‘No, it isn’t.’
Her gaze narrowed, and he could tell she was trying not to lose her temper.
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Like you say, you’re just taking a dip.’ Crouching down, he scooped up a handful of water, checking the temperature. ‘Feels great. Maybe I’ll join you.’
She shrank away from him like a vampire being offered garlic. ‘Actually, I was just going to get out.’
He watched in silence, his stomach clenching with a combination of lust and anger, as she swam a couple of strokes and rose up out of the pool, droplets of water trickling down her neck and back. His breathing shifted. It was an all too familiar view—not from life, but from memory...the memory of that evening and that dress. Even now he could remember how it had felt. He wanted to touch her so badly that night, to run his fingers down the smooth curve of skin...
Not any more, he told himself, blocking his mind to the rush of heat tightening his muscles. Not in this lifetime.
‘Here.’ Catching sight of her robe, hanging from the back of one of the loungers, he picked it up and held it out to her, keeping his eyes locked on hers as she shrugged her arms into it.
‘Thank you,’ she muttered.
‘No, thank you,’ he said with mocking courtesy, wanting to make her feel as off-balance as she was making him. ‘For coming out here at such short notice. It was very kind of you to juggle your busy schedule for me.’
Her eyebrows shot up and, lifting her chin, she said coldly, ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Basa. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for Alicia, because she’s my friend and her happiness matters to me more than anything else.’
Her mouth softened into the slightest of smiles as she spoke Alicia’s name, pulling his gaze to her lips and the blood to his groin so that he suddenly felt lightheaded.
‘Finally we have something in common,’ he said,
Her eyes widened, her smile shifting into a scowl. ‘You and I have nothing in common, Basa. I wouldn’t treat a dog the way you treat people.’
Basa stared at her in silence, his jaw clenching. He could hardly believe that Mimi Miller—Mimi Miller, of all people—was saying this to him.
‘And how exactly do I treat people? Actually, forget about me—let’s just look at how you treat people. How you present yourself as someone to be trusted when all the time you’re playing out your own agenda.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, here we go again. You do realise I’m actually a completely separate person from my stepfather and uncle?’
‘I do—and I wasn’t talking about them. But since you’ve brought them up...’ His mouth twisted. ‘What is it they say? The apple never falls far from the tree? But even if it did, you also had Charlie as a role model. You probably learned how to grift before you could walk.’
‘If you would just listen to me for five minutes I could explain—’
‘You mean lie.’ Shaking his head, he dragged his eyes away from the three sopping wet triangles of fabric masquerading as her swimwear. ‘What did you think? That if you sashayed out of the pool in your itsy-bitsy bikini I’d be too busy drooling to listen to what came out of your mouth?’
He watched the colour spread over her cheeks. She was staring at him open-mouthed, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing, and he couldn’t say that he blamed her. His accusation had been harsh and gratuitous, but with her body so tantalisingly close to his, and his own body acting as if it had only recently woken from hibernation, he needed to remind himself of the kind of woman she was beneath that delectable skin.
And he was still smarting over her remark about how he treated people. How he treated people! She might have conveniently forgotten her behaviour, but he hadn’t, even though part of him wanted to forget everything about that night.
But he could still remember every second.
Her soft, teasing laugh when she’d taken his phone and switched it off...the feverish, almost clumsy way she had kissed and caressed him, as if she was nervous about something. And, of course, the cherry on the cake: the fact that she hadn’t given any thought to protection. She should have told him she wasn’t on the pill and didn’t have any condoms with her.
His shoulders stiffened. If he hadn’t double-checked, who knew what might have happened? The media would have had a field-day. His body tensed as he imagined the gleeful, screaming headlines and, worse, his father’s devastated expression as the news spread around the world that his son had impregnated the stepdaughter of the man who had almost destroyed his family.
She took a step forward, shoving her hands on her hips and unintentionally pulling the edges of her robe apart. He breathed in sharply, his anger forgotten as he caught a glimpse of her marvellous body. He gritted his teeth. It was beyond his comprehension why he should still feel like this. It had been two years. So much had happened in that time—so many good and amazing things, with good and amazing people—so why was he endlessly reliving a moment that should never have happened in the first place with a woman he didn’t trust or like?
‘I’m guessing you don’t suffer from vertigo, do you, Basa?’
Her words caught him off-guard and he frowned. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘Just that it must be so very high, up there on your horse, sitting in judgement over everyone, making assumptions about who they are based on nothing more than your own prejudices.’ Her gaze rested scornfully on his face. ‘It’s a good job you gave up law. You clearly haven’t mastered the basic principle of innocent until proved guilty.’
Wrong, he thought silently. He understood innocence, and there was nothing innocent about how Mimi had acted that night.
He shook his head. ‘I was interested in corporate law, not criminal law, but I don’t need to be a barrister to know that there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who need the judgement of a court to know whether they’re guilty of a crime, and those who have a conscience. I think we both know that you fall into the former.’