Ben’s hands settled on her waist, holding her in place as the kiss deepened. Relief spiraled through Sophie. They seemed to be back on track. Now she just needed to stay focused on reminding him of the powerful chemistry that had bound them together from the first and which had endured despite his walking out on her a year ago. She needed him to wake up and see her as precious, to value her and want a relationship; to do what he did in business and ruthlessly pursue her until she finally said yes.
The thought that she might actually say yes to a proposal of marriage from Ben startled her enough that she froze in place. Somehow her thoughts had raced ahead, possibly because she was used to “visioning” for her company and had seen the potential in Ben. The plain fact was that Ben had a lot of catching up to do before she would ever consider him for the role.
Ben’s gaze was wary. “What have I done?”
“Nothing...yet.” She ran a hand down his chest, then lower, her confidence building at his reaction to her lightest touch. “I’m hoping that’s about to change.”
A split second later, he rolled, his weight pressing her down into the mattress. Feeling his fingers hook through the waistband of her panties, she lifted her hips so he could draw them down her legs. Her breath came in as she felt him lodge between her thighs.
“Is this fast enough for you?” he muttered, his gaze locked with hers as he slowly slid home.
She reached for breath as she adjusted to the shape of him. “I’d say it’s...just about right.”
Sophie grasped his shoulders and tried to breathe, tried to control the exquisite sensations that poured through her as he withdrew and pushed deep again. But breathing was difficult as pleasure, heated and unbearable, gripped her. The aching sensation low in her belly coiled and tightened, then splintered, spinning her into the night.
Long minutes later Sophie roused to the slow stroke of Ben’s fingers on her back. The sensations that had been so overwhelming stirred through her again, tightening every muscle, every cell of her body. Ben, who was propped on one elbow, bent and kissed her on the mouth, taking his time. This time the lovemaking was slower, languorous, the pleasure so intense and prolonged that when she finally climaxed, tears squeezed from beneath her lids. She knew it was dangerous to feel too much, and dangerous to let Ben see how much he affected her. But she couldn’t help herself because in a curious, inexplicable way, making love with Ben felt like coming home.
Bright moonlight beamed through the curtains, rousing Ben.
He noted the time on the digital clock on the bedside table. It was a little after four. Sophie was half-sprawled against him, her head on his shoulder, one slim arm flung across his chest as if even in sleep she wanted to hold on to him.
But he knew that the desire Sophie was feeling was ephemeral and would soon be displaced by the reality of her wealthy, privileged and high-powered life. The Messenas were old money, and with his rough military and construction background, he had no place in their world despite his recent inheritance.
It was a reality he knew well, because he had seen the dynamic play out with his parents. Despite the passion that had driven them together, they had been a mismatch, the brash cowboy who had struck oil on his dustbowl of a ranch, and the cool, sophisticated heiress who had left when Ben’s father had gone broke. The fact that his own engagement had followed the same pattern had only burned the truth in deeper. As gorgeous as Sophie was, as much as he wanted her, he was once bitten, twice shy. They were the kind of mismatch he could not afford in his life, again.
Plus, as beautiful and feminine as Sophie was, he knew she possessed the same kind of ruthless, entrepreneurial qualities her brothers possessed. The fact that she had initiated a seduction tonight and then started talking business in the middle of it more or less proved the fact that she had ulterior motives. The only honest thing they had shared was the sex, and that had been spectacular.
Brooding, he took in the way the silvery moonlight, diffused by gauzy drapes, flowed over her cheekbones, highlighting her faintly imperious nose and finely cut mouth, and investing the silken lashes that feathered her cheeks with an added, fascinating sense of mystery. Lying naked in tangled linen sheets, Sophie had a timeless beauty that tugged at him as if in some indefinable way she was his.
Ben rebuffed the romantic notion; it had no place in his practical, pragmatic life. And there was his problem, he thought. He had come to the party tonight with the express intention of putting an end to his obsession with Sophie Messena. A part of him had hoped that when he saw her he wouldn’t want her, that he could put the stubborn attraction behind him and move on.
That notion had evaporated in the first moment. One turn of her head, a glimpse of her level dark gaze and gorgeous cheekbones, and he had been gone.
When she had tipped the glass of water over him, his fate had been sealed. Sophie’s jealousy had hit him like a kick in the chest, igniting an instant response. Her seeming hurt had fooled him...until she had started talking business. The second she had begun probing into his business affairs, reality had reasserted itself. He had hoped that spending another night with Sophie would be enough to get her out of his system, but the grim fact was that nothing had changed. Somehow, he had once again gotten caught in an obsession with the type of woman he had sworn off.
