by Miranda Lee
‘It is when you know that the guy you’re having lunch with wants more than to share a meal with you,’ Jake pointed out ruefully.
‘But what you want is not necessarily what I want,’ she countered, stung by his presumption.
‘That’s not the impression you gave me today. We shared something special once, Angelina. It’s still there. The sparks. The chemistry.’
‘Men like you share a chemistry with lots of women, Jake. It’s nothing special. Which reminds me, is there some current girlfriend who should know that you’ve asked another woman out to lunch?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m between girlfriends at the moment.’
She laughed. ‘Am I supposed to believe that?’
‘You sure are. I’m a lot of things but I’m no liar.’
‘Such as what? What are you, Jake Winters, that I should worry about before daring to go to lunch with you?’
‘You don’t honestly expect me to put myself down, do you? I’m no saint but I’m not one of the bad guys, either. I don’t lie and I don’t cheat. There is no other woman in my life. But I am a confirmed bachelor. And I aim to stay that way. Which should please you, since you’re not into wedding bells and baby bootees. Or did I get that wrong?’
‘No. No, you didn’t get that wrong.’
If I can’t marry you, then I don’t want to marry anyone.
The thought burst into her mind. Shocking her. Shattering her. This couldn’t be. This wasn’t fair. Not only that, but it was also crazy. He’d only been in her life a few short hours this time.
She couldn’t be in love with him again. Not really. She was being confused and corrupted by the romance of the situation. And by desire. His, as well as her own. She wasn’t sure which was the more powerful. Being wanted the way Jake said he wanted her. Or her wanting him.
Angelina still could not believe the feelings which had rampaged through her when he’d simply touched her hand.
Wilomena was probably right. She was a one-man woman.
And Jake was the man. Impossible to resist him. She could go to lunch with him next Saturday, pretending that it was a reconnaissance mission to find out what kind of man he was. But that was all it would be. A pretence.
‘Tell me about your job,’ she said, valiantly resolving to put their conversation back on to a more platonic, getting-to-know-you basis. ‘What kind of lawyer are you?’
‘A darned good one.’
‘No, I mean what kind of people do you represent?’
‘People who need a good lawyer to go in to bat for them. People who’ve been put down and put upon, usually in the corporate world. Employees who’ve been unfairly dismissed, or sexually harassed, or made to endure untenable work conditions. I have this woman client at the moment who’s in the process of suing her boss. She worked as his assistant in an un-air-conditioned office with him for years whilst he chain-smoked. She repeatedly asked him to put her in a separate office but he wouldn’t. Yet he was filthy rich. She now has terminal lung cancer and she’s only forty-two. We’re suing for millions. And we’ll win, too.’
‘But she won’t,’ Angelina said. ‘She’ll die.’
‘Yes, she’ll die. But her teenage children won’t. She told me she’d die happier if she gets enough money to provide for them till they can provide for themselves. Her husband’s an invalid as well. That’s why she had to work and why she stayed working for that bastard under such rotten conditions. Because the job was within walking distance of her house, and she didn’t have a car. She couldn’t afford one.’
‘That’s so sad. I hate hearing stories like that. Don’t tell me any more, Jake.’
‘All right,’ he said gently. ‘You always did have a soft heart, Angelina. I remember the day we found that bird with the broken wing caught in the vines. You cried till your dad promised to take it to a vet.’
He was getting to her again. ‘I only have a soft heart for poor birds with broken wings,’ she countered crisply. ‘And poor people dying through no fault of their own. Not smooth-talking lawyers who go round trying to seduce old flames just for the heck of it.’
‘Is that what you think I’m doing?’
‘Come, now, Jake, you ran into me today by sheer accident. You haven’t given me a second thought all these years.’ Unlike herself. Even if she’d wanted to forget Jake, how could she when his eyes had been staring back at her on a daily basis for years? ‘Your dear old friend Dorothy is buying a place up here,’ she swept on. ‘You spotted me again today, liked what you saw, and thought I’d be a convenient lay during your weekends up here.’
