Page 59 of The Reunion

I grumble, but I suppose it’s not a terrible plan, under the circumstances, so I rearrange myself as she suggested and check the chair is stable enough before I retract my right hand, and grab my phone from where I shoved it into my jeans pocket a moment ago.

As I make sure I’m stood in the right place to catch Bryony if she falls and simultaneously angle my torch so she can read the fuse-box labels, I notice something out of the corner of my eye and a snort of disbelief snags in my throat.

‘B, get down. There’s a bloody stepladder. I’ll be tall enough to reach it on that, easy.’

‘No, don’t move! Keep the torch right there – I think I’ve got it …’

There’s a heavy click! as Bryony flips one of the switches.

And, for a moment, nothing happens.

‘Dammit,’ she mutters.

I’m about to suggest she climb down (carefully) and let me get the ladder to try, and Bryony starts to say something else, too, but then we’re both drowned out by a wailing siren as the fire alarm goes off.

Chapter Thirty

Ashleigh

‘Most Likely to Kill Each Other’

I’m not flirting with Ryan Lawal, because that’s not a thing that would happen.

Ever.

Under any circumstances.

Not if we were the last two people on Earth. Not even then, would I touch this man with a fucking bargepole. This – this entitled, pompous, arrogant, slimy, butter-wouldn’t-melt bastard.

I am not flirting with him, because I am not attracted to him, obviously, because this is Ryan we’re talking about, but – I am playing this game. This new, less juvenile one in which he tries to make eyes at me and pretend he’s the good guy he always believed himself to be, and reckons he used to flirt with me and is doing that lean, now, the one …

God, that lean. Ryan or not, that lean does something to me. The hand braced near my head, the tension in the muscles of his arm as I follow that hand to his broad shoulders, the tilt of his face and the dark, wide pupils, the heat that consumes his gaze and threatens to consume me right along with it. It’s like that lean is the optimal position to make me unable to do anything except smell his cologne (sandalwood base notes, a kick of something faintly peppery, something else that’s lilting and softer that might be vanilla, all of which makes me want to bury my nose in the crook of his neck and inhale it deeper), or appreciate the strength and simple masculinity of his body, or …

Think about kissing him, which, of course, is exactly why he’s doing it, I’m sure.

It also does something to me, that heady look he had in his eyes as they began to close when I leant in close like I was actually going to kiss him. Between that and the stupid bloody leaning, it’s almost enough to make me wish I had.

Just to see.

An … experiment, of sorts. A data-gathering exercise.

To ascertain if all that cocksure swagger would vanish, and he’d be hesitant and unsure and maybe even clumsy, or if he really wasn’t compensating and would know exactly what he was doing. Where would he have put his hands? Would he even have bothered to pretend to be a respectable gentleman, or gone straight for my hips to pull me close?

Heat flushes up my neck and I’m so glad it’s too dark for him to see. I hope to hell he can’t hear the way my breathing has changed in the few seconds my imagination has run a little too wild.

I fight to keep the smirk on my face, that lofty look of victory at screwing with him, besting him at his own game. If he thinks that lean and the teasing and the – the – the constant bloody glances at my smudged lipstick are going to get the better of me, well, he’s got another think coming.

I’m not about to be seduced by Ryan Lawal.

So, I tell him, ‘You couldn’t handle it.’

It takes Ryan a second or two to recover from my lean-in, and I relish the dazed look in his eyes as he blinks a couple of times in rapid succession. His eyebrows arch, and his head tilts. It feels like he comes in even closer, but there’s still that tiny, minuscule shard of empty space funnelling between our bodies. It feels electric, charged; dangerous.

‘Someone thinks pretty highly of herself.’

I shrug, like it’s nothing. Like of course, he would be the one to fold, like I regularly go around seducing men for kicks.

‘What makes you so sure I couldn’t handle it, Easton?’ Ryan asks, his voice a low, rumbling murmur that seems to caress my skin, and it’s all I can do not to shiver. The sudden gruff cadence, along with his signature arrogance and charisma, would make a lesser woman melt.

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