CHAPTER THREE
‘ARCHIE, WAIT. SLOW DOWN. Where are you going this time?’
‘Relax,’ Archie cast over her shoulder, a bright smile plastered to her lips at her friend’s typically bossy tone. ‘I’m just going for a drink.’
Still, she didn’t slow down in her quest to get off the dance floor and around to the other side of an enormous pillar that would shield her from Kaspar’s view. No easy feat in the ridiculously high heels Katie had insisted on lending her to go with the seriously sexy metallic number her friend had also talked her into buying this afternoon.
It was years since she’d been out so called clubbing it—not that she’d ever had the time or inclination to go out all that often, neither was this charity wrap party exactly clubbing it—but, still, she hoped she hadn’t looked too awkward and robotic out there on the dance floor. She’d felt fine...right up until she’d seen him watching her.
The minute she’d spotted him, her body hadn’t quite felt her own. As though it wasn’t completely under her control. Even now the memory of his eyes scanning over her left her blood feeling as though it was effervescing through her veins, making her entire body hum.
It was an unfamiliar, but not altogether unpleasant sensation.
Ducking behind the pillar, Archie pressed her back against the cool, smooth concrete and rested her hand underneath her breastbone. She could feel the tattoo her heart was drumming out, leaving her unable to even catch her breath. And it had nothing to do with the dancing. Oh, she’d tried to ignore him, especially when his usual harem had draped themselves around him and he’d barely had the decency to offer any of them the time of day.
But who could ignore Kaspar Athari?
‘So, if you’re getting a drink why are we the other side of the room from the bar?’ Katie bobbed under her nose, her brow knitted.
‘Hmm? Oh. I just...needed to catch my breath.’
It wasn’t exactly a lie, but she might have known her old friend would see through it.
‘Archie, you’re about as jittery as a beachgoer trying to get across hot sand.’
‘No, I’m not.’
Katie’s eyes narrowed sharply.
‘Is this about “the Surgeon Prince of Persia”?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she managed loftily, only for Katie to snort in derision.
‘Yeah, sure you don’t. He’s been devouring you with his eyes all night and you’ve been lapping it up.’
‘I have not,’ Archie spluttered, her knotted stomach twisting and flipping. ‘And it hasn’t been all night. It has been half an hour at most.’
‘Aha!’ Katie declared triumphantly. ‘So it is about the perennially sexy Kaspar Athari.’
‘No...not at all...well, not really. That is... Why are you frowning? Aren’t you the one who said I needed to get back out there and have fun, like we used to in uni? Like I did before my dad...died? Before I married Joe?’
She tailed off awkwardly as Katie pulled a face.
‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I always hated the way you changed when you married Joe. You went right into yourself. Nothing like the fun, sassy Archie I’d come to know.’
‘It wasn’t Joe who did that.’ Archie wrinkled her nose. She’d tried a hundred times to explain it to Katie, but her friend had never quite understood. Still, she couldn’t help feeling she owed it to Joe to try again. ‘He was exactly what I needed at that time in my life.’
‘I disagree.’
‘I know you do. You remind me often enough.’
Still, there was no rancour in Archie’s tone. In many respects it was buoying that her friend cared enough to do so. And Katie’s wry smile of response revealed that she knew it, too.
‘I just feel that, while he may not have intended to, Joe took advantage of the fact that you were young and naïve. You were grieving for your dad, and your brother and his new wife were half a world away.’
They were falling into a conversation they’d had a hundred times before, but it was impossible to stop.
‘He didn’t take advantage. It was mutually beneficial.’
Katie’s eyebrows were practically lost in her hairline, but at least she had the tact not to bring up any painful reminders of more than three years of failed pregnancy attempts. The miscarriage at eighteen weeks.
Agony seared through her. Black, almost debilitating.
Faith.
As though it didn’t lacerate her from the inside out just thinking her unborn daughter’s name.
She swayed dangerously.
Had it not been for the silent, supportive hand at her elbow, Archie was afraid she was about to tumble to the floor. She blinked at Katie gratefully. Unspoken, unequivocal support shone back at Archie. Bolstering her. Making her want to forget the fact that, barely a year after she’d lost her unborn daughter, Joe was expecting a baby with his new wife.
