Escape By The Sea. Trish Morey

have told me.’

      ‘And would you have contracted me if I had?’

      ‘Who knows? Maybe if you had, we might be having great sex right now instead of arguing.’

      Unfair, she thought as she sucked in air, finding it irritatingly laden with his testosterone-rich scent. So unfair to bring up sex right now, to remind her of what might have been, when she was right here in his suite and about to lose the backbone of her income because she’d neglected to tell him about a night when nothing had happened.

      ‘Let me tell you something, Evelyn Carmichael,’ he said, as he trailed lazy fingertips down the side of her face. ‘Let me share something I might have shared with you, if you’d ever bothered to share the truth with me. Three years ago, I was aboard a flight to Santiago. I had a fifty-page report to read and digest and a strategy to close a deal to work out and I knew what I needed to be doing, but hour after hour into the flight I couldn’t concentrate. And why couldn’t I concentrate? Because my head was filled with thoughts of a blonde, long-limbed PA with the sexiest eyes I had ever seen and thinking about what we both should have been doing right then if I hadn’t had to leave Sydney.’

      ‘Oh.’ It had never occurred to her that he might have regretted his sudden departure. It had never occurred to her that she hadn’t been the only one unable to sleep that night, the only one who remembered.

      ‘I felt cheated,’ he said, his fingers skimming the line of her collarbone, ‘because I had to leave before we got a chance to…get to know each other.’ His fingers played at her shoulder, his thumbs stroking close to the place on her throat where she could feel her pulse beat at a frantic pace. ‘Did you feel cheated, Evelyn?’

      ‘Perhaps. Maybe just a little.’

      ‘I was hoping maybe more than just a little.’

      ‘Maybe,’ she agreed, earning herself a smile in return.

      ‘And now I find that I have been cheated in those years since. I never had a chance to revisit what we had lost that night, because you chose not to tell me.’

      She blinked up at him, still reeling from the impact of his words. ‘How could I tell you?’

      ‘How could you not tell me, when you must know how good we will be together. We knew it that day. We recognised it. And we knew it earlier when I kissed you and you turned near incendiary in my arms. Do you know how hard that kiss was to break, Evelyn? Do you know what it took to let you go and take you to dinner and not take you straight to my bed?’

      She shuddered at his words, knowing them to be true, knowing that if he’d taken her to bed that night, she would have gone and gone willingly. But he’d left her confused. He’d been angry with her a moment ago, yet now the air vibrated around them with a different tension. ‘What do you want?’

      ‘What I have always wanted ever since the first time I saw you,’ he said, his eyes wild with desire and dark promises that kept those dark, secret places of her humming with sensation and aching with need. ‘I want you.’

       CHAPTER SIX

      ‘THIS won’t work,’ she warned weakly, her hands reaching for the wall behind her as his mouth descended towards hers. ‘This can’t happen.’

      He brushed her lips with his. ‘Why not?’

      ‘You don’t sleep with your PAs. You don’t mix business with pleasure. You said so yourself.’

      ‘True,’ he agreed, making a second pass over her mouth, and then a third, lingering just a fraction longer this time. ‘Never mix business with pleasure.’

      ‘Then what are you doing?’ she asked, her senses buzzing. He slipped his hands behind her head, his fingers weaving through her hair as he angled her mouth higher.

      ‘Unfinished business, on the other hand,’ he murmured, his eyes on her mouth. ‘That’s a whole different rule book.’ He moved his gaze until dark eyes met her own, gazing at her with such feverish intensity that she felt bewitched under their spell. ‘Do you want to open that book, Evelyn? Do you want to dip into its pages and enjoy one night of pleasure, one night of sin, to make up for that night we were both cheated out of?’

      This time he kissed her eyes, first one and then the other, butterfly kisses of heated breath and warm lips that made her tremble with both their tenderness and their devastating impact on her senses. ‘Or do you still wish to leave?’

      He kissed her lips then before she could respond, as if trying to convince her with his hot mouth instead of his words, and she could feel the tension underlining his movements, could tell he was barely controlling the passion that bubbled so close below the surface as he tried to be gentle with her. He was offering her a night of unimaginable pleasure, a night she’d thought about so many times since that ill-fated first meeting.

      Or he was offering her escape.

      She was so, so very tempted to stay, to stay with this man who’d invaded her dreams and longings, the man who’d taken possession of them ever since the day they’d first met. The man who had made her want and lust and feel alive for the first time in her life. She wanted to stay and feel alive again.

      But she should go. The sensible thing would be to go. She was no longer a free agent, able to do as she pleased when she pleased. She had responsibilities. She was a mother now, with a child waiting at home.

      His kisses tortured her with their sweetness while her mind grappled with the dilemma, throwing out arguments for and against. The decision was hers and yet she felt powerless to make it, knowing that whatever she decided, she would live to regret it.

       But it was just one night.

       And her child was safely tucked up in bed, asleep.

      But hadn’t her child resulted from just one such night? One foolish wrong decision and she would live with the consequences for ever. Did she really want to risk that happening again? Could she afford to?

       Could she afford not to?

      Did she really want to go home to her empty bed and know that she’d turned her back on this chance to stop wondering what if, the chance to finally burn this indecent obsession out of her system?

      And didn’t she deserve just one night? She’d worked hard to make a success of her business and to provide for Sam. Surely she deserved a few short hours of pleasure? Maybe then she could stop wondering, stop imagining what it would have been like to have made love that night, to have finished what they’d started. And maybe he was a lousy lover and this would cure her of him for ever, just like one night with Sam’s father had been more than enough.

       Hadn’t she already paid the price?

      His mouth played on hers, enticing her into the dance, his tongue a wicked invitation, his big hands skimming her sides so that his thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, so close to her aching nipples that she gasped, and felt herself pushing into his hands.

      A lousy lover? Not likely.

      ‘What’s it to be?’ he said, pulling back, his breathing ragged, searching her eyes for her answer. ‘Do I open the book? Or do you go? Because if you don’t decide now, I promise you, there will be no going anywhere.’

      And his words were so hungry, the pain of his restraint so clearly etched on his tightly drawn features, that she realised how much power she really held. He wanted her so much, and still he was prepared to let her walk away. Maybe because he sensed she was beyond leaving, maybe because he knew that his kisses and touches had lit a fire inside her that would not be put out, not be quenched until it had burned itself to ash. But he was giving her the choice.

      When really, just like that first time, there was none.

      ‘Maybe,’