Forgotten Sins. Robyn Donald
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least I’m not blonde—they find it even more difficult,’ Aline said.
Ironic that she’d happily, swiftly, surrender her cool, lifeless, regular features for a tenth of the warmth and fire and individuality that blazed from Hope.
Hope said thoughtfully, ‘I wonder if Jake’s wonderful face means that the strength and intelligence behind it was overlooked when he started building his empire? I bet lots of people dismissed him as just a handsome lightweight.’
‘I’m sure he’d have turned it to his advantage. By the time they realised he’s about as lightweight as Mount Ruapehu he’d probably taken them over,’ Aline pointed out, reluctantly recalling her first impression of Jake Howard.
Well-briefed, she’d known that he’d used his brilliant degree to set up as a forestry consultant straight out of university. Within ten years he’d built a huge organisation with global interests, and a reputation for fairness and honesty—and ruthlessness when he was attacked. She’d read about his takeovers, and the way he’d cut ethnic minorities in as stakeholders in his projects.
Yet when she’d first met him it had been his sheer physical presence and his potent, lethal sexuality that had slammed through her barriers.
Hope said cheerfully, ‘Keir says he’s got discipline and daring, and enough focus and determination to take over the world if he wants to.’ She laughed again. ‘And he’s good with babies too. Emma bats her lashes and coos at him. He should get married and raise a dynasty.’
‘All he’d have to do is wave a wedding ring,’ Aline snapped, adding lamely, ‘Anyway, he might have girls instead of sons.’
Hope’s brows lifted. ‘So? You’re living proof that women can make it in the world of business.’
‘Ah, but I was my father’s son,’ Aline told her, her mouth twisting.
‘He must have been proud of you.’
Relaxing her rigid shoulders, Aline pinned on a smile. ‘I hope so,’ she said, glancing surreptitiously past the baby to where Jake and Keir had been joined by Lauren, all flicking hair and sultry seduction.
Jake looked up. For long, timeless seconds their eyes clashed, duelling across the room.
He radiated energy—a formidable, hypnotic power that sent shivery chills up her spine. Nothing like Michael, who’d been big-hearted and gallant and joyous—and who’d died. Why did death take the best?
Deliberately she broke contact, only to meet Lauren’s gaze; the woman lifted a glass of champagne to her, her smile glittering. Aline forced her lips into an answering curve, grateful when Emma leapt excitedly in her arms, almost overbalancing. Hauling her back to safety, she said crisply, ‘Emma’s not the only one who flirts with Jake.’
‘No.’ Hope’s voice was troubled. ‘Something’s been hounding Lauren for years, but it looks as though she’s getting really close to the edge. Her father’s so worried about her.’
With the confidence of a child who has known nothing but love, Emma raised a commanding hand, worked her mouth earnestly, and eventually produced a sound so close to boo that both women laughed, and Aline forgot Lauren’s hostility.
In a few minutes she allowed herself another glance across the room to see Lauren flirting with another young man, Keir charming a pleasant middle-aged woman, and Jake talking—no, listening—to an earnest Tony Hudson, one of the trustees of Michael’s charitable trust.
Making a mental note to contact Tony again this week and try again to persuade him it was time the trust gave some of its millions of dollars to the young people it was set up to help, Aline relaxed.
But when the hair on the back of her neck stood up in primitive recognition of danger, she knew without raising her eyes who’d joined them. Right in front of her she saw long legs and narrow hips, a man’s confident, almost aggressive stance.
Thank heavens Jake’s negotiations with the bank were over; from now on others would deal with him and his business. She’d no longer wake each morning haunted by the challenge in his dark face, the special note in his voice that reached right down inside her, taunting her with her hidden weakness.
Keeping her head down, she dropped a kiss on the baby’s satin cheek.
Beside her Hope said, ‘Jake! How lovely to see you!’
‘How do you manage to glow like that?’ The practised compliment came easily, but there was no doubt about the pure male appreciation in his voice.
Emma bounced and launched herself forwards, holding out chubby arms with a smile that almost split her face.
‘Well, button, is that a tooth I see?’ Jake’s voice came closer as he dropped onto his haunches and touched the baby’s cheek.
Startled, Aline looked into tawny-gold eyes—eagle’s eyes, she’d thought at their first meeting, piercing and merciless. Subsequent meetings hadn’t changed her mind.
He smiled crookedly at her. ‘Hello, Aline.’
A flutter of pulse at the base of her throat drew his gaze; weighed down by the laughing baby, Aline couldn’t drag her eyes from his face. He was so close she could see the small laughter lines fanning out from the corners of those relentless eyes, the thick black lashes, and the chiselled, beautiful lines of his mouth with its thinner upper lip and disturbingly curved lower.
Always before she’d avoided his scrutiny by focusing just past him; now, her head spinning, her senses afire, she drowned in gold. Something had altered. She sensed a difference in Jake, a deeply dominant shift in attitude.
With an effort of will that took all her strength, she deliberately shut down her treacherous awareness, withdrawing into the guarded fastness only Michael had been able to enter.
Jake’s mouth curved in mocking recognition of her silent rejection. He got to his feet with a lithe grace that proclaimed power and control. ‘Here, give the heroine of the day to me,’ he said, reaching out confident arms.
Transferring a chuckling baby meant that Aline had to get much closer, had to touch him for the first time except when they’d shaken hands—something she’d tried to limit, only to have him force the gesture every time they’d met and parted.
Her heart thudded painfully; without looking at him she settled Emma into his iron embrace and stepped back, ambushed by the heat radiating from him, and his hard, tensile masculinity.
All right, she told herself as the conversation was taken over efficiently by the others, admit it. You are—you’re aware of him.
The last honest part of her brain sniggered and drawled, To put it bluntly, you want him. Even more bluntly, you want to go to bed with him.
Well, why not? It was merely a ruthlessly physical ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ response, carefully formulated by Mother Nature to perpetuate the species. He was all alpha male, while she was a woman in her late twenties with her biological clock beginning to tick.
She hated being so vulnerable to Jake Howard’s intense magnetism, his elemental strength and determination. Her weakness betrayed everything she’d felt for her husband because not even Michael had delivered such a blazing punch of erotic excitement.
But she’d shared much more with Michael; he’d valued her for many other things besides her femaleness.
Every time Jake looked at her she saw recognition of her as a sexual being in those eagle’s eyes, in the way he spoke and responded to her. Even when they’d been negotiating hard and forcefully he’d made sure she knew he liked what he saw.
And his tactics had worked. Now her skin tightened whenever he came into a room, his presence invading her guarded detachment.
Hope laughed as he tossed Emma into the air. ‘You can do that all day and she’ll still want more—she has a cast-iron stomach. You’re very experienced with children.’
‘I