by Lee, Miranda
She fairly gaped.
But if she was shocked, so was he.
‘Leah!’ he blurted out. ‘Good God.’
‘Leah?’ Joachim repeated, staring first at Jason Pollack, then at his daughter.
‘You already know each other?’ he asked her.
‘We…er…we met at B…Beville Holdings this week.’
Joachim had never heard his daughter stammer in her life. Or blush the way she was blushing at this moment.
Joachim was no fool. He knew at once that more had gone on between this pair than a simple meeting at work. Intuition told him that Leah’s new boss was the reason she had been acted strangely today.
‘You never mentioned it,’ Joachim said, playing devil’s advocate.
‘Didn’t I?’ came her evasive reply.
Joachim became aware that his guest was glowering at both him and her with dark suspicion in his eyes. It occurred to him suddenly that Pollack had no idea Leah was his daughter. Clearly, he’d jumped to the mistaken conclusion that she held a very different but still intimate role in Joachim’s life.
That of mistress.
And he looked as jealous as sin.
Joachim felt pleased as punch at this development. But he thought it best to clarify things, post-haste.
‘Leah is my daughter, Mr Pollack,’ he pronounced proudly, sliding a possessive around her slender waist. ‘My only child and the apple of my eye.’
Pollack’s deeply set eyes betrayed definite relief, followed by puzzlement. He frowned at Leah, who was still blushing furiously.
‘But you go by the name of Johannsen,’ he said to Leah, almost accusingly. ‘Not Bloom.’
‘Her ex-husband’s name,’ Joachim informed him when Leah couldn’t seem to find her tongue. A most unusual occurrence, lately. ‘Rich as Croesus, but a cur of a man. Leah is well rid of him, aren’t you, sweetheart? But let’s not talk of unpleasant things tonight. Dinner will be served shortly. Just enough time for Leah to get you a pre-dinner drink.’
Joachim removed his hand from her waist and leant it lightly on her shoulder, giving her an indulgent smile at the same time. ‘I’ll leave Mr Pollack in your good hands, shall I, Leah, whilst I check things with the chef.’
Bloom walked off, leaving Jason feeling more rattled than he’d ever felt in his life.
He hadn’t been going to come tonight. He hadn’t felt like socialising, especially with people he didn’t know. It had been Karen’s voice in his head saying that it was best not to be alone when you were troubled over something that had driven him out of the house.
So at the last moment he’d thrown on his tux and ordered a taxi, telling himself—as he had earlier in the week—that at least the wine and food would be good.
Seeing Leah standing next to Bloom like that had given him a dreadful shock. For a few stomach-churning moments, he’d entertained appalling thoughts about their relationship. Thank heavens Bloom turned out to be her father, or he didn’t know what he might have done.
Jason hadn’t realised till that moment just how primal his feelings for Leah had become. One night spent together, and he already thought of her as his, and his alone.
As he stared at her, his mind began stripping her of that far too sexy black dress. He saw her as he’d seen her last night, without a stitch on, her beautiful body stretched out before him, to do with as he pleased.
He’d been trying not to think of her like that all day, telling himself he’d done the right thing to leave things at a one-night stand. But now here she was, tormenting him with her beauty once more.
Still, the pieces of the puzzle that made up Leah Johannsen were finally slotting into place. She was a rich man’s daughter. She’d been married to a rich man. Now he understood why she’d had no work record till recently.
‘I had no idea you were coming here tonight,’ she said agitatedly. ‘You have to believe me.’
‘I do believe you,’ he returned. If she’d expected him, she wouldn’t have looked so embarrassed.
‘This is all my father’s doing,’ she said, shaking her head, the action setting those incredible earrings swaying and sparkling.
‘Yes, I can see that.’
Her eyes flashed with frustration. ‘Daddy likes to think he knows what’s best for me. He’s obviously matchmaking, despite my having told him just last Sunday that I wasn’t interested in getting married again. Or falling in love again, for that matter!’
‘You’re not?’ Jason wished she’d told him that this morning.
‘No,’ she said quite firmly. ‘I’m not. Look, the only reason I’m here tonight is because my father asked me to. He said he needed me to sit next to some billionaire he’d invited to dinner and wanted to impress. He refused to tell me your name, though he cleverly let me assume that you were some ageing tycoon whose investment account he wanted to secure. He knew, if I knew your real identity, I wouldn’t have agreed to help him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’m not into wealthy playboy types who think they’re God’s gift to women,’ she threw at him, her delicately pointed chin lifting the way it had that first day in the car park.
Jason opened his mouth to deny he was a playboy. But then closed it again. He supposed he was, in a way. Hilary would certainly describe him as such.
‘And please don’t throw last night in my face,’ she added angrily. ‘You caught me at a weak moment. Trust me when I say it won’t happen again.’
Jason looked deep into her defiant green eyes, then down at the outline of her stunningly erect nipples before deciding that the lady doth protest too much.
Her body language spoke different words to those she was mouthing.
His own body responding to the still-smouldering desire he sensed in hers, Jason wondered how on earth he was going to get through this evening without misbehaving.