It hurt.
Though not, perhaps, in precisely the way Archie might have thought it would. She couldn’t pinpoint it, but neither could she help suspecting that it had less to do with Joe than it ought to, and more to do with the simple pain that another woman seemed to find it so easy to have a baby while her own traitorous body hadn’t been able to do the one thing she felt it had surely been designed to do.
‘Fine, let’s say it was mutually beneficial...’ Katie conceded at length, though Archie could hear by her friend’s tone that she didn’t remotely believe that.
‘You look like you’ve swallowed a bee.’
She couldn’t help a chuckle, even it did sound half laugh, half choked-back sob. Katie valiantly attempted to ignore her.
‘Mutually beneficial,’ she repeated firmly. ‘And you’re right. Now is your time to get back the Archie I used to know. The one I admired so much that I used to wish I was more like you. The Archie who threw herself out of a plane today, for her father, for Faith, for a new start.’
‘You make it sound so easy.’ Archie smiled softly, the sadness she tried so hard to shake but couldn’t still tiptoeing around inside her.
But she wanted to. And the jump today was the first time she’d felt she might actually be ready to do so.
Because of the jump? Or because of Kaspar?
Archie slammed away the unbidden thought in an instant but it was too late. It couldn’t be un-thought. Instinctively, her eyes were drawn back to where Kaspar had been standing, staring at the pillar as though they could bore a path straight through it to see him.
It was pathetic.
But it was also the biggest vaguely positive reaction she’d had to anything or anyone in a very long time. And that felt strangely compelling.
Kaspar Athari, back in her life after all these years. He’d been her first, only crush. Except back then he hadn’t even noticed her and so she hadn’t had the guts to do anything about it. Suddenly, here he was again and this time he had certainly noticed her. It was as though she was being offered a second chance. It couldn’t be just a coincidence, surely? It had to be fate. Either way, it was making her want to...do something. Anything.
She turned to Katie with as firm a nod as she could manage.
‘Fake it till you make it, right?’
‘Absolutely.’
It was easier said than done, but what the heck.
‘Fine.’ Archie sucked in a deep, steadying breath. ‘Then if I’m going to...what did you say earlier this evening? Get back on the horse? Then why not go all out with the infamous “Surgeon Prince of Persia”?’
Why did it feel easier to call him by his ridiculous nickname? Was it because it felt too close to home to call him Kaspar?
‘Yes.’ Katie didn’t look remotely abashed. ‘I did say that. But not with him. He’d gobble you up and spit you out. The man is pure danger.’
Seriously, how difficult could it be to dredge up a casual grin while simultaneously trying to stop her stomach from executing a perfect nose-dive?
‘Maybe that’s what I need?’ she tried hopefully. ‘A bit of danger.’
‘Absolutely not.’ Katie shook her head so vigorously her shiny halo of curls bobbed perfectly around her pretty face. ‘No chance. There’s absolutely no way I’m letting a guy like that get anywhere near you. Over my dead body. You can count on me for that.’
Archie frowned, confused.
‘I’ve heard you drool over the Surgeon Prince a hundred times. Are you really saying you wouldn’t go there after all?’
‘Of course I would,’ Katie scoffed loudly. ‘Trust me, I’d be in there like a shot if the guy so much as squinted in my direction.’
‘So he’s okay for you, but not okay for me?’
Archie didn’t know whether to feel insulted or honoured.
‘He’s not okay for you right now. If you were the old, fearsome Archie from back in uni, then I’d say go for it. That Archie could have handled a man like Athari.’
This was it. She could either go along with what her friend was saying, proving Katie right. Or she could show a little spirit. Like she had on that skydive. Not that she’d told Katie, who’d been occupied with her own charity water-polo match, about the tandem jump.
Archie blew out sharply.
‘You know, I think I can handle one little prince.’
Katie opened her mouth, eyed her and closed her mouth again. A crooked smile that Archie knew so well hovered on her friend’s lips.
‘I do believe you mean it.’
‘I do.’
Katie paused, considering.
