Socialite's Gamble

‘Aidan?’

Now she said his name.

He lifted the glass and tipped the contents down his throat. He waited two seconds for the burn to hit his gut and then he poured another.

Shifting his gaze to the oval mirror behind the bar he saw that she had risen to her feet, the top of her dress thankfully pulled back into place. Her face and upper chest were flushed with desire and her short hair was mussed from where he’d thrust his fingers through it.

Damn, she looked beautiful.

She pressed her swollen lips together tentatively and something like guilt twisted inside him. He hadn’t meant for things to go that far. Well, he had, he conceded; he’d meant for them to go much further. Before the bet.

Ellery’s ugly mug jumped into his mind and his gut churned with the need to forget every single thing about this night.

‘You need to go.’

He hadn’t turned to face her and her cheeks flamed with embarrassment. He watched her eyes climb up his back and her lower lip started to tremble when she saw that he was watching her.

‘But I thought …’

Aidan slammed the crystal tumbler down onto the wooden bar, cutting off whatever it was she had thought. He was hanging on to control by a thread and he wanted her gone.

‘Doll face, I don’t really know what you thought but you need to grow a brain. You do not hijack people’s cars because you’re in a hurry, you do not let yourself be bet on in a game of high-stakes poker and you do not come to strange men’s rooms and … Do not start crying,’ he bellowed as a fresh spill of tears trekked down her face.

Bloody hell, but those tears tore something up inside of him.

Without thinking he started towards her only to have her throw her hands up in front of herself. She looked touchingly vulnerable with her feet apart and a fierce expression on her face, her slender frame trembling as if she really did have a chance of stopping him. She wouldn’t, of course. She wouldn’t have a hope in hell of stopping him from doing whatever he wanted to do if he had a mind to.

‘Don’t come any closer.’

‘I don’t intend to,’ he said softly. ‘The door is behind you. I suggest you use it.’

‘With pleasure.’

The silence in the room after the dull thud of his door closing was loud and oppressive.

Aidan moved to the plate-glass windows and stared outside.

The Strip beckoned like a shiny toy hiding a tarnished interior. Flashes of red, green, blue and gold. Flashes of pink. All of it designed to lead a man to his downfall.

If he let it.

CHAPTER SIX

CARA HATED EARLY MORNINGS as a general rule and she particularly hated them after only two hours’ sleep, most of which had been spent crying.

Crying because she felt sorry for herself.

And she still didn’t know how one of the worst nights of her life could also have some of the best moments in it. Or how a man who so clearly hated her could have made her feel so … so … aroused.

So desired.

So wanted.

It was a true testament to her desperate state of mind that she could even think that Aidan Kelly had wanted her with any of the urgency that she had felt for him.

It was the way he had held her when she’d burst into tears that had lowered her defences towards him. His gentleness coming so quickly on the back of such coldness. It had made her let her guard down. It was exactly what she’d wanted her father to do on the rare occasions that she had seen him while she was growing up. A nugget of affection to help her through the lonely times.

She closed her eyes and groaned softly as the memory of Aidan Kelly’s hands and mouth on her body rushed through her. She’d never been kissed like that before. As if the man she was with couldn’t get enough of her. And, even more surprising, she’d never felt like that when a man had kissed her before. As if she was no longer in control of her own body. Her own mind.

The whole night had been like that noisy roller-coaster two doors down. The thrill followed by the spill.

His kiss had been unforgettable and yet she wondered if he truly believed that she wasn’t Martin Ellery’s mistress. It seemed important that he did, though she couldn’t think why. She would never see him again, after all.

Oh, she felt awful. Embarrassed by her physical reaction to him. Mortified by his total rejection of her. The way he had just been able to push her aside and stroll to the bar as if nothing had happened. The way his cold eyes had met hers in the mirror. God, he hadn’t even bothered to turn around to talk to her face-to-face.

Remembering that she had switched her phone off when she’d collapsed into bed a short time ago she switched it on. Nine messages pinged into her inbox. She counted three from Christos, another three from Cilla, one from her friend Lucy and two from her agent.