‘That’s a pretty harsh judgement.’
‘I think it’s a pretty honest one. Please don’t try to con me, Jake. I won’t like that. Be straight with me.’
‘OK, you’re right and you’re wrong. I admit I haven’t actively thought about you for years. But that doesn’t mean I’d forgotten you. When I realised where I was going for lunch today, everything came flooding back. The way you made me feel that summer. The things that happened. I really wanted to see you again. I told myself it was just curiosity, or the wish to say sorry for being just a chump back then. But when I actually saw you, Angelina…when I saw you I—’
‘Please don’t say the world stopped,’ she cut in drily.
He laughed. ‘I won’t. It actually sped up. At least, my pulse-rate did. Do you know how beautiful you are?’ he said, his voice dropping low again. ‘How sexy?’
Don’t fall for all that bulldust. Keep your head, honey.
Angelina could almost hear those very words coming from Wilomena’s mouth.
‘You’re not the first man to tell me that, Jake,’ she said in a rather hard voice.
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘City men are amazingly inventive, especially when they’re away from home. The Ambrosia Estate has become a popular venue for conferences,’ she elaborated. ‘Lots of them pass through all the time.’
‘You sound as if you’ve been burnt a few times.’
‘Who hasn’t in this day and age?’ came her offhand reply. If he thought she’d jumped into bed with her fair share of such men, then all well and good. No way did she want him thinking he was the only man she’d ever known.
‘I’m sorry but I really must go, Jake. I was in the middle of something important when you called. I’ll see you on Saturday at the expo. I’m sure you can manage to find the right booth. Shall we say twelve-thirty?’
‘Noon would be better.’
‘Noon it is, then. Bye for now.’ And she hung up.
Jake was grinning as he replaced his receiver.
Alex, old man, he thought elatedly, come next weekend, you’re going to be history!
CHAPTER SEVEN
ANGELINA couldn’t stop titivating herself. If she’d checked her make-up and hair once, she’d checked it a hundred times.
Not for the first time this morning, she hurried into the hotel bathroom so that she could stand in front of the cheval mirror that hung on the back of the door.
The dress she was wearing was not casual. But she knew she looked good in it, which was the most important thing to her right at that moment.
Light and silky, the sleeveless sheath skimmed her curvy figure, making her look slim yet shapely at the same time. Its scooped neckline stopped just short of showing any cleavage, the wide, softly frilled collar very feminine. The hem finished well above her knee on one side and dipped down almost to mid-calf on the other, as was the fashion this year. The print on the pale cream material was floral, the flowers small and well-spaced, their colours ranging from the palest pink to a deep plum, her favourite colour. She’d matched the dress with open-toed cream high heels and a plum handbag. Her lipstick and nail-polish were plum as well. Strong colours suited her, with her olive skin and dark hair and eyes.
Her hair—which had been up and down several times so far this morning—was finally down, its natural wave and curl having
been tamed somewhat with a ruthless blowdrying, but it still kicked up on the ends. Shoulder-blade-length, it was parted on one side and looped behind her ears to show her gold and pearl drops. A gold chain with a single gold and pearl pendant adorned her neck. The floral scents of her perfume, an extravagant one she’d bought during her last shopping trip to Sydney, was only just detectable on her skin. Angelina didn’t like it when a woman’s perfume preceded her into a room like a tidal wave.
She stroked the figure-hugging dress down over her hips before turning round and looking over her shoulder at her back view. Her scowl soon became a shrug. Nothing she could do about her Italian lower half. She had wide hips and a big bottom, and that was all there was to it.
Angelina turned back and looked with more approval at her front view. At least she had the breasts to go with the backside. They were a definite plus. Just as well, however, that her nipples were hidden by the wideness of the collar, because she could feel them now, pressing against the satiny confines of her underwired bra, making her hotly aware of how excited she was. How incredibly, appallingly excited.
