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He got to his feet and came to stand right in front of her. She took a step backwards but her office was too small for it to make much difference.
‘G-get away from me,’ she said with an edge of desperation in her voice.
He took another step, his eyes locking on hers. ‘What are you frightened of, Hayley?’ he asked. ‘That I might kiss you like you begged me to all those years ago?’
She clenched her teeth, her face flaming with remembered shame of her one lapse of self-control. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘Oh, I dare all right,’ he said smoothly, reaching out to capture a lock of her dark curly hair and slowly coiling it around his finger.
Hayley swallowed as the hairs on her scalp responded to the tether of his touch, her stomach folding over itself as his chest moved close enough to brush against her breasts. She was deeply ashamed of how her body responded to the closeness of his. She could feel the subtle tightening of her nipples against the lace of her bra, her body weakening as a silky ribbon of traitorous desire began to unfurl deep inside her.
‘Aren’t you f-forgetting something?’ she asked somewhat breathlessly. ‘I’m already engaged to be married.’
‘Call it off.’
‘No, I will not call it off!’
‘He’s having an affair, you know,’ he said.
‘That’s a slanderous lie!’
‘I have proof.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, but the niggling doubts she had been pushing away for the last few days began to nudge her yet again.
‘I have photos if you want to see them,’ he said into the silence. ‘Her name is Serena Wiltshire. Tall, leggy blonde, big boobs and a killer smile.’
Hayley felt a wave of nausea flow over her. How could Myles have done this to her? They were getting married next month. She’d just paid for the honeymoon during her lunch break. He’d told her he loved her. He was the first man in fact who had ever done so. He had promised her the world, marriage and babies and a house in a harbourside suburb.
Security.
And she loved him.
Of course she loved him; she shoved the creeping doubt back beneath the bolted door inside her head.
‘So how about it, Hayley?’ Jasper said, his breath whispering over the surface of her lips. ‘Do you fancy being my wife for a month?’
‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ she scratched out.
His dark eyes twinkled. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘What if I took your salon away from you? Wouldn’t that be far worse?’
‘You wouldn’t d—’
He blocked the rest of her sentence with the warm pad of his index finger on the soft cushion of her lips. ‘Oh, I dare all right,’ he repeated his previous w
ords with chilling determination. ‘You just watch me, sweetheart.’
Hayley gulped back her rising panic. She was only just managing to meet the rent now; how much worse would it be if he decided to charge her an exorbitant sum? The business loan she’d taken out recently for the refurbishment of the salon had stretched her to the limit, and, although the salon was doing well, any extra financial pressure right now would be nothing short of disastrous.
‘When you think about it, Hayley, this is a perfect chance for you to get revenge on your cheating fiancé,’ he said, dropping his hand from her mouth. ‘Tell Lederman you’ve fallen in love with me. It will really get to him that you’ve chosen me over him.’
‘No one would ever believe me if I told them I was in love with you,’ she said, injecting her tone with scorn even as her lips continued to buzz with the sensation of his touch. ‘They’ll think I was marrying you for your money.’
‘I guess we’ll both have to brush up on our acting skills,’ he returned. ‘You’re not exactly the woman of my dreams either. I wouldn’t go as far as saying you’re the last woman on the earth and all that, but you’re way down on that list somewhere.’
She glared up at him. ‘I see you failed the entrance exam to charm school again.’
He laughed and stepped back from her, the deep rich sound sending a shock wave of reaction through her stomach.