It was a mistake, but at least now he knew it had to end.
He fought the urge to draw her close, which would be fatal. Considering his track record with Sophie Messena, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from making love to her again. Instead, he gently disentangled himself, eased from the bed and padded through the suite retrieving his clothes. He dressed then let himself out and made his way to the room he had booked for the night.
After a quick shower, he called the concierge and arranged for his Jeep to be delivered to the front entrance of the hotel. As he strode across the foyer, he found he couldn’t walk away cold this time. On impulse, he paused at the concierge desk. The instant he arranged for two dozen deep red roses to be delivered to Sophie in the morning, he sensed he was making a mistake. A mistake he had made once before, when he had sent flowers to a business partner’s daughter as a simple thank-you for being his date at a work dinner.
Since then, Buffy Holt had pushed the social agenda, inserting herself into Ben’s meetings with her father and making it clear she wanted a relationship. She treated every social event Ben had attended with her father as a date, and had repeatedly contacted him online and through his business numbers and email addresses. She had even gotten hold of his cell phone number and kept messaging him. He believed the term was stalking.
Not that Sophie would stalk him, he thought; she had too much class for that. She would ditch him,, like she had a year ago.
That fact should please him Once he could forget how good it had felt to have Sophie back in his arms.
Sophie turned over in bed and burrowed into the softness of a down pillow. She was caught in a dream, a delicious, tender dream where Ben was smiling and relaxed and holding her, pulling her close for another kiss.
Automatically, half dreaming, half awake, she reached for him, and found...nothing. Her eyes flickered open. The soft light of dawn flooded the room, illuminating tumbled sheets and a lone shoe on the floor. She drew a breath, but even before she turned her head on the pillow, she knew she was alone.
Her heart began to pound. She drew another deep breath and attempted to calm down. Just because Ben wasn’t in the bed didn’t mean he had gone, as in gone. He could be in the bathroom or the sitting room. Maybe he was even out on the terrace, taking one of his business calls and being careful not to wake her. Dragging the sheets back, she retrieved the robe from the back of the bedroom door and shrugged into it. Her stomach tensed as she surveyed the room. Ben’s clothes were gone. But if he was outside, of course he would be dressed.
She checked the bathroom, which was empty. The towels looked fresh and undisturbed, which meant Ben hadn’t showered. Feeling suddenly sick to her stomach, she turned to leave. As she did so the huge mirror over the double vanity threw her reflection back at her, momentarily riveting her in place. Her hair was tousled, her mouth soft, the robe gaped to show a faint abrasion on her collarbone where Ben’s roughened jaw must have scraped across her skin.
Jerking the door closed, she walked into the sitting room and then out onto the terrace, which was also empty. She did another circuit of the rooms, looking for a note, something, anything.
Grabbing the phone she rang down to the concierge desk. She didn’t know for sure if Ben was booked in here; he could have just planned to attend the party and leave. But if he was staying the night, maybe he had simply gone to his own suite to shower and change? When she was put through to Ben’s suite, a surge of relief made her legs feel as weak as noodles.
The phone rang for a period of time, then switched to the answering service. Sophie hung up, took a deep breath and called the concierge again. Her voice was husky and a shade too flat as she asked if Ben had checked out. She had to wait while the concierge spoke to another staff member. He finally came back to the phone and apologized. Apparently, Ben had left in the early hours and, because he was a guest of Mr. Messena and no payment was required, the night staffer had failed to check him out.
Sophie thanked the concierge and fumbled the phone back into its cradle. Feeling like an automaton, she sat down on one of the comfortable couches and stared blindly at the beautiful suite. Her gaze lingered on the waiter’s trolley with its bottle of champagne and the two flutes, both barely touched. Jaw tight, she pushed to her feet and wheeled the trolley toward the door. Parking it to one side of the small foyer, she yanked the door open, only to be confronted by a bellhop carrying a huge bunch of long-stemmed red roses.
Surprise registered in the bellhop’s gaze, then he grinned and handed her the roses. Sophie stared at the lavish bouquet, feeling as if all the air had been punched from her lungs. Roses, especially red roses, were a gift of love. Had she had gotten things totally wrong. Perhaps Ben hadn’t ruthlessly ditched her, after all, for the second time.
