Craving Jamie

His revulsion to the idea she’d come here on the make was strong. He didn’t want her to be like that. Yet she was sizing up the men in the gallery. And dismissing them, one by one.

Cynicism soured his mind as he continued to observe her meticulous assessment of the male half of the company. If he was her mark, he was in the mood to string her along for a while before delivering a comeuppance she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. He despised freeloaders. He’d worked damned hard to get where he was. A pretty face and a beguiling body bought nothing from him. Except space in his bed if he really felt enticed to take what was offered.

She came through the archway that linked the two rooms on the first floor of the gallery. Jim tensed as her gaze swung towards him. Any second now, the moment of truth. He waited, a savage challenge brooding in his mind, his eyes simmering with dark intent.

She found him, her eyes widening as he stared straight at her. A questioning? An expectation of some response from him? Almost as if he should recognise her. Well, she was bound to disappointment if she thought that old line would work on him. He’d never seen her before in his life.

If there was one thing Jim prided himself on, it was total recall, people, places, figures. It was his one great talent, the means by which he had climbed to the pinnacle he now occupied, the hottest financier in town. The woman in yellow was not, and never had been, part of his world.

Her expression changed. It was as though she had mentally stepped back from her first reaction. She studied him with an intensity he found oddly discomforting. He could feel her trying to burrow under his skin to see the man inside. It was a cool, steady, calculating look, the kind an astute man might give in sizing up someone he was dealing with, not even a hint of sexuality in it.

It provoked Jim into moving, taking the initiative from her. She wanted to meet him? Fine! She would meet him on his terms.

He had a compelling urge to reduce her to simply another woman, a woman responding to him as a man. He wanted to strip off her deceptive cloak of spring, unmask both her body and mind. He wanted her flesh in his hands, naked of any illusion, grinding her into compliance to his will.

Deliberately he slid his eyes over the lush fullness of her breasts, his mouth curving into a smile of male appreciation. Her short skirt gave him a good view of her legs, too, long and lissome in silk stockings. He imagined them wound around him in submission. He would give her one hell of a serve for tricking him.

No one fooled Jim Neilson for long.

He was too wise in the ways of the world.

The yellow had been nothing but a spotlight. An impact colour. It would give him a lot of satisfaction ... taking it off her.

CHAPTER TWO

HEAT flooded through Beth. She hadn’t anticipated this—this sizing her up as a bed-worthy woman. He must have interpreted her staring at him as a come-on. Her stomach squirmed. Her mind whirled into a chaos of embarrassment.

To find him scrutinising her had been a heart-thumping shock. At first she’d thought... But he hadn’t recognised her. Not so much as a glimmer of anything familiar to him. Then somehow, she hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away. The pull was too strong to resist, to look for something left of the boy she had known.

Jamie, Jamie, her mind called to him, willing him to hear, to see, to remember. She had believed so strongly the bond between them would never be broken. Yet he hadn’t come to her as he vowed he would.

Where did it go, the feeling they’d shared? What forces had severed it for him? She didn’t understand. Never would. It had been too real to her. Even though she had been little more than a child when they’d parted, the certainty had been deep and abiding that they were meant to be together.

Eight years they had known each other, their understanding growing, deepening, a love that was more than love though they had never acknowledged it in words. It went beyond words. An intermingling of spirits or an intuitive communion of minds.

But there was nothing now. Nothing coming back from him except the kind of interest a man took in a woman he found attractive. Or were his instincts picking up something else, undefined yet tantalising enough to want to dig deeper?

He moved, coming straight at her, and she found it impossible to look away or turn aside. Her feet seemed rooted to the floor. Her pulse was drumming in her ears. Her mind couldn’t come to grips with what she should do.

He was no longer the Jamie who had lived in her memory. Far from it. Fifteen years and an entirely different range of experience separated them from the childhood they’d shared in the valley. The last time she’d seen him in the flesh he was fifteen, she thirteen. And he was so different now. Not even the photographs had prepared her for this much difference.

His eyes locked onto hers, hard and compelling, sizzling with sexual signals. In some weird way it both frightened and excited her. No escape from a direct confrontation. He was not going to let her go easily. She was his quarry at the moment, and his concentration on her was like a magnetic force.

