His brows drew together. ‘You think I’d have liked to watch the grand reunion?’
‘Why else did you stage it?’ she rallied.
‘Hold on a minute.’ He abandoned his relaxed pose. ‘I had no idea you had any connection with the Wainwrights until I came downstairs to find you gone and an agitated Charlie in your place.’
Tory wasn’t convinced. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘I’ve pretty much given up expecting anything of you,’ he said, ‘but, yes, I’m telling you straight—I was as much in the dark as you.’
‘All right.’ It rang true. On his part, anyway. She, of course, hadn’t totally been in the dark.
She must have looked guilty as the blue eyes were already studying her, narrowed.
‘Or maybe even more so?’ he asked astutely.
Tory suddenly found herself on the defensive. ‘I did not realise who we were visiting until about a minute before Charlie came home.’
A statement of fact; he still saw behind her carefully chosen words. ‘But you knew of my connection to the Wainwrights. You must have.’
Tory considered denying it. After all, he’d never actually mentioned his wife by name or his in-laws. But what would be the point?
‘I did realise, yes,’ she admitted, ‘the first day we met.’
‘No wonder you seemed familiar.’ His eyes hardened with distrust. ‘I must have seen a photograph or something, though I guess you’ve changed in…what? Five years, would it be?’
She nodded. ‘My hair was longer and I wore glasses before I had contacts fitted.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he added.
‘What, exactly?’ countered Tory. ‘ I was once engaged to your late wife’s brother? Not quite the easiest of introductions to a new boss.’
‘You had plenty of chances later… Do you honestly think I would have taken you to their house, if I’d been clued up?’ His tone clearly told her he wouldn’t.
It seemed she’d misjudged him, yet again, but rather than apologise she gave an uninterested shrug.
It was a gesture designed to annoy, and annoy it did as his mouth went into a tight line and he finally stepped away from the door to cross the room.
Misunderstanding his purpose, Tory retreated to the far corner. She felt a little foolish when he veered off towards the mini-bar.
He noted her jumpiness with a humourless smile. ‘Relax. Right at the moment a drink is all I want.’
If it was meant to reassure, it didn’t. His eyes lingered long enough to suggest that later he might want something else.
Tory took a deep, steadying breath and told herself to keep calm. He was playing games, that was all.
‘Can I fix you one?’ He bent to do a quick inventory of, ‘Whisky, gin, vodka, beer…’
‘No…thank you.’ Tory had already had several glasses of wine earlier.
She watched as he took a couple of miniature whiskies from the cabinet and poured both in a glass, then eased his length onto the only chair.
As hotel bedrooms went, it had seemed quite spacious, but, with him in it, it suddenly felt overcrowded.
‘So what happened between you and Charlie?’ he asked, as if his interest was merely casual.
‘Tonight?’
‘No, we’ll come to that. I meant before.’
Tory supposed she could have told him to mind his own business, but wasn’t that making it a big deal? And it wasn’t. Not really. Not any more.
‘We met at college on the same media course,’ she relayed, ‘we went out, then became briefly engaged before having second thoughts.’
‘Which one of you?’
‘Which one of you what?’
‘Had second thoughts?’
Both of them, Tory supposed was the truth.
She’d had second thoughts from the moment Charlie had proposed and pressed her for an immediate answer at the New Year’s party they’d been attending. But she’d tried hard to ignore her doubts and let herself be caught up in Charlie’s impulsiveness and sheer certainty about everything.
‘Charlie,’ she answered at length.
‘That’s not what I heard,’ he drawled back at her.
Tory wasn’t altogether surprised. It was Charlie who’d decided to call off the engagement but she’d left it up to him as to what story he gave people.
‘I heard,’ he continued at her silence, ‘that all of a sudden the engagement was off and Charlie was devastated. Doesn’t quite tally with the notion he was the one to back out, now, does it?’
‘Who did you hear it from?’ she retorted. ‘His mother?’
