The Magnate's Marriage Merger. Joanne Rock
turned, still in conversation with the other woman, her dimple flashing once as they continued their animated talk. Clearly, the two of them knew each other, but then again, they moved in a small world of elite professionals.
Would Lydia try to leave without speaking to him privately? He didn’t think so. She was not a woman to mince words. And while he’d caught her off guard—clearly—by showing up here without her knowledge, she’d had two hours during the meeting to consider her course of action. She would confront him directly.
The idea tantalized far more than it should have. She’d walked away from him. Worse, she’d meddled in his affairs without his knowledge. Even that, he might have forgiven. But how could she extend her vengeance to his family? She’d matched his brother Cameron to an oblivious stranger. The meeting—and Cameron’s impulsive proposal in the middle of a private airport—had been caught on film by a dance magazine that was doing a special on the ballerina and would-be bride. The episode put their older brother, Quinn, in the awkward position of trying to smooth things over in the media to placate the woman’s furious and embarrassed father.
Lydia had been responsible for all of that, and Ian wasn’t about to forget it. Even if things had worked out in the end when Quinn fell hard for the ballerina himself. The two were now engaged. Happy.
Ian exchanged pleasantries with the site manager as the rest of the group filed out through the glass doors and back into the main building, leaving him and Lydia alone in the interior courtyard. A water feature gurgled in the space as yet untouched by the remodel.
The babble of water over a short rock wall softened the impact of the sudden silence. Shoving to his feet, Ian stalked around the wrought iron table to where Lydia sat, gathering her things and tucking a silver pen into the sleeve inside her leather tote bag.
“I need to speak with you privately,” she informed him, slinging the tote onto one shoulder as she met his gaze.
He’d forgotten how green her eyes were. He remembered staring into those jade depths while the two of them stood in a languid pool off the Pacific on a beach in Rangiroa, just north of Tahiti. He’d thought then that her eyes matched the color of the water—not really emerald green or aqua that day, but a brilliant green.
He’d thought a whole lot of foolish things then, though. A mistake he would not be repeating.
“I figured you might.” He inclined his head. “My car is outside.”
For the briefest moment, she nipped her lower lip. Uncertain? Or unwilling?
Or tempted? Ah...
“We might as well work while we talk,” he explained. He didn’t want her to think he planned to cart her off and ravish her at the first opportunity, the way he once would have after a tedious two-hour meeting. “Traffic should be reasonable at this hour. We can drive over to Singer’s inspiration hotels and take a look around.”
“Of course.” She pivoted on her heel and preceded him toward the exit. “Thank you.”
His eyes dipped to the gentle sway of her hips in the turquoise silk, the hint of thigh visible in the short slit at the back of her skirt. He didn’t recognize the dress, but the thighs were a different story. He and Lydia had been crazy about each other, tearing one another’s clothes off at the slightest opportunity. One time, they’d barely made it to an outdoor shower stall on their way up to his villa from the beach.
Now her hair had grown longer, reaching to the middle of her back. Last year, it had been cut in a razor-sharp line across the middle of her shoulder blades. Today, it draped lower, the ends trimmed in a V that seemed to point to the sweet curve of her lovely ass.
He reached around her to open the door for her, leading them into the Miami sun, grown considerably warmer over the last two hours. Once outside, he flicked open the top button on his shirt beneath his tie, knowing full well this noontime excursion wasn’t going to be all about work and knowing with even more certainty that his rising temperature had more to do with the woman in step beside him than the sun above him.
“This way.” He pointed toward the valet at the next hotel over, grateful the attendant behind the small stand noticed Ian and sent one of the younger workers into the parking garage with a set of keys.
No doubt his rented convertible BMW would be driven out soon enough. He ushered Lydia to one side of the street while they waited, his hand brushing the small of her back just long enough to feel the gentle glide of silk on his fingertips and the warmth of her body underneath.
The South Beach scenery—palm trees, exotic cars, brilliant blue water and beach bodies parading to and from the shore on the other side of the street—was nothing to him. Lydia had his undivided attention.
“You just happened to be in Miami?” She turned on him suddenly, the frustration that had been banked earlier finding fresh heat now that they were alone. “On a job that has nothing to do with McNeill Resorts or your personal development company?”
He caught a hint of her fragrance, something tropical that stood out from the scent of the hibiscus hedge behind her.
“I am here to see you.” He saw no need to hide his intentions. “Although even I didn’t realize until recently how much unfinished business remained between us.”
“So pick up the phone.” She bit out the words with careful articulation, though her voice remained quiet. “There was no need to fly fifteen hundred miles to ambush me on my project.”
“Our project,” he reminded her, letting the “ambush” remark slide. “And I saw no sense in calling you when you purposely went into hiding after we left Rangiroa.” He’d been furious that she’d blocked him in every way possible, giving him no access to her unless he wanted to be truly obnoxious about seeing her. He refused to be that guy who wouldn’t give up on a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.
“You knew how I felt about public scandals.” She hugged her arms around herself for a moment, eliciting an unwelcome twinge of empathy from him.
With a very famous father and a mother who was unrepentant about going after his billions, Lydia had received way too much media attention as a child and straight through her teen years. Her parents were the kind of media spectacle that the tabloids cashed in on again and again. In Lydia’s eyes, all her mother had done was to destroy Lydia’s relationships with her father’s family.
“You had no reason to believe I would ever make our affair public.” He spotted the silver Z4 rolling out of the parking garage and pointed out the vehicle to her. “You know me better than that.”
“I only thought I knew you, Ian.”
She didn’t need to say any more than that for him to hear the damning accusation behind the words as they headed toward the car.
Tipping the valet service, Ian grudgingly allowed one of the other attendants to close Lydia’s door behind her, not surprised the thin veneer of civility between them was already wearing thin. He’d cared deeply about her and he was sure she’d once felt the same about him. The raw hurt of tearing things apart had left them both full of resentments, it seemed.
Indulging those bitter emotions wasn’t going to get him what he wanted, however. His objective remained to find out what she was doing messing with his life and his family’s welfare through her so-called matchmaking efforts.
“Do you mind having the top down?” he asked. They’d shared a Jeep with no top to roam around the French Polynesian island a year ago, but the stiff-shouldered woman in his passenger seat today bore little resemblance to the laughing, tanned lover of those days.
“It’s fine.” She reached into the leather tote at her feet and retrieved a dark elastic hair band that she used to twist her hair into a tail and then a loop so the pieces were all tucked away somehow. “Maybe having some fresh air blowing around this conversation will help us keep our tempers.”
He pulled out of the hotel parking area and onto Ocean Drive.
“Either