by Lynne Graham
‘And there isn’t going to be a night before to regret.’ There wasn’t; she was going to put a stop to this any minute now…any minute…
Well, what harm could another couple of minutes do? she told herself as she felt the pressure of his skilful lips subtly increase. It was just kissing.
Releasing a long, shuddering sigh, she ignored the alarmist voice of caution in her head that was insultingly suggesting she couldn’t stop even if she wanted to, and instead responded to an instinct that impelled her to clutch at him to intensify and prolong the delicious experience. Weaving her fingers into his lush dark hair once she had done so seemed equally instinctual and very satisfying. If this went on for ever it wouldn’t be too long, the dreamy thought drifted through her mind, before she gave herself up totally to the hedonistic pleasure of feeling his hard, rampantly male body pressed up against her.
Natalie hadn’t known that kisses so addictive you couldn’t walk away from them existed. Totally submerged by a tide of longing, she hooked her arms tightly around his neck. Rafe responded by encircling her narrow waist with his hands. With effortless ease he drew her upright, causing the chair he lifted her from to spin backwards until it collided noisily and unobserved into a filing cabinet.
Natalie wasn’t even conscious that her shoes had slipped off as her toes lost contact with the floor.
‘What if someone comes in…?’
Her agonised whisper caused him to pull back slightly. The flicker of cold reason in the passion-darkened eyes that swept over her flushed face brought the stupidity of what she was doing crashing home.
Her cheeks heated with mortification. ‘This is really stupid.’ She shook her head. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this.’
Rafe let his head fall back and she heard him exhale noisily. ‘Sure,’ he agreed, lifting his head and pinning her with a feverish cerulean stare. ‘But think,’ he advised her throatily, ‘of the alternative.’
Natalie blinked in confusion.
‘Not doing it.’
‘Oh!’ Every cell in her body screamed in protest.
‘Precisely.’
Natalie was transfixed by the dark need stamped on his hard features.
‘That would be…?’
His eyes slid to her mouth, then back to her eyes. ‘Unthinkable,’ he completed. Still holding her eyes, he parted her lips once more and with seductive skill slid his tongue between her trembling lips.
‘Yes!’ she whimpered, giving herself up to the craving she could no longer pretend didn’t exist. ‘Oh, yes, please!’
Her fractured sob ached with longing. It was too much for Rafe’s iron self-control, self-control she naïvely hadn’t been aware existed until it was no longer there. A shudder rippled through his lean, powerful body the moment before he claimed her lips. His hungry lips had barely covered hers before his tongue stabbed deep again and again into her mouth.
Natalie was swept up into a maelstrom of pure sensation.
CHAPTER FIVE
NATALIE felt bereft and dizzy when Rafe abruptly put her from him.
‘The phone is ringing.’
There was not a trace of the raw, driven hunger he had been exhibiting moments before in the hard planes and hollows of his face.
Natalie shivered, she suddenly felt very cold. He was going to pretend it hadn’t happened… That was good, that was excellent—well, as excellent anything connected with kissing your boss with all the finesse of a sex-starved bimbo could be!
Just why had kissing him seemed a good idea? When she thought about how she had… Don’t think about it, she instructed herself firmly. It didn’t happen. If it works for him it works for me, she told herself angrily. It’s just easier for him, she thought, sliding a resentful sideways glance at his darkly impassive face.
Rafe intercepted the look and exhaled loudly. ‘This,’ he grated, raking a hand through his hair in an exasperated manner, ‘is exactly what I’ve been trying to avoid. Getting involved emotionally at work is a recipe for disaster.’
Wasn’t that just typical of the man, acting as if he were the innocent victim of her shameless lust when he was the one who had started it? And that in itself was confusing. Why would a man who had spent the previous few minutes pulling all aspects of her appearance and character to shreds want to kiss her? Well, whatever the reason she wasn’t going to accept all the blame.
‘Afraid it wouldn’t be good for your reputation if it got around you’d kissed someone with an inside-leg measurement of less than thirty-four?’