A small moan escaped her lips, Angelina stuffing a closed fist into her mouth and biting on her knuckles in an effort to get some control over her silly self. But she was fighting a losing battle. The truth was she was dying to see Jake again. She wanted to see that look in his eyes once more, the one which made her feel like the most beautiful girl in the world.
Oh, she knew that he’d probably looked at a hundred different girls that way over the years. There were no end of lovely-looking girls here in Sydney, model-slim girls with more sophistication and style than she had. But no matter. She could pretend she was the only one, just for one miserable lunch.
Surely there was no harm in that. Lunch was safe. They wouldn’t really be alone. Impossible for him to get to her sexually during lunch, no matter what his secret agenda might be. Sharing a meal was also a good opportunity to find out more about him.
Her eyes went to her wrist-watch. It was ten-past ten, still almost two hours to go before noon. The minutes were dragging, but then, she’d been up since dawn.
She hadn’t slept well, and she couldn’t even blame the hotel bed. She hadn’t slept well all week, her mind never giving her any peace. She’d been tormented by regrets and recriminations.
Of course, in hindsight, she should have told Jake about Alex straight away last Saturday when he’d come back to the restaurant. And she shouldn’t have begun that silly charade, letting Jake think Alex was her boyfriend. No, not boyfriend. Lover. It had only made Jake even more determined, it seemed, to win her. She’d become a challenge.
By Friday her nerves had been so bad that she hadn’t felt capable of driving down to Sydney, let alone coping with the inner-city traffic. Whenever she came down to visit Alex at weekends, she always stayed at the Rydges Hotel in North Sydney, which was near his school. There was never any need for her to drive over the Harbour Bridge. If she wanted to go shopping in the city during her weekend trips down, she caught the train over the bridge. She never attempted to drive. For a country-raised girl, driving in that congestion would be a nightmare.
But getting to the expo, and the Star City hotel, would require her to go over the bridge and negotiate all those confusing lanes that went off in myriad different directions. Her father had brought her down to a show at the Star City theatre last year, and even he’d taken a wrong turn. Much easier to catch the train down and get a cab from Central. Much easier to come down on the Friday, too, rather than wait till the Saturday morning.
Arnold had kindly driven her into the station yesterday morning and she’d arrived in Sydney just after two, giving her enough time after booking in at the hotel to go for a walk and locate where the weekend expo was being held. It was down on a nearby wharf, in a building that had once housed the old casino.
The finishing touches on the Ambrosia Estate booth were being made when she arrived and she’d been very impressed. It looked like a little piece of Italy, with vines climbing over a mock-pergola, from which hung big bunches of grapes—not real but very lifelike. The right side of the booth was dedicated to white wines, with the red wines on the left. Each side would have its own team of pretty female demonstrators for wine-tasting, she’d been informed by the man running the show. Cheese would be offered with the reds, slices of fruit with the drier whites, and exotic sweets with the dessert wines.
The only negative during her inspection tour was this man himself. He was a typical salesman. Thirtyish and suavely handsome with a moustache and goatee beard, he just couldn’t help flirting with her. Not too strong for a first meeting. But Angelina had had plenty to do with salesmen at the resort, and she knew as sure as the sun was already up and shining that morning that today would be a different story. Today, he was going to come on much stronger. Today, he was going to be hands-on.
Which created a dilemma for Angelina. She didn’t want to encourage the guy by turning up again today. At the same time, she didn’t want Jake to think her presence wasn’t required at the expo. She needed to actually be there at the booth, doing something constructive, when Jake showed up. Which meant she’d have to leave the sanctuary of her hotel room soon and make an appearance.
Angelina sighed. She hoped that Wayne—he must have told her his name ten times—didn’t think she’d dolled herself up for him. Yesterday she’d only been wearing jeans and a simple white shirt, and he hadn’t been able to stop eyeing her up and down.
