you just kidnapped me and the police did nothing—’
‘Maybe you should’ve tried a little screaming and struggling to demonstrate fear,’ Jax mocked, convinced that she was secretly delighted to be in his limo again and probably already planning a lucrative rehash of their Spanish fling.
No way, he swore to himself, black lashes almost hitting his cheekbones as he glanced studiously away from her, sitting there as she was watching him like a little spider planning an intricate web in which to capture him. On the other hand, he could play her the way she had once played him, he conceded grimly. And while he was doing that he could do whatever he wanted to do with her. That thought, that very idea took him aback because he didn’t usually play games with women. But there was no denying that the concept of playing games with Lucy hugely turned him on.
Lucy breathed in slow and deep to calm herself. She focussed on the strong male thigh next to her own, the fine fabric of his trousers pulled taut across his powerful muscles and across his crotch. Her attention lingered there a split second longer and then hurriedly shifted because it was obvious that he was aroused. Why? Did he ever think of anything but sex? Colour warmed her cheeks because once they had had a very physical relationship. It had lasted six weeks, with them only becoming intimate in the last two, but during it she had realised that sex was unbelievably important to Jax and an unapologetic drive he made no attempt to restrain. Bella, after all, had been conceived in a brazen episode in a changing-room cubicle, she recalled in serious mortification. She had tried to say no but she had never been very good at denying Jax when her own body burned for his like a fire that couldn’t be doused.
‘I hate you,’ she told him truthfully, still thinking about that changing-room cubicle in which the use of precautions hadn’t figured.
‘Because I found you out?’ Jax drawled in a tone of boredom. ‘Or because I dumped you?’
Lucy’s nails bit crescents into the soft skin of her palms. She had told him the truth: she did hate him. In fact the idea of wreaking revenge on Jax energised her. He was so unbearably confident, sure of his every move in a way she had never been. He was clever, successful and rich. He was also worshipped like the Greek god he resembled by women more akin to groupies than anything else.
‘Where are you taking me?’ she demanded curtly. ‘Why do you even want to talk to me? It’s a bit late in the day, isn’t it?’
‘Is it?’ Jax traded unfathomably, leaning forward to press a button that opened a gleaming bar.
‘I don’t understand you!’ Lucy bit out in frustration.
‘Why would you?’
Jax thrust a foaming glass of champagne into her hand, thoroughly disconcerting her. Big blue eyes skimmed up to his in confusion and she looked so lost and bewildered that a momentary pang of conscience pierced his tough hide. Of course it wasn’t real, he recognised angrily.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
He knew he could trust Lucy to put in an award-winning performance. He would get what he wanted. He would get answers and doubtless tears, self-justification and grovelling into the bargain. He positively warmed to an image of Lucy grovelling and a smile flashed across his forbidding mouth. Lucy on her knees poised to please...just what the doctor would order for a bored billionaire.
That was what lay at the root of his bizarre behaviour, he reasoned broodingly. He was bored. Bored with the flattery of too many far too eager to please women. Well, Lucy had never been into the art of hanging off his every word and complimenting him on his brilliance. Lucy had fought him and criticised him and driven him crazy on many occasions. Yet he had only been with her six short weeks interspersed with the business trips that had parted them. Six weeks. That was a sobering acknowledgement. Why did he remember so much about her when generally he was challenged to recall the name of a woman he had shared a bed with only a week ago?
She had hurt his pride. That was why. That was the only reason he still remembered her, Jax decided. Well, that and the supercharged, highly satisfying sex...
Lucy sipped the champagne, bubbles bursting under her nose and tickling, tiny beads of moisture cooling her too hot face. She felt out of control and she didn’t like it. She was in Jax’s car and she didn’t know where he was taking her or why he would want to talk to her after so long. She crossed her legs, then re-crossed them, looking everywhere but at him.
‘I want to go home,’ she said abruptly.
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I don’t trust you. I don’t want to be anywhere alone with you,’ she told him sharply.
‘My housekeeper lives in,’ Jax murmured flatly.
‘Like that’s going to change my mind!’ Lucy scoffed. ‘Nobody you employ will go up against you. Do you think I’m stupid?’
‘A little hysterical,’ Jax confided. ‘And it’s undeserved. I’ve never harmed you in any way.’
‘But your employees will if you tell them to. I was dragged