Love notes (13 page)

She spent the next twenty
minutes, going through the building room by room, describing how
she visualised each one with reclaimed oak floors, a white kitchen
and an attic bedroom with vaulted ceilings and huge windows looking
out to sea.

Although her designs sounded
remarkably similar to Aiden’s plans, he made his own suggestions,
adding elements of old and new until Erika could clearly imagine
herself walking from room to room and the way the light would flood
in through the south-facing windows.

“When all this is over and I’m
bankrupt, keep me in mind for the housekeeper’s job,” Erika said,
only half joking. “I’d give anything to live there.”

“I’ll help you find something
similar of your own and even work on the conversion,” Aiden
promised, obviously assuming the case would go in her favour and
that she’d be free to return to England.

“Thanks. That fantasy will keep
me going over the next few months. But I pray I’ll be left with
enough to buy food, let alone bricks and mortar.”

“You’ll have more than enough. I
promise. Now pass my iPod out of your bag and I’ll let you finish
your book in peace.”

He removed his arm from behind
Erika’s head, lowered the back of his lounger, settled himself more
comfortably and closed his eyes. The unmistakable lilt of one of
her own ballads seeped out of Aiden’s headphones and Erika once
more gave him full marks for attention to detail. Lulled by the
soft music and an hour’s punishing exercise, Aiden’s body soon
relaxed into sleep, his breathing deepening and the tension eased
in his limbs.

Recognising the soft sighs that
had always heralded sleep, Erika glanced across and wondered why
she still remembered every little detail about him, when she’d
spent the last five years doing her utmost to forget. Her
rebellious subconscious had obviously cherished, wrapped and stored
every tender memory and now threw them up to the surface where they
glistened in the light of their renewed friendship.

If friendship was the best way
to describe it.

She’d have to think about that
some more, when her mind wasn’t quite so full.

Finally admitting defeat with
her book, Erika let her arm fall sideways onto Aiden’s chest,
expecting him to wake at her touch. When he didn’t, she let the
back of her hand sweep a wide curve from the top of his shorts to
his collarbone, his chest hair still damp but soft against her
skin. On the third arc, Aiden caught her wrist very gently and
enfolded her hand in his, before pressing it close against his
chest right above his heart. He shifted slightly, making himself
more comfortable, and let out a long sigh as his mouth curved in a
sleeping smile that suggested a pleasant dream.

Rather than disentangle her
fingers, Erika let them rest where Aiden held them, straining every
nerve to pick up the rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her hand and
asking herself how a relationship this easy and this perfect could
have gone so horribly wrong.

All she needed was a red carpet
underfoot, and a rank of photographers, and Erika felt she could
have temporarily reclaimed her Hollywood self.

She and Aiden had reservations
in the hotel’s main restaurant so they’d both dressed up for the
kind of dinner Erika could never have afforded as a student. After
trying on every dress in her wardrobe, she’d eventually settled on
a midnight-blue silk gown that left her shoulders bare, clung to
her body and ended not far above her knees. Not exactly the most
appropriate clothing for a cold November evening in Yorkshire, but
her performer’s instincts told her the night called for something
dramatic.

When she’d split from Aiden,
she’d been an impoverished student with barely enough money for an
economy flight across the Atlantic. Tonight was all about showing
him how far she’d travelled since – financially, emotionally and
creatively – and that he’d been a fool to let her go. She needed
all her best tricks.

Aiden had gone up to her room
first to change and had arranged to wait for her in the bar, giving
her every opportunity to make an impact. If there was one thing a
thousand red carpet appearances had taught Erika, it was how to
make an entrance and, as she walked in to meet Aiden, he reacted in
exactly the way she’d hoped.

Light sparkling on the diamond
droplets on her bodice first caught his attention, followed by the
rustle of the full skirt around her slender legs as she walked very
steadily toward him, imagining she was playing to a camera.