Initially Rafe looked startled by her caustic taunt, but within a matter of seconds an amused glint she didn’t like appeared in his eyes.
‘Or are you worried I’ll play the sexual harassment card? Don’t be!’ she advised, determined he would not be left with the impression she envied in any way those blonde clones. Her small bosom heaved as she sought to control her strong feelings. ‘Do you think I want people to know you kissed me?’ She gave a very expressive little shudder.
‘It’s not my reputation I’m concerned about.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Have you any idea what people think about ambitious young women who sleep with their bosses?’ He paused to let his point sink in. ‘It doesn’t matter how talented you happen to be, people will always assume that you slept your way to the top.’
Natalie flushed. ‘Some place I’m not likely to get!’ she gritted.
‘If you stop bleating and start actually being positive, it’s not totally impossible,’ he declared callously.
Natalie glared at him with loathing.
‘The phone is ringing again.’
‘I know the phone is ringing, I don’t need you to tell me,’ she snapped back childishly. ‘Hello!’ she snarled down the line.
‘Is that you, Nat?’ a puzzled voice the other end asked tentatively.
It was hardly surprising, Natalie reflected grimly, that she didn’t sound like herself—she certainly didn’t feel like herself! And as for the way she’d been acting! How could you loathe someone and want to rip their clothes off at the same time? She turned her back on the tall, silent figure but it didn’t stop her being painfully aware of him in every cell of her body.
‘Natalie?’
‘Yes, it’s me,’ Natalie replied, recognising the familiar voice of Ruth the child-minder. Alarm bells began to ring in her head—Ruth never rang her at work unless there had been a disaster of some sort. The last time Rose had been inconsolable because she had lost her favourite teddy.
‘Don’t panic, Nat.’
Nothing, in Natalie’s experience, was less likely to soothe than a telephone conversation that began with these words, but this was especially true if they were closely followed by a horrifying, ‘I’m ringing from the hospital.’
Not a lost teddy this time.
This was the sort of phone call that every parent dreaded getting. An icy fist of frozen fear closed around Natalie’s heart as a dozen scenarios, each one more catastrophic than the one preceding it, chased rapidly through her head. The panic racing through her veins made it hard for her to think straight. Her lips felt stiff and reluctant to form the question she knew she had to ask, but desperately didn’t want to.
‘Is she…?’
There was a gasp the other end. ‘Oh, God, no, Rose is fine!’ The child-minder sounded horrified. ‘Well, not fine, obviously, or we wouldn’t be here, but she will be, they say.’
Natalie’s shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, my God!’ She was not conscious of Rafe retrieving her chair and sliding it behind her knees at the crucial moment they gave way.
A strange numbness spread through her body while in her head she could feel the dull throb of her own heartbeat.
‘After you left Rose seemed a bit feverish,’ Ruth relayed hurriedly. ‘And later when she started wheezing the inhaler didn’t work. I thought the best thing was to get her here first and then ring you.’
‘You did the right thing, Ruth.’ Natalie caught
her trembling lower lip in her teeth. ‘I should have listened to my instincts,’ she gulped. ‘Oh, God, I knew, I just knew I shouldn’t have left her…but the doctor said she was fine this morning, just a cold…’ She stopped, her expression one of grim self-condemnation. She couldn’t pass the buck. Nobody had forced her to come into work; that had been her own decision. Because I have a point to prove—namely that a single parent can be just as good…no, better than everyone else.
And while I was busy proving my point my daughter was… She shook her head in disgust. What sort of parent does that make me?
Ruth’s sensible voice injected a note of practicality into the endless flow of bitter self-recriminations.
‘Natalie, dear, if you listened to your instincts you’d never leave Rose at all.’
‘Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea,’ Natalie replied heavily. ‘Listen, tell her Mummy will be there soon…yes…all right, Ruth, and thank you,’ she said, placing the receiver down and rising urgently to her feet.
