Tell Me You Do

by Fiona Harper

  ‘For what it’s worth, I really am sorry,’ she said, putting the picture back on the shelf and walking towards him. She glanced back at the frame. ‘If it bothers you so much, why do you keep it there, staring you in the face all day long?’

  Jason’s mouth flattened into a grim line. ‘To remind me.’

  ‘Of what?’ she asked softly.

  He looked into her eyes. It was a shock. For the first time she felt she was seeing the real him—no gloss, no game playing. It made her feel a little bit wobbly. ‘To keep me jealous. To make me want to drive forwards and prove myself.’

  And to punish yourself, she thought. But she didn’t say it.

  And she got it now. Why the shoes were so important. Why he hadn’t been able to bear admitting failure. Why he’d distracted himself with a good night out, shaking it off and pretending that nothing was wrong. And then she’d gone and shattered the insulated bubble he’d created for himself—and if anyone knew how important that bubble could be when tough times came, it was Kelly.

  ‘I’ll clean out my desk as soon as I get a box,’ she told him. ‘I just need to go and find one.’

  Jason sat up in his chair. ‘Don’t.’

  Kelly’s mouth dropped open. ‘But I … But you …’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t think my behaviour on Friday was saintly, either. I don’t usually force myself on women.’

  Kelly’s shoulders sagged. ‘You didn’t. Not really.’ She hated the next words that came out of her mouth. ‘I mean, I was in it as much as you were.’

  There was a flicker of amusement behind Jason’s eyes.

  ‘Doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea to repeat the experience,’ she added quickly. ‘Far too complicated.’

  He gave her a rueful look. ‘I hate to admit it, but I think you’re right.’

  Kelly exhaled. That was good, wasn’t it? That he agreed with her. She should be feeling pleased. And she was. It was just that the morning had been a bit of an emotional roller coaster and the notion still hadn’t caught up with her.

  ‘We’re agreed, then,’ she said, and watched carefully for his reaction.

  ‘I guess we are.’

  She hadn’t realised she’d been holding her breath until she released it in unison with him. ‘What now?’

  Jason looked up at her. ‘We start again. There are plenty of other sports figures out there who’d love to endorse Mercury. We just have to find ourselves one and convince them of that.’

  Kelly smiled at him. The old Jason wasn’t back, but the snapping, snarling one had retreated into his cave. And she kind of liked this new one, the one who looked at her as an ally rather than something to be conquered.

  He stood up and reached across the desk, offering her his hand. It was exactly the same gesture he’d made the first time they’d met, and she understood its significance. New beginnings, fresh starts …

  Swallowing slightly, she reached over and slid her hand in his, and he gripped her fingers lightly. They stayed like that for a few seconds, not moving, not shaking, but still cementing what they’d just verbally agreed. However, underneath that feeling of everything settling back into its proper order, her blood started to pulse harder, her nerve endings quivered and she couldn’t quite ignore the steady thrum deep down in her core.

  Unsettled, she pulled her hand away, not daring to look at him, then she turned and walked back to her desk, closing the office door behind her.

  Don’t be stupid, Kelly. It was just a handshake, that was all. Nothing to get dramatic about. Just a simple handshake.

  She walked round her desk, dropped into her chair and stared at her blank computer monitor. They could do this, couldn’t they? They could work together without sex getting in the way. Couldn’t they?

  Over the next couple of months they did manage to keep sex out of their relationship—on the surface, at least. And that was good enough for Kelly. It was always there, simmering away underneath, but she told herself she was getting used to it, like a dull toothache you put off going to the dentist about.

  She didn’t regret backing away from whatever had been brewing between them. Jason had spent the intervening time cementing her sense of self-righteousness on that front. While he obviously hadn’t been dating anyone at work, he had been dating.

  Kelly had a list on the notepad on her desk. A list of names. Girls’ names.

