Blame It On The Bikini. Natalie Anderson

her neck from the block, she was also irritated with the ease with which he’d done it. The man had everything. Money, looks, brains, charm. Had he ever known what it was to have to fight for something? To really have to work for something? Mya knew what it was to work, hard.

      ‘You have two minutes,’ Drew said to Mya, as if he were an emperor granting a favour to a lowly serf. ‘Then back behind that bar.’

      ‘Of course.’ Mya nodded as he disappeared into the crowd. Then she turned back to Brad. ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to follow through on that meeting.’

      ‘I’m looking forward to it.’ Brad didn’t look at all bothered. ‘I think a night here could be fun.’

      Mya chose to ignore the hint of entendre in his expression. ‘Have you got a reason to party?’

      ‘Who needs a reason?’ Brad shrugged.

      ‘Because life’s just one big party?’

      He merely chuckled and then stepped closer. ‘I’m sorry we were interrupted. Things were getting interesting there.’

      But that close call had firmly grounded Mya. ‘Things were getting out of hand,’ she corrected, opting not to look any higher than his collar. ‘I’m sorry about that. You took me by surprise.’

      ‘Wow,’ Brad said after a pause. ‘I’m intrigued to think what it’ll be like when I give you fair warning.’

      Mya shook her head and stepped away. ‘You’re not getting another chance.’

      She felt his hand on her elbow turning her back towards him. His hand slipped down her arm to take her fingers in his.

      The touch made her look up before she thought better of it. His surprisingly intense expression incinerated her but she hauled herself from the ashes of easiness. Mya liked sex, but she preferred it within the context of some kind of relationship, not the one-night-stand scene Brad was champion of. And she was steering well clear of any kind of entanglement for the foreseeable future. Long-term future. She had too much else to do—like work, study and occasionally eat and sleep.

      Also, this man had always had everything too easy. She’d just seen him in action—twice already tonight. He wasn’t having her that way again. She truly had just been caught by surprise, and her response to him was simply a reflection of his expertise and her lack of any physical release in the last while, right?

      The swirling frustration and embarrassment inside her coalesced and came out as temper. ‘You thought that picture was a booty call, didn’t you?’ She called him out with sarcasm-coated words. ‘From a woman that you haven’t spoken to in at least five years?’

      ‘Have we ever spoken?’ He laughed off her accusation. ‘I thought you and Lauren just paraded around fake-Goth-style and giggled behind closed doors. Interesting to think what was really going on behind those doors given the pictures you send each other. Thinking about it, you two went to prom together, didn’t you?’

      ‘With her boyfriend,’ Mya answered.

      ‘Oh, a threesome.’ Brad laughed harder.

      ‘If you remember, she tried to get you to take me.’

      ‘Oh, yeah.’ His eyes widened as he thought about it. ‘That’s right.’

      Unlike him, Mya had never forgotten what for her had been the most mortifying moment of that night. He’d been home from university. He’d had some silvery-blonde girlfriend with him. Tall and sleek, she’d had the obligatory blue eyes and the label clothes and the ‘born to it all’ attitude. Mya had hated her on sight. The girlfriend had spent most of the time spread on a sofa being kissed to glory by Brad.

      ‘You were wearing one of Lauren’s dresses,’ he said slowly.

      ‘Yes.’ She was amazed he’d now remembered that detail. Mya had butchered one of Lauren’s many formal dresses. A soft, pretty pink dress—never a colour she’d normally wear. She’d taken to it with a pair of scissors and completely cut away the back and secured it with long, trailing ribbons. She’d been aiming for a soft romantic look.

      It was the dress that she’d hoped might garner her the attention she’d thought she’d wanted. All she’d wanted to do was fit in—to be popular and accepted. To be just like the rest of them and not different for once. She’d wanted it to all be easy. But it was never as easy as a change of clothes. Make-overs didn’t change the person underneath. She hadn’t just been sixteen and never been kissed. She’d made it all the way to eighteen and first-year uni before that honour had fallen to a fellow student who’d seemed sweet enough until he’d had what he wanted.

      But back at that night of the dance, she’d had the whole prom fantasy. What wallflower schoolgirl didn’t? The one where the hottest guy in school asked her to dance and it was all perfect and ended with a kiss. Or the super-hot brother of the best friend asked her? Yeah, she’d been such a cliché. And she’d felt like a princess for all of five minutes, until Brad had ignored her. She’d been pretty and dressed up and hadn’t even been able to turn the head of the most sexually hungry male she knew back then.

      ‘You were too busy wearing that blonde to answer at the time,’ Mya said dryly.

      The dimple in his cheek deepened. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

      He hadn’t appreciated his younger sister’s interruption. Mya had seen the raw lust in him, the tease, the firmness with which he pulled the girl onto his lap—his strong arm wrapped around her waist, his confident hand close to her breast. And for a few minutes, she’d wanted to be that girl. Now for five minutes she had been. And it was better than any fantasy.

      Mya sucked up her stupidity and turned her self-scorn towards him instead. ‘That’s all irrelevant anyway. What’s really the issue here is how pathetically horn dog you are. You get a look at a woman in her bikini and you’re suddenly hot for her? When you’ve never so much as looked at her in the last decade?’

      Amusement still burned in his eyes. ‘You were a child a decade ago.’

      ‘It’s still pathetic.’ And frankly, insulting.

      ‘Maybe that prom night isn’t so irrelevant at all.’ His smile widened. ‘Did you have a crush on me back in high school? Your best friend’s older brother?’

      She gaped.

      ‘Because,’ he leaned closer and drawled outrageously, ‘you wouldn’t have been the only one.’

      Hell, the guy had an ego. Unfortunately what he’d said was true. There were several girls who’d done the faux-friendship thing to Lauren just to get close to her brother. Mya shook her head and denied him anyway. ‘Girls that age are at the mercy of hormones just as boys are and they fixate on the nearest object. Their fixating on you was probably more a matter of locality than your attractiveness.’

      He grinned wolfishly. ‘So if it wasn’t me your hormones fixed on, then who?’

      ‘I didn’t have the time.’

      ‘Everybody has the time.’ He moved closer as his voice dropped to an intimate whisper. ‘Who did you used to dream of?’

      ‘No one.’

      ‘So rebellious on the outside, such a square inside.’ He shook his head.

      Mya gritted her teeth.

      ‘No wonder you erupted with one touch—you’ve been repressed too long.’

      Mya couldn’t answer because that was actually true. She’d been without too long; that was the reason she’d inhaled his touch like an attention-starved animal.

      ‘Did you wish I’d said yes to Lauren and taken you to the ball? Is that why you’re trying to cut me down now? Did I burst your love-struck teen bubble?’

      He was so close to the mark it was mortifying. But she’d never,