Maybe he’d had to leave because of some emergency, and there would be a note tucked in among the flowers? Feeling utterly confused, she told the bellhop to wait. Placing the gorgeous blooms on the coffee table, she quickly found her bag and extracted cash to tip him.
After he had wheeled the champagne trolley out into the hall, she closed the door and turned to stare at the roses. Her heart was pounding, which was faintly scary because the reason Ben had sent them shouldn’t matter so much. She was used to controlling relationships, setting the boundaries and terminating them when they didn’t work out. She had thought long and hard before she had slept with Ben the first time. This time the process had been somewhat more rushed, but in the end she had stayed true to herself. She had weighed the pros and cons and made the decision to risk sleeping with him a second time.
A quick search of the roses revealed no thoughtful note that might explain why he had left in the night without a goodbye.
Checklist, she thought grimly. Ben had left before sunup without an explanation and without the courtesy of leaving either a phone number or an address. The fact that he knew that she had his phone number and probably knew where he lived didn’t count; this was about manners. This time he’d had the decency to send flowers but the roses were depressingly devoid of scent and, though beautiful, weren’t even her color. Somehow that seemed symptomatic of everything about her nonrelationship with Ben. If he had known anything about her at all it would be that she liked perfumed flowers and white roses.
Faint sounds out in the hall signaled that housekeeping was doing the rounds. Picking up the roses and holding them at arm’s length, Sophie opened the door to her suite and gave the bunch to a tired-looking woman who was collecting room service trays that had been left outside of the suite opposite. When her face lit up, it somehow took the sting out of Ben’s gesture, which was patently devoid of anything but the most caveman-like acknowledgment that they had spent a night together.
Sophie returned to her room, her gaze automatically sheering away from the rumpled bed. She took a quick shower, then wrapped herself in a thick white towel as she combed the tangles out of her hair. She froze as she noticed a pink mark on the side of her neck, as well as the one on her collarbone. Both were clearly scrapes from Ben’s stubbled jaw, testament to the fact that she had just had a night of steamy passion with...someone.
Jaw taut, she dressed quickly in white jeans and a loose, pale gray boatneck cotton sweater. She dried her hair then took care of the marks on her neck and collarbone with dabs of concealer.
When she was finished, she could no longer see the marks, although that didn’t change the fact that she knew they were there. After applying light makeup and pinning her hair up into a loose knot, she stared at herself. She looked pale but composed, and disorientingly the same, as if she hadn’t just made a second horrendous mistake with Ben.
And she was still the same, she thought a little fiercely. Sleeping with Ben—being ditched by him a second time—had not changed anything about her. She had taken a calculated risk; it hadn’t worked out. Life moved on. She would take what positives she could from the experience. Next time she would be smarter about men: she would be smarter about Ben Sabin.
She did not know what on earth had attracted her to him in the first place. She must have been stark, staring crazy. Maybe it had been some kind of hormonally driven primitive desire to mate with a strong alpha male that had temporarily hijacked her brain? And, let’s face it, she had been brought up surrounded by the ridiculous amount of testosterone from four older brothers, so it made sense that on an instinctual level she would naturally tend toward the same kind of difficult, dominating male. Or maybe it was that, at twenty-seven, her biological clock was ticking and Ben had just happened to be around at the time? Whatever the reason, her usual radar for detecting what she called URM—Untrustworthy Rat Men—had failed.
She searched through her small traveling jewelry case and found the diamond studs her brothers had given her as a twenty-first birthday gift. The studs, made by her favorite designer, were deceptively simple. The stones were flawless and glowed with a pure white fire. They were a gift that signified love and thoughtfulness, because they were exactly what she would have chosen herself. More than that, they were a gift that, every time she wore them, made her feel loved and valued. It was a reassurance she desperately needed now.
With methodical precision, she fitted the gorgeous studs to her ears, then, driven by a desire to exit the suite and the hotel as quickly as possible, she threw her things into her overnight bag and checked her watch. Francesca had given her a lift because it hadn’t made sense for them both to drive out to Nick’s resort, so she was dependent on her sister or a cab for transport. It was a little early for Francesca, who hated getting up before ten on weekends, but Sophie decided to call anyway. The first call went through to voice mail, as did the second and third.
Feeling frustrated but now desperate to leave, Sophie hooked the strap of her tote over her shoulder and stepped out of the suite, wheeling her small case behind her. As she strolled toward the elevator, the doors slid open and she glimpsed a tall dark guy, his back to her as he waited for a woman with a stroller and two toddlers to exit. For a fractured moment, her mind said it was Ben, that he hadn’t left after all, but it wasn’t Ben, not even close.
