by Lucy King
‘I suppose not.’
‘Working with Jake helps.’
‘You’re very different.’
‘That’s probably why we work so well together.’
‘So how did you get started?’ she asked, once the waiter who’d materialised at their table had taken their order of scallops for Leo, smoked salmon for her and rare chateaubriand to follow, and then slipped away.
He shrugged and gave her the answer he gave most people. ‘We were just two kids who happened to be in the right place at the right time and got lucky.’
Abby took a sip of her tequila and arched a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Just like that?’
Remembering his decision to contribute to the conversation, Leo shot her a faint smile and said, ‘No, not just like that, actually. I was just about to finish university and Jake was a couple of years off graduating when my mother gave us an inheritance she’d received so that we could buy our first flat. We did it up, sold it, bought two more with the proceeds. From there we kept multiplying and growing and then moving into developments overseas until we got where we are now. Jake has an excellent eye for detail and I have an affinity for numbers and it’s a combination that seems to work.’ He shifted in his seat and his smile turned wry. ‘That’s not to say we haven’t had setbacks, especially in the beginning, and the state of the economy doesn’t always coincide with our plans, but we’re doing OK.’
Abby grinned and glanced round at the expensive décor and the stunning views pointedly. ‘More than OK, I’d say.’
‘You’re right. More than OK.’
The waiter appeared, produced a half-bottle of fino with a flourish and proceeded to fill first Abby’s glass and then his.
Abby took a sip and hmmed in appreciation. ‘This is nice,’ she said, putting down her glass and twirling it by the stem. ‘Unusual, but nice.’
Leo glanced down at her fingers and had an instant searing memory of those same fingers wrapped around a certain part of his anatomy. ‘That’s why I chose it,’ he said a bit gruffly.
‘So tell me about your parents.’
Leo cleared his throat and swiftly steered his mind back on track. ‘Don’t you know everything there is to know already? I thought Elsa Brightman was a mine of information.’
‘She was,’ Abby said with a nod, and he wondered with a brief stab of concern exactly how much information Elsa had revealed. ‘But I’d like a son’s perspective.’
‘There’s not a lot to say. They’re just like most middle-class parents, I should think. Loyal. Unconditionally supportive. Totally non-judgmental when it comes to me and Jake. And while they’ve always wanted the best for us I think they’re pretty bemused by what we’ve achieved. They’re also immensely proud and refuse to take a penny from us, so with the party thing it feels good to be able to do something for them for a change.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘What about yours?’
‘More or less the same. Bar the bemusement.’
‘Do you have siblings?’
She nodded. ‘Two older brothers. Charlie’s a civil engineer and Steve’s an oncologist.’
‘And how did you get into event management?’
‘By accident I suppose. I was all set to go to university to study politics, philosophy and economics, but during my year off I got a job with a catering company to earn some money.’ She shrugged and smiled wistfully. ‘And that was it really. I was hooked. Not on the catering, but on the whole events thing. I’ve always been pathologically organised and a bit of a perfectionist and my best friend, Gemma, who I worked with at the time in the catering company, suggested I go for it. I tossed up the pros and cons for a while, then jacked in uni and did an NVQ in event management instead.’
‘What did your family think?’
Abby frowned and bit her lip for a second. ‘Good question,’ she said eventually. ‘Outwardly they were fine with it. Just said I should do what I felt was right and that they’d be behind me whatever I chose to do. Inwardly, though, I have absolutely no idea.’
‘How come?’
‘They’re not ones for emoting or expressing themselves much. On the one hand it drives me nuts—’
‘Why?’ interrupted Leo, curious because he considered not emoting and not expressing himself a perfectly good way of being. The best, in fact. It kept you safe, kept you strong. Invincible, unbreakable and always in control.
‘Because no one ever says what they think or feel,’ she said a bit heatedly, as if it was an argument she’d had many times before, ‘and how can you possibly respond to anything if you don’t know the facts? I can’t stand having to second-guess all the time. It’s so much better to have everything out there.’ She stopped, thought for a moment, then shot him a quick smile. ‘On the other it did give me the freedom to potentially screw up my future with no doubt about it whatsoever.’
‘And you haven’t screwed up.’
‘Not yet. And I guess it has taught me self-reliance, independence of thought and to have courage in my convictions.’
‘All good stuff.’
She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you?’
‘You’re very capable.’
‘And is that bad?’
‘Why on earth would that be bad?’
‘No idea. But it’s something I can’t help,’ she said and he got the feeling she was somehow apologising for it, although he couldn’t imagine why. ‘When I was sixteen my father had a heart attack. A bad one, although not fatal. My brothers were away at university and my mother sort of fell apart. It was left to me to keep things going for a couple of months. Make sure there was food in the house, bills were paid, doctors’ appointments were kept, that kind of thing. Turned out I was good at it.’
‘Would you ever considering expanding?’