‘Then far be it from me to stop you. Okay, you know that sexy, dangerous scar across his jawline?’ Archie nodded silently. ‘Apparently it was the result of some big fight when he was younger.’ Katie hugged her arm tightly and whispered in conspiratorial tones. ‘You remember those massive Hollywood kung-fu, karate-style blockbusters he did as a seven-and eight-year-old?’
The Hollywood life he’d been only too desperate to run away from, Archie remembered. Not that she could say anything.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she hedged instead.
‘Of course you have to know them. They were huge, until his mother apparently demanded too much money or riders or whatever and he got kicked out and replaced.’
The rumours didn’t come close to the damage his volatile mother had caused. But she couldn’t say that either.
‘So you heard he got the scar on those films?’ Archie tactfully changed subject.
Katie’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
‘No, the rumour I actually read somewhere was that the fight was down some back alley when he was about seventeen or something, and wasted after a drinking session. Apparently he was outnumbered five to one but he still beat their collective backsides. Juicy, isn’t it?’
‘Juicy,’ Archie agreed half-heartedly.
The idea of the quiet, controlled Kaspar of back then drinking, let alone fighting, was a complete anathema to her. No doubt a lie the press had spun to help them with their paper-shifting image of the playboy Kaspar. Not that he hadn’t played his own stupid part to a T.
But the man in the media bore little resemblance to the boy she’d once known. And it was the latter who had stolen her adolescent heart.
Besides, she’d been there when he’d really got that scar, climbing the forty-foot oak tree outside Shady Sadie’s house when he’d been fifteen. Or at least she’d been in the living room with her father when Robbie had raced back to say that a damaged limb had given way and Kaspar had fallen to the ground. He’d been carted off to the hospital with a few superficial cuts and bruises and that one deep gash. He’d worn it with all the pride of a battle scar, of course. Trust the media to come up with something far more dark and exotic to explain it.
But they couldn’t have made up everything, could they? The playboy lifestyle? The dangerous reputation? It had been fifteen years since she’d last seen him so of course he wasn’t going to be the same boy she’d known. As Katie gabbled on, Archie let her head drop back, the cool concrete of the pillar seeping into her brain, and tried to think a little more clearly. Maybe opening the Kaspar Athari can of worms really wasn’t the best idea she’d ever had.
As Katie’s hands grabbed her shoulders and hauled her off the pillar, Archie was tugged back to the present.
‘This is your chance, here comes your Surgeon Prince.’
Before she could stop it, she was being swung around and thrust out around the column. The breath whooshed from her body. She didn’t need to turn to know that Katie would have already gone.
‘And there I was thinking you were hiding from me, Archie.’
The rich, slow drawl was laced with a kind of lazy amusement as every inch of Archie’s skin prickled and got goosebumps. Not least the fact that he knew who she was after all. Her stomach spiralled like a helter-skelter in reverse.
Archie. He rolled her name on his tongue as though sampling it, tasting it. She imagined he was measuring it against the woman she was now, compared to the ‘Little Ant’ he’d always known her as.
She opened her mouth to speak just as Kaspar stepped closer to her. Everything in her head shut down as her body shifted into overdrive. Heady, and electrifying, and like nothing she’d ever known before.
He was dressed smart-casual, a vaguely lemony, leathery scent toying with her nostrils, and he practically oozed masculinity. Enough to eclipse every other male in the room most probably. Even every other male in the county. The world.
Even her childhood crush on him didn’t compare. It made her feel physically winded and adrenalin-pumped all at once.
The indolent crook of his mouth, so sinful and enticing, gave the distinct impression that he could read her thoughts. Feed into her darkest desires. It made her very blood seem to slow in her veins. A sluggish trickle, which her thundering heart seemed to be working harder and harder to process.
He was simply intoxicating. She cast around for something, anything, that wouldn’t betray how at sea she felt.
‘How is the patient? Rick, wasn’t it?’
Not exactly ideal, but it would have to do. Kaspar only hesitated for a moment.
‘He’s in pretty bad shape.’
‘But you can help him?’
‘Possibly.’
He didn’t want to talk shop, she could understand that, but it was buying her some much-needed time. She had to settle down. Katie was right, she was like a beachgoer on hot sand.