The stranger’s gaze connected with hers as they descended to the lobby. She caught the flare of masculine speculation but by now totally off men, Sophie stared straight ahead. When the elevator came to a stop she stepped into the gorgeous marbled foyer, and tried Francesca’s phone again. This time she got a response. Relief at hearing her sister’s voice made her feel the tiniest bit shaky. “Good, you’re up,” she said as smoothly as she could manage. “I was hoping we could leave soon. Like now.”
“Leave?” Francesca’s voice sounded muffled, as if she’d just been dragged from a deep sleep. “I thought we’d agreed to stay for lunch with Nick.”
“Something’s come up. I need to get back to my apartment.” She had to squash the urge to confide the whole sorry story, which was weird because normally she was the strong one and it was Francesca crying on her shoulder.
“You sound a little strange. Is everything all right? Don’t tell me you and Ben—”
“I’m fine, and it’s nothing to do with Ben.”
“I thought you and he—”
“You thought wrong. He left...last night.” Which was only the truth.
“So you’re okay, that’s good.” Francesca smothered a yawn. “Look, can you take a taxi? I’m tired. You might not have had a late night, but I did. A very late night, if you get my drift.”
Sophie caught the low timbre of a masculine voice in the background and froze inside. Francesca was with someone, and evidently, despite the fact that the sun was up, he was still there instead of skulking off under cover of darkness.
She swallowed to keep the sudden huskiness from her voice. Until that moment she hadn’t realized how much she had been counting on the simple, uncomplicated comfort of being with her twin. “No problem. I’ll see you later.”
Slipping her phone into the back pocket of her jeans, she made her way to reception, which was now packed with tourists all wanting to check out or join a tour group that was assembling in one corner. A frustrating ten minutes later, she finally reached the desk and checked out. As she handed over her key she saw the familiar figure of John Atraeus, who was joining the adjacent queue.
He stared at her as if he was having trouble figuring out which twin she was.
“Sophie,” she said helpfully, and his face cleared.
“I know Francesca’s got blond hair, but even so, you’re...amazingly alike.”
“Apart from the hair, we’re identical. Although, in terms of personality, we’re poles apart.”
He grinned and shook his head. “The first time I ever met you both, I got that.”
Sophie hesitated. Now was the perfect time to extend the conversation and start steering it in the direction of business. Normally, that was exactly what she would do. But, after last night, all she wanted was to go home and do something—anything—to help get her balance back. With a shrug, she waved and headed for the door.
When she got outside there was a line of people waiting for taxis. Feeling more and more stressed and upset by the minute, she parked her bag and waited. Seconds later a sleek Mercedes slid to a halt by the curb. John Atraeus collected the keys from the valet and placed his bag in the back seat. He caught her gaze and lifted a brow. “I’m heading into town if you want a lift.”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Why not?”
Still feeling emotionally bruised by her encounter with Ben, Sophie was happy to relax in the passenger seat and let John do the talking. He was staying in town another night because he had a crucial meeting with a high-end group of franchises that were looking for a new home after the retail chain they were with had collapsed. If he could sign them, he could extend his reach into the uppermost end of the luxury market.
He hadn’t mentioned the group’s name so when she did, and said she had heard about the trouble they were having, he gave her a startled look.
She shrugged, still feeling curiously flat and divorced from a conversation that, normally, she would find fascinating because it was part of her business.
John braked for a stoplight then accelerated smoothly through the intersection. Sophie caught the flash of what looked like a delivery van veering toward them on John’s side. She opened her mouth to warn him, although she didn’t need to because John had already braked. Even so there was a sickening thud and she was knocked back in her seat by the airbags deploying.
A little grimly, she noted this was the second accident within a year. She wondered if there was going to be a third.
The car was stopped and the airbags had deflated, but that wasn’t what concerned Sophie. John appeared to be unconscious. Unfastening her belt, she leaned over to check him. Because Sophie’s mother was a trained paramedic she had made sure that both her daughters knew all the basics.
John was breathing steadily but didn’t respond to Sophie’s voice or a mild shake, so he was definitely unconscious. Not good. There was a lump forming on the side of his head, so it seemed clear he had taken a hit from something, either the airbag or the buckled driver’s side door.
Someone wrenched her door open and helped her out. She reached for her phone, but the woman who had helped her waggled her own phone at her. Emergency services were on the way.