Her Best Laid Plans

That was where she came in. An arranged ‘chance meeting’ between her and Jared with some subtle flirting was usually enough to leave the impression that he had effectively moved on.

Leaning back against the cab’s fading leather, Amanda admitted to a tiny, miniscule really, loss of perspective where Jared and their sporadic role-playing Limpet-dispensing exercises were concerned. Because for all that was up-front, solid, responsible and in-control about Jared—there was, lurking just beneath the surface, a hint of danger and a dark sensuousness that any woman would be inclined to want to try and entice out to play. Add in the six-feet-two, exquisitely muscled, chiselled cheek-boned, full-lipped, green-eyed, raven-haired wrapping and well …

Amanda squirmed. Darn it, was she going to have to get out “The Plan” again?

She chewed on her bottom lip. Maybe these days the camaraderie between them had been replaced with something far less easy to label—he still needed her help didn’t he?

The light on Jared King’s phone flashed and he shot a glance to his companion before picking it up to read his message.

‘I’ll be there in fifteen. You owe me ;-) Amanda xx’

He breathed out silently, though his shoulders relaxed maybe a millimetre and switched off the device before replacing it on the table. Briefly he lamented not having time to make the text more explicit, but he’d sort it out with her when she arrived.

Glancing back down at the familiar menu before him, he frowned, unable to concentrate. Of their own accord, his eyes glanced at the woman sat opposite him.

Ostensibly, she too was looking at the menu, but every time his eyes lowered he could feel her silently assessing him.

He’d tried telling himself she had to be feeling as shot-to-pieces uncomfortable as he was. But all evidence pointed to the contrary. The long flight and lengthy wait in his office must have given her all the time she needed to compose herself.

He, on the other hand, had returned from a property acquisition meeting to find his PA Janey close to carrying out a discreet security check on his very non-scheduled visitor.

That had been twenty minutes ago.

Normal state of play—twenty minutes was nineteen minutes longer than he needed to bounce back after a shock.

But then he hadn’t planned to be meeting a sister he hadn’t set eyes on for ten years.

He tried unobtrusively to check his watch. Surely fifteen minutes had come and gone. Where was Amanda? He needed her particular brand of easy-flow, relaxed small-talk to soothe his shock and cover the awkward silences while he figured the angles.

Instead, he sat, waiting for his sister, Nora, to speak whilst silently processing a thousand questions and their myriad answers as to why she was here.

‘Aren’t you even going to ask how he is?’ Nora asked with the succinct and confident tone provided by years of the best education money could buy.

Without looking up from the menu, Jared, careful to absent all inflection from his words, asked, ‘How is he?’

She sighed, ‘Do you really want to know or are you just being polite?’

‘I could tell you I really want to know but after ten years in New York maybe I’m no longer as polite.’

‘Wow. I thought it would be easier than this. I must have been mad. I guess I thought when I saw you I’d be able to cut to the chase.’

Jared felt his chest tighten. ‘I’d say getting on a plane, travelling thousands of miles, and coming to my office pretty much equates with cutting to the chase. How’d you know where I worked anyway?’

‘I asked everyone’s faithful friend, Google.’

Her sarcasm slammed into him and he knew he deserved every bit of it. He hadn’t exactly made himself invisible in New York, but he hadn’t made it especially easy to find him either.

But then, never for one moment had he assumed any of them would want to.

He thought back to the last time he’d seen her. It had been her nineteenth birthday party. He had known then that he was leaving; his bag already stowed next to his beloved motorbike at the foot of the sprawling King estate.

Guilt worked its way up from his gut.

For want of a sense of order he did what was expected of one in a restaurant and signalled a waiter.

As soon as the waiter left, Nora leant forward. ‘Look, I’m just going to come right out and say this before I totally lose my nerve. I, that is—’

Jared picked up his imported beer and drank to coat the swirling emotion he now felt in his stomach. The Kings didn’t do hesitation. It was educated out of them. Decide upon what to say. Then say it. Leave no room for misinterpretation.

He watched as Nora swept her hand over her sleek black bob. Her hand was trembling. Damn it, where was Amanda?

And then Nora found her voice and Jared heard only the first sentence before the anger gathered and threatened to spew from his solar plexus like a scene out of Alien.

Locking his jaw, he breathed in, forcing himself to acknowledge the fullness of what she was saying. His eyes dropped to his sister’s delicate hand resting on top of his clenched fist, offering comfort; something he wasn’t entitled to—making it the last thing he wanted.

‘You’re sure of this?’ he ground out.

She nodded and he was left reeling. Until he remembered he was a King. ‘Well I can give you my answer now. It’s a resounding “no”.’

‘And since when has a King ever taken “no” for an answer?’

The question hung in the air, and Jared realised that his little sister had grown up, inheriting a few of the old man’s traits along the way. He breathed out slowly. ‘I don’t care if you take it or not. My answer won’t change.’

He felt himself being assessed once more and wasn’t at all comfortable it was his baby sister doing it.

‘Look, I realise this must have come as a bit of a shock, but aren’t you a bit old to still be cultivating the tortured, bad-boy image?’

Jared withdrew his fist from the table and stretched it out on his thigh. Image? He’d always assumed he’d sealed his reputation when he’d left, without a backwards glance for the sisters who’d once looked up to him, who’d once believed in him.

As the waiter arrived to place piping-hot dishes on the rotating glass plate at the table’s centre Jared kept his expression deliberately blank.

He needed a moment to adjust, that was all.

Shock could do strange things to a person.

Something he knew for a fact when he turned his head slightly to the woman doing the siren-like slow-mo walk through the maze of tables towards him, and briefly imagined that it was Amanda.

Cataloguing sexy high heels, black pencil skirt and form-fitting black sweater, long chestnut hair and flawless creamy skin… all his thoughts lurched to a stop when he zeroed in on the pair of twinkly, button-brown eyes.

Alright. Okay. There had to be a really good explanation as to why Amanda Gray had walked in wearing something so far removed from her usual garb. He couldn’t help but look at her in a thoroughly off-limits way and if he didn’t stop staring in the next ten seconds, all hell was going to break loose.

Nobody blind-sided him twice in one day.

‘On your way somewhere special?’ he asked, inwardly cursing the gravel-like quality to his voice as he rose automatically from his chair to greet her.

She shrugged her shoulders as if it wasn’t important and yet a part of him, the part which had sat up to take notice as soon as she’d entered the room, wanted to beg to differ. Shock had got a hold of him. Simple as that, he cautioned, as displacement therapy played dirty with his mind, telling him it was perfectly okay to respond to the sweet temptation of Amanda leaning into him.

He felt some of his famous constraint shake loose. Felt the devil-may-care attitude he’d stamped so forcefully from his personality ten years before resurface with a thud to beat a rhythm over his consciousness and awaken the Jared of old.