And yet when she looked at the sexy man in front of her the resolutions that she’d thought were firmly in place seemed hazy.
‘Kyle didn’t seem to like you,’ Lily said to distract herself. ‘Why is that?’
Jacques moved closer, and the breeze brought his fresh-from-the-shower scent to her nose. Her insides wobbled as attraction flowed through her, but she chose to ignore it.
Or tried to.
‘We have history.’
Lily waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she said, ‘That’s all you’re going to tell me?’
He chuckled. ‘Apparently not.’
He leaned against the balcony’s railing.
‘Our families run in the same circles, so I’d met him a few times before Nathan started to work for him. Because I knew he was a—’ He looked at her, as though checking what her reaction would be, and then continued with a grin. ‘Because I knew he wasn’t a very nice person, I used to make a game out of stealing his dates.’
Her heart raced. ‘But you stopped?’
Something sparked in his eyes. ‘A while before you, yes. Unfortunately.’
Her face heated and she leaned against the railing as well, looking away from the view he was facing towards. She didn’t want him to see how uncomfortable he made her. And heaven only knew why she was staying there with him so that he could make her uncomfortable.
‘Why?’
‘Why did I stop?’
She nodded, and he sighed.
‘Because Nathan started working for Kyle’s firm. Because I stopped going to events he would be at.’
Jacques fell silent, and Lily wondered if he was remembering why he’d stopped going to those events. Had it been because he’d started playing rugby? Because he’d stopped? Had it been during the year after he’d stopped?
She folded her arms again when guilt nudged her at the way she’d got the information to wonder those things at all.
‘And,’ Jacques said after a while, ‘because I didn’t have time to deal with the punches he tried to throw at me.’
Surprise almost had her gasping. ‘Kyle tried to hit you?’
His lips curved and her pulse spiked.
‘Tried being the operative word. It was entertaining for me...painful for him, I imagine.’
‘You hit him back?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. I was defending myself.’
It took her a moment to process that, and then she laughed. ‘I would have paid to see that.’
He smiled. ‘You could still see it.’
She gave him a look. ‘I’m not actually going to pay you to hit my ex.’
Jacques laughed. ‘It wouldn’t cost you much if you wanted me to, but I wasn’t talking about that. I saw the way he looked at us when he heard we were together. He hated it. So I bet if you and I go into that party right now and pretend to be a couple for a while longer his reaction would pretty much be the same as a punch in the gut.’
She’d barely had enough time to consider his proposal before he’d pushed up from where he was leaning and moved closer to her, sliding an arm around her waist. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened as she drew a quick breath. She watched his eyes lower to it. He only needed to dip his head—it was barely five centimetres away—and she would know if she could really feel that scar during a kiss...
He moved his mouth until it was next to her ear and whispered, ‘Kyle’s watching, so you might want to make that decision quickly.’
JACQUES COULDN’T DENY enjoying the way the woman he’d only just met shivered in his arms. Or the look her ex—a man he had a very low opinion of—was aiming at him. But those things were irrelevant to him at that moment. What was relevant was an opportunity to do just as his PR firm had advised. An opportunity that had just fallen into his lap, and would get him exactly what he wanted if he used it properly.
Lily shifted, reminding him that the opportunity wasn’t an it but a who.
‘If I say yes, will you let go of me?’
She asked it in a shaky tone, and he looked down into uncertain eyes. They became guarded a moment later, and he frowned, wondering where the spirit he’d admired earlier had gone.
‘I’ll let go of you regardless, Lily.’
He spoke softly, but forced his heart to harden. He couldn’t feel anything for her—including empathy. It would make using her a lot more difficult.
It sounded harsh, even to him, but he knew he would do it if it meant he could redeem himself from the mistakes he’d made in the past. He’d been trying to do that since he’d realised he was only proving people right—specifically his father—by acting the way he had during the year after his suspension.
The realisation had had him channelling the ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ motto he’d been known for during his rugby days into building a sporting goods company. Into making it a success.
Now it was. And yet people still thought of him as the bad boy who’d beaten up his opponent seven years ago, and it grated him. So when he’d heard that his old rugby club was being sold, he’d known it was an opportunity. He could go back to the root of it all—to where his problems had started.
The irony was that he needed a better reputation to get the club he believed would change his poor reputation. And Lily was the key to that.
‘Let’s do it.’
The words were said firmly, surprising him after the brief moment of vulnerability he’d just seen, but he simply asked, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
She gave a quick nod, and then moved her mouth so that it was next to his ear, just as he had done to her earlier. It made it seem as if she was responding to his question—something her action made seem suggestive—and he would have appreciated the strategy if a thrill hadn’t gone through his body, distracting him.
‘We’ll have to tell Caitlyn about this. If she sees us and thinks we’re together she’s going to freak out.’
She pulled back and laid a hand on his chest—an intimate gesture that had his heart beating too hard for his liking.
‘That would probably be best,’ he answered stiffly.
It took him a moment to figure out whether his tone came because of the effect she had on him or the prospect of speaking to his brother.
A fist clenched at a piece of his heart as it always did when he thought of Nathan, but he tried to focus on his task. He took Lily’s hand and led her through the crowd of people he no longer cared enough about to know to where his brother and Caitlyn were standing.
Holding Lily’s hand sent awareness up and down his arm, but he ignored it. Attraction wasn’t something new to him. There’s more with her, a voice taunted, and again he tried to think of something else. But his options seemed limited to things he didn’t want to think about, and he sighed, realising he would have to face at least one of them.
His brother won, Jacques thought as they reached the circle of people Nathan and Caitlyn were surrounded by. The easy air that Nathan carried around him—the way it translated into ease around people—had always been something Jacques had admired. Sometimes envied.