‘I’d love to but that would probably mean taking on someone else and handing over responsibility, and as a total control freak I don’t know if I could do that.’
‘Instead you work pretty much every hour of the day.’
‘So do you.’
‘True,’ he said with a wry smile.
‘So what do you do to relax?’
‘I row.’
‘In your gym?’
‘On the river mainly.’
‘That sounds nice,’ she said. ‘Peaceful.’
‘It is. Very. When it isn’t pelting.’
‘Do you race?’
‘Not since university. I don’t have time to practise.’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘Only the winning.’
She tilted her head and studied him. ‘And I bet you won a lot.’
‘A bit,’ he said, because admitting that he’d been a blue and had won at Henley three years in a row would only come across as boasting. ‘What about you?’
‘I like winning too. Job pitches especially.’
‘I meant, how do you relax?’
‘Oh, I do the usual things when I have the time. Hang out with my friends. See my family.’ She leaned forwards a little, her eyes shining and her smile broadening. ‘Don’t tell anyone but I also have a bit of an obsession with medical dramas on TV.’
‘Medical dramas?’ he echoed, faintly distracted by the way the gold glints in her hair caught the light of the candle.
She nodded. ‘I can’t get enough of them,’ she said, and with effort he switched his focus to what she was saying. ‘I think it’s the sense of urgency and imminent chaos that appeals. The way things happen without warning. Failure is always a very real possibility even if four times out of five everything turns out fine and I guess that’s the attraction. Chaos and failure aren’t options for me, but nevertheless I do find them strangely addictive.’
‘They’re your vicarious ki
cks.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Did you know Jake’s date for the party is the producer of St Jude’s?’
Abby’s jaw dropped and she nearly leapt out of her seat. ‘Seriously?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘Someone’s going to have to hold me back,’ she said, and Leo’s head instantly swam with images of him restraining her. With cuffs, scarves, belts, whatever came to hand, really, as long as she was naked and at his mercy.
Cursing his surprisingly active imagination, he shifted on his chair to ease the sudden pressure gripping in his lower body, and muttered, ‘I’ll warn her to be on the lookout.’
CHAPTER TEN
SO FAR, THOUGHT ABBY, smiling up at the waiter who was placing her starter of smoked salmon in front of her, so good. The evening was absolutely going as well as it could given the circumstances.
Admittedly it had been touch and go for a while at the beginning. She’d walked through the door and spotted Leo frowning down at the table, clearly deep in thought and looking tired and dishevelled but nevertheless so gorgeous that for a second she’d gone a bit dizzy.
For a moment she’d wished she’d rung him up and told him she couldn’t make it. Then she’d contemplated turning around and leaving because suggesting they meet up had been reckless and foolish and she still had the smidgeon of a chance to rectify that.
But then he’d seen her and it had been way too late to back out. So she’d got a grip and told herself that her reaction was simply down to the initial shock of seeing him after so long. That she’d be fine once she’d got over it, and they’d got down to business.
Things had taken a slight turn for the worse when he’d kissed her cheek and she’d nearly passed out with the need to kiss him back, only properly. She’d looked up at him and had had the almost overwhelming urge to stroke away the lines of tiredness from his face and tell him that she’d missed him. But she’d got over that quickly enough.
By taking an unnecessarily long time to sit down and faff around with her handbag she’d more or less managed to haul herself under control, and now much to her surprise—and relief—she was enjoying herself.
Up until now they hadn’t really engaged much in the way of general conversation, and so now she was finding it, well, kind of nice to be able to talk normally, without tension and without subtext.
As they chatted about everything from work to films to books, she discovered he was interesting. Dryly amusing and probably unintentionally entertaining.
Best of all, though, he was once again nothing more than a client, and therefore everything was absolutely back on track.
* * *
If he’d known what torture dinner was going to be Leo would have suggested meeting Abby somewhere else entirely. Like a supermarket. A car park. His office. Hers. Anywhere that wasn’t softly lit and encouraged seduction.
He’d known that after the long flight he’d be hungry for good food and he’d assumed a restaurant would be safe enough, but it wasn’t because at no point had he taken into consideration the fact that once the food arrived he’d be unable to resist the temptation to watch her. As she ate, as she drank, as she talked and as she moved.
He couldn’t help it. She was so expressive, her movements so fluid and graceful as she talked about the events she’d organised and how, by way of a recommendation, she’d come to work for them.
And then there was the way she’d sighed over the food. With every tiny sigh he’d itched to sweep the table aside and tumble her to the floor, and once that thought had entered his head kissing her, undressing her and touching her was all he could think about. He was finding it so hard to concentrate on what she was saying with the images that were spinning through his head that he’d had to resort to non-committal hmms and vague agreement or disagreement depending on her expression.
He watched her put down her coffee cup, turning it so that the handle sat exactly at ninety degrees, and he even found that arousing, which meant that he was in a bad, bad way.
