“Ah, such beauty and fire.” He smiled. A devastating curve to his lips, she was certain. Unfortunately, it left her cold and had little effect on the mesmerizing magic Cam had left pulsing inside her body.
Thick black hair was pulled back to the nape of his neck and tied there. It appeared long enough to fall well below his shoulders. He was dressed in dark gray slacks and a white silk shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His eyes gleamed with wicked, sinful charm, and with delights that a woman could only imagine.
Jaci paused several feet from him, her lips twitching as she saw the faint resemblance between him and the young woman she had grown so fond of last year.
“Mr. Mustafa,” she greeted him, restraining her grin.
He blinked back at her in surprise. “Have we met? Funny, I would have thought I would remember meeting such exquisite beauty.”
“I met your sister, Paige,” she informed him. “She warned me to steer a wide path around you.”
His expression flickered with fondness and amusement. “Brave women rarely take such warnings to heart,” he told her, the faint foreign flavor of his voice as sexy as his eyes. And it pissed her off, because she should have been swooning at his feet, just as Paige had warned her not to do. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single swoon inside her, because he couldn’t compare to Cam.
“Bravery doesn’t necessarily entail sampling forbidden fruits, either,” she warned him, amused by him, rather than offended or outraged.
“Paige enjoys warning all the beautiful women against me.” He grinned again, his sensual lips curving back to flash strong, white teeth. “But I promise you, I am not in the least forbidden. You may sample me all you choose.”
There was an irrepressible delight in his eyes, the look of a man who enjoyed the chase just as much as he enjoyed the capture.
“I think I’ll pass.” She declined his very charming offer with a wide smile. “As lovely as the offer sounds, I’m really pretty busy these days, and I’d hate to be unable to give you all the attention I’m certain you deserve.”
He laughed at that, then tilted his head and watched her for a long, assessing moment.
“You must be the lovely interior designer, Ms. Wright, that Courtney has been telling me so much about. She said you had a beautiful, fearsome wit. I see she was correct.”
“I don’t know how fearsome it is, but it’s wit anyway.” She extended her hand. “It’s been interesting to meet you. Though I’ll have to be certain to tell Paige you no longer ravish women at first sight.”
His hand enfolded hers before he pulled her to him. Off balance, she landed against his chest to find herself the recipient of a quick, laughing kiss to the corner of her lips, before she was carefully set away from him.
“There, my reputation is now once again intact; you may inform Paige you were ravished after all.”
“You are a rogue.” She laughed.
“He’s also endangered if he doesn’t take his f**king hands off you.”
Jaci whirled around, shock, anger, a mix of emotions bombarding her head at the sight of Cam standing at the entrance to the hall, his expression savage, eyes narrowed and dangerous.
Behind him, Chase was watching curiously, his gaze more interested than angry. Cam, on the other hand, was way past angry.
He strode down the hall just as the door to Courtney and Ian’s suite opened and Ian stepped outside.
The tension tightened around her, trapped between the four men, aware of Courtney watching from the doorway, all eyes on her.
Suddenly she decided she’d rather face the Robertses on a bad day than the mess she could feel brewing in the hallway.
“Courtney, tell me you have coffee.” She turned to her friend desperately.
Courtney took one look at Cam as he stopped behind Jaci, lifted her brows and drawled. “Jaci, I can go you one better. I have whisky. And from the looks of things out here, we’re probably going to need it.”
She stepped outside the door, snagged Jaci’s wrist, and pulled her inside before slamming the door behind her.
Both women leaned their backs against the panel and blew out hard breaths.
“Life getting interesting?” Courtney asked her as Jaci stared straight ahead into the elegantly appointed sitting room.
“Oh yeah.” She nodded, feeling the trembling in her legs, the heat in her lower stomach. “Is it like this around here very often?”
“Not since Ian and I were sniping and snarling through our courtship,” Courtney responded, before turning to stare at her.
Jaci could feel her friend’s look and grimaced at the question she knew was coming.
“You know,” Courtney finally drawled, “Cameron Falladay is positively delicious when he’s being possessive.”
Delicious wasn’t the word she would use to describe him. But there was no doubt those few seconds had been filled with such heightened lust that it left Jaci shaking.
“He’s going to drive me to drink,” she muttered.
“No doubt, he probably will,” Courtney agreed.
They both listened expectantly, but could hear little more than the murmur of voices outside.
“Ian will referee,” Courtney promised, but there wasn’t a lot of conviction in her voice.
Jaci turned to her slowly, turning her wrath from Cam to the other woman. “I blame you for this,” she stated. “You didn’t even warn me they were here.”
To which Courtney grinned. “I didn’t, did I? I’ll have Ian spank me for that later. But admit it, Jaci, your life was horribly boring. You aren’t bored any longer.”
She was beginning to wonder, though, if bored wouldn’t be better.
Cam slammed the door to his office with a vicious flick of his wrist and grinded his teeth in fury.
Five minutes. She had been out of his sight five f**king minutes, and what had happened? There was that bastard Khalid, his hands on her, his lips on her.
His fists clenched, the need to punch something nearly overriding his self-control. The need to punch that half-Middle-Eastern son of a bitch touching his woman was what crazed him.
“You hit the wall again, and Ian’s going to make us pay for the repairs ourselves,” Chase warned him as Cam felt his fingers curling into a fist.
He’d already put a hole in the wall once this year. The day after the final report on Jaci was compiled, and he’d had time to think about it, time to let the fury stew inside him.