‘Yes, well, paying someone to have an abortion isn’t exactly how to win friends and influence people, I’ll grant you that,’ Jaz said.
‘What about you?’ Miranda said. ‘You mentioned a couple of weeks back you were thinking about meeting her. Any luck?’
‘Nope,’ Jaz said. ‘I might not be a Ravensdale but I’m considered close enough to your family to be on the black list as well.’
‘Maybe Flynn can get her to change her mind,’ Miranda said, referring to the family lawyer, Flynn Carlyon, who had been a year ahead of Jake and Julius at school. ‘If anyone can do it he can. He’s unlikely to give up until he gets what he wants.’
‘But I thought the whole idea was to get her to go away,’ Jaz said. ‘Wasn’t that what Flynn was supposed to do? Pay her to keep from speaking to the press?’
‘Yes, but she wouldn’t take a penny off him. She hasn’t said a word to the media anyway and it’s been over a month,’ Miranda said. ‘Dad’s agent called him last night about putting on a party to celebrate his sixty years in showbiz in January. Dad wants Kat there. He says he won’t go ahead with it unless she comes.’
‘Sixty years?’ Jaz said. ‘Gosh. What age did he start?’
‘Five. He had a walk-on part in some musical way back. Hasn’t he shown you the photos?’
‘Nope,’ Jaz said. ‘I must’ve missed that bragging session.’
‘Ha ha,’ Miranda said. ‘But what are we going to do about Kat? She has to come to Dad’s party otherwise he’ll be devastated.’
‘Well, at least Flynn will have a few weeks to change her mind.’
‘I can’t work her out,’ Miranda said. ‘She’s a struggling actor who’s only had bit parts till now. You’d think she’d be jumping at the chance to cash in on her biological father’s fame.’
‘Maybe she needs time to get her head around who her father is,’ Jaz said. ‘It must’ve come as a huge shock finding out like that just before her mother died.’
‘Yes, I guess so.’ Miranda sighed again and then added, ‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Jaz—I mean with Jake? I can’t help worrying this could backfire.’
‘I know exactly what I’m doing,’ Jaz said. ‘I’m using Jake and he’s using me.’
There was a telling little silence.
‘You’re not going to sleep with him, are you?’ Miranda said.
Jaz laughed. ‘I know he’s your brother and all that but there are some women on this planet who can actually resist him, you know.’
And I had better keep on doing it.
* * *
Jake was coming back in from a morning run around the property when he saw Jaz coming down the stairs, presumably for breakfast. She was wearing light-grey yoga pants and a baby-girl pink slouch top that revealed the cap of a creamy shoulder and the thin black strap of her bra. Her slender feet were bare apart from liquorice-black toenail polish and her hair was in a messy knot on the top of her head that somehow managed to look casual and elegant at the same time. She wasn’t wearing a skerrick of make-up but if anything it made her look all the more breath-snatchingly beautiful. But then, since when had her stunning grey-blue eyes with their thick, spider-leg long lashes and prominent eyebrows needed any enhancement?
He caught a whiff of her bergamot-and-geranium essential oil as she came to stand on the last step, making her almost eye-to-eye with him. The urge to touch her lissom young body was overpowering. He had to curl his hands into fists to prevent himself from running a hand down the creamy silk of her cheek or tracing that gorgeous mouth with his finger.
Her eyes met his and a punch of lust slammed him in the groin. The fire and ice in that stormy sea of grey and blue had a potent impact on him. It happened every time their eyes collided. It was like a bolt of electricity zapping him, making everything that was male in him stand to attention. ‘I told Miranda the truth about us,’ she said with a touch of defiance.
Jake decided to wind her up a bit. ‘That we have the hots for each other and are about to indulge in a passionate fling that’s been seven years in the making?’
She folded her arms like a schoolmistress who was dealing with a particularly cheeky pupil, but he noticed her cheeks had gone a faint shade of pink. ‘No,’ she said as tartly as if she had just bitten into a lemon. ‘I told her we aren’t engaged and we still hate each other.’
He picked up a stray strand of hair that had escaped her makeshift knot and tucked it safely back behind the neat shell of her ear. He felt her give a tiny shiver as his fingers brushed the skin behind her ear and her mouth opened and closed as if she was trying to disguise her little involuntary gasp. ‘You don’t hate me, sweetheart. You want me.’