She could sense the dangerous, ruthless edge to him, the steely will of a survivor, a mind constantly watchful, determined on knowing, sifting, acting. It completely unnerved her. Yet she should have realised it had to be there in him to get where he was.

All the clippings Aunty Em had sent from newspapers and business magazines, reporting on the spectacular rise of Jim Neilson in financial circles, the man with the Supercray computer mind, the analytical genius, always one step ahead of market trends... It had surely been implicit in those columns if she’d been objective enough to read between the lines.

He was always referred to as Jim. Never Jamie. Never any mention of his earlier life. It was Aunty Em’s opinion he had comprehensively blocked that out, and he wouldn’t welcome any reminder of the past. It was behind him. Dead and deeply buried. If he’d wanted to reconnect with Beth or any of the Delaney family, he’d had more than enough years—and money—to do so.

She had accepted that long ago, yet she’d still been drawn to take this chance of having a look at the man he had become. More than look, if she was ruthlessly honest with herself. The need to know, finally and conclusively, had to be laid to rest.

Suddenly challenged with meeting him face to face, she frantically fretted over what to say. He might hate her for bringing his valley life back to him. Might also put all sorts of false interpretations on her coming here to see him, now that he was regarded as someone worth knowing. She inwardly recoiled from such an outcome. Let it go, her mind screamed, even as he spoke and forced her to meet the immediate present.

“Can I offer you a glass of champagne?”

Her throat was dry. “Yes. Thank you,” she managed to say huskily. He was so close to her. Couldn’t he see Beth in her eyes?

He smiled as he handed the glass to her, a winning smile designed to charm a woman he was meeting for the first time. “You have the advantage over me.”

His voice had deepened since he was fifteen. His tone was low, sexy, seductive. It had a mesmerising effect on her. She didn’t catch his meaning. “Pardon?”

“You know who I am,” he stated, his eyes subtly challenging her to deny it.

“Yes,” she admitted. Stupid to pretend otherwise. Her smile was wry. “I know many things about you. But that’s not really knowing you, is it?”

He laughed. It was a dark sound. Her skin prickled, instinct warning her to beware. This was not Jamie. This was very much a predatory male on the prowl.

“Media reports on me are usually slanted to suit the journalist,” he said mockingly. “Much better to do your own personal research.”

Blatant suggestiveness. Beth tried to push aside the disturbing physical element to satisfy some of her curiosity about him. “Do you ever let anyone into your private world?”

“I’ve just opened my door to you. Would you like to progress to, shall we say, a more intimate level?”

The sexual magnetism he was projecting took her breath away. Almost everything about him took her breath away. He was a head taller than she was, and she was above average height. His once slight and wiry physique was now solid with hard muscle, exuding masculinity.

His face no longer had a lean and hungry look. It was filled out in a strikingly handsome way, strong and firm, aggressively male, the brilliant intelligence in his dark eyes adding a dynamic quality that made it difficult to look away from him. His thick black hair was closely cropped, like a shiny helmet, emphasising a sleek animal appeal that was highlighted by his black leather jacket.

Beth found herself wondering whether his expertise as a lover would live up to the pulse-quickening promise of his looks. He was arrogantly confident of his attraction. No doubt he had every reason to be. But what did he deliver when it came to intimacy?

She sipped the champagne, giving her heart time to calm down while she considered how best to handle what was happening. It was totally outside any scenario she had imagined.

“Come now, don’t go shy on me,” he chided. “I much prefer spontaneity to calculation.”

Hard cynicism behind his surface amusement. The impulse to probe a little spurred her to ask, “Do you make a habit of picking up women on a whim?”

“No. I tend to be very selective. Consider yourself an exception to the rule.”

The hope that wouldn’t be stifled kicked through her heart. “Why make an exception of me?” Did he feel something? A faint thread of familiarity teasing his mind?

“I was bored with women in black. Your yellow suit caught my eye. Then you caught my eye. Are you going to tell me your name?”

She shook her head, knowing it would bring an abrupt end to this strangely piquant encounter. To tell him would shame her. If he didn’t feel it...

“What point is there in remaining a mystery woman?” His eyes narrowed. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“Attached?”