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He’d remarked to her that addiction was a disease, not a weakness, but by God he’d like just ten minutes with the jerk who’d ripped her off so badly that she was reduced to living in two shabby rented rooms.
‘What would you like to drink? Tea or coffee?’
Caitlin’s voice took Jake by surprise. Turning round, he avidly noted her long shapely legs, which were encased in soft worn denim, and the pretty pink top she’d donned, which was fastened at the front with little pearl buttons. In her apparent haste to get dressed the top two buttons had been left undone, inadvertently revealing the creamy cleft between her breasts, and the arresting sight made him catch his breath.
But she might not have left the buttons undone deliberately—she hardly needed to resort to feminine wiles to get his attention. All the woman had to do was glance at him with those bewitching emerald eyes and Jake was all hers.
‘Neither,’ he answered. ‘Why don’t you just come and sit down so we can talk?’
Caitlin acquiesced, her brows puckering when she noticed that one of her multi-coloured cushions was lying on the floor. Inside her chest, her heart was galloping at what felt like a worrying breakneck speed.
When Jake had asserted that sooner or later they would have to ‘deal with it’, had he been saying that it was inevitable that they had an affair? Because if he had then he hadn’t reckoned with her iron will. It didn’t matter how attracted she was to the man, she wasn’t the type to jump thoughtlessly into bed with him. Sean was the only man she’d ever been intimate with, and to be honest it hadn’t been anything to write home about even when she’d foolishly imagined herself in love with him.
Being a singer and a member of Blue Sky was far more important than having a hot little affair with the band’s manager, she told herself.
‘I was rough on you today.’ Still standing in the centre of the room, Jake rubbed a hand round his beard-darkened jaw. ‘I feel like I owe you an apology.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I pushed you too hard.’ He flinched as though genuinely regretting it.
‘You don’t have to apologise. I know I’ve still got a long way to go and I need all the help and guidance I can get. Rick says that you’re the best, and so do the others. I’m hungry to learn, Jake. You shouldn’t lose any sleep over the fact that you had to yell at me a few times.’
Gritting his teeth, he silently cursed the ache in his groin that refused to be tamped. It wasn’t the fact that he’d lost his temper a few times that he was losing sleep over. She was sitting on her sofa, looking about as tempting as Eve in the Garden of Eden, and her soothing velvet voice rolled over him like honey. She might not know it but she was seducing him as thoroughly as if she sat there naked, beckoning him to come to her.
‘Are you always this reasonable?’ He quirked an eyebrow.
Although he’d apologised, he was still spoiling for an argument—anything to defuse the sexually charged tension between them.
‘No.’ An amused smile played at the corners of her mouth. ‘Sean used to accuse me of being unreasonable all the time.’
‘Sean?’
‘My ex-boyfriend.’
‘The drug addict.’ Jake hadn’t meant to sound cruel, but the fact was he wasn’t in the mood to be magnanimous. A stab of jealousy had sliced through his insides at Caitlin’s reference to the man she’d previously been in a relationship with.
Suddenly rising to her feet, she let her fingers toy restlessly with the little pearl buttons on her blouse. The gesture inevitably drew his gaze.
‘Amongst other things he was a painter and decorator by trade. Not that he was in work very often…For obvious reasons.’ Her expression was briefly pained. ‘But, like you said, just because he was an addict, it didn’t mean he was a bad person. He was easily led by some unsavoury friends, that was the trouble.’
Caitlin dipped her head and Jake found himself automatically taking a step towards her.
‘So, you were “unreasonable” because you tried to warn him off those so-called friends?’
‘Yes… That and because I didn’t give him money as often as he liked to buy his drugs. I was struggling to keep the roof over our heads as it was. I had a lovely flat that I’d bought with a legacy my grandmother had left me and I was eventually forced to sell it because of Sean. He was in so much debt due to his drug habit.’