She focussed her entire
attention on him, not a difficult task because he looked so
gorgeous in his sharply-cut, charcoal suit and white shirt. The
costly fabric moulded to every solid, perfectly-formed inch of him,
making him even taller and broader – if that were at all possible –
and Erika was afraid her legs would buckle with lust.

Aiden appeared even more
overawed by the sight of Erika and watched her cross the room, his
eyes drinking in every detail of the tightly-cut dress that
accentuated her generous breasts and her long, long legs in sheer,
black stockings.

“You look amazing,” he breathed,
taking her hand and kissing her lightly on each cheek. “You’re more
beautiful every time I see you – if that’s possible.”

“Thank you.” Erika sat down
beside him on a sofa that was tucked away in a very discreet corner
of the bar. She registered every gorgeous element that went into
making up Aiden’s handsome whole and fought the overwhelming
compulsion to lay a trail of kisses across his bare throat. “I’d
forgotten how well you wore a suit.”

“You approve then?”

“It’d be impossible not to.”

Suddenly, his well-cut clothes
were nothing but a distraction and Erika couldn’t help imagining
the sight of that expensive jacket crumpled on the hall floor and
his trousers dropped somewhere at the foot of the bed.

The first line of her mental
resistance crumbled and her fingers itched to unbutton his shirt.
The last time she’d seen him naked there’d only been a towelling
robe to contend with. How much more exciting would it be to take
off this tailor-made gift wrapping, piece by piece?

Her sex gave a jolt of
pleasure.

“I ordered champagne,” Aiden
said, breaking into Erika’s fantasy. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Lovely.” She crossed her legs,
accidentally-on-purpose letting her calf rest against his and
feeling his muscles flex. She allowed herself a secret smile. If
she’d intended using seduction to keep Aiden in line, she was
winning every battle too easily and she half wished he’d put up
more of a fight.

Aiden picked up a glass to
disguise his confusion and defy the near-irresistible urge to run
his hand up Erika’s leg all the way to her stocking tops.

Although calling Aiden a leg man
would have been wildly inaccurate because he’d always been equally
infatuated with every inch of Erika’s body, as she knew only too
well. From his quickened breathing, and the fact that he couldn’t
take his eyes off her, Erika assumed that some infatuations ran
more than skin deep and that Aiden’s reactions were now being
dictated from a place somewhere below his waist, not by rational
thought.

Erika raised her glass. “Here’s
to winning the first battle against Marty. I don’t suppose you’ve
heard anything more from your people.”

Aiden’s expression fell and
Erika guessed that, whatever he’d heard, it wasn’t good news.

“I’d hoped you wouldn’t ask
tonight. I didn’t want to spoil the evening.”

“What’s happened?” She put her
hand on his knee but there was nothing seductive about the gesture.
She touched him because she needed to ground herself and hold onto
something steady before the anticipated shock sent her reeling.
“Tell me.”

“They’ve found the contract and
your copyright may have been assigned to one of Marty’s
companies.”

Panic rose like the bubbles in
her champagne and she struggled not to cry. “Please tell me it
isn’t true.”

“We don’t know if it’s the right
contract yet,” Aiden hurried to say and took her hand, grasping it
tightly as he tried to soften the blow. He wanted to be honest with
her but felt she wasn’t strong enough to take the unvarnished
truth. “It’s only my interpretation of it and I could well be
wrong. I know my way around a construction contract but this is a
highly specialised area. The entertainment lawyers are looking at
it right now. They’ll call us tomorrow.”

Erika gulped down her drink,
conscious that Aiden hadn’t yet let go of her hand. She read a
hundred different things into his expression but the one she clung
onto was his confidence.

“You really think we can beat
Marty, don’t you?” she said.

“I know we can. Even though the
contract is a blow, we still have far more leverage from his
financial records than we’d hoped for. And there’s no telling what
the technical people will find when they open the rest of the
files. Your chances of reclaiming your music, money and freedom are
increasing by the hour.” He made his voice emphatic.

“You wouldn’t lie to me, would
you?”

