by Kim Lawrence
To work off her fury she concentrated with grim tenacity on her work and made a gratifying amount of headway. Ironically, the faster she achieved her goals, the nearer she got to making herself redundant as far as Mallory’s was concerned. Still, the sooner she was in a position never to see Callum again the better!
‘You’re not dressed.’
The words shattered the instant of déjà vu as she opened the door to the tall, rugged stranger. Only now he wasn’t a stranger... anything but. He looked distressingly drop-dead gorgeous in the dark formal suit and she compressed her lips, hating her intense appreciation of the fact and wishing her nose weren’t sensitive to the elusive fragrance that drifted from his body.
‘I am dressed,’ she contradicted him firmly. She glanced down at her jeans which had seen better days and the pale blue shirt knotted loosely at her waist.
He made an impatient sound in his throat and pushed past her. She closed the door. Short of calling for armed assistance, she decided philosophically, she had no way of evicting him forcibly. ‘Make yourself at home,’ she said sarcastically, following him into the sitting room.
‘You’ve got ten minutes to get ready.’
‘You may be able to order me around like some sort of tinpot dictator at the office, but I’m not paid to suffer you out of office hours,’ she observed flatly, folding her arms across her chest. The action caused her shirt to rise up, revealing a portion of her smooth, flat midriff, and she hastily lowered her arms to her side. His glance had homed in on the expanse of flesh and she saw, rather to her surprise, colour suffuse the crest of his cheekbones.
‘I’m a firm believer in flexi-hours,’ he said with a husky rasp in his voice. ‘Get dressed, Georgina; I’m hungry.’ The expression she glimpsed in his eyes made his words open to interpretation and her knees turn to cotton wool. ‘If you don’t get dressed I’ll help you.’
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ A quirk of one well-defined eyebrow and a slow smile dispelled any illusions she had on that score. ‘I don’t want to go to dinner with you.’ A sudden sound emerged from between her clenched teeth. Half-anguish, half-outrage. ‘What about your wife?’ God, I was going to taunt him with a nice mixture of composure and disdain and here I am squeaking like an agitated mouse, she thought.
The deep blue eyes which had been narrowed in speculation suddenly widened. The rat! she thought wrathfully. He only feels guilty when he’s caught out. ‘Which one would that be?’ he enquired with cautious interest.
‘Very droll,’ she snapped. ‘Though I doubt if Tricia would appreciate the humour. Being made party to adultery is not my idea of a joke either.’
‘Actually I’ve arranged to meet her for drinks after dinner. You can come along too as you’re so interested in my personal life.’ His smile grew as her bosom heaved in agitation.
‘She knows about us?’
‘Us.’ He gave a soulful sigh. ‘You do care after all. What’s wrong, Georgina?’ he asked with a perplexed look. ‘Do you have a problem with the arrangement?’
‘Why, you...’ Colour wildly fluctuating, she stared at him in sick horror.
‘She’ll be with her husband—my brother—if that makes a difference.’
Sister-in-law! She felt her cheeks ignite with fiery embarrassment ‘Oh,’ she said in a rather forlorn voice.
He folded his arms across his chest and she could see the shadow of body hair through the thin fabric of his shirt. Her stomach muscles quivered as she tried hard to avert her stare. ‘You weren’t so tongue-tied a few minutes ago when reading me the Riot Act. Is that all the apology I’m going to get?’
‘Under the circumstances it was a perfectly natural mistake to make,’ she said defensively. Apologising to him was marginally more difficult than chopping off her own finger.
‘Which circumstances are those? Your lurid imagination, or your high opinion of my moral fibre?’
She sniffed. ‘I should have known no woman would be fool enough to marry you.’
‘I didn’t say I wasn’t married,’ he interjected softly.
She swallowed hard. ‘Well...are you?’ she said tightly as he continued to watch her with that infuriating sphinx-like impassivity. ‘It’s bad enough I slept with you at all without that.’
A curious expression entered his eyes. ‘It would bother you that much?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes, it would.’
