Twin Scandals
Ben shrugged, his expression remote and unapologetic. “Like I said, I was leaving for the States. I was taking on a new business. There was no way I could afford to start a relationship.”
Relationship. There was that word again. Despite her determination to not allow Ben to affect her, the fact that he had seen her as potential relationship material, but in the wrong time and place, was quietly riveting. It raised the possibility that, maybe, there could be a right time and place.
Still, Sophie knew that timing and geography weren’t the only issues with Ben. From her online research she knew that he had also been burned by a past relationship and now seemed chronically wary of commitment.
Previously, she had dismissed Ben’s past. He was a big boy; he should be able to get over a broken engagement. However, that had been a serious mistake, because commitment was obviously still a problem.
The moment she had realized he’d had her number when she had been sitting in her SUV at the bottom of bush-choked gully burned through her again. “You had my number. You could have phoned me.”
“If I’d done that we’d be right back where we are now.” Ben’s gaze seared her.
With slow deliberation, he picked up her hand and threaded her fingers with his. Heat shimmered from that one point of contact, making her heart pound and her stomach tighten. Memories she had worked hard to bury flooded back. Ben’s mouth on hers, heat welding them together as they’d lain together in his bed. The intense emotion that had poured through her with every touch, every caress, along with a bone-deep certainty she had never experienced before and which had been the reason she had consented to sleep with him in the first place. The uncanny conviction that after years of disinterested dating, she had finally found The One.
With a jerky movement, she withdrew her hand.
Ben pushed away from the railing and dragged off his tie as if it was suddenly too tight. He draped it over the railing next to his jacket. His brooding gaze dropped to her mouth. “I didn’t call you because I didn’t think you were serious about wanting a real relationship.”
She frowned. He could only be referring to the fact that she was naturally wary and standoffish when it came to relationships and that it had taken her eighteen months to admit to him that she found him crazily attractive. “It’s not as if I’m in the habit of having one-night stands!”
He shrugged. “I was also not in a position to offer any kind of commitment.”
Sophie met Ben’s gaze squarely. She could barely concentrate on Ben’s struggle with his emotional past when she was coping with her own very present struggle and the startling revelation that he still wanted her. “You could have asked me what I wanted instead of talking to Nick. It’s not as if my brother is any kind of a love doctor.”
To put it succinctly, Nick had had a serious issue with commitment, which had been resolved only when the woman he had married, Elena, had taken a risk on him and he had ended up falling for her hook, line and sinker. It had just taken some time.
Suddenly all the breath seemed to be sucked out of Sophie’s lungs. Elena and Nick’s relationship had been a bumpy affair, but Elena had persevered and she had won out in the end. Sophie believed that Elena had won Nick because what they shared had been real and true in the first place. But the relationship could easily have failed if Elena hadn’t taken the initiative and risked herself by sleeping with Nick in unpromising circumstances. Twice.
Sophie took a deep breath and tried to stay calm, which was difficult because her mind was going a million miles an hour. Usually she was guarded, logical: smart. She did not let emotion carry her away. She did not try to win a man, especially not an alpha male like Ben, because alphas were dominant and predatory and they preferred to do the hunting.
But this was different. They were on a darkened terrace, with the perfumed night pressing in around them. Heated awareness pulsed through her as she grappled with the dangerous knowledge that Ben still wanted her.
It wasn’t love, not even close.
But it was a start.
If Elena had worked with Nick—who, let’s face it, had been an extremely unpromising boyfriend—Sophie could work with Ben. In that moment a world of possibilities opened up and a year of wallowing in victimhood was gone. She was back to her normal ultraorganized, controlling self with a project to manage, and that project was Ben Sabin.
She closed the distance between them. “Let’s not worry about the commitment issue right now,” she said smoothly, her palms gliding over his shoulders.
Three
A jolt of pure sensual awareness hit Ben with all the force of a freight train. But, as Sophie wound her arms around his neck, he also couldn’t help noticing the odd expression on her face, as if she was assessing him for a position in one of her successful luxury fashion stores. As if he was an employee with hidden potential she was determined to unlock.
