she met my eyes but bit her lip.
“The first time I saw you I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in real life. Then the scraps of conversation I managed to get out of you at the bar showed me your humour, your kindness, your husky, smooth-velvet voice, your unique perspective on everything. For the last year and a half I’ve thought about you all the time.”
Her mouth fell open and her eyes went wide before she shook her head. “What are you talking about? If you liked me that much why didn’t you say anything?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. There was never an opportunity. You only had slivers of time for me at the bar, and all the men there were constantly hitting on you. I would have been just another one of the pathetic city boys you dispatched every night.”
“What about that night when we . . . ?”
“The night when I hung around until after closing?”
“Well, yeah. You could have said something then. We –”
“That night felt surreal. It felt almost magical. I didn’t want to ruin it. To sully its memory. And I felt like a creep, hanging around until closing to get you alone. I didn’t want to compound that by asking you out. That’s why I grabbed my chance when we were in the coffee shop. You weren’t serving me. It was daytime. It didn’t feel sleazy or like a power play. But then . . .”
“Then Stella happened.”
“Yeah.” I put my hands in my pockets and scuffed my foot on the pavement. “I found her in my bed on Monday. Naked.”
She stared at me and then looked away quickly.
“You knew?” I asked. She bit her lip again.
“Maybe?”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s what I get for having so many staff. I’m guessing you saw her leave.”
“Uh . . . yeah. She was strutting down the corridor looking smug. She asked me for a latte as she passed – said she needed the caffeine after the night she’d had.”
“Ugh, she’s terrifying.” I shuddered. “I’d stayed up half the night sweet-talking Ben (lot of good that did) and when I made it to my cabin in the early hours she was there waiting for me. Like a spider. I threw her out.”
Urvi looked straight into my eyes for a long moment. Whatever she saw there caused her to let out a relieved breath and her stiff posture relaxed.
“You thought I’d slept with her?”
She gave a little shrug. “It wasn’t any of my business if you had. And I knew she was way more your speed than me. After all I was just staff. I didn’t even know I was on your radar.”
“On my radar? You’re all I can see. All I’ve ever seen since we first met. And you were never just staff.”
“Jack, I’m sorry but it didn’t seem that way to me. You weren’t exactly making me the centre of your world at that stage.”
That vulnerability was back in her voice and I gritted my teeth. She would trust me. I’d prove to her that she could.
Chapter 12
A little OTT
Urvi
“So I should probably go back to my room,” I said, looking up at Jack’s shadowed face in the dark corridor.
“Er, yeah,” he murmured, staring at my mouth. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone, showing just a hint of the body beneath and a light dusting of hair. Stubble darkened his jaw and his hair had been ruffled by the wind and my hands. Turns out I was quite handsy where Jack was concerned – not normally a problem with my other boyfriends. “You probably should.”
Neither of us moved. He just kept staring at my mouth and his eyes flared with a look so possessive, filled with so much longing that my control snapped.
“Okay, so maybe I am easy,” I said as I launched myself at him, hopping up so that my arms went around his neck my legs circled his hips. “So sue me.”
“Urvi,” he breathed as his mouth closed over mine and he pushed me back against the wall of the corridor, holding me up against him. “God, I’ve wanted you for so long.” His words were growled low and full of such acute need that I felt the hairs on the back of my arms stand up. As his mouth moved down my neck and his hands pulled up my shirt, mine went into his thick, gorgeous hair. When his hand met the bare skin of