‘From that am I to infer you believe in the sanctity of marriage and all that jazz?’ His tone was faintly mocking but his eyes, holding hers, were strangely serious. ‘I think you’ll find scruples like that might hinder your meteoric rise, Georgina.’
‘You still haven’t answered me.’ He really did like to extract every last ounce of agony from a situation, she thought resentfully.
He reached forward and his thumb stroked across the side of her cheek. ‘Always the best man, never the groom,’ he said sorrowfully.
‘Best!’ She snorted, flinching away from the touch which prickled like an electrical current across her skin. ‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ she said huskily. The anxiety dissolved, only to be replaced by another tension, one no less intense.
‘I’m surprised your cynical little heart has room for such elevated moral standards, let alone any belief in the sanctity of marriage. I thought the scars of your parents’ marriage would have cured you of any romantic notions.’
What had she told him? She flushed, recalling the disastrous wedding day when her unguarded confidences had spilled out. Of late she’d had reason to question her judgemental attitude towards her mother’s weaknesses. Having experienced firsthand how powerful the blind, primitive force to mate could be, her smug, complacent superiority had been shaken to its core.
‘I know men are congenitally incapable of being faithful. ’
‘Isn’t that a bit sweeping?’
‘I think my illusions are my concern, not yours, but be assured I have none about you.’
‘Actually we’re both the product of unsuccessful marriages,’ he observed with a thin smile. ‘Dysfunctional—isn’t that the popular term? I’m surprised you were so anxious to perpetuate the error yourself, but then history does suggest people are incapable of learning by their mistakes. Or, in this case, your parents’ mistakes.’
‘Don’t you intend to marry?’ she asked curiously.
‘Not to satisfy any primitive desire to possess a woman. That situation can be achieved without any formal contract,’ he said, his eyes flicking over her with insulting familiarity. ‘Choosing a mate shouldn’t be done in a rush of hormones or for mushily sentimental reasons,’ he said with confident scorn. ‘I shall marry someone whose expectations are similar to my own.’
Does such a creature exist? she wondered doubtfully. She was glad her own experiences hadn’t left her quite that disillusioned. What had soured Callum Stewart so profoundly? ‘Will you have children? Or will that be too messy?’ she asked sarcastically. She was appalled by the sterile scenario he painted of marriage. Could a man who was obviously capable of passion really be satisfied with such an arrangement?
‘That’s the only reason I’d ever consider entering into that particular contract.’
‘I hope the job pays well,’ she observed flippantly. ‘Because you might find there aren’t too many takers.’
‘Thanks for the concern, but I wasn’t considering you for the post’
‘I’m devastated,’ she hissed.
‘I know I’m a fascinating subject but aren’t you going to get dressed?’
Georgina gave a sigh of pure frustration. ‘I can give you a progress report here,’ she said. ‘Though why the morning won’t do...’
‘In the morning I’m off to France,’ he explained shortly. With an expression she didn’t trust he looked thoughtfully around the room, his eyes dwelling outrageously on the open door to her bedroom. ‘Mind you, an evening in might be quite cosy,’ he observed silkily. ‘Can you cook?’ he enquired, all blue-eyed innocence.
/> His husky laughter followed her retreat to the bedroom and, leaning against the door, she gave a tremulous sigh. He’d been baiting her, she knew it, but if he’d known how beguiling the idea had been—cooking for Callum, sharing the food and her small, narrow bed...
I’m going mad! She licked her dry lips and raked a hand through her hair with a trembling hand. Seeing him in public was a far safer bet than seeing him in privacy, she decided, opening her wardrobe door and surveying the contents with a frown.
She hadn’t selected her outfit with any desire to please him, she told herself firmly, surveying the end product of her deliberations a few minutes later. This dress was the one she always wheeled out on vaguely dressy occasions. It was the archetypal little black number—a plain sleeveless shift with a row of beading around the above-the-knee-length hemline that made the garment move against her legs as she walked with a pleasing swishing sensation that had always seemed deliciously decadent to her.