Keeping a tight leash on his control, he stared down into a face that had fascinated him from the moment he had first seen Sophie two-and-a-half years ago. He had just taken the job as construction manager with Nick. With liquid dark eyes, cheekbones to die for, a firm chin and a distractingly husky voice, Sophie Messena was drop-dead gorgeous in anyone’s language.
He was also aware that it was not just how Sophie looked that attracted him, because she had an identical twin who looked and sounded exactly the same. And he didn’t feel a thing for Francesca.
When he was near Sophie, something happened. It was like being plugged into an electrical outlet; every cell in his body tightened and all brain function stopped. She could have a bag over her head and he would still recognize her.
“I thought you didn’t want this,” he ground out, “that you weren’t a glass half-empty girl.”
And it was a fact that, with Sophie, half a glass was all he could afford to offer. As mesmerizingly attractive as she was, she was exactly the kind of pampered, spoiled rich girl on the hunt for a wealthy husband or a trophy affair he usually went out of his way to avoid.
Six years ago when he had established his first construction business, he had done the one thing he had promised himself he would never do, after being caught up in the messy breakup of his parents’ marriage: he had fallen for a rich man’s daughter. Even knowing the pitfalls, he had worked to attain her and to hold her. Then, when a financial crash had almost bankrupted him, Melissa had walked the same day. She had handed him back his engagement ring and smoothly told him that she could never marry someone poor. To rub salt in the wound, within the week she had moved in with an extremely wealthy and older business competitor.
Since then Ben had worked hard to rebuild his finances, climbing corporate ladders as he managed construction for other firms. In that time his experiences with women had done nothing to change his mind. He knew how it worked; money married money.
Sophie, who had been born with a diamond-encrusted spoon in her mouth, wouldn’t have looked at him twice if he hadn’t been successful. And the stakes had recently gotten a whole lot higher. When he had started working for Nick Messena, there had been an eighteen-month period during which Sophie had kept a cool distance despite the attraction that had sizzled between them.
A year ago, he had inherited a multibillion-dollar construction and real estate business and Sophie Messena had slept with him. He had to consider that her main focus wasn’t him, personally, but his inheritance.
It didn’t feel that way right now, though. She lifted up on her toes and fitted herself against him as if their last passionate encounter had been just hours ago and the past year of separation hadn’t happened. Close enough that there was no way she could miss exactly how much he still wanted her.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Sophie murmured, a husky catch to her voice.
Ben’s body tightened on a powerful surge of desire. Maybe he could have kept his perspective, he thought grimly, if he hadn’t seen her on Tobias Hunt’s arm. Something fierce and primal had risen up inside him. And it had only grown worse when he learned who Tobias was. Ben’s cool, controlled plan to seduce Sophie Messena in order to put to rest the fatal attraction he had so far failed to shake had crashed and burned.
If Hunt had been one of the normal run of men Sophie had been dating—soft, manicured men who took orders and drove desks—Ben could have maintained his aloofness. However, there was nothing ordinary or even remotely domesticated about Hunt despite the fact that he had spent several months working for Gabriel Messena, presumably to gain experience with playing the financial market. Aside from being the scion of an international manufacturing conglomerate, which, among other things specialized in high-tech military equipment, Hunt was ex-military.
Even though Ben was aware that he was being seduced, his hands, of their own volition, settled at her hips, pulling her closer still. There was his problem, he thought. This encounter with Sophie was following a familiar, conflicted pattern. He couldn’t resist her, and he couldn’t trust her.
But damned if he’d stand tamely aside and let Hunt move in on her.
Sophie’s gaze was oddly considering, giving him the inescapable feeling that he was being evaluated in some way. She brushed her lips against his, sending a rush of heat through him that tightened every muscle in his body.
“About that glass,” she said huskily. “Half a glass will do for now.”