  When a new one called they’d sound breezy and hopeful. Kelly had now started adding to the list just based on a particular tone of voice on the other end of the line. But the women whose names were at the top of the list had lost that optimism now. If they called at all, they sounded tearful and stressed. More than one had shouted at her on the phone when she’d told them Jason wasn’t there or was unavailable, thinking that Kelly was covering for him.

  She hadn’t been. If he wasn’t busy she put them straight through. He could deal with them himself. Definitely not part of her job description.

  One morning, Jason buzzed through and asked her to come into his office. Kelly rose from her desk and opened the door. The little kick of attraction still came as she spotted him bent over his desk, scribbling furiously on a pad, but she didn’t dread or even resent it anymore. You’re alive, it told her. She almost welcomed the daily reminder, even missed it on the weekends.

  One day, maybe, she’d find a man who made her heart jump the same way, a man who was ready to be a grown-up about his relationships. One who wouldn’t run when the going got tough. If there were such a fairy tale creature, of course… .

  Jason looked up as she crossed the office and sat down in the chair opposite him. She smiled gently as she met his gaze.

  It wasn’t this one. No, definitely not this one.

  ‘Any updates?’ he asked her.

  She nodded and looked down at her notepad. ‘Yes, all three runners have received the sample shoes. Emerson’s out of the country at the moment, but the other two hope to test them out within the week and give us a verdict.’

  ‘Good,’ Jason said, nodding. ‘I want to go to contract as soon as possible on this. We need to find us a face that fits.’

  He made a little gesture with his mouth, pulling it down at the edges.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Are you unhappy with any of the three we’ve shortlisted? Because we can keep looking …’

  He shook his head. ‘No. They’re all … fine.’ And then he started to tell her about the ideas he’d been discussing with the marketing department and the advertising company they’d hired. She scribbled away on her pad, noting down names and dates and times. Things for her to do and things to remind Jason of later, when the next amazing idea hit and he’d half forgotten about this one.

  When their brief meeting came to an end, she rose to return to her desk.

  ‘You’re coming to the company picnic next Saturday, aren’t you?’ Jason asked. ‘Bring your sons, there’ll be plenty of other kids to play with.’

  Kelly looked back at him. ‘I think you’re insane. This is London, not Los Angeles. Don’t you know that organising something like that is practically an open invitation for the weather gods to come and mess with you?’

  Jason leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. He dropped the tone of his voice and impersonated someone; his father, she guessed. ‘The Knight Corporation is still a family company at heart, and the annual picnic is an important part of creating that ethos.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘Big fans of outdoor eating then, your family?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not really. Never once had one on the lawn at home, despite there being acres of it. Dad would never have been home for it anyway—too busy at the office. And my mother would never have thought to organise one without his say-so.’ He gave her a tight smile. ‘He let us go to the office picnic, though, so he could show what a great family man he was, so I can’t complain.’

  There was that hint of pain behind his lau
ghing eyes again, the one she glimpsed every now and then that tugged at her heart. But Kelly had developed a coping mechanism for these moments, and it was very effective too. The key was to take a mental step back and see the big picture where Jason Knight was concerned, to remember that was only one facet of him and there were other things she needed to keep in the forefront of her consciousness.

  She fumbled in her pocket for the tiny object she’d stowed there earlier. ‘Erm … one of the cleaners gave this to me. She said she found it under your desk.’

  She produced a gold hoop earring and placed it in front of him. Jason stared blankly at it.

  So did Kelly. She hadn’t been aware of another woman spending significant time in this office besides her these last few weeks. Somehow the knowledge made her feel … territorial.

  He picked up the hoop and turned it over in his hand, frowning slightly.

  Kelly let out an exasperated sigh and shook her head. ‘You don’t know who it belongs to, do you?’

  The fact he didn’t answer straight away told her all she needed to know, but then his eyes crinkled round the edges. ‘Would it help if I told you that I can narrow it down to one of two candidates?’