‘As I recall, yes.’ He nodded. ‘Charlie wasn’t making much sense at the time. He just said he’d discovered something that made it impossible for you to go on together.’
That was true enough and she supposed she was glad that Charlie had been discreet, although it was questionable whether his intention had been to save her face or his own.
‘I bet his mother couldn’t contain her delight.’ Tory knew she’d never been good enough for Diana Wainwright.
He raised a brow at her slightly acerbic tone before admitting, ‘She did think you were unsuited, yes.’
‘Not her sort at all.’ Tory mimicked the other woman’s posh way of talking.
‘Yeah, okay, Diana can be a bit of a snob,’ he conceded, ‘but she was more concerned for Charlie and whether he’d ever get over you.’
There was a note of accusation in his voice. It seemed he’d cast her in the role of heartbreaker.
Tory resented the unfairness of it. ‘Well, she was wrong, wasn’t she? How long before he was married? A year, maybe?’
‘And you’d prefer him to do what?’ he grated back. ‘Stay crying into his beer? Carry a torch for ever? Or maybe go crawling back to you?’
‘I didn’t want that,’ Tory denied angrily.
‘No?’ He clearly didn’t believe her.
‘No!’ she repeated, gritting her teeth.
He still didn’t look satisfied as he muttered, ‘Let’s hope not.’
‘Does it matter?’ Tory wasn’t enjoying this trip down memory lane. ‘It’s past, over, history.’
‘Is it?’
Why was he looking at her like that?
‘Yes, of course,’ she declared adamantly. ‘ I haven’t seen Charlie for five years.’
‘But you saw him tonight,’ he reminded her, ‘and he saw you.’
What was he getting at? Obviously something, but she’d lost the plot.
‘Yes,’ she answered slowly.
‘And?’ He waited.
She still didn’t know what he wanted her to say.
‘And nothing,’ she replied.
‘He gave you a ride, you shook hands like nice polite English people do and said goodbye?’ The mocking drawl in his voice was shot through with disbelief.
Colour seeped into Tory’s cheeks even as she told herself he couldn’t possibly know otherwise. He’d not been in the car with them and surely Charlie hadn’t rushed off home to confess all.
‘Something along those lines,’ she finally murmured.
It was the wrong answer, evidently, as his lips curled with contempt for her. Then he drained his whisky and set the glass down on a table with a cracking noise, before rising to his feet.
She watched him cross to the door, seemingly with the intention of leaving.
She should have been relieved but instead she found herself coming round the end of the bed, pursuing him as she claimed, ‘Nothing happened between us, if that’s what you’re trying to imply.’
He paused mid-flight, hand on the lock, back rigid, then turned round to face her.
‘Nothing happened?’ he echoed, but there was a dangerous edge to his voice, and when she took a step backwards he reached out to catch her arm.
Unable to retreat, Tory stood shaking her head. ‘I—I… No, nothing.’
‘Liar.’ The word was growled at her as he drew her closer. ‘I
just sat through dinner with a man who looked like a ghost had come back to haunt him. I spent most of it trying to distract his wife so she wouldn’t notice how sappy he was acting, then afterwards had to listen while Charlie went on like a corny Country and Western song about the love of his life and how he’d lost her.’
And he blamed it all on her. Tory saw that in the scathing look he gave her.
‘I’m not interested in Charlie,’ she said in her own defence.
‘And that makes it better?’ It was a rhetorical question as he ran on, ‘So why vamp him—to see if you could? Or a little revenge?’
‘Vamp him?’ Tory repeated, her own temper rising. ‘Is that what Charlie said?’
‘He didn’t need to,’ Lucas replied. ‘It was obvious from the way he was behaving. Doesn’t it mean anything to you, the fact he’s married, has kids?’
She shook her head, denying that she’d done anything, but he chose to misunderstand, to believe the worst of her.
‘Evidently not,’ he concluded for himself. ‘Well, I’m warning you now, go near Charlie again and I’ll make sure you regret it.’
