His Brand of Passion Read Free

even though seduction had to be the last thing on his mind, Zoe could still feel her body’s pulsing awareness of him. All he’d done was touch her leg. She had to get a grip and remember this was about the phone. Nothing else.
    She raised her hand above the table, the phone still clutched in it, and slowly shook her head. ‘No.’
    Aaron’s lips thinned. ‘I could take it from you by force.’ She had no doubt he could. ‘That would cause a scene.’
    ‘You think I care?’
    No, Zoe realised, she didn’t think he did. Considering his behaviour so far, she didn’t think he cared at all. She imagined him prying the phone from her hand. It would be like taking candy from a baby. She was no match for his strength, and she couldn’t stand the thought of enduring Aaron’s mocking triumph for the rest of the evening.
    Impulsively, her gaze locked on Aaron’s, she slid the phone down the front of her dress. he stared back at her and something flared in his eyes that made the awareness inside her pulse harder.
    ‘That looks a little…strange,’ he remarked, and Zoe glanced down to see her cleavage obscured by a bulky object in the middle of the dress. It did, indeed, look a bit strange.
    ‘Easily fixed,’ she replied breezily, and with a bit of pushing and pulling of the strapless dress she managed to get the phone to lie flat under the shelf of her breasts. Still a little strange, but not too bad. And totally impossible for Aaron to access.
    He sat back in his chair, shook his head slowly. ‘You really are a piece of work.’
    ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
    ‘It wasn’t meant as one.’
    ‘Even so.’
    He chuckled softly, the sound hard and without humour,and leaned forward again. ‘You think,’ he murmured, his voice stealing right inside her, ‘I can’t get that phone out of your dress?’
    Zoe glanced at him, tried for haughty amusement. ‘Not easily.’
    ‘You have no idea what I’m capable of.’
    ‘Actually, based on your behaviour so far, I think I have a fairly good idea of the level of boorishness you’re willing to sink to,’ she replied. ‘But even you, I believe, would draw the line at mauling the maid of honour in the middle of a wedding reception.’
    Aaron stared at her for a few seconds, his gaze flicking over her face, seeming to assess her. His face had turned blank, expressionless, which made Zoe uneasy. She couldn’t read him at all. Then he shrugged and turned back to his meal. ‘Fine,’ he said, and he sounded completely bored, utterly dismissive. ‘Give it back to me in a couple of hours.’
    Zoe sat there, the phone hot and a little sweaty against her chest, and felt weirdly deflated. She’d enjoyed sparring with him, she realised. It had been invigorating and, yes, a tiny bit flirtatious. But, based on the way Aaron was now focused completely on his salad, she was now the furthest thing from his thoughts. Well, she thought with a sigh, wriggling a little to make herself a bit more comfortable with a phone inside her dress, at least she’d taught him a lesson.
    Aaron knew about patience. It was a lesson he’d learned from childhood, when his father would summon him to his study only to make him wait standing by the door for an hour or more, while he concluded some trivial piece of business.
    It was a lesson he’d needed, for it had taken patience to rebuild Bryant Enterprises from the ground up when his father had left it to him fifteen years ago, utterly bankrupt.
    It was a lesson he would use now, for he knew it was onlya matter of time before he found an opportunity to corner Zoe and get his phone back.
    He had to admire her bravado and tenacity, even if the whole exercise annoyed the hell out of him. She was different from most women he knew, utterly uninterested in impressing him. In fact, she seemed to want the opposite: to aggravate him. Well, it was working.
    An hour into the festivities Zoe excused herself from the table. Aaron watched her head to the