Her eyes drifted over him, but from the vague, unfocused expression in them Rafe doubted she had even registered his presence.
He watched as she opened her handbag and, extracting a wallet from the depths, began flicking through the contents with an expression of fierce concentration on her pale features. Her hands were trembling but he doubted she was aware of it; she was displaying all the classic symptoms of shock.
‘Where are you going, Natalie?’
Natalie swung back and as she saw him standing there Rafe saw a flicker of shock replace for a moment the fretful expression in her wide, darkly lashed eyes—clearly she had forgotten he was there. This female, he thought wryly, seemed to be determined to single-handedly supply the dose of humility his mother—not a person exactly renown for modesty herself—liked to say he needed so badly.
‘You called me Natalie,’ she heard herself say stupidly.
‘It’s your name,’ he reminded her gently.
‘It sounds…different when you say it,’ she observed in a distracted voice. ‘My daughter is in hospital.’ She looked around the familiar room as if she was surprised to find herself still there. ‘I have to go…’ She glanced briefly towards the mess on her desk and then back at him. ‘Now,’ she added, dealing him a ferocious frown.
Clearly she thought he was an inconsiderate louse who would demand she cleared her desk before she went to her sick child, which was a great basis for a relationship. Relationship…? First you break the ‘mixing business with pleasure’ rule, which is bad, but not as bad as wanting to break it some more. Now you’re thinking relationships! he derided himself. What next…?
‘Which hospital is she in?’
Natalie told him because it was easier than telling him to mind his own business and because he was blocking her way. Actually his calm voice helped her focus her thoughts. Rafe was the sort of man that women less able than herself to take care of themselves would have automatically leaned on in a situation like this.
Natalie was fully awake to the pitfalls of leaning on a man…when they walked away you either fell flat on your face or learnt how to do things for yourself. Of course, Mike had never exactly been a pillar of strength to begin with, so it hadn’t been so difficult for her. In fact the gap he’d left in her life had been pretty insignificant all things considered… Rafe Ransome, on the other hand—her wary glance flickered to his tall, vital person—well, nothing about him was insignificant!
‘Give me a minute and I’ll take you.’
Natalie stared at him incredulously. ‘You?’
‘It’s on my way.’
She looked up at him, a sceptical line between her dark, feathery brows, clearly trying to figure out his ulterior motive. He couldn’t help her out; he still wasn’t sure if he had one himself.
‘On your way where?’
‘I can give you a detailed run-down of my itinerary or I can take you to the hospital.’ He gave a very Latin take-it-or-leave-it shrug. ‘Unless you prefer to take your chance with public transport?’
Natalie’s thoughts turned to the empty condition of her wallet. If anyone had asked her earlier that day she’d have stated with total confidence that nothing on earth would have persuaded her to accept a lift from Rafe Ransome…the man who had just kissed her—and you kissed him back!
If her lips hadn’t still felt bruised and swollen she would have imagined it had been another of those erotic dreams that woke her up more nights than she cared to admit.
Impatiently she shook her head; she couldn’t think about that now.
Swallowing her pride, she lifted her eyes to his. ‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t, she told herself, as if she were sleeping with the enemy, just riding with him. ‘Don’t be long!’ Her anxiety and impatience made the request emerge as an imperious command.
Rafe turned, looking about as surprised as it was possible for someone like him to look. It occurred to Natalie that he wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of yelled orders. Not, she acknowledged, that he did any yelling—he didn’t need to. He could silence any would-be dissident with a look.
‘You did say you’d only be a minute,’ she reminded him, moderating her tone. ‘You might forget I’m here…’ she added defensively.
For a brief moment his narrowed eyes scanned her face. ‘I’ve already tried to do that…and failed,’ he revealed cryptically. A rather grim smile lifted the corners of his mouth as she looked back at him warily. ‘Don’t worry, Natalie, I’m renowned for my attention to detail and timing.’
This time his grin was frankly wicked.