Francesca stepped out onto the terrace and stopped dead. Sophie was kissing Ben Sabin, and it was not just a casual peck.
For long seconds she was frozen in place, not knowing what to do. Usually, Sophie was extremely careful with men. She almost never let any of the men she dated so much as kiss her. Francesca knew for a fact that Sophie had not slept with anyone until Ben. She also understood why Sophie was so picky.
Ever since their father had been killed in a car accident with his alleged mistress, Sophie had been fragile about relationships. Maybe that was because Sophie had always had an unusual character. She tended to be black-and-white in her thinking. When it came to trust it was all or nothing. Added to that, she had been Daddy’s girl, then the father she had adored had tipped her world upside down by betraying her twice. The first time by dying, the second by apparently having a mistress, which Sophie had viewed as an utter betrayal of the entire family.
Consequently, when it came to relationships, she practically interviewed a potential date before she committed. Then she micromanaged the “relationships” because she hated anything unscripted or creative happening.
The droves of men who fell for her didn’t understand what they were letting themselves in for. It was like watching an assembly line, with no hope that any of them would make the grade.
Until Ben.
A little anxiously Francesca skulked in the shadows of a large potted ficus, trying to stay out of sight. She was glaringly aware that with her platinum-blond hair, it was terminally difficult to hide because she practically glowed in the dark. She tucked herself more firmly behind the plant, ignoring the discomfort as a branch scraped her jaw and caught in her hair. Her stomach tightened as one kiss morphed into a second, then a third.
Seconds later, Sophie took Ben’s hand and led him down the steps into the garden. Francesca had to steel herself against rushing after Sophie. The only thing that stopped her was that Sophie seemed to be taking the lead and not Ben She frowned, tossing up whether or not to call Sophie and try to talk some sense into her. Although, given the way they had kissed, she didn’t hold out much hope!
A faint sound made Francesca straighten with a start. She almost died on the spot when she realized that the person who had busted her for spying on Sophie was the guy she’d had a crush on for the past couple of years, John Atraeus. She attempted to shuffle out from behind the tree but a strand of hair had caught on a branch of the ficus.
She pulled on the strand, which stayed stubbornly tangled.
“Wait. Let me do that.” John stepped close enough that she could feel the warmth of his body, smell the tantalizing scent of his gorgeous cologne. His jaw brushed her forehead, sending a hot zing of awareness through her as he worked on the silky strand, which was so blond it still startled her.
“All done.” His gaze met hers for a long moment, then he frowned. “Damn. What have you done to your jaw?”
She registered the faint sting, touched the area and felt the dampness of blood. She vaguely remembered a scrape from one of the branches, but she had been so intent on worrying about Sophie she hadn’t paid it much attention.
As she stepped away from the tree, John produced a snow-white handkerchief. She stared at the beautifully folded linen and embarrassment burned through her, along with an uncharacteristic thread of panic. This was not the way it was supposed to be. She had wanted to be cool and sophisticated, more like Sophie, less like Jane of the jungle with pieces of tree caught in her hair. “I can’t use that.”
John glanced around the terrace, which held a few scattered groups of people. “The only entrance to the bathrooms is inside, which means you’ll have to walk back through a party crowd that’s crawling with media.” He lifted a brow. “If you’ll hold still for a second or two, I’ll press the handkerchief against the cut until it at least stops bleeding.”
Horror struck Francesca at the thought of how many media personalities and reporters there were, every one of them with a camera and longing to catch her looking bad. “Okay.”
Another half step, and he tilted her head slightly to one side and pressed the folded handkerchief against her jaw. Francesca knew she should be concentrating on how happy she was to have a practical solution to fixing her face, but with John’s fingers firm on the sensitive skin of her jaw and the clean scent of him in her nostrils, all she could think of was that finally, even if it hadn’t happened exactly as she’d planned, she was close to John.
John lifted the pad, refolded it, then pressed it against her skin again. His breath feathered across her forehead, and for a long, dizzying moment she wondered what would happen if she closed the oh-so-tiny gap between them, clutched the lapels of his jacket, went up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth.
