by Kim Lawrence
Her body arched in a sensuous, almost feline gesture of pleasure as her hands slid up to his shoulders. ‘I enjoy looking at you,’ she admitted without a trace of self-consciousness.
With Alex there had been that awful self-conscious embarrassment. After waiting so long she’d felt strangely cheated and disillusioned. If Harriet was to be believed, so had Alex. But now was no time for the past; somehow, just looking at Callum made her lose the inhibitions she’d imagined were an integral part of her personality. The scent of his arousal, the texture of his skin—she was intoxicated by the sensual bombardment and greedy to glut her starved senses.
He passively accepted her voyage of discovery for a few moments before a hoarse sound of denial emerged from between his clenched teeth. With a dexterity that left her breathless and suffering from a mixture of frustration and soaring anticipation he flipped her over onto her back.
‘I enjoy looking at you too.’ He repeated her words throatily as his eyes roamed hungrily over her supine form. Her skin under his probing fingers was satin-smooth and damp and hot. He felt the fine, delicate network of muscles under the satiny surface contract responsively under his touch.
Her body was wide open to him, boneless, yet gripped by the fierce tension that pulsed through her. ‘Please, Callum ...I can’t bear ...I need...’ Her voice was strained beyond recognition as she ran her hands along his sweat-slick skin and felt the febrile shudder that racked his powerful torso.
He lay above her, suspended on his elbows, close but not nearly close enough. His thighs rested against her hips as he settled against her spread-eagled body. She felt him swallow a strangled groan and heard the grating of his teeth as her questing hands slid lower, seeking the velvet-sheathed hardness. When he kissed her fiercely she could taste the blood on his tongue.
He lifted her hips upwards to meet him and as she closed her eyes the image imprinted on her brain was of his face, the lines etched with tension and a wild, fierce triumph.
It had hurt with Alex and she was sure it would now; she’d been awed by the pulsating size of Callum. Her eyes opened wide with pleasurable shock as her body expanded to absorb him painlessly and the last remnants of apprehension slipped away. She felt exultant! She could follow where he led and she did, climbing higher and higher. The pulsating rhythm flowed through her and she felt indivisible from the man who filled her.
The first ripple of a fierce contraction hit her seconds before the primitive cry was torn from deep within his chest. Aftershocks still shook her when his weight lifted from her and his head slid down to nestle against her breast. He was still stroking the smooth curve of her thigh and behind when he finally fell asleep.
There had been no word, just one moment when his heavy-lidded eyes had sought out her own languorous glance. There had been a question there which she’d been too stunned to interpret.
The muscles in her body might have relaxed but her mind was firing on all cylinders as she cradled the powerful body spread out against her.
A solid lump of emotion throbbed in her throat as she eased herself from under his constricting weight. She couldn’t regret anything that had been so perfect and fulfilling in a way she hadn’t dreamt was possible. Making love with Alex had left her feeling empty and disillusioned; she would always be grateful to this man for teaching her that it didn’t have to be that way.
What had it been to him? Her hand went up to cover her quivering mouth. Sensitive and generous he might have been, but to him she would only ever be a one-night stand. It was brutal but necessary for her to face the truth. The awkwardness of the morning after would ruin the magical memory. She couldn’t expect him to share her wonder. She didn’t want to see the night through his eyes and have it made sordid and superficial.
She had no intention of confusing generous, skilful lovemaking with affection and warmth. The irony of it! She who had despised her own mother’s weaknesses had succumbed to the very same primitive urges she had condemned. She felt guilty when she thought of how self-righteous she had been in the past.
Quietly she slipped into her clothes. She didn’t want his affection, his love; her mind balked at the word and the accompanying surge of craving that was physically painful in its intensity. He was a stranger who had by some perversity of destiny been the only man she’d ever met who could fill her with the mindless compulsion. Perhaps a secret part of her had accepted the inevitability of this in the first few seconds of seeing him.