The telephone suddenly ringing startled Angelina. As she hurried from the bathroom, she wondered who it would be. Unlikely to be Alex. The team wasn’t allowed any outside calls during their weekend camp. The focus was to be all on swimming. Angelina had called him last night from the hotel and they’d talked for simply ages. Mostly about the expo. Alex was all for advertising their wines, unlike his grandfather, who’d been old-fashioned in his ways.
No, it couldn’t be Alex, she thought as she crossed the hotel room and scooped up the receiver. Hopefully not the dreaded Wayne, wanting to know where she was.
‘Yes?’
‘Do you always answer the phone as if it’s bad news?’
Jake. It was Jake. Angelina’s stomach started to swirl.
‘How did you know to ring me here?’ she said.
‘I was just talking to the chap running your booth at the expo and he mentioned you’d arrived yesterday. You yourself told me where you were staying, Angelina.’
‘But what are you doing at the expo this early? You said noon. It’s only just after ten.’
‘I didn’t want to risk not being able to find you later, so I thought I’d do a preliminary sortie. I’m glad I did. This place is a madhouse. You should see it. Which reminds me. Why aren’t you down here, selling your wares? It wouldn’t be because you don’t really need to be here, would it? You couldn’t possibly have lied to me about that too, the way you lied to me about when you would be arriving in Sydney?’
Angelina didn’t know whether to be annoyed with him, or charmed. ‘I didn’t want you pestering me any more than necessary.’
‘Pestering! Wow, you really know how to take the wind out of a guy’s sails, don’t you?’
‘Sorry. That was a bit harsh. But you know what I mean. Is there a purpose to this call, Jake, or is it just a softening-up trick?’
He laughed. ‘I can see I’m going to have to be very careful with you.’
‘Yes, you are. I’m fragile.’
He laughed again. ‘You’re about as fragile as Dorothy. OK, so I won’t confess I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice. That would probably go down like a lead balloon. The second reason for this call is to check that you don’t get seasick.’
‘Seasick,’ she repeated blankly. She was still thinking of his wanting to hear the sound of her voice.
‘Yep, I’m planning on booking us a luncheon cruise on the harbour. That’s another reason for my early arrival over here. I wanted to find out what was available.’
‘Oh. Oh, how…lovely,’ she finished, having almost said how romantic.
‘I thought you might never have done that, living where you do.’
‘No. No, I haven’t. That’s very thoughtful of you, Jake.’
‘I cannot tell a lie. It wasn’t thoughtful. It was my next best softening-up trick. After this phone call.’
Angelina smiled. ‘You really are shameless.’
‘And you really are beautiful. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have said that, either. I can’t seem to help myself with you. My mouth has a mind of its own. Have you told Alex about us yet?’
‘There is no us, Jake.’
‘About lunch with me, then?’
‘No.’
‘You’re only delaying the inevitable.’
‘Yes. I know that.’
She heard his sharp intake of breath. ‘Does that mean what I hope it means?’
‘Let’s just take one day at a time, Jake,’ she said.
‘Fair enough.’
‘See you at the booth at noon,’ she said, and hung up before she could say another single silly word.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JAKE watched her from a safe distance, Angelina totally unaware of his presence. He was a good thirty metres away from the Ambrosia Estate booth, with the milling crowds providing the perfect cover for his observation post.
She looked even more beautiful today than she had last Saturday. That dress was a stunner. But then, Angelina would look stunning in anything.
Woman was the right word to describe Angelina. So many girls these days were like stick insects. But not her. She was all soft curves and lush femininity. The two skinny blonde demonstrators working next to her in the booth looked positively anorexic by comparison.
Jake had been thinking about Angelina all week. She’d constantly distracted him at work and disturbed his sleep with dreams of the most erotic kind.
Last night had been especially erotic. He’d woken and reached for her in the bed—so real was the dream. But where he’d anticipated finding her warm and naked next to him, there’d only been a cold emptiness.