‘I think I read last year that you had a patient who’d had a firework go off in his face and you used some kind of layering technique?’
‘You’re in the medical profession?’ Kaspar’s stare intensified.
Archie swallowed. Hard.
‘No, actually I’m in the construction industry. I build the hospitals, you work in them.’
‘You build them?’
‘Well, I work out layout, ease of movement so it isn’t a rabbit warren; service routes such as for heating, lighting and medical gases especially for the operating rooms; whether to connect to the existing back-up generators, or build new ones; medical incinerators, that sort of thing.’
There was a lot more to it, and given how much she loved her job she could probably go on about it all night. Which would be a problem. It was hardly the most seductive of conversations.
‘Are you part of the team building the new women’s and children’s wing for our hospital?’
Pride outweighed her need to change the subject.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m impressed. It’s looking really good and I believe you’re pretty much on time and on budget.’
She was powerless to prevent a grin so wide it might well crack her face in two.
‘Thanks. It isn’t going too badly. There are a few niggles but I built decent float into the programme so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Once we’ve finished on the new wing we’ll start on the new hospice facility across the site. We should be done within ten months, hopefully.’
‘Even more impressive.’
‘Dad always loved what I did,’ she added suddenly.
Waiting, hoping, for Kaspar to add something he also remembered about her father. Then fighting the sense of discouragement when he barely even reacted.
‘I can imagine.’
‘Anyway,’ she caught herself, ‘we were talking about your firework patient.’
She didn’t know why it felt so important that he should answer her. Perhaps because her dad had once told her and Robbie that getting Kaspar to open up about the things he loved was the key to knowing the boy. He kept everything that mattered to him so closely guarded, as though he feared the pleasure could be snatched from him at any time. The way his mother had often cruelly snatched away anything he’d shown an interest in as a kid, from toys, to hobbies, to his only decent stepfather.
According to her dad, Kaspar had never been a kid in the strictest sense of the word. His parents’ volatile relationship had caused him to grow up quickly, to distance himself from people, to distrust easily. But her own father had brought him round, treating him exactly as he’d treated Robbie, encouraging when he could, laying down the ground rules at other times. And she’d treated him like a brother while Robbie, of course, had just been Robbie, sweet, funny and easygoing.
Did Kaspar remember all that? If he did, did he care? Enough to answer her?
He hesitated and, for a moment, she thought he was going to sidestep it.
‘The boy’s jaw was shattered. He’d lost a chunk of it along with the teeth on the right side. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t even speak, so I needed to build a new jaw and simultaneously implant teeth. We layered pieces of titanium and then used a laser to harden the material. The lattice structure allowed us to really bend and form it so that it was the right size and shape for the kid, fitting perfectly and looking natural.’
Archie didn’t realise she’d been holding her breath until he stopped speaking. He was looking directly at her, his eyes were dark, intense, like a moment of understanding. Of connection.
She didn’t know whether it was a good or a bad thing that at that moment the music cranked up a notch and whatever else he was saying was lost, swallowed up by the thumping bass line.
‘Say that again?’ she shouted, but he shook his head.
The moment of opening up to her about his career was clearly over. She leaned in to speak into his ear, swaying slightly on her friend’s heels, her body lurching against his as he put his arm around her to steady her. Her lips grazed his skin and she smelled the tantalising citrus scent.
It hit her again, that wall of primal need, stealing her breath away as his touch seared every inch of her flesh. It was almost a relief when the music kicked down again and he released her.
‘You want to get out of here?’ she asked instead.
‘Together?’
‘Is that a problem?’
The words were out before she had even thought about them. Seductive, teasing, another flash of the old, adult Archie. Yet the way she could never have dreamed of being as a thirteen-year-old with a crush. It was exhilarating.
‘Not for me,’ he growled. ‘But, then, I’m sure you’ve heard the endless scandals that seem synonymous with my name. This isn’t a high-profile charity event, but it isn’t a small gathering either. If any press spot us, your photo will be on the internet before we even get to my hotel.’