  Kelly tried hard not to think about how such an item might get dislodged in the vicinity of Jason’s desk and just what kind of helping hand he’d had in the matter. ‘Nope. But that’s because it’s none of my business what you get up to once I’ve gone home for the evening. You could have a whole … herd … of girls up here for all I care.’

  The mischievous grin remained, but his eyes searched her features as if he was trying to work out if she was telling the truth. She made sure she gave him no clues.

  ‘And while we’re on the subject, Amber called again.’

  There it was, the shifty expression she’d been waiting for … Jason didn’t have to open his mouth to let her know that poor Amber was history.

  ‘Don’t you give me that look … that boyish, won’t-you-take-pity-on-me look! I’ve told you already that you can tidy up your own messes. You’ve made your bed, as my grandmother used to say, and now you’ve got to lie in it. Just tell the poor woman it’s over!’

  ‘I have,’ Jason muttered, ‘and it’s not the bed bit that’s the problem.’

  Kelly pretended she hadn’t heard. She sighed and shook her head. ‘Honestly, what do you do to these women to make them so … so … whatever they are?’

  He opened his mouth, but Kelly held up a hand. ‘Scratch that. I don’t want to know how—’ She clamped her mouth shut before she could dig herself in any deeper.

  The smile playing round the edges of his eyes was pure devilment. ‘How what?’

  She licked her lips. She had been going to say how good in bed you are, but had managed to put the brakes on at the last second. Seemed that working for Jason was teaching her new skills in self-control.

  ‘How you … hypnotise … them,’ she finally said, watching Jason’s smile grow slowly even more wicked. ‘At least, that’s what I assume you do, because any woman in possession of her full senses would see through you in a flash.’

  ‘Like you do,’ he said, his voice low and velvety.

  ‘Precisely.’ She straightened her spine, turned and walked away, ignoring the knowledge that he was silently laughing at her as she headed back to the safety of her desk.

  But at least he hadn’t pressed the matter or decided he was in a teasing kind of mood. She really didn’t want to know how good in bed he was. Chloe would say it was because she’d regret what she was missing, but it wasn’t that. When the sex was good, it was a nice extra in a relationship, but it couldn’t be the foundation. She’d had that kind of chemistry with Tim and look how well that had turned out.

  Oh, she knew it wasn’t always a disaster—Chloe and Dan being a case in point—but good sex, even off-the-charts sex wasn’t a guarantee of any sort, even if those wonderful endorphins it produced were such good liars, telling you it meant something when it didn’t, making you feel that something cosmically earth-shattering had occurred, when really it was just some well-designed biology to keep the species going.

  She didn’t believe in ‘soulmates’ anymore. You just had to find a good match, someone you got on with, who wanted the same things out of life as you did, and if there was a spark there so much the better.

  Never again would she be one of those silly women like the ones on Jason’s list. The ones who believed too much, who saw a god when there was really only an ordinary fallible man. No, Kelly had her eyes open now, and she was never going to be tricked that way again. The happiness of her and her boys depended on it.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KELLY ARRIVED AT Greenwich Park the following Saturday with a firm grip on each of her sons and a cool bag slung across her body. The strap dug into her shoulder more with every step, but she wasn’t going to let go of Cal and Ben until they’d reached their destination. There was no telling where they’d run off to otherwise and the park was a big place.

  Thankfully, she soon found some faces she recognised on a flat expanse of grass just before the landscape dipped dramatically to meet the Thames. Across the river, the sun glinted off the skyscrapers in Canary Wharf. It seemed odd for the towering buildings to be so close when she was standing in a royal park that was so old the sense of a rural idyll still clung about it.

  She sighed and looked up at the bright sun climbing steadily in the sky. Weather forecasting was obviously not her talent, because the day was as clear and warm as any that blessed Los Angeles. Well, that was what Kelly imagined. The furthest west she’d ever been was St Ives.