‘I’m glad you’ve come over to my way of thinking,’ he returned drily. He’d have no hope of containing his own desire if she indicated she’d be willing for a repeat performance. ‘Now, how about that drink your father promised?’
Chapter 11
‘What a lovely room.’
Leah flashed Jason a resentful glance over the rim of her crystal flute. She didn’t want to stand here next to him, sipping champagne and pretending that the whole evening was not going to be a total disaster. She didn’t want to make small talk with him. She wanted to get out of here more than anything she’d ever wanted, except perhaps this man.
She looked at him hard again and wished he wasn’t so attractive. And so decent.
If decent was the right word. Maybe he’d just been protecting himself this morning from a girl he decided might become a neurotic cling-on in his life.
Clearly, emotional complications weren’t on Jason’s agenda.
Sex was fine. But nothing more.
Leah wished she could have hidden that she wanted more.
‘You can handle this, Leah,’ Jason said softly, as if reading her mind. ‘You can handle just about anything, from what I’ve seen. Don’t let your father’s manipulations bother you. They’re irrelevant. I won’t be pushed into doing anything I don’t want to do. And neither will you. We have minds of our own.’
She stared at him, both impressed and flattered. She really was much weaker than he believed. Around him, anyway.
‘And I genuinely like this room,’ he added, smiling at her with a warm smile that made her want to weep.
Why couldn’t she have married a man like this, instead of Carl? Why couldn’t she have met Jason first, before his wife stole his heart and left him without the ability—or the desire—to love again?
‘It was my mother’s favourite room,’ she replied, her heart lurching a little.
‘Am I right in presuming that your mother has passed away?’
‘She…she died in the same car accident that gave me the scars.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said with true sympathy in his voice and face. ‘I never act
ually knew my mother. She died when I was born. But Dad and I were very close. He passed away when I was in my twenties, so I know what it feels like to lose a much-loved parent.’
‘Not a day goes by that I don’t miss Mum terribly.’
‘I know what you mean,’ he muttered. ‘You just can’t get used to the fact that they’re not there any more.’
Leah looked at his bleak eyes and suspected he was now thinking about his wife.
Thinking about her and missing her. Every day of his life.
Oh, God.
‘Tell me about your mother.’
A wistful sigh whispered from Leah’s lips. ‘She was a lovely sweet woman, too sweet in some ways. A great wife and mother. She had a wonderfully calming effect in the house, and on Daddy. Everyone loved her. Unfortunately, she was a dreadful driver…’
‘Do you look like her, or your father?’
‘People say I’m the spitting image of Mum. But not in nature,’ she added. ‘I’m not quite as amenable as Mum was.’
Jason smiled. ‘No kidding.’
Leah felt herself bristle. She opened her mouth to make some snappy reply when her father announced that dinner was ready.
Leah glared at her father as she and Jason walked past on their way into the dining room.
‘I want a quiet word with you,’ she bit out.
‘It won’t be during dinner,’ came his smiling answer. ‘The seating arrangement is not conducive.’
An understatement. The regimented place names put her father at one end of the huge mahogany dining table, and Leah at the other end, almost shouting distance away. Jason had been placed on Leah’s immediate right, with Nigel’s wife on her left, a shy woman who rarely said a word. No doubt a deliberate ploy on her father’s part.
The first two courses were an absolute trial, not because she was forced to talk to Jason and Jason alone, but because he cleverly drew Jessica out of her usual shell till she was fairly sparkling with wit and previously untapped charm.
Jealousy consumed Leah as she watched all the women at the table—not just Jessica—flick admiring glances towards Jason. She wanted to scream at them that they couldn’t have him. That he was hers.
But of course he wasn’t.
The trouble was, the memory of his lovemaking was still pleasurably, painfully sharp. She could almost feel his hands on her breasts. Her stomach. Her bottom.
Her body literally began to burn as her mind relived that torrid mating in the shower. She could hear her cries echoing against the tiled walls, feel his swollen sex buried deep inside hers.
‘Your father’s wines are superb.’
‘What?’ Her head jerked around at his voice, her face flushing when her eyes met his.
Jason was an expert at reading body language. When he’d first started out in sales, his take-home pay had depended on it. There was no doubt in his mind that Leah still wanted him, regardless of what she’d claimed earlier.
His resolve not to sleep with her again shattered under the force of his own immediate and intense desire.
Dessert arrived, a wicked-looking chocolate concoction that had most of the women at the table protesting—though only half-heartedly. Jason used their momentary distraction to lean across the corner of the table towards Leah.
‘Come home with me tonight,’ he invited softly before he could think better of it.
Her nostrils flared as she sucked in sharply, her eyes blinking wide in shock on him.
‘Please,’ he added, his own eyes fixed firmly on her stunned face.
Leah just stared at him.
Yes, was the obvious answer. It was what she was wanted more than anything. So why did she hesitate? Why did she feel the urge to punish him for rejecting her this morning?
In that moment, Leah began to understand why pride was one of the seven deadly sins, and not a virtue as some people imagined. It could be perverse, and very self-destructive.
‘So what’s happened to change your mind?’ she snapped, without thinking who might hear.