Her eyes watered as she slipped her contact lenses in and blinked at her image in the bathroom mirror. ‘She who loves and runs away lives to ... love?’ The idea of such intimacy with another man made her grimace in protest. She’d crammed her wild, reckless moments into one night, she decided shakily, not quite meeting the wide eyes of the girl in the mirror.
She kept brushing tears from her cheeks as she drove along dark, quiet roads. What would he feel when he awoke to find himself alone? Relief? Annoyance? Probably a mixture of the two, she decided, sniffing stoically. She had made sure she had settled the hotel bill even though it was going to mean a tight budget for the next month.
CHAPTER FIVE
GEORGINA WAS BACK at the office on Tuesday. Glancing at her reflection in the glass-fronted office wall as she walked confidently past, she was pleased to see that no hint of the weekend’s events showed in her appearance.
The tailored black suit was one of the several she wore to work; its mid-calf-length skirt was as modest and unchallenging as the cream silk shirt she wore buttoned up to the neck. Her hair was wound into a tight knot on the nape of her neck and a pair of round-framed spectacles was perched on her nose in preference to her contact lenses.
After several unsuccessful job interviews she had opted for a change of image; how much this had contributed to her gaining her present job she wasn’t sure, but it helped keep most potential office Romeos at bay—that and a reputation for having an abrasive tongue guaranteed to deflate male egos at twenty paces.
The one time in her life she had trusted a man he had let her down. Before the weekend she had been confident of her ability never to permit herself to be in that position again. She banished the disquiet that thoughts of the weekend gave her and placed an expression of firm determination on her troubled features. The girl in the pink suit belonged to another world; if she tried very hard she could almost believe she didn’t exist.
‘The new boss is in.’ The competent secretary with whom she had originally had a spiky relationship looked uncharacteristically excited. Georgina could easily understand the antagonism and suspicion the older woman had felt towards the young girl who had leap-frogged straight from a lowly clerical post to the heady heights of PA.
Georgina had worked hard to prove her worth and had been frank about her need to learn from her colleague’s experience. Mary Webb had reserved her judgement but had been won over eventually by the sheer determination the young girl displayed. Unlike her predecessor Georgina never took credit for anything she hadn’t been responsible for. Their working relationship was now warmly friendly.
‘What’s he like?’ Georgina asked, wondering just how out of depth this farmer was after one day at the helm. ‘Do you think he’s going to try and step into Oliver’s shoes?’
Mary shrugged. ‘Shall we just say he’s electrified the workforce, my dear? And the sight of dignified executives all prepared to turn cartwheels to gain a Brownie point is unsettling, but I quite like it.’
Georgina felt her slightly scornful smile slip. ‘You mean he’s not a naive farmer with straw behind his ears?’ That’ll teach me to make snap judgements, she thought, an ironical light illuminating her eyes. I should have had more faith in Oliver’s judgement, she chided herself.
‘Let Miss Campion judge for herself. I’m ready for her now.’
Mary struck the heel of her hand to her head and grimaced at the intercom on her desk. She mimed a desperate apology to her friend who had gone several shades paler than normal.
Ge
orgina shook her head understandingly and wished she hadn’t opened her mouth. First impressions were incredibly important and she’d just made the sort of impact she’d have preferred not to. She took a deep breath and whispered, ‘Wish me luck,’ before knocking smartly on the door and entering with more confidence than she felt.
The wide floor-length window had a view over the city that drew the eyes of anyone entering the room. The panorama was, however, lost on Georgina; a figure with his back to her was deep in apparent contemplation of the vista.
Broad-shouldered and lean-hipped, he stood well over six feet tall. The loose-fitting Italian suit didn’t disguise the fact that this man was at the height of his physical powers. Georgina didn’t need him to turn around to know he was in his early thirties; she even knew the colour of his eyes.
The room tilted slightly as she gasped for air, tiny black dots danced across her vision, and a sound like the sea roared in her ears. Confusion, disbelief and a sort of numb dread stole over her simultaneously. What she was seeing was impossible. Hallucination? Had he made such an awesome impact upon her that she was going to see his face and figure everywhere?
