By Request Collection 1. Jackie Braun

woman, champagne and candles. He could have had her. Right there on the floor, he could have given into the temptation that had kept him hard as granite all evening and most of the day.

      He could have stripped away her clothes and watched her body bloom beneath his hands. He could have slid inside her, watched her eyes darken in surprise then pleasure. And he was walking away.

      He shook his head. Some other man would have to introduce Lissa to the joys of sex because she was strictly out of bounds to him. And the pain in his skull was intensifying by the minute. Strobes of light impeded his vision, nausea rose in ever-increasing waves. The alcohol hadn’t helped. He shoved the discomfort away. Never allow another to witness your vulnerabilities. He’d lived by that personal mantra all his life and he wasn’t changing now.

      On his arrival earlier, he’d had the unnerving feeling she was looking right into him when she’d caught him watching her at the top of the stairs. He hadn’t enjoyed the sensation one bit.

      Nor had he intended a seduction scene as such. One always celebrated a new venture with champagne. And the candles. He really had expected the power to be off.

      Beneath the twin circles of light, he slowed to allow her to catch up. The empty building echoed with the sound of footsteps on wood as they crossed the polished boards.

      A big hollow space, waiting to be filled. Kind of like where he was in his life right now. A place full of endless possibilities. He stared past the lights’ glare to the darkened ceiling. Darkness into light.

      He swiped a frustrated hand over his hair. Today had been one hell of a day and he wasn’t going to end it by making an even bigger mistake with Lissa. A mistake that could cost them this partnership, and he knew she couldn’t afford for that to happen.

      She walked up and stood beside him, her shoulder brushing his arm, and said, ‘Right, where shall we start …?’

      He liked her ideas, suggested a few of his own. Her vision for the premises was well thought through considering she’d seen it for the first time this afternoon, the energy running through her commentary boundless. She pointed out a proposed office area, another space where clients could wait in comfort and browse catalogues. Areas for displays of soft furnishings and colour swatches, wallpaper, shelves to display interesting and unusual glassware or pottery. Another where clients could play with mock-up designs on touch-screen computers.

      Eventually Lissa had said all there was to say. She looked to Blake for his response to her suggestion that she hang some of her own artwork on the walls. She’d saved a couple of her favourite pieces from a watery grave and she could create more.

      He only nodded and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

      ‘If it’s all right with you, I could set up at home in one of the spare rooms so it doesn’t interfere with anything you might want to do,’ she said.

      ‘No problem. I don’t have any plans for entertaining. Besides, I’ve never watched an artist at work.’

      The thought of him watching unsettled her and she rubbed her arms in the cool swirl of air. ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ A half-laugh trickled out. ‘I’ve never worked with an audience.’

      But when she looked at him her smile faded. His eyes. Haunting, hurting. Hungry. A well of conflicting emotions churned like a choppy sea behind that carefully neutral stare. A stare that defied anyone to try and find a way through.

      She wanted to see the pain gone. She wanted to be the one to make it go. Right now she didn’t care that she’d warned herself to keep away, that the business came first, that she didn’t want her heart broken. She rested her hands on his crossed forearms and looked up at him.

      She wasn’t going to let their difference in height intimidate her. Rising on tiptoe, she reached behind his head and pulled it down towards her, keeping her hands slow and light, craving his taste again.

      She felt his tightly crossed arms loosen, his body give as he leaned closer. So close. The scent of his skin surrounded her, his quickened breathing feathered over her mouth.

      And then his lips brushed hers and her pulse went wild. How long had it been since she’d been brave enough to invite any kind of sexual contact, let alone initiate it? She crept her fingers between his forearms so that she could open them wide and fit herself against that broad hard chest—

      He muttered something against her mouth that sounded like something a sailor would say. She felt the stiffness in his neck, resisting her, pulling back. Pulling away.

      He uncrossed his arms all the way. Not to wrap them around her but to let them hang at his sides, leaving her own hands to drift down, useless.

      ‘Lissa.’ He looked down at her, the heat she’d felt emanating from him banished somewhere behind that shuttered gaze. ‘I phoned Jared this afternoon.’

      Pardon? ‘You phoned Jared?’ It took her a moment to gather her wits, pull her scattered self together and absorb what he’d said. Another before the feeling of betrayal slid cold and slick between her ribs. What had happened to keeping it between them? Our little secret.

      ‘You made an agreement with me and you broke it.’ The intoxicating moment fled and she clenched her fists against her stomach to stop the feeling of nausea welling up there. ‘What did you do—scroll through my address book behind my back?’

      ‘I looked up Crystal and Ian’s phone number. Ian remembered who I was and gave it to me.

      I—’

      ‘No.’ She couldn’t look at him. ‘You had no right.’

      ‘Wrong. It was the responsible thing to do. The only thing to do.’

      ‘No.’ She jabbed a finger at her chest. ‘What I tell Jared is my business.’

      ‘What, you’d have him drop by on his way home from vacation and find no boat? No Lissa? No way of knowing where you were?’

      She shook her head. ‘He’d never drop in without phoning ahead. It’s called communication.’

      ‘You weren’t doing a very good job of communicating with him, then, were you?’

      ‘What about you? Did you communicate with me about this first?’

      ‘You were shopping.’

      She lifted her head and glared at him. ‘So?’

      ‘I didn’t want to have this conversation with you over the phone.’

      ‘I told you I was going to let him know.’

      ‘When? He loves you and you left him out of the loop.’

      She knew, and it stopped her in her tracks. Worse, it had taken Blake to point it out. ‘That still doesn’t give you the right to go over my head or mess with my affairs.’

      What exactly had he told Jared? Had the two of them discussed her as if she didn’t have a voice—or a brain? It made her want to slap something. Or someone.

      ‘So you had a chat about Lissa’s lapsed insurance too, then? The boat’s state of disrepair? Did you tell him you own it?’

      She stopped because she’d run out of breath. He wasn’t attempting to deny her accusations. He was waiting for her to finish her little tirade. Calmly. Rationally. Only a tic in his jaw betrayed him.

      ‘The boat’s gone,’ he said coolly. ‘I’ve decided there’s no point telling him my father sold it twice over. I assume Jared has insurance to cover it. He can make his own decisions about whether or not to replace it.’

      Oh. ‘That’s very—’

      ‘I told him what happened,’ he continued, in the same unhurried voice. ‘And that you were safe and unharmed and with me.’

      With me. Why did those words claw so at her belly? She tightened her stomach