Chapter Ten #2
‘I just want to know why you wore it.’ He kept his tone even, determined not to give into the anger he still felt lapping at his senses. Was she really playing dumb even now? ‘You must have had a reason.’
She twisted her shoulders in a shrug that felt stingingly dismissive. ‘It was in my closet. I needed something to wear.’
‘Don’t,’ he warned her in a low voice, ‘Be flippant.’
‘I am struggling to understand why you care what dress I’m wearing,’ Ashley replied.
She sounded exhausted rather than angry.
‘You had a dozen brought to my apartment. Presumably any of those would have satisfied you.’ She glanced down at the crystal-strewn dress he remembered so well. ‘Why not this one?’
‘The question remains, why this one?’ Nico asked, his tone sharpening. She was making him appear foolish or even strange for fixating on the dress. Was that part of her plan? ‘I just want to know what you’re playing at,’ he stated. ‘Because it’s obviously something.’
‘What I’m playing at?’ she repeated, taking a step towards him.
Colour flared in her pale cheeks and her eyes glittered like the crystals on her dress as she drew in an agitated breath.
‘I’m not playing at anything. But, while we’re at it, why don’t you tell me what you’re playing at?
Why did you get so angry tonight? Because I don’t think I’ve seen anyone so furious, and I still have no idea what it was about. My dress?’
She sounded so incredulous. Once again, Nico had no idea what to think. Could she actually be innocent? Had she somehow forgotten the whole episode, everything, the way she’d forgotten her breakdown last night?
He stared at her, wishing he could see beneath those stormy eyes, that silken skin. ‘You wore that dress,’ he finally ground out, ‘The night we met.’
Ashley’s eyes widened and her whole body went still. ‘The night we met?’ she repeated in a whisper, sounding shocked.
‘I said you had a part in ruining my life,’ he reminded her. ‘Didn’t you realise we must have met before?’
She shook her head, a few tendrils of hair falling from her elegant chignon and framing her pale, heart-shaped face. ‘To be honest, I thought that was just a bit of…hyperbole.’
‘It wasn’t. Trust me.’ He deliberately echoed the words her father had used time and time again as he’d asked Nico to send emails, open accounts or add figures. All of it had been to incriminate him, and he’d been too trusting and dumb to believe it.
‘When…?’ Ashley licked her lips, her wide-eyed gaze locked on his. ‘When did we meet?’
‘At that fundraising ball for breast cancer. The one your mother set up. I told you before.’ He couldn’t keep from sounding impatient, because to him it was so obvious.
The fact that she hadn’t pressed him on any point before just made her look guiltier.
She must have known. She so clearly remembered.
‘Yes,’ Ashley replied slowly, ‘But… I didn’t realise… You didn’t say we’d actually met…’ She shook her head. ‘I think I would have remembered that.’
‘I suppose you met a lot of people,’ Nico replied evenly, daring her to agree. To say their meeting hadn’t been significant in any way, when he’d already told her it had changed his life.
‘Yes, but…’ She was silent, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as she frowned in thought. ‘Obviously it must have been a fairly significant meeting,’ she finally said, ‘To have the effect you claim it had. To “ruin your life”.’
The words would have gratified him, save for the needling note of doubt in her voice. That sent a fresh wave of fury through him, but he tamped it down. ‘I don’t claim,’ he bit out. ‘I know.’
‘All right.’ Ashley lifted her chin and, in the tilt of it, as well as the set of her lips and the flash of her eyes, Nico knew that, just as he’d doubted her, now she doubted him. ‘Then tell me about it. How did we meet? What did we say? And how on earth did meeting me ruin your life?’
She sounded scornful now, and Nico had to wait several seconds before replying to make sure his voice was as cold and even as he needed it to be. ‘I’m not about to go into all that here,’ he told her.
Her eyes flashed with more scorn. ‘Then where?’
‘My apartment,’ he decided. ‘We need to talk in private.’
‘I am not,’ Ashley informed him, her eyes flashing all the more, ‘Going to your apartment so you can…can…’ She shook her head, unwilling to finish just what they both knew he could do, and what she would welcome.
‘Trust me,’ Nico told her with acid sweetness. ‘You’re not that irresistible.’
‘Neither are you,’ she fired back, but the flush rising to her heated cheeks told otherwise.
He took a step towards her. ‘Do you want me to prove that to you?’ he demanded in a low voice, and for a heightened second it felt as if the very air between them twanged with electric, sexual energy.
They stared at each other as a thousand memories of what she’d felt like in his arms, beneath his hands, flashed through his mind, reminding him of just how truly irresistible she was, never mind him.
‘No, I don’t,’ she said at last, her voice little more than a husk. ‘Which is why I’m not going to your apartment.’
‘And if I promise I won’t touch you?’ He didn’t want the complication either, no matter that desire was already racing through him, tightening every muscle and heightening every sense.
She tilted her chin. ‘Is that a promise I can trust you to keep?’
‘I don’t break my promises,’ he assured her stonily. ‘And I don’t force myself on unwilling women.’ He held her gaze, daring to deny it. They both knew just how willing she’d been.
‘Fine,’ she finally said shortly, the colour still surging in her cheeks. ‘As long as we’re both clear that neither of us is irresistible.’ Her mouth quirked cynically, and her chin lifted once more. ‘Lead the way.’