Forgotten Sins

‘All he’d have to do is wave a wedding ring,’ Aline snapped, adding lamely, ‘Anyway, he might have girls instead of sons.’

Hope’s brows lifted. ‘So? You’re living proof that women can make it in the world of business.’

‘Ah, but I was my father’s son,’ Aline told her, her mouth twisting.

‘He must have been proud of you.’

Relaxing her rigid shoulders, Aline pinned on a smile. ‘I hope so,’ she said, glancing surreptitiously past the baby to where Jake and Keir had been joined by Lauren, all flicking hair and sultry seduction.

Jake looked up. For long, timeless seconds their eyes clashed, duelling across the room.

He radiated energy—a formidable, hypnotic power that sent shivery chills up her spine. Nothing like Michael, who’d been big-hearted and gallant and joyous—and who’d died. Why did death take the best?

Deliberately she broke contact, only to meet Lauren’s gaze; the woman lifted a glass of champagne to her, her smile glittering. Aline forced her lips into an answering curve, grateful when Emma leapt excitedly in her arms, almost overbalancing. Hauling her back to safety, she said crisply, ‘Emma’s not the only one who flirts with Jake.’

‘No.’ Hope’s voice was troubled. ‘Something’s been hounding Lauren for years, but it looks as though she’s getting really close to the edge. Her father’s so worried about her.’

With the confidence of a child who has known nothing but love, Emma raised a commanding hand, worked her mouth earnestly, and eventually produced a sound so close to boo that both women laughed, and Aline forgot Lauren’s hostility.

In a few minutes she allowed herself another glance across the room to see Lauren flirting with another young man, Keir charming a pleasant middle-aged woman, and Jake talking—no, listening—to an earnest Tony Hudson, one of the trustees of Michael’s charitable trust.

Making a mental note to contact Tony again this week and try again to persuade him it was time the trust gave some of its millions of dollars to the young people it was set up to help, Aline relaxed.

But when the hair on the back of her neck stood up in primitive recognition of danger, she knew without raising her eyes who’d joined them. Right in front of her she saw long legs and narrow hips, a man’s confident, almost aggressive stance.

Thank heavens Jake’s negotiations with the bank were over; from now on others would deal with him and his business. She’d no longer wake each morning haunted by the challenge in his dark face, the special note in his voice that reached right down inside her, taunting her with her hidden weakness.

Keeping her head down, she dropped a kiss on the baby’s satin cheek.

Beside her Hope said, ‘Jake! How lovely to see you!’

‘How do you manage to glow like that?’ The practised compliment came easily, but there was no doubt about the pure male appreciation in his voice.

Emma bounced and launched herself forwards, holding out chubby arms with a smile that almost split her face.

‘Well, button, is that a tooth I see?’ Jake’s voice came closer as he dropped onto his haunches and touched the baby’s cheek.

Startled, Aline looked into tawny-gold eyes—eagle’s eyes, she’d thought at their first meeting, piercing and merciless. Subsequent meetings hadn’t changed her mind.

He smiled crookedly at her. ‘Hello, Aline.’

A flutter of pulse at the base of her throat drew his gaze; weighed down by the laughing baby, Aline couldn’t drag her eyes from his face. He was so close she could see the small laughter lines fanning out from the corners of those relentless eyes, the thick black lashes, and the chiselled, beautiful lines of his mouth with its thinner upper lip and disturbingly curved lower.

Always before she’d avoided his scrutiny by focusing just past him; now, her head spinning, her senses afire, she drowned in gold. Something had altered. She sensed a difference in Jake, a deeply dominant shift in attitude.

With an effort of will that took all her strength, she deliberately shut down her treacherous awareness, withdrawing into the guarded fastness only Michael had been able to enter.

Jake’s mouth curved in mocking recognition of her silent rejection. He got to his feet with a lithe grace that proclaimed power and control. ‘Here, give the heroine of the day to me,’ he said, reaching out confident arms.

Transferring a chuckling baby meant that Aline had to get much closer, had to touch him for the first time except when they’d shaken hands—something she’d tried to limit, only to have him force the gesture every time they’d met and parted.

Her heart thudded painfully; without looking at him she settled Emma into his iron embrace and stepped back, ambushed by the heat radiating from him, and his hard, tensile masculinity.

All right, she told herself as the conversation was taken over efficiently by the others, admit it. You are—you’re aware of him.

The last honest part of her brain sniggered and drawled, To put it bluntly, you want him. Even more bluntly, you want to go to bed with him.

Well, why not? It was merely a ruthlessly physical ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ response, carefully formulated by Mother Nature to perpetuate the species. He was all alpha male, while she was a woman in her late twenties with her biological clock beginning to tick.

She hated being so vulnerable to Jake Howard’s intense magnetism, his elemental strength and determination. Her weakness betrayed everything she’d felt for her husband because not even Michael had delivered such a blazing punch of erotic excitement.

But she’d shared much more with Michael; he’d valued her for many other things besides her femaleness.

Every time Jake looked at her she saw recognition of her as a sexual being in those eagle’s eyes, in the way he spoke and responded to her. Even when they’d been negotiating hard and forcefully he’d made sure she knew he liked what he saw.

And his tactics had worked. Now her skin tightened whenever he came into a room, his presence invading her guarded detachment.

Hope laughed as he tossed Emma into the air. ‘You can do that all day and she’ll still want more—she has a cast-iron stomach. You’re very experienced with children.’

‘I like them,’ he said simply. ‘Nice basic things, kids. You know exactly where you are with them—if they don’t like you they howl and struggle; if they decide you’re a fit person to hold them they smile and coo.’ His glinting eyes moved to Aline’s face. ‘There’s no wasting time with children; they won’t allow it.’

Hope’s brows shot up, but she returned a remark that made him laugh, and then Keir arrived, and for five minutes or so they chatted with relaxed ease.

Too soon, but inevitably, Hope and Keir moved on, taking Emma with them. With her usual store of small talk evaporating fast, Aline cast around for something innocuous to say before escaping.

Jake watched her from beneath his lashes, an unnerving glint of mockery lighting his eyes.

Edgily she summoned a cool smile. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to be here,’ she said, hoping the observation didn’t sound as inane to him as it did to her.

Her hope was dashed immediately. ‘You mean you assumed I wouldn’t be. Do you want me to go?’

‘No!’ She inhaled quickly, sharply, to settle her racing pulses. ‘Of course not,’ she said, encouraged when her voice revealed nothing more than polite interest.

She lifted her eyes, only to find them captured by his. Dazedly, she felt as though she’d fallen into frozen fire, lost all individuality, all reason, all control…

Forcing another tight smile, she went on, ‘I thought you were in Vancouver,’ and wrenched her gaze free of the forbidden imprisonment of his, fixing her eyes on his mouth.

Only to discover that it was as dangerous to her peace of mind as his tawny-gold eyes. Sex, she reminded herself sturdily, that’s all it is. Yes, it was humiliating to be attracted to a man like Jake, a man so unlike Michael they had almost nothing in common except their gender, but she’d get over it now she didn’t have to see him so often.

‘Jets leave Canada every day for New Zealand. I plan to be seeing quite a bit of Keir and his wife in the future.’

‘They’re a lovely family,’ Aline said tautly.

Silence stretched between them, buzzing with hidden significance. He waited, but when she refused to break it he said with smooth insolence, ‘And I plan to be seeing more of you.’

She gave him a small, meaningless smile. ‘I don’t imagine we’ll need to meet again now that we’ve stitched up the deal—’

‘This has nothing to do with the deal.’ He paused before saying in a voice underpinned by steel, ‘This is about us, Aline. You and me.’