‘I saw the video of your impromptu press conference,’ he answered her. As long as he lived, he’d never forget Thadie, dressed in that very sexy dressing gown, taking down her waste-of-space groom and exposing his conniving, behind-the-scenes shenanigans. Good for her that she hadn’t curled up in a cornerand wept but instead she’d come out swinging. And looked stunning doing it.
But he was here for a reason. He’d address her need for additional protection soon—he’d been met at OR Tambo International Airport by his Johannesburg manager and briefed on the drive to Rosebank, where his offices were based. Her non-wedding and her ex’s idiotic denials of her statements at the press conference were feeding the tabloid newspapers and leading to a rise in people trolling her online. There had been a couple of threats levelled against her as well.
But before they discussed business, he wanted answers to why their plans had gone so badly awry. If he could work out how he’d read the situation wrong, he could avoid repeating his mistake.
‘Why didn’t you contact me after London? You had my business card with every number I had written on it, all my email addresses, and my company website. What happened?’
If Thadie was thrown by the new direction of their conversation she didn’t show it. She tossed her head and lifted her chin, her eyes blazing. ‘Why are you so certain I wanted to contact you again? It was a one-night stand, nothing special, and I decided to move on.’
Her eyes slid to the left and Angus knew she was lying. He saw the pulse beating in her long, elegant neck, and noticed the pink flush on her skin. She was trying to be insouciant, but her body gave her away; her now hard nipples pushed against the fabric of her dress’s bodice, and he knew, simply knew, that under her skirt, her thighs were parted.
She wanted him, he wanted her, and their chemistry was undeniable and extraordinary. And it wasn’t something that should be left unexplored. They’d been the human equivalent of Wolf-Rayet stars, supernovas that slammed together, burned brightly and died quickly...
But, thanks to Thadie’s vanishing, Angus felt as if they’d only brushed by each other instead of properly colliding. From the moment he saw her again, even before he’d hoisted her into his arms and carried her away, he’d known he was fighting a losing battle, that they’d revisit their insane attraction. It was too powerful, inevitable. It was going to happen, apparently sooner rather than later.
His questions could wait.
He crossed the room, moving quickly to stand in front of her, looking down into her lovely face, and waited for her to push him back, or to move out of his personal space. He gave her a minute, maybe more, to put some distance between them but she stayed where she was, her eyes not leaving his.
She broke first, moving closer to him, and when her breasts brushed his chest he lifted his hands to hold her upper arms, pressing his body into hers, his chest against her breasts, his thigh between her legs. She nodded, tipped her face up in a silent plea and, giving into temptation, he lowered his mouth to cover hers, desperate to revisit the intense connection they’d shared so long ago.
He’d expected a trickle of lust, maybe a small punch of want, but nothing prepared him for the thwack of passion, the hard-hitting strike of sensation. Her lips were soft, her skin under his hands silky and her mouth was pure heaven. Kissing her was the sexual equivalent of stepping into a space both comforting and intensely exciting. She tasted of mint and coffee, smelled of apple orchards and berries, of wildness itself. Thadie whimpered and he deepened the kiss, noticing, from a place far away, that her arms were around his neck, her fingers playing with his hair. His hand was, of its own volition, holding her face, his other hand gripped her butt.
He needed more, he neededeverything. Reality was so much better than his imagination, so he pulled up the material ofher dress and stroked the back of her slim thigh, up and over the bare skin of her butt cheek, barely covered by her skimpy underwear. He slid his fingers under the edge of her high-cut panties and palmed her, pulling her closer to him so that the evidence of how much he wanted her pushed deeper into her stomach.
How could she have walked away from more of this, left him before their intense attraction burned out? He needed to know why but, more than that, he needed to kiss her. Here in her kitchen, for as long as she allowed him to. She was a wild wind sweeping across a moonlit desert, beautiful and inconvenient, a blue-green sea teeming with wild underwater currents, a long drink of icy water after a twelve-mile hike across rocky terrain. She was...God...a woman a man crossed continents for.
And he wanted more, he wanted whatever she could give him. He deepened the kiss, needing to see her naked, to have her luscious body pressed up against his without the barrier of their clothing. He wanted unrestricted access to every inch of creamy skin, wanted his mouth on the back of her knee, her ankle, her hipbone, that special, lovely place between her thighs. And, judging by her breathy moans, the way she’d pulled his shirt out from his trousers, streaking her hands across his bare back, she wanted him the same way.
Her passion matched his and he thought it one of the best gifts he’d ever received.
‘Love the way you kiss,’ she muttered, tracing his lips with her tongue. ‘The way you taste...’
He was about to reply, to cover her breast with his hand when he heard the front door open. He dropped Thadie to his feet and instinctively pushed her behind him, ready to face the threat.
Across the room, two tall guys entered the room and were advancing on them, their expressions stormy. A series of impressions bombarded him: fit, muscled and, maybe, a littletrained. If this encounter ended up in a fight, he’d win but he’d take a hammering. But he’d, with the last breath he took, protect Thadie.
‘What is going on here?’ the blond man roared. ‘Who are you and how do you know my sister?’
The haze created by passion was clearing, and it was all coming back to him now. He’d seen them in the video Heath had showed him. These men were Thadie’s brothers. Or, more accurately, half-brothers. Same father, different mother. Owners, according to the research he’d had his assistant do, of a multibillion-dollar holding company with interests in many sectors. Rich, very rich, indeed. Along with their sister, they were South African royalty.
Thadie briefly squeezed his arm as she walked past him to the closest couch. She sat down and leaned back against its thick cushions, looking exhausted. ‘Angus, meet Jago and Micah Le Roux, my brothers.’
Angus nodded at them, his mouth as dry as dust. An awkward silence descended and, spotting a glass sitting upside next to the preparation sink, he grabbed it and poured himself some water. He needed a minute, or ten.
He felt like a spinning top at the end of its revolution, about to slump sideways. He wasn’t a guy who overreacted—or reacted at all—when life threw him a curveball. He’d faced bullets and bombs, terrorists and predators, relying on his training to get him out of some pretty hairy situations.
Thadie pushed him way out of his comfort zone, and he didn’t know how to navigate this unfamiliar, challenging scenario. He was winging it, and for someone who loved control and feared failure, it was terrifying.
Angus, his back to Thadie and her brothers, lifted the glass to his lips, his eyes falling on the covered-with-magnets fridge. Some of the magnets were from travel destinations—New York,London, Mexico, Cape Town and numerous other cities—and some held inspirational sayings. The biggest magnet, a bright, bold cartoon pineapple, kept some takeaway menus affixed to the fridge. Angus noticed the corner of a photograph peeking out from underneath a sushi menu and, keeping his back to the others, he lifted his finger and pushed aside the menus to see two young faces staring at him.
His heart slammed into his ribcage, stuttered and spluttered. Their hair was curlier, their skin darker, but other than that the two boys—the same age but non-identical—looked, in different ways, like he did when he was a kid. And, big clue, they both had his strangely coloured eyes, that hard to find blue-green with a deeper green ring encircling the lighter colour.
They couldn’t be... Surely. But were they? How? Really?
Was this actually happening?
CHAPTER THREE