Decadent was not a frame of mind she ought to cultivate at this particular moment! she thought, her second attempt to pin up her hair ending in another failure as a shower of clips slid down her neck and the heavy tresses followed suit, spilling down her back like a river touched with the lustre of a setting sun. She stifled a sound of frustration.
‘If you’re not ready in thirty seconds I’ll come and help.’
The voice from the other room made her throw down her hairbrush and, after a brief glance at her freshly applied lipstick, head for the door. I never was much good at entrances, she thought wryly, pausing with her hand on the doorhandle, but here goes!
She decided to look everywhere but at Callum, which was quite difficult because it wasn’t a big room and he was a big man. He certainly seemed to make things seem distinctly claustrophobic.
‘I know a lot of women—’
‘I just bet you do,’ she snapped.
‘—who would envy you for being able to produce this sort of result in minutes.’
She blinked, swallowed convulsively and forgot she wasn’t going to look into those eyes—eyes that seemed deep enough to drown in. God, I’m getting positively mushy, she thought with vaguely desperate humour. The black rings around his irises made the colour appear even more dense. It was the expression in them, not the colour, however, that made her twitch the hem of her dress like a nervous child.
A muscle flexed along his angular jaw as he contemplated the picture she made standing watching him with wide-eyed trepidation. The sensuous appreciation of his expression shifted to something else before abruptly hardening. He straightened up and made a sharp gesture towards the door. ‘Time we were off.’
Close but not touching, he ushered her down to his car.
‘More room in this than my Beetle for your legs,’ she observed, sinking into the leather upholstery. It was a long, low-slung coupé—the sort of thing which made people stare, which was a definite detraction from its obvious attractions in her mind. She wished quite a lot that she hadn’t thought about his legs—long, athletic legs with just the right amount of muscle power and that light sprinkling of dark hair.
Callum slid in beside her but he didn’t appear to notice her comment. Her furtive glance in the direction of his legs and her visible gulp he did notice. ‘I like your legs too,’ he said in a low, throaty voice that made all the small, downy hairs on her arms stand on end.
She gave a startled gasp and turned her head to look at him. It was like stepping off a cliff; the warm, dark chasm was frightening yet heart-stoppingly enticing. He reached out a hand and traced the line of her collar-bone. It moved to the angle of her chin and cradled her jaw. She found her cheek turning to rest in the large palm.
‘We don’t have to go to dinner,’ he suggested, and the smoky invitation in his voice liquefied every ounce of her resistance. Molten and warm, the desire moved through her pliant body like a storm.
In a minute he was going to kiss her and the anticipation was unbearable. She could hear the harsh sound of her swift inhalations as her whole body centred on the imminent invasion of his mouth... the taste and texture. The blast of a horn and the glaring lights of a passing car were all that stopped the escalation of this insanity.
She drew back, placing her hands on her lips. ‘For God’s sake, start the car up!’ she pleaded, not looking at him.
He cursed with impressive fluency and the car shot forward. Georgina was learning fast not to overestimate her own powers of resistance or his of perseverance. It was a humbling lesson.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘THEY APPEAR TO know you here,’ Georgina observed, after Callum had ordered the wine without consulting her. At least he hadn’t interrupted as she’d given her order; she ought to be grateful that at least his appalling take-charge style didn’t extend that far. She glanced at her starter and smiled faintly at the waiter, who silently withdrew.
‘I’m staying here.’
The knowledge that he had a room just a lift-ride away made her neck ache even more than it already did; her muscles were twisted in tortured knots of tension. Heat scalded the back of her eyes as she briefly let her mind run over a scenario where Callum led her back to his room. The graphic images didn’t end there! With a horrified start she halted her wayward imagination.
‘You can drink it,’ he said, nodding at her untouched wine. ‘I’m not trying to get you drunk. You fall asleep, I seem to remember.’
Recalled from her abstraction, she gave him a glare of dislike. ‘You really enjoy reminding me of that, don’t you?’ Self-disgust shone in her eyes as she looked at him.