True to his word, he was back within the minute. He walked towards her, shrugging on a dark, loose-fitting suit jacket, and the expensive fabric fell smoothly into place across his broad back. That never happens to me, she thought as she fell in step beside him. She quickly got breathless trying to keep up with his long-legged pace.
‘Is there anyone you want to contact…to meet you at the hospital…?’ he probed when they reached the underground parking area.
‘No.’
‘A friend, relation…your daughter’s father, perhaps?’
Natalie, her mind on more urgent matters, was exasperated by his persistence. ‘My grandmother is my only relation and she lives in Yorkshire. Hospitals freak Mike out.’
And she couldn’t cope with a man who went catatonic when he saw a white coat as well as a sick and almost certainly fretful child. Mike would appear when Rose was back home, bearing expensive and often inappropriate gifts. He meant well, she thought indulgently, now she didn’t have to contend with her ex-husband’s foibles on a daily basis.
Rafe was not inclined to be so generous. It seemed pretty obvious to him that there had been two children in her marriage. He found it inexplicable that women were frequently attracted to the inadequate types who traded on their boyish charm.
‘And is your daughter…?’
Natalie’s expression softened. ‘Rose.’
‘Is Rose ill often?’
‘No more than a lot of children,’ Natalie replied defensively. ‘Well,’ she conceded, her eyes falling self-consciously from his, ‘I suppose she is. She’s asthmatic. She’s fine normally with the medication. Only winter’s not a good time…a cold or virus can trigger a nasty attack in some sensitive people.’
‘I’ve heard that pollution from exhaust fumes and so forth can make matters worse.’
His depth of knowledge surprised her. ‘It doesn’t help,’ she agreed, nodding her thanks stiffly as he opened the passenger door of a black Jag. She slid inside the luxurious interior, her tense back remaining a good two inches clear of the backrest as Rafe belted himself into the driver’s seat.
‘Haven’t you considered moving out of the city—if it would improve your daughter’s health?’
Natalie tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and threw him an impatient look. ‘Some of us have to live where the work is.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘Always supposing I still have work. Does it feel good to h
old my fate in your hands?’
Dark colour scored the slashing angles of his high cheekbones as he turned the key in the ignition. The powerful engine came to life. ‘You’ve got me—we egomaniacs just love wielding power.’ He turned his head and his dark lashes dipped as his glance moved with deliberation over the length of slender body. ‘Only actually in this instance it felt even better to hold your body in my hands.’ A firm, supple and surprisingly strong body that had proved amazingly responsive to his lightest touch.
For the briefest of moments their eyes collided. The anger in his made her recoil, but it wasn’t the anger that made her look away, her heart thudding hard against her ribcage. The message in his smoky eyes had been explicitly sexual in nature…and worse was the fact her entire body responded to what she had seen.
God, she despaired, I am obviously a desperately shallow person and a terrible mother to boot to be feeling this way when my daughter is lying sick in hospital.
‘I think we should discuss what happened back there…’
Natalie shook her head. ‘As far as I’m concerned it didn’t happen.’ If she told herself this often enough, maybe she would even start believing it herself. She thought for a moment he was going to contest her statement, but after a brief nod in her direction he returned his attention to the road.
It had taken Rafe several frustrating minutes to find a parking space, so when he walked into the busy casualty department he had no expectation of finding Natalie still there.
She was.
He summed up the situation at one glance. Natalie was standing at the back of a queue several people deep that had built up behind an aggressively awkward drunk who was giving the young woman at the reception desk in the busy casualty department a hard time.
‘I know my rights!’ the dishevelled figure slurred loudly enough for Rafe and everyone around to hear.
Natalie, who was struggling to contain her impatience, heard the subdued murmurs of complaint as someone shouldered through the people who were waiting ahead of her, but didn’t pay much attention. It wasn’t until a few moments later when she glanced up that she recognised the tall, broad-shouldered figure. She cringed with embarrassment when she saw what he was doing!
