Fyre & Revenge Read Free

“she’s just a
diversion, something to fill my time this week.”
    The memory
faded and Zette blinked, bringing herself back to the present with
a bump. She covered her lapse with a slow downward sweep of her
lashes. Her eyes, so expressive, had always been her downfall.
There was no way she wanted him to know how much he affected
her.
    It brought it
all back, everything she’d tried so hard to bury for so long. She’d
known it wouldn’t work of course. These things had to be faced,
dealt with. But at the time she’d been too young, too inexperienced
to know how to deal with it. She’d had her heart broken, her
mother’s marriage had failed and she’d been left to fend for
herself in London after her mother had headed off to the Med to
find herself a new husband.
    Survival had
taken precedence and she’d pushed it all to the back of her mind,
fooling herself that time healed all wounds. It didn’t. The mere
sound of his voice was enough to rip away all the layers she’d
plastered over her wounds like a child pulling the scab away from a
nasty graze and revealing the tender flesh beneath.
    * * *
    She was pissed,
that much JJ could tell. The slight stiffening of her body told him
she’d recognised his voice even before she looked up and speared
him with those eyes. Not the sultry chocolate brown of the pictures
in the various magazines upstairs but cold and hard. It took a lot
to make brown eyes go cold like that but he wasn’t surprised. No
doubt he was the last person she expected, wanted to see.
    “JJ.” She
inclined her head a touch in greeting as she stood, moving with an
elegant grace he didn’t remember her possessing as a teenager. If
anything she’d been awkward, as though unsure in her own skin. She
didn’t offer her hand, which irked him a little. Now that she was
here, in front of him, he wanted to touch her again. Found he
needed to touch her, needed to feel her satin soft skin under
his.
    Down
boy
, he told himself, getting his body’s reaction to the
sound of her voice in check. She’d always had an unusual voice,
distinctive. He could never remember her singing as a child though,
but that might have had something to do with her mother. Ariadne
couldn’t sing, wasn’t in any way musical other than using the odd
dance to cast her lures for her next victim of a husband. If she
wasn’t interested in something, no further effort was expended on
it. It had always pissed him off about Zette’s mother, that and the
callous way she’d treated her quiet daughter.
    Obviously
though, somewhere along the line someone had seen the promise in
it. He wondered who… How had she gotten her big break?
    As soon as he
thought it, he dismissed the question. He wasn’t interested in the
past, or the portions of it between Zette and her gold-digging
mother being kicked out of the Jensen house and now. All he was
interested in was getting her into his bed. For now anyway. The
rest would come later.
    “You’re looking
well,” he commented lightly then nodded toward the lift, eager to
get on with this. “I believe we have an appointment so shall
we?”
    “From that I
assume Mr. Anders isn’t going to be joining us?” she asked as she
walked into the lift ahead of him. Her perfume, an exotic scent
that suited her, wound around his senses leaving him a little
lightheaded. JJ shook himself to clear it and hit the button for
his top floor office, keeping his mind firmly on the business ahead
and not on the promise of the curves beneath the jacket she was
wearing.
    What on earth
was the matter with him? He’d never reacted this strongly to a
woman before. Not even Zette herself when she was younger. But who
knew she’d turn out like this? A siren to haunt any man’s
dreams.
    “Oh I doubt he
will be. Probably off playing golf in the Seychelles or something,”
he commented. “He retired last week.”
    Zette made a
noncommittal noise in response. She wondered whether that had been
all Anders’s idea or if