‘Are you always so tough on yourself?’
‘I’ll leave that to you,’ she responded, surprised by his question.
‘I won’t make any allowances for you just because of our personal relationship,’ he conceded.
‘We don’t have a relationship,’ she retorted, twisting her napkin in her lap, her fingers trembling slightly.
‘Has it thrown your calculations, actually wanting to sleep with me?’
She glared at his superbly confident features with simmering resentment. ‘You really do think you’re irresistible, don’t you?’ she breathed incredulously. ‘It borders on the pathetic,’ she added scornfully.
‘At least you made... what was he called?... Alex jealous. Wasn’t that what you set out to do?’ Callum asked with the sort of smug superiority that made her teeth clamp hard on her lower lip. ‘If we’re talking pathetic...’
‘I wasn’t prepared to pay that price.’
‘You seemed to enjoy paying the price at the time,’ he observed, with a reminiscent look that sent hot colour flooding into her cheeks. ‘Don’t take the moral high ground with me, Georgina; you’re as susceptible to the same appetites as the rest of us.’
‘I thought you wanted a report,’ she snapped. The petulant sound in her voice made her wince.
‘I’m listening,’ he said shortly. Leaning back in his chair, he levelled his disconcerting, unblinking stare directly at her.
He did listen, interrupting only to ask a few pertinent questions. ‘You’ve been a busy little bee, haven’t you?’ he said when she’d finished.
‘Denigrating and patronising are two terms which immediately spring to mind,’ she observed, stabbing her asparagus-flavoured mousse with unwarranted force. She speared a prawn and bit into it viciously. She’d not just done well, she’d achieved miracles, and pacified several ruffled male egos into the bargain.
Amazingly he laughed. ‘I’m impressed. Is that better?’ The cleft that bisected his square chin deepened as he grinned.
‘Much better,’ she agreed huskily. He did have the most extraordinarily attractive laugh, she thought with a hint of wistfulness. ‘I thought you were hungry; you haven’t touched anything.’ Her eyes flicked to his plate, partly to force her gaze away from his face.
‘If I had, you’d probably have accused me of not giving you my undivided attention,’ he observed with a teasing note in his voice. ‘Yo
u don’t treat me with the deference I’ve grown to expect, Georgina,’ he told her, self-mockery flavouring his words. ‘I’ve never been called sir so frequently in my life as since I arrived here.’
‘There’s not much point in me joining the queue to lick your boots; I’m already sacked, aren’t I?’
‘You handed in your notice, as I recall,’ he said drily.
‘It amounts to the same thing. I just beat you to it, that’s all. Or are you going to say you hadn’t intended throwing me out on my ear?’
‘When it came down to it I just couldn’t bear to be parted from you, darling.’ His blue-eyed mockery made her teeth clench. ‘I was forgetting that now you’re a woman of substance you can afford to behave recklessly. Can’t you, Georgina?’
The cynical twist of his lips as much as his words spoilt the brief illusion of harmony. Behaving recklessly was what had created this hateful situation to begin with!
‘It’s marvellous,’ she agreed. ‘I don’t even have to sleep with the boss any more. Such a relief,’ she drawled, rolling her eyes heavenwards. She saw his lips curl in disdain.
‘I thought you managed to keep Oliver at arm’s length and hold his interest, or was that just an idle boast? You’re such a very versatile girl, I was inclined to believe you. I’m your boss now...you could sleep with me,’ he offered generously. ‘But it won’t get you mentioned in my will, or even promoted.’
She wasn’t calm enough to decide whether he really did think she was an unscrupulous slut or just enjoyed insulting her, but she wanted, quite desperately, to wipe that supercilious smirk off his face! ‘In that case it’s hardly worth my while, is it? I’ll pass,’ she said from between lips firmly committed to a smile. ‘After all, isn’t Peter Llewellyn going to be the man who matters in future? I’ll practise my sultry seduction on him. Incidentally, I really admire you for admitting you’re just not up to the task of running the agency.’