‘So we should talk about the party,’ she said, and for a split second he was about to ask, Party? What party? before sense returned and in the nick of time he remembered the whole original point of this evening.
‘That’s what we’re here for,’ he said, astonishingly sounding as if he actually meant it.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ she said, and then with the help of a folder that she extracted from her bag, placed on the table and started flicking through, proceeded to outline exactly what was planned and how it was all going to work.
He watched her talk, her face growing more and more animated as she shared the details, and words like ‘table plan’, ‘soaking of the oasis’—which would have baffled him even if his brain had been running at one hundred per cent—and ‘setting up’ danced around him, barely filtering into his head because if he wanted to know more he could presumably appropriate the folder and, besides, he was enjoying listening to her far too much to concentrate on the actual details.
‘As a decoy,’ he heard her say through the fog in his head and his focus sharpened a fraction because he’d actually been wondering about this, ‘I thought, seeing as how your parents are such opera buffs, you could invite them to a black-tie recital at Barton Hall. A charity thing. Jake would bring them, and then, ta-da, surprise.’
‘Good plan,’ he murmured before zoning out again as she moved on to timings and speeches and the design for the firework display.
‘And then I thought,’ she said, tilting her head and narrowing those incredible blue eyes a little, ‘how about flying a dozen camels over from Dubai and holding races down the drive, with jockeys and betting and everything? Your parents could present the trophies.’
‘Sounds great,’ he murmured, vaguely wondering how unusual the combination of her hair and eye colour was because he didn’t think he’d ever come across it before.
‘Leo.’
At the sharpness of her voice he blinked and gave himself a quick shake. ‘What?’
‘Have you been listening to a word I’ve been saying?’
‘Of course I have.’
‘What’s the plan for the decoy?’
‘An opera recital.’
‘Timings for the drinks?’
‘I’ll take a look at the folder.’
‘And the camels?’
‘Camels?’ he asked with a frown as he thought, damn, how on earth did camels fit in? and thereby totally gave himself away.
‘I thought not,’ she said, shaking her head in disappointment, her smile gone. ‘Look, if you don’t care about any of this, if you’re not particularly interested, all you have to do is say.’
He did care and he was interested. In the party, a lot. In her, even more.
And frankly he’d had enough. Of the confusion, the lack of concentration, the constant tension inside him. Of everything about her that had turned his life upside down since the moment they’d met, in fact.
So to hell with business. And to hell with what she thought about him. He couldn’t contain it any longer, because if he did he feared he might actually go mad.
Hadn’t she said it was better to put the facts ‘out there’? That second-guessing was a waste of time? Well, for once he was going to put how he felt ‘out there’, and she could do what she liked with it.
‘Want to know why I was distracted?’ he asked, he thought coolly enough but his voice must have held an edge because she went very still.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said, her breath catching and her gaze fixed on his. ‘Do I?’
‘I’ll tell you anyway.’
‘OK.’
‘Your mouth moves and all I can think of are the amazingly clever things you can do with it. I look at your hands and all I can remember is how they felt on me. I listen to your vo
ice and all I can hear is you telling me to go harder, deeper, faster. The memory of us together won’t go away, Abby, and it’s undoing me.’
For the longest time she didn’t say anything. But the pulse at the base of her neck was hammering like crazy, her breathing was rapid and shallow and her cheeks flushed deep.
‘I thought what happened wasn’t going to be a problem,’ she said and her voice was husky.
‘So did I.’
‘Yet it clearly is.’
‘I overestimated the strength of my will power because I can’t stop thinking about you. That night. The things we did.’ He stopped. Tilted his head and held her gaze. ‘Has it crossed your mind even once?’
She looked at him steadily, her eyes clear and unguarded, and after a beat said, ‘It’s on my mind pretty much constantly.’
At her admission his brain reeled, his pulse raced and his one overriding thought was that as soon as they were done here he was taking her home and keeping her there until the desire and the tension had gone.
Until she added, ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m planning to do anything about it,’ and he reeled a bit more, the disappointment slamming through him sudden and excoriating.
‘What?’ he asked, his voice rough.
‘You know I don’t mix business and pleasure.’
‘Why not?’
‘Experience.’
‘What happened?’
‘I once had a client who thought that sleeping with me entitled him to a one-hundred-per-cent discount. When I said no, that was it. No more client, but four months of bad-mouthing that meant no work for me until it fizzled out and everyone moved on.’
‘I won’t ask you for a discount.’
She eyed him coolly. ‘You won’t get the chance.’
‘You want me.’
‘Maybe I do, but I can resist.’
‘Liaise with Jake instead of me over this party and you don’t have to.’
‘It’s still your name on the contract.’
‘A technicality.’
‘But a crucial one.’
She was stubborn, and while half of him admired her for it, the other half damned it to hell. ‘Is there anything I can say to change your mind?’
