didn’t feel threatened by this undiminished sexual spark between them, then she wouldn’t feel a need to employ those obvious defences. She was working to keep him at arm’s length, he realised with a delayed jolt of perception. She tried to keep her own desires in check.
First time around he’d allowed her time and space while he enjoyed the challenge, the pursuit, the anticipation. This time the stakes were higher. He wasn’t playing games; he was playing for keeps.
From the corner of his eye he caught the almost imperceptible lift of her chin. Defence mechanism number one. A precursor to speech, used when preparing for verbal battle.
Deep inside Ric smiled in anticipation. Bring it on, babe. I’m ready.
“I may not have learned how to cook,” she said, circling back to her earlier comment about kitchen helpfulness. “But I have changed in other ways.”
“How?”
“I’m more cautious now. I don’t make snap decisions. I weigh my options so I can make an informed choice.”
With the position on the Blackstone’s board, for example. That’s where she wanted to lead the conversation; that’s why she’d taken her time in choosing her words so cleverly. A pity and a waste, since he wasn’t ready to go there. They were within five minutes of their destination and an inevitable disruption.
Their long, involved and probably heated discussion was for later, without interruption, so he let her leading comment take this conversation in another direction. “Such as deciding to wear that dress—” his gaze swept over her before returning to the road “—instead of the new one?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The new dress you picked out in Double Bay this afternoon.”
“Sonya,” she said on an accusatory note. “I can’t believe she told you about that!”
“Not nearly enough, as it happens. Why don’t you fill in the gaps.”
“You want to hear about our shopping expedition?”
The incredulous look on her face was priceless. Ric stifled a grin. “I want to hear about the dress and why you decided not to wear it.” He let his eyes drift over her in lazy speculation. “Was it too short? Too low-cut? Too revealing?”
“All of those things,” she replied without missing a beat.
“Then I can’t wait to see you in it,” he murmured.
“I doubt that will happen.”
“Spoilsport.”
The start of a smile lurked around the corners of her mouth but she looked away quickly, peering out the side window in sudden rapt interest. He noticed the exact second her pseudo-interest turned real. Her shoulders stiffened, her head snapped around. “Where are you taking me?”
“My place. Is that a problem?”
“You said dinner. I assumed you meant at a restaurant.”
“I could get a table at Icebergs if you’d prefer,” he said mildly. “Although I can’t promise we’ll have privacy to talk or that our tête-à-tête won’t appear in a society column tomorrow.”
Indecision ghosted across her expression.
“Which wouldn’t be all bad,” he mused. “It’d give them something to talk about other than Howard and Marise.” Flicking on an indicator, he pulled over to the side of the road and reached for his mobile phone. “I can call ahead and secure a table if you don’t mind being noticed dining with me. Or we can eat at my place, as planned, with the privacy to talk business and no risk of interruption.
“Your decision, Kim. What’s it to be?”
Six
Perrini was too damn clever by half! Kimberley quietly simmered while she chose privacy, just as he’d set her up to do. They had business to discuss and if he tried baiting her again as he’d done over the dress and just now over the restaurant, then she might feel inclined to throw something at him. She would prefer if that didn’t appear in any society columns, thank you very much.
Which didn’t mean she felt comfortable returning to the house where they’d spent so many nights and weekends of their affair, plus their short, drama-filled ten days of marriage. During the days they’d worked side by side with cool, professional restraint, and in the evenings they’d driven into this street, this driveway, this garage, and torn into each other with a fevered passion that could not wait a second longer.
“You’re not nervous about coming here?”
Kimberley blinked herself out of the minefield of memories. Carefully she relaxed her fisted fingers and moistened her lips. “Should I be?”
“I don’t see why.”
But there was a dangerous glint of heat in his eyes as they rested briefly on her mouth, and she wondered if he, too, was recalling the times they hadn’t made it upstairs with all their clothes on. When they’d slaked their hunger for each other here in his car, or in the foyer leading off the garage, or in the slick elevator that glided between the three floors of this uniquely designed contemporary town house.
“Do you live here alone?” she asked.
The question had been brewing, unacknowledged and unspoken, ever since the day by the pool when he’d told her he still lived here. Now seemed the time to ask. Before he took her inside.
“At the moment,” he said after a beat of pause, “yes.”
Now, what was that supposed to mean? Had there been a live-in lover, one who’d recently packed her bags and departed? Or did he have someone waiting in the wings, all primed and ready to park her stilettos under his bed?
The thought crept up like a thief and ambushed her with unbidden images. Perrini with a faceless, nameless woman. Her hands sliding inside his shirt. Her mouth opening to his kiss. Her arms pulling him down to the bed.
No. Kimberley shut down the visuals with a vicious shake of her head. And while he opened the passenger door and ushered her from the car to the foyer and into the elevator, she struggled to tamp down the impact of her irrational possessiveness. She had no right to it. She had no claim on him.
Business, she reminded herself. It’s not about us.
But in the confines of the closet-size lift, she became hyper-aware of the whipcord tension in his body and the heat emanating from his skin despite the layers of fine Italian tailoring separating their shoulders, their arms, their hips. Those ten-year-old memories of greedy mouths and impatient hands and swiftly shed clothes worked back into her consciousness, blurring the imagery until the nameless woman’s face became hers.
Her hands, her mouth, her arms drawing him onto the bed and into her body.
“Hungry?”
The velvet murmur of his voice spent a moment meandering through her fantasy before Kimberley snapped her errant mind back into focus. “Yes, I am.” Cool. Somehow she managed to sound very cool. “What are we eating?”
“Seafood. For expedience I ordered ahead. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That would depend on what you ordered.”
“Blue swimmer crab. Roasted scallops. Ocean trout. Catch of the day with aioli and Murray River salt.”
Although her taste buds had started to shimmy in anticipation, Kimberley merely nodded. The real test was in the final course. “And for dessert?”
“Ah, so you still start your order from the bottom of the menu? That hasn’t changed?”
She tilted her head, enough that she could favour him with a silly-question look.
Amusement kicked