He didn’t stop, didn’t even falter. He just continued walking right out of the door.
‘I’m exactly the kind of guy you should stay away from, Little Ant.’
‘I’m not Little Ant, Kaspar. I haven’t been that girl for over ten years. I’m a woman now, with a career, and my own home, and a failed marriage.’
He hesitated in the hallway, just as she’d hoped he would, and turned to face her. He was still fighting temptation, she could tell, but he knew his arguments were holding less and less sway. Deliberately she swept her tongue over her lips, as if to wet them.
His eyes slid down and watched the movement with a darkening expression. A thrill coursed through her. He wanted to do what he thought was the morally right thing, he was trying to do it. But things had gone too far in the car. They’d been too intimate. And
now he was having a difficult time turning the attraction off just like that.
‘I thought you were in Australia.’
He was stalling, she realised incredulously. No one would ever believe it. Not the press, not the public, certainly not the broken-hearted women who flailed in his wake.
‘Robbie went after Dad died because his then girlfriend, now wife, was from there. My life was here. I’d just finished my degree, I had a new job...’
‘You’d met your husband.’
She couldn’t place the edge to his tone, but she did know the moment she’d been imagining was slipping away from her. Too fast.
She needed to salvage the evening, convince Kaspar that she wasn’t that kid any more. She was the woman he’d been kissing, holding, touching in the car.
‘As nice as this little catch-up might be, we didn’t come back here to my flat to shoot the breeze, did we, Kaspar?’
She couldn’t decide whether he admired her forthrightness, or if it merely caught him off guard. Either way, she didn’t care. She had a small window in which to press her advantage. If she missed it, that would be it.
She stepped forward boldly and flashed him a cheeky grin, disarming him.
‘Good, so now we’ve aired our concerns, can we get back to the fun we were having in the car?’
‘Archie, are you listening to me?’ he bit out, but he didn’t move away.
She stepped forward again.
‘I’m trying not to. It’s hardly the greatest foreplay conversation. Certainly not worthy of the great Surgeon Prince of Persia.’
‘This isn’t going to happen,’ he warned, his voice gritty. Not entirely as forceful as she imagined he could be.
‘I’m pretty sure it already has. Or have you forgotten just how intimate we were on the car journey here?’
She heard the low growl, which reverberated around her. She knew the image of his mouth on her nipples, making her moan and writhe on his knee, was as imprinted in his head as it was in hers. He was close to giving in to her. To this attraction. She just needed to give him that nudge over the edge.
‘I’m leaving now, Archie.’ He reached his hand out to grab the door handle and close the door behind him.
She had one last chance to stop him.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked evenly, even as she reached up to the back of her neck, undid the clasp and let the dress drop to the floor, past the flimsy scrap of electric-blue lace, to pool around the skyscraper heels, which she suddenly didn’t remotely feel silly wearing.
She felt sexy and powerful and wicked.
But Kaspar wasn’t moving. And she had absolutely no idea what he was thinking.
* * *
He couldn’t move.
Frozen to the spot, his eyes riveted to the vision in front of him, for the first time in his life Kaspar felt powerless. He should leave. Turn around and walk away. But he couldn’t bear to.