with awesome strength.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe, then she said threadily, “Just give me my clothes, Kaden. This really isn’t a good idea.”
But Kaden ignored her, was already stepping back and away, taking her clothes with him and leaving the fresh ones on the bed. She looked at them. Jeans and a delicate grey silk shirt. Rage filled her belly at being humiliated like this.
She indicated the clothes with a trembling hand. Too much emotion was coursing through her. More than she’d felt in years. “I won’t wear your mistress’s cast-offs. I’ll walk out of here in this towel if I have to.”
Kaden turned. He was silhouetted in the doorway, shoulders broad in a simple white shirt. Black trousers hugged his lean hips. Julia hadn’t even noticed his still damp hair. She’d been so consumed by his overall presence.
He said, with a flash of fire in his eyes, “Be my guest, but there’s really no need. Those clothes belong to Samia. You remember my younger sister? You’re about the same size now. She’s been living here for the last couple of years.”
Immediately Julia felt petulant and exposed. She blushed. “Yes, I remember Samia.” She’d always liked Kaden’s next youngest sister, who had been bookish and painfully shy. Before she could say anything else, though, he was gone and the door had shut behind him.
Defeated, Julia contemplated the clothes. She took off the towel and put them on. There were even some knickers still in a plastic bag, and Julia could only figure that someone regularly stocked up Samia’s wardrobe. The jeans were a little snug on her rear and thighs, and she felt extremely naked with no bra under the silk shirt. Her breasts weren’t overly large, but they were too big for her to go bra-less and feel comfortable. There wasn’t much she could do. It was either this or dress in the robe hanging off the back of the bathroom door. And she couldn’t face Kaden in just a robe.
She went back into the bathroom and dried her hair with the hairdryer. It dried a little frizzy, but there was not much she could do about that either. And, anyway, it wasn’t as if she wanted to impress Kaden, was it? She scowled at the very thought.
Fresh resolve to insist on leaving fired her blood, and she picked up her shoes in one hand and took a deep breath before emerging from the suite, steeling herself to see Kaden again. When she did emerge though, it was to see him with his back to her at one of the main salon windows, looking out over the view. Something about his stance in that moment struck her as acutely lonely, but then he turned around and his sardonic visage made a mockery of her fanciful notion.
She hitched up her chin. “I’ll get a taxi home. I can arrange to get my clothes from you another time.”
Kaden’s hand tightened reflexively on the glass he held. He should be saying Yes, I’ll call you a taxi. He should be reminding himself that this was a very bad idea. But rational thought was very elusive as he looked at Julia.
Her hair drifted softly around her narrow shoulders. Like this, with the veneer of a successful, sophisticated woman stripped away, she might be nineteen again, and something inside him turned over. The grey silk shirt made the grey of her eyes look smoky and mysterious. He could remember thinking when he’d first met her that her eyes were a very icy light blue, but he had then realised that they were grey.
The silk shirt left little to the imagination. Her bare breasts pushed enticingly against the material, and under his gaze he could see her nipples harden to two thrusting points. His body responded forcibly. The jeans were too tight, but that only emphasized the curve of her hips and thighs. He wanted her to turn around so he could see her lush derrière. She’d always had a voluptuous bottom and generous breasts in contrast to her otherwise slender build.
Heat engulfed him, and he struggled for the first time in years to cling onto some control. Once again when it came to it … he couldn’t let her go.
Julia was on fire under Kaden’s very thorough inspection. “Please …” She wasn’t even really aware of what she was saying, only that she wanted him to stop. “Don’t look at me like that.”
He smiled and went into seduction mode. “Like what? You’re a beautiful woman, Julia. I’m sure you’re used to having men’s eyes on you.”
Julia flushed at the slightly narrowed dark gaze, which hinted at steel underneath the apparent civility. The memory of what had happened just before she’d left Burquat flashed through her head and brought with it excoriating heat and guilt. And nausea … Kaden’s eyes had been on her in her moment of humiliation. Even now she could remember the way that man had pulled her so close she’d felt as if she were suffocating, when all she’d wanted— She slammed the door on that memory.
She shook her head, “No, actually, I’m not. And this is not appropriate. I really should be leaving. So if you’ll just call me a taxi …?”
Kaden smiled then, and it was the devil’s smile. She sensed he’d come to some decision and it made her incredibly nervous.
“What’s the rush? I’m sure you could do with a drink?”
Julia regarded this suddenly urbane pillar of solicitude suspiciously. Her shoes were unwieldy in her hand. She felt all at once awkward, hot, and yet pathetically reluctant to turn and never see Kaden again. That insidious yearning arose … the awareness that tonight was a bizarre coincidence. Fate. Surely the last time she would ever see him?
As much as she longed to get as far away as possible from this situation, and this man, a dangerous curiosity and a desire for him not to see how conflicted she was by this reunion made her shrug minutely and say grudgingly, “I suppose one drink wouldn’t hurt. After all, it has been a long time.”
He just looked at her. “Yes, it has.” Hardly taking his eyes from hers, he indicated a bottle of cream liqueur on the sideboard and asked, “Do you still like this?”
Julia’s belly swooped dangerously. He remembered her favourite drink? She’d only ever drunk it with him, and hadn’t touched it in twelve years. She nodded dumbly and watched as his large, masculine yet graceful hands deftly poured the distinctive liquid. He replaced the bottle on the sideboard and then came and handed the delicately bulbous glass to Julia.
She took it, absurdly grateful that their fingers didn’t touch. Bending her head, she took a sniff of the drink and then a quick sip, to disguise the flush she could feel rising when the smell precipitated a memory of drinking it with Kaden one magical night in his family’s summer palace by the coast. It was the night they’d slept together for the first time.
For a second the full intensity of how much she’d loved him threatened to overwhelm her. And he’d casually poisoned those feelings and in one fell swoop destroyed her innocent idealism. Feeling tormented, and wondering if this avalanche of memories would ever go back into its box, she moved away from Kaden’s tall, lean body, her eyes darting anywhere but to him.
She sensed him move behind her, and then he appeared in her peripheral vision.
“Please, won’t you sit?”
So polite. As if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t given him her body, heart and soul.
Slamming another painful door in her mind, Julia said quickly, nervously, “Thank you.”
She followed him, and when he sat on a plush couch, easily dominating it, she chose an armchair to the side, putting her shoes down beside her. She was as far away from him as she could get, legs together primly. She glanced at him to see a mocking look cross his face. She didn’t care. This new Kaden intimidated her. There was nothing of the boy she’d known. They’d both just been teenagers after all … until he’d had to grow up overnight, after the death of his father.
Now he was a man—infinitely more commanding. She’d seen a glimpse of this more formidable Kaden the last time they’d spoken in Burquat, but that had been a mere precursor of the powerful man opposite her now.
Julia felt exposed in her bare feet and the flimsy shirt. It was too