Page 18 of The Rules of Their Red-Hot Reunion

CHAPTER FIVE

ONFRIDAYMORNING, Pasco skirted the back of St Urban’s manor house and headed for the old carriage house, which Ro had converted into offices for the hotel manager and the admin staff. Walking inside, he heard voices coming from the end office, wandered down the short hallway, and leaned his shoulder into the frame of the door to watch Aisha pacing the floor of her messy office, her hands on her hips and her back rigid.

‘Yes, I understand I have to get the order in today to take advantage of the old pricing structure, but I need to get my consultant to sign off on the order and I can’t get an answer from the man!’

That man would be him. Pasco winced. His bad.

He’d had about a dozen emails from Aisha over the past fourteen days and nearly as many phone calls, all of which he’d ignored. Not because he didn’t want to talk to her, but because he was worried that once he started down that pitted-with-peril path, he wouldn’t be able to find his way back. As it was, he spent far too much time thinking about his stunning, sexy ex-wife.

In between lurid thoughts of what she looked like naked—gorgeous, of that he had no doubt—and imagining what he would do to her if he ever got the chance to see her like that again, he rolled her words over and over in his brain, trying to make sense of what she’d said.

‘I never left because we were financially strapped, Pasco. That was never a problem. Other things were, but not that.’

If money hadn’t been the problem, then what else had caused her to run? He wanted to know, but also didn’t. Their time had passed and there was no point in looking back, but he hated the idea of getting something so important wrong.

He did recall stumbling in after a long shift and seeing her sitting on their sofa, her hands under her thighs and her eyes reflecting trepidation and determination. He’d quickly learned her I-need-to-talk expression and that was, after a busy, high-stress night, the last thing he’d wanted to do. Make love to her, sure, he was always up for that, but talking? Not his thing.

Maybe that was one of their problems: he’d been eager to gloss over their problems and pretend everything was fine. It hadn’t been fine. A quick marriage, an even quicker divorce, and years of not communicating proved that theory. Talking about his feelings,anyone’sfeelings, made him feel scratchy, as if he were standing in a leaking bucket on a storm-tossed ocean. Unsure and vulnerable...he hated exposing himself emotionally.

Idiot that he was back then, he’d always assumed she was going to whine that they never had any fun, but fun required money and time, and they were barely keeping their heads above water.

Whenever he saw her I-need-to-talk face, he made it a game to see how long it would take him to distract her, to move her off the subject. Luckily for him, she was putty in his hands and one deep kiss and a thumb across her nipple normally distracted her...

God, he’d been a jerk. Young, arrogant, full of himself.

He was now paying the price for his youthful arrogance because he couldn’t stop thinking about the real reason for her unhappiness and needed to know what had made her run. He burned with curiosity and his inquisitiveness annoyed him. He and Aisha were done, nothing remained...

Except his need to make love to her, with her, again. That hadn’t gone away. If anything, it was bigger and bolder than before.

Crap.

And, yes, this was difficult to admit, but the more time he spent with her, the urge to be with her grew stronger. He didn’t have the time to devote to a significant other—

God!

She was his ex-wife, someone he worked with, why was he attaching the wordssignificantandotherto thoughts of her? He was not getting involved with her again.

Bottom line, he couldn’t afford to spend great swathes of time with her, wouldn’t give her that much importance in his life.

They. Were. Done.

The only reason he was here, in her office, was because he was on his way to Pasco’s, Franschhoek and it was a quick detour to St Urban. And also because the tone of her messages and emails had changed from polite and professional to increasingly irate and he suspected he was dancing on her last nerve. He couldn’t be around her without wanting to kiss her senseless, but neither did he want to alienate her.

Aisha Shetty still had the ability to flip his world on its head.

Fifteen minutes... He’d give her fifteen minutes and then he was out of here. He could keep his hands off her for that long, surely?

When the call disconnected, Aisha looked up at the ceiling and released a low, intense scream, her arms linked behind her head.

‘Problem?’ Pasco asked when her arms dropped.

She whirled around, heat in her cheeks and fire in her eyes. He’d never seen her look so beautiful. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Kildare?’

Pasco’s eyes dropped to her wide mouth, remembering the feel of those sexy lips under his. ‘I thought I saw at least two dozen emails from you demanding that I drop in. This is me, dropping in.’

Aisha pursed her lips and Pasco was pretty sure she was counting to ten. Or maybe, judging by the seconds ticking by, to twenty. ‘I have been trying to get hold of you for the past two weeks,’ Aisha stated, pushing the words out through gritted teeth.

‘I’ve been busy,’ Pasco told her, walking into the room. God, a temper looked good on her, her eyes flashing brown-black fire and her skin rosy with frustration. He jammed his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching for her and hauling her into his arms and slowly stripping her so that he could see her standing naked in the sunlight pouring into the room.

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