He turned around and the last remnants of colour seeped from her clammy skin. All the classic symptoms of shock, she told herself as a bubble of hysteria rose in her throat.
‘Good morning, Miss Campion.’ The soft voice was no hallucination; neither was the brilliant, icy stare.
‘Who are you?’
‘Have a seat,’ he said, walking around to the other side of the vast, leather-topped desk. He pushed a chair behind her legs and her shaking knees collapsed as she sank into it.
‘The escort company didn’t send you?’
‘I can see how you’ve progressed so rapidly, with that sort of amazing mental capability.’
‘You let me think... think...’
He’d made a fool of her so completely that she could hardly grasp the full implications. He knew more about her... He’d cold-bloodedly seduced her and she had fallen like a ripe... A sound of denial escaped her lips and she clenched her hands into two tight fists. Over the past fortyeight hours she’d grown to despise her lack of self-control, and her inability to resist the primitive need that had sent her into Callum’s arms. Now she also felt sick to the core at having her vulnerability exposed to those ruthless blue eyes. This was her reward for abandoning all her idealism and principles for a shallow interlude of intense pleasure.
‘You told me who I was,’ he corrected her. ‘You could say I did you a favour. If I hadn’t appeared so fortuitously what would you have done? I arrived wanting nothing more than to know why you apparently know more about certain accounts than very senior executives. It seemed amazing that the absence of a PA could virtually immobilise a firm of this size.
‘Did you know your phone is out of order, incidentally?’ he asked, flicking an invisible speck off his immaculate jacket. ‘It occurred to me I might get more insight into a devious character capable of manipulating a shrew old fox like Oliver by going along with your little deception.’ He sounded neither apologetic nor ashamed of his actions and Georgina felt the lick of pure rage race through her shaking body.
‘And did you get much insight?’ she asked in a small, hard voice that was by now quite steady.
‘I got quite a lot more than I’d bargained for.’
With a gasp she shot to her feet; his implication had been unmistakable. ‘If we’re talking manipulation,’ she yelled, twin flags of colour blooming on the crests of her cheekbones, ‘you’re a regular con merchant, Mr Stewart.’
‘So you know who I am now. Considering I left my bush hat back home, I’m impressed.’ The creases around his eyes deepened but his narrowed eyes betrayed no humour. ‘Which is more, if I recall, than you are with my capabilities of running this vast empire.’ He drawled the term with languid scorn. ‘As we’re on such ... intimate terms, Georgina, perhaps you should make it Callum.’
The degradation seemed to fuse into a solid mass behind her breastbone; the tightness made it hard to breathe. ‘Under the circumstances, Mr Stewart, I’m sure you’ll accept my resignation.’ The firm, steady voice seemed to be coming from a long way off.
A faint spasm moved the sensual line of his lips. The despicable rat was really enjoying the joke! ‘At a future date, Georgina, I shall be delighted, but I never mix business with pleasure. Your contract requires that you give six weeks’ notice and if you walk out prior to that date I shall sue you. I shall also see to it that you don’t get a comparable job. Possibly no job at all,’ he mused thoughtfully; his eyes, unlike his voice, were neither languid nor casual.
These dire and casually voiced threats made very little impression on the panic that surged through her; the urge to run was sending heart-racing adrenaline flooding through her veins. ‘I can’t work with you.’ Walking through fire seemed a much more appealing prospect!
‘Certainly not,’ he observed coolly. ‘But you do and shall work for me.’ He watched the flush mount her cheeks as this barb penetrated. ‘Several of the firm’s major contracts—the lifeblood, so to speak—were Oliver’s personal pets. There appears to be no physical evidence concerning the ongoing campaigns—no notes, no computer files.’
His eyes bored into her as though the entire responsibility for this situation rested on her shoulders. Indignation made her straighten those slender attributes.