‘Is that your attempt to warn me?’ She deliberately rolled her eyes. ‘Only I make it a point never to believe idle gossip. I don’t think they know the old Kaspar.’
‘The old Kaspar?’ His brow furrowed and as two light indentations peeked out from between his eyebrows a wave of familiarity unexpectedly coursed through Archie, making her clench her fingers into a fist just to keep from reaching out and lightly skimming them even as her stomach executed another downward dive.
So he didn’t know who she was. No wonder he hadn’t reacted to her mention of her father. Sick disappointment welled in her, but instead of backing away, as she might have done, a flash of the daredevil Archie Katie had been talking about suddenly flared within her.
Maybe, just maybe she could jog his cobwebbed memory. She would rather he piece it together himself than simply hit him over the head with it. She didn’t want to risk anything that might make him back away from her.
‘You know, the pre-“Surgeon Prince of Persia” reputation,’ she prompted. ‘The kid who climbed trees, and built dens, and fought with his best friend.’
Another beat. Imperceptible to perhaps anyone else. She felt rather than saw the shift.
‘There is no pre-“Surgeon Prince of Persia”.’ He winked.
It should have irritated her, being altogether too seductive, suggestive and downright overconfident. It didn’t. She’d seen the façade sliding back into place as though he regretted his moment of perceived weakness. That tell she recognised from long ago. More polished now, but there nonetheless. Kaspar the playboy might be standing in front of her, but she’d seen the Kaspar she’d known, the one she’d wanted, was still in there. She could still unearth him. For a moment back there she had succeeded.
A thrill coursed its way through her, lending her the confidence she’d been lacking.
‘I don’t know whether to admire your confidence or deplore your arrogance.’ She cocked her head to one side as if genuinely giving it serious consideration. ‘I rather fear it’s the latter.’
‘Oh, I seriously doubt that.’
His wolfish smile did little to soothe her jangling nerves. It was as though he was enjoying the banter. Relishing the challenge. Maybe if she dropped the right prompts, he would finally realise who she was. Finally remember.
‘Are you really the blasé Lothario the press paint you as? Bedding a different woman every other night?’ she challenged.
‘Well, if it’s in the press, then it must be true.’
Which wasn’t really, she couldn’t help but notice, an answer at all. It begged the question of why, if he was more like the Kaspar she remembered than the Kaspar the media seemed to describe, he would ever have allowed this unfavourable reputation of his to slide?
‘So you haven’t slept with any of the hundreds of women you’ve been linked with over the years?’
‘I didn’t say that either.’ His teeth almost gleamed and Archie shivered as she felt their sharp edges as surely as if he had them against her skin.
Grazing her. Nipping her. An intimacy she’d read in books or experienced in her fantasies. Never in real life. Certainly not with Joe. She held his gaze, steady and sure, until eventually—incredibly—he broke his gaze.
Archie wasn’t sure who was more surprised, her or Kaspar himself.
‘I confess that I’m always impressed how I have the time to date quite so many women. Although I won’t deny that when I get chance I do enjoy the company of the fairer sex.’
Something kicked hard, low in her stomach.
‘Of course you do.’
‘I am, after all, a man.’ He took a step closer to her and she found herself backing up to the pillar, her entire body fizzing with anticipation. ‘Or are you going to pretend that you haven’t noticed?’
‘And if I said I hadn’t?’
‘I’d say that, public perceptions and exaggerations aside, I know women well enough to read that such an assertion would be a lie.’
‘Is that so?’ She barely recognised the husky voice coming out of her mouth. And Kaspar only cranked that sinful smile up all the higher.
‘That’s so. You noticed me. What’s more, you want me. Almost as much as I want you.’
‘There’s that hubris again.’
‘Perhaps it is hubris.’ He took another step closer, not looking remotely remorseful. ‘But it doesn’t make it any less true. Shall we put it to the test?’
Suddenly, she was caged. The pillar at her back and Kaspar on the other three sides. Huge, and powerful, and heady. He wasn’t actually touching her, and yet she felt the weight of him pressing in on her. Holding her immobile.
Not that she felt remotely like trying to escape.
‘You really are altogether too sure of yourself.’ She had no idea how she managed to sound so breezy.
