Her left hand encircled her right wrist protectively, chin up, eyes still glittering. ‘Yes.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Was.’
She moved away from the cabinet to go back to the piano. She closed the lid over the keys like someone closing a conversation...or a coffin. A shiver scuttled over the back of James’s neck like the legs of a spooked spider. ‘He’s dead,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry.’
She gave a shrug but he couldn’t decide if it was a ‘thank you’ or ‘I don’t need your sympathy’ one.
‘Who was he?’
Her eyes met his but there was no sign of anything resembling emotion. A curtain was drawn. A shutter was down. ‘He was a friend I had once. A childhood friend.’
‘What happened to him?’
Her gaze moved away again. ‘Do you play a musical instrument?’
The swift change of subject alerted him to an undercurrent of emotion she seemed at great pains to conceal. He was intrigued by her shadow self. The side he had seen last night when she had sprung up from that sofa with her fists at the ready. The side of her he briefly glimpsed while she sat playing her music. She was capable of deep feeling. No one who wrote music like that could possibly be cold and indifferent, without feeling and depth. But, rather than push her, he decided to leave it. For now.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t inherit my mother’s musical ability. I’m sure it was a bitter disappointment to her. I think she would’ve liked me to be a virtuoso of some sort.’
She pushed the hood back off her cloud of tousled hair to face him levelly. ‘Your father was wrong to make her give up her career.’
James studied her expression for a moment. ‘She told you about that?’
She pressed her lips together as if regretting having spoken. ‘I don’t think she’s disappointed you didn’t pursue music as a career. She’s very proud of your work, as any decent parent should be. You’re good at what you do. Brilliant, actually. Everyone raves about your designs. They’re so innovative.’
He gave her a wry look. ‘A compliment from the cynical Aiesha Adams. Well, I’ll be damned.’
‘Make the most of it. It won’t happen again.’
She moved past him to leave but he captured her arm on the way past. He hadn’t consciously realised he was going to touch her until he felt his fingers wrap around her slim arm. Even through the soft velour of her tracksuit sleeve he could feel the snap-crackle-pop shock of his touch on her.
She glowered at him. ‘If you want the other eye to match your right one then keep on doing what you’re doing.’
‘What am I doing?’
‘You’re touching me.’
He kept his gaze locked on her fiery one as his thumb found the thud of her pulse. ‘I thought you liked being touched by me. I thought that was your plan. To seduce me.’
She pulled back from his hold but his fingers tightened. So did his groin. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
Her game plan had changed. She was back-pedalling after coming on so strong. He had got too close. Seen a part of her she didn’t want to reveal. He had never met a more fascinating person. She was all smoke and mirrors. Secrets and cover-ups. It made him want her all the more. She was unpredictable. Mysterious. Captivating.
He moved in closer, breathing in the exotic gardenia-like flowery scent of her, watching as her black pupils in that stormy sea of grey grew wider. Her nostrils flared as if she, too, were breathing in his smell like a she wolf did a mate. Primal need overruled his common sense. His body blanked out the warnings of his mind like a master switch turning off a source of power, rerouting it to where it was needed the most. Blood flowed thick and strong to his groin. He felt it surging there in a hot turgid tide that no sandbag of rationality was ever going to withstand.
He hadn’t realised it would be so hard to fight it. To deny it. To ignore it. His desire for her had smouldered in his blood and body for so long it took nothing but a look or touch to set it raging. ‘You don’t like it when someone else is in control, do you?’ he said. ‘You like to drum up the action but you don’t like being on the receiving end of it. That’s way too submissive for you, isn’t it?’
She continued to glare at him but every now and again her gaze would flick down to his mouth as if remembering how it had felt to have it fused with her own. The tip of her tongue passed over her lips, leaving them moist and shimmering. She could have moved away if she wanted to. He had deliberately relaxed his hold; his fingers were barely more than a loose bracelet around her wrist.