‘The customers’ confidence and loyalty appear to be dissolving rapidly,’ he continued drily. ‘When I can’t produce a senior executive capable of allaying their fears I can’t really blame them. When making the sort of financial commitment they are, they’re entitled to expect something tangible.’
‘You might be able to sit at Oliver’s desk but I can’t be held responsible if you can’t fill his shoes,’ she replied, managing a faint, derogatory smirk. This was a nightmare and any moment now she was going to wake up!
No man was ever going to use her...not after Alex’s betrayal. Had she ever felt that confident? Callum Stewart had manipulated her in the most coldly callous way imaginable. Her eyes glimmered with loathing as she vowed he’d never realise just how deeply he’d punctured her emotional defences. The loathing that seethed like poison in her veins was equally divided between herself and him.
All her smug confidence, accumulated over years of retaining her virtue, had been demolished by short-term exposure to this demon. Even the humiliation of finding out Alex’s shortcomings didn’t rate compared with the humiliation she felt now.
Callum lowered his lean frame into the chair behind the impressive desk—a desk that might have made some men look insignificant—but it was to him that eyes were drawn, not the furniture.
‘Oliver and I were not well acquainted; he was my mother’s brother and she has never felt inclined to be tied down by emotional attachment. Call it a family trait,’ he observed, with an edge to his voice that she couldn’t interpret. ‘You and she have a good deal in common,’ he remarked, his nostrils flaring with obvious distaste. ‘And I don’t go in for displays of false sentiment. I’m glad to hear you were very fond of him,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘As he obviously was of you. Straight from a clerical job to indispensable right hand to the man himself. Quite a quantum leap...’
She got to her feet, head held high. ‘I don’t have to listen to any more nasty innuendoes from you. I earned my salary.’
‘You don’t need to sell yourself to me, Georgina; I’ve already discovered your talents.’
Her high colour faded dramatically, leaving her paper-white. ‘I didn’t sleep my way to my position, despite what the grapevine likes to imply.’ Oliver had interviewed her out of curiosity, he’d told her later; his interest had been piqued by the sheer gall of a junior clerk applying for the position of PA to the company chairman. She’d sold herself, but not in the way everyone liked to think.
‘What a pity you didn’t know my true identity before you slipped into my bed.’
‘To be accurate, it
was my bed.’
‘If you hadn’t thought I was penniless I imagine it might have taken a lot more persuasion to get you between the sheets, whoever they belonged to. You must be kicking yourself when you think about all the things you might have extracted from me before you came up with the goods. Who knows? You might have thought I even rated your being there in the morning.’
He was on his feet now and when he moved the illusion of safety which the desk had given her disappeared. It took all her stubborn determination not to step backwards away from his advancing figure.
‘You’re the sort of woman who manipulates men by withholding your favours until you get what you want, aren’t you, Georgina? The wholesome, wide-eyed appeal overlying the sultry promise, you’re all promise and no fulfilment under normal circumstances. You obviously satisfy your very physical nature like any cat on heat does, with the occasional stranger.’
‘You’re disgusting!’ She was shaking in response to his cold character assassination. It was all too easy to see how he’d reached his conclusions and, short of revealing herself as a naïve idiot, she didn’t see how she could convince him otherwise. And she didn’t owe him any explanations.
‘Did the boyfriend get tired of you sleeping your way to the top?’ The false sympathy made her jaw ache with tension. ‘Or did he approve of your methods? Was it just your taste for anonymous one-night stands he couldn’t stomach? Only it’s not anonymous after all...is it, Georgina? ’
‘I hate you!’ Her voice shook with a solid depth of emotion. He was insulting and humiliating her past the point she had imagined endurable. It occurred to her that Alex would stare to hear her spoken of as some sort of femme fatale when ironically he had given her second place in his test run for perfect wife material.
‘Because I know you for what you are. Behind that wide-eyed simpering act you’re solely motivated by ambition, aren’t you?’ His voice was expressionless but the anger that glittered in his eyes reverberated through her like a scream. ‘Personal relationships take second place to that. You sacrificed your prospective marriage to that.’
