Page 23 of Temptation at His Door

Carrick’s only answer was a muffled growl.

“Or maybe she isn’t as attracted to you as you are to her.” Ronan teased.

“I...what... I’ve got to go. If you speak to her, tell her I’m looking for her. No, don’t bother...dammit.”

Joa smiled at the mischief in Ronan’s eyes.

“You’re sounding a bit unhinged, dude.” Ronan said, sounding smug. When Carrick abruptly disconnected the call, Ronan laughed.

Joa cocked her head. “Why were you hassling Carrick about Sadie?”

“Because something is brewing between them and it’s my brotherly duty to give him crap about it.”

Man, smiling upped his sexy factor by a thousand percent and Joa’s stomach did backflips. And then a double twist. She needed to go. Before she did something really stupid.

Like throw herself at him.

Bite the bullet, Jones.“I’ll call a taxi and I’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes.”

Ronan frowned at her. “That’s not necessary. It’s freezing out and it’s late. Go home in the morning.”

Joa pulled the inside of her right cheek between her teeth. Should she stay or go? She looked out the window, saw the wind had picked up and the snow was swirling. The weather was dreadful and it was a fine excuse to stay...

She really shouldn’t stay...

“Okay. Thank you.”

An awkward silence fell between them, which Ronan eventually broke with a wry smile. “I need a huge glass of wine and some food. Any ideas?”

“I made the kids a rice-and-fish dish, and there’s some left over. I also made spicy nachos for myself. You can share.”

“Nachos sounds perfect,” Ronan said. “Wine sounds better. Let’s go...”

Said the sexy spider to the fly...

Six

Beah Jenkinson exited the black taxi at the swanky entrance to Claridge’s, grateful for her long black vintage cashmere coat. After paying the taxi driver, she tucked her designer clutch bag under her arm and sucked in a deep breath. She could do this, shehadto do this...

It was only dinner with one of the most important and elusive collectors in the world.

And her ex-brother-in-law Carrick and her ex-husband, Finn.

Who also happened to be two of her three bosses.

Not a big deal.

Liar. It wassucha big deal...

Beah handed a black frocked doorman a smile and walked up to the doors of the impressive hotel. Allowing her coat to swing open, she resisted the urge to check her reflection in the glass doors, to reassure herself that her off-the-shoulder, tight-fitting, cobalt blue cocktail dress with its ruffled hem was suitable.

She looked perfectly fine. She was thirty years old, a woman confident in her body and her looks. She had an amazing career, a wonderful life.

She was not the insecure girl she’d been when she met and married Finn Murphy the best part of a decade ago.

She’d been twenty-one and working as an intern at Murphy International when she met the brilliant Finn and she’d been entranced by his quick brain and his encyclopedic knowledge of art and history. Within a week they were sleeping together; within a month they were engaged. They married in Vegas on the three-month anniversary of the day they met.

After a visit to the ladies’ room and a conversation with her best friend, Beah walked in the direction of Davies and Brook, Claridge’s brand-new restaurant, Beah admitted that she’d gone into her relationship with Finn, and her marriage, with a cruise ship’s worth of baggage. Her mother had passed away just a year before, after a six-year battle fighting cancer. Her dad, her hero and the first true love of her life, had left them both around the time she started getting ill, and it was a betrayal Beah had never come to terms with.

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