“I never have and I never shall.
If I’d thought it was a hopeless case, I wouldn’t have wasted my
time driving all this way north.”

This, in itself, was a very easy
lie to spot. Aiden hadn’t driven two hundred miles just to help her
through a financial crisis. The last two days had shown that he
also had unfinished business where their relationship was
concerned, and that it was now up to Erika to decide how that
business concluded.

She let out a long sigh and
braced her shoulders, drilling down deeply into the reserves of
strength that had sustained her over the past five years. She gave
herself a stiff, mental talking to.

“As I see it, I have two
options,” she thought out loud. “Firstly, I can sit here worrying
about my contract for the next thirty six hours, but that won’t
achieve anything and it certainly won’t solve anything.
Alternatively, I can enjoy the rare treat of time to myself. A
quiet meal with an old friend. Intelligent conversation. A glass of
champagne without some gossip mag speculating whether I have a
drink problem. It’s the first time I’ve been away from Marty in
five years. I don’t intend wasting these precious hours thinking
about him.”

“I’m happy to distract you,”
Aiden offered, reassured by her resilience and smiling wickedly.
His eyes carried promises his body could most definitely keep and
his lips parted slightly, begging to be kissed.

Erika couldn’t resist.

With a courage built out of
relief and champagne, she slipped her hand around the back of
Aiden’s neck and pulled him toward her. Her mouth brushed his
gently, feeling it soften and respond, the privacy of their corner
tempting her into deepening the kiss when Aiden ran his tongue
around her lips and leaned in to her.

“We could always skip dinner,”
he offered, his breath soft against her face but Erika stopped his
lips with another kiss to silence the thought.

“That would never work for me.
You know how I love to eat.”

“Room service then?”

“What, after I went to all this
trouble dressing up?”

Aiden smiled slowly. “In my
experience, a woman only dresses up because she wants to be
undressed.”

Erika didn’t argue in case she
fell too squarely within his theory. “Perhaps I dressed to please
myself, not you.”

“So why choose black stockings –
which you know I adore – and the kind of dress that forces me to
imagine what’s underneath?”

“Are you imagining right
now?”

“Remembering might be a better
word.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking hard. “With a little bit of
fantasy thrown in.”

The air around them crackled and
Erika’s heart clenched in expectation. Given the time, she would
have relished spending the entire evening flirting with Aiden but
thirty-six short hours (and counting) honed her attention and she
drove straight to the point.

“What do you really want from
me, Aiden?” she asked. “Apart from the obvious.”

“There’s no easy answer to
that.”

“Then simplify it for me. Money?
Flirtation? Bragging to your friends about sleeping with Erika
Fenn?”

“None of the above.” He downed
his champagne, giving himself a few precious seconds in which to
think. “Forgiveness, would be a start. But friendship, would be
better.”

“And after that?” She stared at
him, trying to fathom his motivation. “You might not be lying but I
suspect you’re not telling me the whole truth either. I don’t have
time to waste. Straight answer.”

Aiden pushed his lips together,
holding back the words until he had them organised inside his
head.

“I want you back in my life,” he
said simply. “Finding me in bed with another woman drove you out to
America. I’d hoped that freeing you from your contract would bring
you back to England… and to me.”

The answer knocked Erika off
balance – going further than she’d expected – and her breath failed
momentarily. “As a friend?”

“If all else fails. But I was
hoping for more.”

She panicked. Time had been slow
to anaesthetise her against the pain of their first break-up and
she doubted her heart would survive a second wounding. An
intolerable loneliness had engulfed her and it had taken months to
claw her way out of it. The upcoming fight with Marty threatened to
break what remained of her spirit and she’d have nothing left over
to deal with another split from Aiden.

She couldn’t guarantee that she
wouldn’t sink without trace this time.

“It’s been over between us for
too long,” she therefore told him. “There’s no going back. This is
only harmless flirtation. A chance for you to make amends.”

“I told myself the same thing,
but the minute I laid eyes on you again, I knew it wasn’t
over.”