  As they neared the growing sprawl of Aspire employees, she tried to stop herself scanning the crowd for Jason. And failed miserably.

  It didn’t matter. He wasn’t there yet. She shook her head and concentrated on laying a tartan blanket out on the warm grass, forbidding herself from looking up and checking for who else had arrived once she’d finished. That done, she sat down and leaned back on her hands, legs stretched in front of her, enjoying the sun on her face and the slight breeze that ruffled the loose hair around her shoulders.

  At least, she enjoyed it until she was felled by two small boys who’d launched themselves at her. They were alternately strangling her, bouncing up and down and eyeing the play park at the bottom of the vast hill.

  ‘Can we go to the swings, Mummy? Can we? Can we? Please?’

  Kelly unhooked Ben’s arm from around her windpipe and gasped for some oxygen before she answered. ‘Maybe after lunch,’ she told them, then pointed over to a blanket not far away, where Sarah from Accounting, her husband and brood of four children were gathered. ‘There are some kids your age over there. Why don’t you see if you can go and play with them?’

  Cal pulled a face. ‘They’re girls.’

  She smothered a smile. ‘Well, those girls have got a football in their bag. Still not interested in playing with them?’

  The boys exchanged looks. Cal looked down and scuffed the grass with his trainer, before staring longingly at the assortment of brightly coloured pint-sized sports equipment being unloaded from a large holdall.

  ‘I suppose we could go and teach them how to play properly,’ he said slowly.

  Once again, Kelly struggled to keep her lips in a straight line. From the look of the pink-and-lilac-clad tomboys clambering over their father to get to the toys, they could teach Ben and Cal a thing or two.

  She pushed herself to her feet. ‘Come on, we’ll go and say hi.’

  The boys loped behind her for a few steps, but started running the instant Sarah spotted them coming and beckoned them over. Within thirty seconds Cal was being bossed by Sarah’s eldest as to exactly where he should put some discarded cardigans to serve as goalposts. Kelly stood, hands on hips, watching them for a moment and then accepted Sarah’s offer to join her on her blanket for a chat.

  ‘So what’s the deal with this picnic?’ she asked Sarah, keeping half an eye on the game of football that h
ad just started. ‘We just slowly toast ourselves in the sunshine and stuff our faces?’

  Sarah grinned at her as she rolled up her T-shirt sleeves to expose her shoulders. ‘If that’s what you want, but this being a sporty kind of staff, there’s also a chance to burn off the picnic calories, should you wish to. Jason’s big on organising games and races and getting the different departments to compete against each other.’

  Kelly stared ahead and said nothing. Of course he was.

  ‘Highlight of the afternoon is the annual rounders tournament. Of course, Jason calls it baseball, and we don’t correct him, but we all know it’s really good old British rounders. Production and Design won last year and they’re determined to hold on to their trophy.’

  Kelly closed her eyes. ‘Please don’t tell me there’s an actual trophy.’

  Sarah chuckled. ‘Of course there’s a trophy! It’s all the guys talk about. It gives them gloating rights for the next twelve months.’ Her mouth hitched up at one side. ‘The way they go on about it, you’d think the stupid thing had magical powers. You watch, they’ll be warming up and taking their practice swings before lunch.’

  Sarah was right about that. Not ten minutes passed before a band of serious-looking twenty-somethings, all with specially printed T-shirts with the Aspire logo and ‘P & D’ on the back, huddled together and started taking turns with a bat. Kelly only half watched them, content to just sit and do nothing for once. Sarah’s husband was supervising the kiddie football game, so she didn’t even have to keep more than half an ear out for her sons’ voices.

  For the first time in months, maybe even a couple of years, she felt as if she could kick back and do nothing. It was glorious.

  She’d been sitting there quite happily, soaking up the sunshine, when that familiar prickling sensation crept up her arms. She glanced over to where the rounders players were warming up and her stomach lurched so hard she was almost convinced the ground had moved.