Fortunately, everyone was busy chatting away to someone else. And also fortunately, Jason didn’t take offence. He just smiled at her, as though he’d expected this reaction.
‘You happened again, Leah,’ he said quietly, his eyes gleaming with seductive force. ‘Along with that dress. I’m just a man, you know, not a saint.’
‘Oh.’ His honesty was as irresistibly attractive as he was.
‘Is that a yes?’
She nodded, suddenly unable to say a word. Her mouth had gone as dry as the Sahara. She stared at him again, drowning in his dark, sexy eyes and dying for this dinner to be over so tonight could begin.
The impatience of her desire astounded Leah. Was it just his lovemaking she was craving? Or the man himself?
Impossible to separate them. The man and his lovemaking. They came together, as they had come together, last night, not once but several times.
This had to be why Trish had kept going back to Jim, even though she knew there was no future with him. Because the sex was great.
Leah couldn’t imagine anything, however, being as perfect or as powerful as what she’d shared with Jason last night. How was she going to feel when he called it quits a second time?
And he would. If not tomorrow morning, then eventually.
Don’t think about that, she told herself as she dropped her eyes to the dessert and picked up her spoon.
Leah was partial to chocolate of any kind. But her taste buds seemed to have gone on strike, her focus on nothing but what was going to happen later tonight after she went home with Jason.
Slowly, she lifted her head and gazed down the long table to where her father was enthusiastically attacking his dessert. Perhaps feeling her eyes on him, he stopped with his dessert fork mid-air and looked back across the expanse of mahogany.
The smile that curved her lips was full of irony. Whatever her father had planned for tonight, it certainly wasn’t for his daughter to go home with his mystery guest.
Clearly, her father was on the lookout for a new son-in-law, not a new client.
Joachim Bloom believed in love and marriage and family. Even before Leah married the first time, he’d expressed the wish for a grandson, his one regret over his own marriage being that they hadn’t been able to have more children.
Leah would have liked to give her father what he wanted. This time.
Unfortunately, the man sitting beside her was never going to marry her, or fall in love with her. He certainly didn’t want her having his child. He’d made his position quite clear, both this morning and tonight. His offer of another night together was a strictly sexual one.
Leah knew her only chance of having any kind of relationship with Jason, as opposed to just one more night, lay in her ability to convince him that this was all she wanted, too.
Could she do that? Would he believe her?
It was a plus that she’d already revealed tonight that she didn’t want to get married again. All she had to do was slip in somewhere that she didn’t want to fall in love again, either.
A shudder ran through Leah. She’d never been all that good a liar.
‘You don’t like chocolate?’ Jason enquired.
Leah hardly dared look at him, lest he see the machinations going on in her mind. ‘I seem to have lost my appetite.’
‘Just as long as you’re not dieting.’
‘I’m not. When I’m upset or excited, I simply can’t eat.’
‘And are you upset over something?’ he asked softly, the implication behind his clever question drawing her eyes to his.
‘No.’
‘When I’m upset or excited, I eat all the more,’ he said, his dessert already gone.
‘And are you upset over something?’ she heard herself ask on a husky whisper.
‘No,’ he mouthed in reply.
Leah swallowed. How on earth was she going to bear the rest of the evening? But her father’s dinner parties were never rushed affairs.
After dessert, coffee and cognac would be served back in the living room, along with large cheese and fruit platters. Finally, bottles of his prized port would come out. No one would be expected to leave till midnight, at least. No one ever left Joachim Bloom’s dinner parties early. No one ever wanted to. Except when they were desperate to be dragged by their sexy new boss into bed and kept there.
By the time everyone rose from the dining table, Leah began thinking about places she could take Jason to where she could at least be alone with him, where they could talk naturally and not in hushed whispers or coded messages, where he might kiss her and touch her and maybe even…
‘I’m taking Jason down to the boathouse to look at your cruiser, Daddy,’ she said to her father as soon as the time came to leave the table. ‘He’s interested in buying a boat. You did say you wanted to sell it, didn’t you?’
‘But only if it’s a bargain,’ Jason piped up by her side, not batting an eyelid at this invention of Leah’s. What a clever man he was. What a gorgeous, clever, cooperative man!
Leah’s father gave a mock sigh. ‘I see I’ll have to teach my daughter the art of negotiation. Never show your hand, Leah. Make people think you don’t want to give them what they want. That the way, isn’t it, Jason?’
‘Most of the time,’ Jason replied with a brilliant poker face. ‘There are occasions, however, when it is more…effective…to let a person know what you want. Don’t you agree?’
‘Indeed I do,’ her father said, glancing from Jason to Leah and smiling a rather smug smile. ‘Off you go then, Leah, and show this young man my boat. But leave the final negotiation of any sale to me.’
Jason took her hand the moment they were alone on the terrace, pulling her off to one side into the shadows and pressing her up against a side wall.
‘This is what you want, isn’t it?’ he muttered just before his mouth collided with hers.
The kiss was long and wet and wild, leaving Leah’s lips bruised and her heart thundering in her chest. Who knew what she would have allowed then and there if he hadn’t taken her hand again and started pulling her past the pool towards the garden beyond.
