He looked at her as if she was an imbecile. ‘For obvious reasons I’m not about to take your word for that.’ Shaking his head, he leaned back against his chair. ‘Much as I want to, I can’t stop Alicia being friends with you, but don’t think for one moment that I can’t see you for the manipulative little hanger-on that you are. And clearly I’m not the only one.’
She stared at his face in confusion.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about...’
‘Of course you do,’ he said quietly. ‘Your little legal setback?’ His eyes flickered over her face. ‘My sister might be too sweet and trusting for her own good. Unfortunately for you, though, not all your friends are as naive as she is.’
Her heart bumping unevenly against her ribs, she glared at him. ‘They’re not my friends.’
‘I’m sure they’re not.’ His dark eyes locked with hers. ‘Not now. Not after you manipulated them into doing you a favour and then tried to exploit their success.’
She breathed out unsteadily. ‘You don’t know anything about them. Or me. And I don’t have to stay here and listen to this—’
Pushing back her seat, she made to stand up, but before she could move he said quietly, ‘Oh, but you do. You promised my sister we would talk. No, sorry—I forgot. That was just for Alicia’s benefit, wasn’t it?’
‘This isn’t a conversation. It’s just you making vile accusations,’ she snapped. ‘Do you really think that’s what she meant by us talking?’
His eyes rested on her face, and then, tilting his head to one side, he sighed. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I don’t suppose it is.’ He ran a hand slowly over his face. ‘Look, Mimi, I’m here because I love my sister, and her happiness matters to me. For some unaccountable reason you being in her life makes her happy, so I’m willing...’
He hesitated, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was about to say.
‘I’m willing, for her sake, to call a truce between us—but don’t think for one moment that means I want to kiss and make up with you.’
* * *
Actually that wasn’t true, Basa thought a half-second later. The kissing part anyway.
Picking up his wine glass, he glanced over at Mimi’s taut face and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. Was she remembering that evening, that dance, that kiss? Or, like him, had her mind zeroed in on the moment in his bedroom when he’d slipped the straps of her dress over her shoulders and watched it pool at her feet...?
He shifted in his seat, wishing he could shift the memory of what had happened and what had so nearly happened at his sister’s birthday party, but he’d been trying to do that for the last two years and it was still etched into his brain like an awkward tattoo from a gap year in Thailand. And it wasn’t just her soft lips or the scent she wore that had burrowed into his subconscious.
Watching her that night, he’d found her beautiful and sexy. But, more than that, intriguing. As a teenager she’d been a regular visitor to the family home, and thanks to her tomboyish clothes, tied-back hair, clunky glasses and gauche manner, she’d been easily distinguished as apart from the ‘glossy posse’, as he’d christened the rest of his sister’s friends.
Of course he’d had no time for anything but work after his father’s stroke had forced him to take over the running of the family business. So he hadn’t seen her properly for several years when she’d wandered into the ballroom at Alicia’s party, looking as apprehensive as an antelope approaching a waterhole.
But that wasn’t why he’d done a double take.
Picking up his cup, he downed the rest of his coffee. He needed that hit of raw caffeine to counteract the impact of that moment when Mimi Miller had metaphorically ambushed him and wrestled him to the ground.
She had been wearing a long, high-necked white dress that had seemed to ripple over the heart-stopping silhouette of her body, and her waist-length blonde hair had hung loose over her shoulders like a golden cape. But it hadn’t been the duckling-to-swan transformation that had stopped him in his tracks, for at that point he hadn’t actually worked out who she was. No, it had been something else—a kind of hesitancy that tugged at a memory hovering at the edges of his mind,
And then, as she’d turned to pluck a glass of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter, he’d felt his heart stop beating. The dress had been backless, provocative without the overt sexiness of a low-cut bodice or short hemline, and, watching her cautious progress around the room, he’d felt a strange mix of resentment and responsibility and an inexplicable need to stay close.
Too close.
Close enough to feel the heat of her skin. Close enough to let his hand slide around her waist and press against the satin-smooth skin at the base of her back. Close enough to get burnt.
His lungs suddenly felt as though they were full of wet cement.
He’d told himself that it was just a dance, and a duty dance at that, but even before the music had ended, and even though he’d known by then that she was his sister’s friend, and therefore a complication he didn’t need and normally wouldn’t choose, he’d pulled her closer, moulding her body to his.
Lost in her scent, and the heat of her bare skin, he’d kissed her all the way to his bedroom. And there they would have finished what they’d started—only he hadn’t had any condoms on him. He’d gone back down to the party, to grab a bottle of champagne to console them both, but then, walking back through the ballroom, he’d switched his phone on—the phone he could remember Mimi taking from him and switching off—and the world as he had known it had crumbled to dust.
Gazing down at the list of messages from his lawyer and his accountant, each one growing increasingly frantic, he’d felt his heart turn to stone. A brief call to his lawyer had made it clear that he needed to leave the party immediately, but discreetly, so as not to alert Alicia, and just as he’d been finishing the call he’d caught a glimpse of Mimi.
At the time he’d assumed she’d come looking for him, and he remembered how guilty he’d felt at leaving her alone for so long.
His heartbeat stalled. Now he would be willing to bet his entire fortune that she hadn’t been looking for him, but he hadn’t known that at the time. Trusting idiot that he’d been, he’d set off on his way to follow her.