The Secret Affair(52)

                “I wouldn’t bring my mouth any closer if I were you,” he warned in a rough whisper.

                She blinked as if realizing how close they were. Heeding his warning, she quickly took a step back. “I still want answers, Aidan. What are you doing here?”

                He decided to be totally honest with her. Give her the naked truth and let her deal with it. “I came on this cruise, Jillian, with the full intention of winning you back.”





                                      Eleven

                Jillian stared at Aidan as his words sank in. That’s when she decided it would be best for them to take this discussion to a more private area after all. She removed her mask. “I think we need to step outside the room, Aidan.”

                When they stepped into a vacant hallway, she turned to him. “How dare you assume all you had to do was follow me on this cruise to win me back?”

                He pulled off his mask and she fought back a jolt of desire when she looked into his face. How could any man get more handsome in a year’s time? Yes, she’d seen him a couple of times since their break-up, but she had avoided getting this close to him. He appeared to have gotten an inch or so taller, his frame was even more muscular and his looks were twice as gorgeous.

                “I have given it some thought,” he said, leaning back against a railing.

                “Evidently, not enough,” she countered, not liking how her gaze, with a mind of its own, was traveling over him. He was wearing a dark suit, and he looked like a male model getting ready for a photo shoot—immaculate with nothing out of place.

                “Evidently, you’ve forgotten one major thing about me,” she said.

                “What? Just how stubborn you are?” he asked, smiling, as if trying to make light of her anger, which irritated her even more.

                “That, too, but also that once I make up my mind about something, that’s it. And I made up my mind that my life can sail a lot more calmly without you.” She watched his expression to see if her words had any effect, but she couldn’t tell if they had.

                He studied her in silence before saying, “Sorry you feel that way, Jillian. But I intend to prove you wrong.”

                She lifted a brow. “Excuse me?”

                “Over the next fourteen days I intend to prove that your life can’t sail more calmly without me. In fact, I intend to show you that you don’t even like calm. You need turbulence, furor and even a little mayhem.”

                She shook her head. “If you believe that then you truly don’t know me at all.”

                “I know you. I also know the real reason you broke things off with me. Why didn’t you tell me what you thought you saw in my apartment the night of my birthday party?”

                She wondered how he’d found out about that. It really didn’t matter at this point. “It’s not what I thought I saw, Aidan. It’s what I saw. A woman giving you a lap dance, which you seemed to enjoy, before she began stripping off her clothes.” Saying it made the memory flash in her mind and roused her anger that much more.

                “She was a paid entertainer, Jillian. All the ladies there that night were. Several of my frat brothers thought I’d been living a boring and dull life and decided to add some excitement into it. I admit they might have gone a little overboard.”