‘Really?’ The threat didn’t scare Tory, it just made her madder. ‘So how are you going to do that, Mr Ryecart? Let me guess? My P45 in the post.’
‘P45?’ The term didn’t translate.
‘P45, it’s a tax form you get when you stop working for a company—’ Tory switched to saying, ‘Never mind. It doesn’t matter. You can’t sack me because I quit. As of now, this moment.’
It clearly took him by surprise as his brows arched together. Perhaps he’d imagined he was the only one who could call the shots.
‘You can’t quit!’ he barked back.
‘Oh, can’t I?’ Tory taunted, and tried to jerk her hands free.
He held them fast, long fingers circling her slender wrists. ‘You’re on contract and in the middle of an assignment. I thought you were the one who could keep work and their personal life separate?’
Tory recognised the claim she’d made that afternoon but didn’t appreciate having it flung back at her.
‘And this business with you and Charlie,’ he continued heavily, ‘has absolutely nothing to do with work, and everything to do with Caro and those three kids back there. You honestly want to wreck their lives just because Charlie was too spineless to marry you in the first place?’
Of course Tory didn’t. No thought could be further from her mind, but his lecturing tone incensed her all the same.
‘Why not?’ she found herself saying. ‘You don’t expect anything better of me, do you? You imagine I’ll sleep with anyone, after all… Well, anyone but you, that is,’ she added with reckless intent.
She didn’t regret it. Not then, anyway. She enjoyed wiping that superior look from his face.
It was replaced with a cloud of dark anger. ‘You think I’d want to sleep with you now?’
His tone said he’d not touch her, but his eyes said something else, and Tory scoffed at him, ‘Yes, actually, I do.’
She felt his hands tighten like bands round her arms, and waited for him to push her away.
But she had seriously miscalculated.
‘Let’s see, shall we?’ he ground back, pulling her towards him.
At the last moment she tried to turn but it was too late. His hand was in her hair, holding her head steady. She saw his mouth curve into a humourless smile a second before it lowered on hers.
She meant to resist but she had forgotten how it felt to be kissed by this man. His lips moved against hers, warm and hard and persuasive, tongue tasting teeth until she opened to him, then thrusting inside to explore the warm, sweet intimacy of her mouth, making her breathing as ragged as his.
‘You’re right,’ he murmured against her mouth. ‘I still want you.’
It was the last they spoke, the last conscious thought formed as desire overwhelmed reason.
Afterwards Tory would try to tell herself it was down to the drink they’d both had. Afterwards she’d try to call it seduction but then she’d remember how it really had been. Too quick to be seduction. Too sweet to be force.
It was more compulsion as he began to touch her, a hand moving round, slipping inside her robe, pushing aside, seeking flesh, breasts swollen and heavy, fingering until she cried out for the mouth closing, sucking on her aching nipples. It was need and desperation as she fell with him on the bed and guided him down to the part of her that was already warm and wet and let him stroke her, deep and intimate, until desire kicked in her belly and she drew his hips to hers.
She was naked, he still clothed. Together they fumbled for his zip. Then they coupled in mutual need.
The first thrust and he filled her too completely. She moaned a little until his mouth covered hers in a sweet, drugging kiss. Then slowly he moved inside her and her body opened up as if it had always known his, and she rose and fell with him, grasping his shoulders, digging in at each shaft, panting and gasping, almost one being as they came together with wild, unrestrained pleasure.
They lay back on the bed, for a while suspended in time, their bodies experiencing intense physical satisfaction—then gradually reality impinged and the mind took back control.
Tory remained paralysed in those first conscious moments, wondering what she had done. She’d never made love like that, with almost primitive urgency. She’d never felt like this, possessed to the core. She’d never wanted to let a man this close to her.
Every instinct told her to run. She’d nowhere to go but inside her head. So she retreated there as she slid off the bed and picked up the robe she’d been wearing and turned her back to him as she put it on.