Especially considering the frenzy into which her body currently seemed hell-bent on working itself. Lust and longing stabbed through her.
‘Imagine how disappointing it would be if you fell short.’
He actually looked affronted just for a split second, before his eyes crinkled and a warm laugh escaped his lips. It was as though all the air in the room—in the world—went into that laugh. As though she didn’t need it to breathe and could exist on that laugh alone. As though there was nothing else but Kaspar.
‘I can assure you, Archie, I do not...fall short. In any respect.’
Her name on his lips again. If only she had the guts to reach up and kiss him, to discover whether his mouth tasted just as good as she imagined. She tried to but her body wouldn’t move, probably due to this overriding need for him to recognise her properly. So in the end she simply stared back into eyes, which were all too familiar. In colour if not in expression.
‘Well, of course, you would think that.’
‘It isn’t a matter of what I think.’ His dark, indolent tone spiralled through her. Every inch of her body felt it wrapping around her. Pulling tighter. Drawing her closer. ‘It’s a matter of what I know.’
It was all she could do to offer a nonchalant eye-roll.
‘Let me guess. A hundred women hailing you as a deity in the throes of passion?’
She didn’t want to think of those stories the papers loved to run with. The fact that his sexual prowess was lauded quite as much by quite so many. Although, now he’d mentioned it, it didn’t add up that he should be quite such a driven, dedicated surgeon and yet have so much time for personal indulgences.
‘Bit of an exaggeration. Although, frankly, I wasn’t thinking of a single other woman. I was only interested in one. And she’s standing right in front of me.’
‘Oh, you are good,’ she conceded, hoping against hope she didn’t look half as flushed as she felt.
Hoping he couldn’t hear the drumming of her heart or the roaring of blood in her ears. Hoping he couldn’t read the lust pouring through her and making her nipples ache they were so tight. Hoping he couldn’t feel the heavy heat pooling at the apex of her legs the way no man had ever made her feel before. At least not quite so wantonly.
She had a terrible fear that perhaps no other man would make her feel that ever again.
‘Care to confirm that conclusion?’ he murmured, his voice pouring over her just the way she would imagine warm, melted chocolate would do.
If she’d ever been that sexually adventurous, of course. Which she never had been. She imagined this version of Kaspar was, though, and the thought made her pulse leap in her wrists, at her throat.
What was the matter with her?
Kaspar didn’t miss a thing. His eyes dropped to watch the accelerated beat, his face so close she could almost draw her breath as he exhaled his. His eyes never left hers, their intentions unmistakeable.
What wouldn’t she have given for Kaspar to look at her like this when they’d been kids and she’d been besotted with him? And now he was.
Before she could stop herself, she reached out to trace the scar Katie had mentioned earlier.
‘Is this really the result of some drunken bar brawl?’
‘What else could it be?’ His voice rasped over her as though his very fingers were inching down her spine. It was all she could do not to give in to a delicious shiver.
‘I don’t know, something more banal.’ Archie had no idea how she managed to execute such an atypically graceful and nonchalant shrug. ‘Like a childhood accident. Falling off a bike? Charging into a table? Tumbling from a tree?’
His eyes sharpened for a moment.
Something hanging there. Teetering between them.
‘You have brothers?’
Her breath caught in her chest. A tight ball of air. Was Kaspar finally remembering?
A slew of emotions rushed her. Feelings she’d thought long since dead and buried. Idealistic, romantic, intense fantasies she’d cherished as an adolescent fancying herself in love with the oblivious Kaspar.
He’d ruined her, without ever touching her. Archie was sure of it. His mother had hauled him back to America right at the peak of her crush on him. If that hadn’t happened, no doubt the infatuation would have run its course, as it did with most young girls. Instead, for years, she’d imagined she and Kaspar to be some kind of modern-day star-crossed Romeo and Juliet, torn away from each other before Kaspar had even had a chance to open his eyes and see what had been in front of him all along. She’d carried the ridiculous dream with her long after she should have let it die.
It was the reason she’d never had a serious boyfriend, always holding a part of herself back in her relationships. Until Joe, of course. But that had been tainted with other issues.
