Unscripted Seduction - Chapter 3
For one stunned second Ama simply stood there, pulse punching, the echo of the polished wood door slamming reverberating through the hot and humid late afternoon.
Then fury surged hot and clean through her veins. ‘Unbelievable,’ she muttered, then rapped hard against the door. Once. Twice. Three times, each knock sharper than the last.
‘Damian!’
Nothing.
Her phone buzzed in her hand.
Cilla: Have you seen him yet?
Mom: Don’t let him bully you into losing your temper.
Too late.
Ashon: Crew losing confidence. We may be looking at a wider delay if this isn’t resolved.
Ama stared at the messages, jaw tight, then at the closed door again.
Fine.
If he wanted to be impossible, she could work with impossible.
She turned the handle.
Unlocked. Of course it was. Supremely arrogant men like Sefa believed they were untouchable. Above the petty worries and concerns of normal beings.
She glanced back towards the SUV. Kwesi, her driver, looked at her through the windscreen with polite but unmistakable alarm. Overhead, the light had subtly shifted; thick grey clouds were beginning to gather, bruising the horizon. She was familiar with the sudden and ferocious storms that could paralyse this city in moments.
Walking back down two steps, she gestured for him to lower the window. ‘Please come back for me in three hours.’
Kwesi’s brows rose. ‘Miss…are you certain?’
She looked up at the house, at its beautiful, inhospitable stillness, at the darkening sky collecting over it like a warning.
A drop of rain touched the back of her hand. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Make that two.’
He hesitated only a fraction before nodding. ‘Yes, miss.’
As the SUV rolled away, the first warm gust of storm wind chased over the gravel. Ama drew one steadying breath, turned back to the open doorway and stepped inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.
Silence met her. The kind money bought and loneliness furnished with cool stone underfoot, clean lines and art on white walls that looked expensive and unlived with. A long stretch of open-plan interior disappearing towards broad glass at the back of the house, beyond which the sea had turned a darker, moodier blue.
No Damian.
Her phone buzzed again.
Mom: Remember, you’re not there to win. You’re there to regain control.
And then—
Cilla: You don’t have to fight him in his language. Find the real problem.
Ama let out a breath that was almost a laugh and very much not amused.
Easy for them to say.
She slipped the phone into her bag and moved further into the house, heels clicking against stone, every sense suddenly alive. The scent of rain pushed in from somewhere half-open, closely followed by the distant crack of thunder.
But it was the awareness of being inside the private space of a man who clearly preferred the rest of the world kept at a distance that kept her pulse leaping.
And underneath all of it, infuriatingly, the memory of him at the door.
Barefoot. Hard-eyed. Beautiful in a way that aggravated her on principle.
‘Mr Sefa,’ she called, her voice cool and carrying. ‘You can hide like a sulking genius all you like, but I’m not leaving until we talk.’
Silence echoed.
Then his voice drifted from somewhere deeper in the house, low, precise, and rough enough to make her skin tighten.
‘That,’ he said, ‘may be the first genuinely stupid thing you’ve done today.’