Somehow Luc wasn’t surprised by this reaction. He was more surprised by what had gone before.
He followed her up off the bed, straightening his clothes as he did so. He considered an apology but it would have been hypocrisy. He wasn’t sorry for what he’d done. In fact, when he recalled her response, so warm and passionate, he wanted to do it all over again.
Her rigid stance, however, told him the cold war had resumed.
He restrained a desire to cross the room and take her back in his arms.
‘You want me to go?’ he surmised instead.
‘Yes.’ Tory didn’t risk saying more.
He was equally laconic. ‘Okay.’
But still Tory didn’t imagine he would leave without another word, didn’t believe it when she heard the door behind her open and shut.
She turned and found herself in an empty room. He was gone. Just like that.
But he couldn’t be forgotten the same way. How could he be when he’d left his mark on her body, left a jagged tear on her heart?
She showered and tried to wash the smell of him, the taste of him, the touch of him from her body. She leaned against cool white tiles while hot tears of shame and rejection ran down her cheeks. She towelled her skin dry till it hurt and climbed into the crumpled bed and shut her eyes tight and prayed for sleep to come.
But it made no difference. When finally she slipped away, she found him chasing through her dreams.
It seemed as if she had opened a door that she couldn’t close.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TORY woke, hoping it really had been a dream, but her eyes were drawn to the whisky glass on the table. This trace of Lucas’s presence prompted vivid recall of what had happened last night.
She felt a measure of shame. She’d never indulged before in casual sex but what Lucas and she had done together could scarcely be described as anything else. And the worst part was the way he’d left her, as if he hadn’t been able to wait to be gone.
She wondered how she could ever face him again. The easy option was not to. She could follow through her threat to quit her job. In the cool light of day, however, she knew such an action would damage her career as well as her finances.
And what else had she but work? It was the thing she did best, the thing that gave her life meaning and form. If she walked away from Ea
stwich now, how long might it be before she secured another post?
There was also a reasonable possibility that Lucas would no longer be a problem. Yes, he’d pursued her from the moment they’d met, but now he’d had her and used her and seemingly lost interest at once. Perhaps she was already history.
Tory visualised their next meeting. She’d be churned up inside while he would be his usual laid-back self. He might or might not allude to their one-night stand. If he did, it would be as a joke or a shrugged aside. No big deal. Couldn’t she act the same way, regardless of how she felt inside?
Tory decided she could and would, and, driven by a mixture of pride and pragmatism, she got herself out of bed, showered and dressed and ready for her first day as an employee of Toi.
While she’d been nervous yesterday, she approached today very differently. She sailed into the offices with an almost reckless disregard as to whether she was found out or not, and straight away set up a meeting with her three assistants, listening as they explained the work in progress before making appropriate comments and suggesting approaches that might be taken for this or that article. She made it clear that they would have a fair degree of autonomy, and two of the young women seemed happy to accept her as their new boss. The third was Sam Hollier who’d been Acting Features Editor, and, not surprisingly, she was more hostile, although she stopped short of outright rebellion, and Tory decided she could probably handle her.
It was Amanda Villiers of whom she was most wary, but, to her relief, the lady in question failed to appear. Either she was too busy to bother or didn’t really care whether Tory settled to the job or not.
Thus Tory survived the day with her credibility intact and actually stayed late, wading through some unsolicited articles sent by freelance writers. Most she earmarked for polite rejections, a couple were worth considering and one stood out as eminently printable. Unsure if she had the authority to commission the latter, she decided to play safe and placed a copy on Amanda’s desk, requesting her opinion of it.
She returned to the hotel with some reluctance. Occupied throughout the day, she’d avoided thinking of Lucas Ryecart, but once back in her room she was unable to keep her mind off the events of last night. She felt she would have welcomed any distraction until Reception rang up to her room, informing her she had a visitor downstairs: Caro Wainwright.
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