Taking a deep breath, she met his gaze boldly, but in the instant that she made the quarter step toward him, a vibrating sound emanated from his jacket pocket.
“That’ll be the call I was waiting for.” Leaving her holding the handkerchief, John stepped away, cell held to one ear.
Francesca teetered, just a little off balance. She had actually been on the verge of kissing him. Her cheeks burned even hotter. Had he noticed? she wondered. In any event, she no longer had to die wondering why John had been on the terrace. He had not come looking for her as she had hoped; he had been waiting for a call.
Feeling embarrassed and flustered because she had been a split second away from humiliating herself completely, Francesca remembered her jaw. She found her compact and peered at the scratch, which was absurdly small yet had bled quite a lot. Luckily, her dress was red and, thankfully, the pressure had worked, stopping the bleeding. Refolding the once pristine handkerchief, she stuffed it in her clutch and resolved to launder and return it to John. Probably by post.
A few paces away, leaning on the wrought iron railing, one hand thrust casually in the pocket of his narrow dark pants, phone to his ear, John was speaking not in English, but in liquid, totally sexy Medinian.
Francesca knew she should cut and run now, before she did make an utter fool of herself. Instead, she lingered near John, while she soaked in the liquid cadences of his deep voice and the romance of a language that their families shared and which she now wished she’d made more of an effort to learn.
Using the excuse of needing to tidy herself before she went back to the party as a reason for staying out on the terrace, she extracted another twig from her hair and tossed it into the midst of the tree branches. Searching through her beaded evening bag, she found a comb and began running it through her hair with slow, systematic strokes.
When her hair felt smooth and sleek, she deposited the comb back in her bag and snapped the clutch closed. As she did so a thought made her mood plummet. She was probably wasting her time waiting out here with John. Even though his last flame, a gorgeous blonde model, was finally out of the picture, and there did seem to be a momentary vacuum of blondes, it was entirely possible that John had brought someone else to the party.
Every other time she had been at the same social event with John, he’d had a beautiful girl on his arm. She didn’t know why she hadn’t considered that possibility before now.
Feeling both annoyed and depressed, she dragged her gaze from the mouthwatering cut of John’s cheekbones and the intriguing hollows beneath, the totally sexy dimple that flashed out as he grinned. She scanned the terrace, half-expecting to see his beautiful new girlfriend waiting for him.
Suddenly, changing her hair color to blond so she could level the playing field and give herself a fighting chance seemed a little desperate. She had been certain that the attraction she felt was mutual, but now her thinking seemed horribly flawed and any hope that she would finally end up in John’s arms practically nonexistent.
John terminated the call and straightened away from the wrought iron railing. He slipped the cell back into his jacket pocket, and suddenly nerves she normally never felt with a man kicked in.
She was used to being in charge, to picking and choosing and being the one who said no. But for reasons she could not quite pin down, John Atraeus was important. Every time she bumped into him, she got the feeling, and tonight it was stronger than ever, tingling through her like an electrical charge and reaffirming a conviction that had stayed steady for almost two years: that John Atraeus belonged to her, and she to him.
John glanced at her hair, a faint frown of puzzlement making him look even more handsome. “So, why were you hiding behind the ficus? A new life as a private detective?”
“Just looking out for my sister. She’s with someone who—well, I’m not so sure he’s good for her—”
“Ben Sabin. He’s hard to miss.”
Francesca’s fingers tightened on her clutch. For some reason John seemed disposed to stick with her and talk, which was putting her on edge. Was he just being friendly? Or did he mean something more by it?
Now that she finally had the one-on-one time with him she had craved, contrarily, all she wanted to do now was hurry back to the room Nick had reserved for her at the resort, find some chocolate and try to pretend that tonight had never happened. “What about you?” She rubbed her palms over her upper arms, which now felt slightly chilled. “I’m guessing this is a work visit, since I saw you in Nick’s office.”
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