For Revenge…Or Pleasure?

And next time he’d make sure there was no chance for her to change her mind. Next time she wouldn’t get away.

His body hummed with anticipation of the hunt. The information couldn’t come more enticingly gift wrapped. The idea of extracting what he needed to know couldn’t possibly give him more of a charge.

She might be as plastic as the industry she worked for, and the celebrities she practised on, but at least she was making his quest more entertaining than he’d ever imagined possible.

He pulled one hand from his pocket and glanced down at his watch, but it only confirmed what the sun was already telling him as it dipped lower in the sky—the doctor kept long hours. The nip and tuck business was obviously booming.

Then a movement at the side door caught his eye. It was her. As she stepped from the door her hand went to the back of her head, and with a toss she pulled a clip from her hair, releasing it. He growled his approval as the wave swung around her face and tumbled over her shoulders like a sweep of honey.

He liked the way she looked with her hair down. Even more than how it looked, it appealed to his sense of economy.

One less thing for him to remove.

She couldn’t wait to get into that bath. Grace might be content to stay and deal with paperwork till all hours, but Jade had had enough for one day. And there was absolutely no need for Grace to stay back. They had enough staff that Grace need never bother herself with administration, but she’d always been hands-on, always been involved, even with matters as mundane as the accounts. She was a total inspiration.

Her neck and shoulders aching, Jade unclipped her hair as she stepped from the building, already mentally unwinding as she shook her hair free. She took two steps into the car park and froze.

It was him. He was leaning against her car and looking for all the world as if he owned it. Did he know it was hers? In the same instant she asked herself the question she’d already answered herself in the affirmative. Of course he knew. Why else would he be sprawled all over it? How he knew wasn’t even an issue. This man didn’t strike her as the sort who would have trouble getting anything—least of all information.

But what the hell was he doing here? Even in the gathering twilight the foolishness of her actions at the ball came back in stark detail to taunt her. And she didn’t want to be reminded of that night. Didn’t want to be reminded of what had nearly happened. Didn’t want to be reminded of how his firm body and his sultry mouth had made her feel…

She swallowed down an urge to turn around and walk the other way. She’d run from him once before, and be damned if he’d see her bolt again. It was her car he was leaning on. He was the one who was going to leave.

So she forced her legs to move once more, forced herself closer to where he stood so casually regarding her approach, his hands in his pockets, one leg bent over the other, while she wound tighter and tighter inside like a coiled spring.

She stopped two metres shy, wondering how the hell she was going to get into her car while he leaned against her door.

She nodded. ‘Mr Demakis.’

‘Loukas,’ he corrected. ‘How are you, Dr Ferraro?’

If he thought that was an invitation to ask him to call her Jade he was very much mistaken. ‘You seem to be blocking my car door.’

He looked around as if surprised. ‘This is your car? Now, there’s a coincidence.’

‘An unbelievable coincidence, I would have thought,’ she said, making it clear she knew it was no accident of fate that had brought them together today.

‘It seems we have a mutual liking for this particular marque,’ he continued, indicating the car alongside hers. Another sleek Mercedes Sports, although so clearly the top of the line it made her smaller soft-top look like a basic city run-around. ‘I wonder what else we have in common?’

His easy banter grated on her nerves, especially as his eyes gave her different messages entirely. In what remained of the light of day they were nowhere near as dark as they’d seemed in the evening lighting, more a rich chestnut colour—though right now they contained a noticeable absence of warmth. And yet she felt a heat emanating from them that burned into her senses and touched parts of her deep down inside, where the humming his touch had set in train Saturday evening was coming alive once again.