скачать книгу бесплатно
Perhaps he read her embarrassment, for his tone softened a little. ‘To be brutally honest, I’m surprised to see you here. Investment banking is a tough world to survive in. I’m not sure this work will suit someone of your temperament.’
‘My—temperament?’ came from her dry throat.
‘Well…’ He hesitated, then scratching his ear, said, ‘I think you’ll find that in finance an excess of emotion and, er, sensibility are luxuries we can’t afford.’
She bristled all over. Sensibility indeed. Did he think she was still that gormless idiot who’d broken her heart over him a thousand years ago?
Lucky she was of a proud disposition and could think on her feet while being eviscerated.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘please don’t worry about me, Joe. I’ve toughened up. Every night I sleep on a bed of nails.’ She spread her arms. ‘Go on. Dish it out. I can take it.’
A muscle twitched in his gorgeous jaw, then he said drily, ‘Very dramatic. I suggest you pour all that passion into your work.’ There was slight inflection in the way he said the word that reminded her he was no stranger to its various applications.
For a minute or perhaps an hour or two his blue gaze seemed to burn through her face, then he snapped out of it and looked at his watch. Brisk, unemotional Joe Sinclair, CEO.
‘Right. Ryan Patterson will be reporting on how you perform, so since we keep strict hours here you’d better drink your coffee. Oh, and, er…good luck.’
With a curt gesture he walked away.
So brusque. So—unwelcoming.
Indignation threatened to overcome her. So she had an emotional side. She was human, wasn’t she? He hadn’t seemed to object to her passionate nature ten years ago. She stared after him, striding through the department like an autocrat. She could hardly recognise the guy. If he hadn’t still been oozing hotness she’d have wondered if she’d been talking to his twin. Anyone would think he’d been born with a briefcase in his hand.
She smarted for minutes over the implication that she was too soft for the business world. Too weak. On what had he based that assessment?
Her credentials were all there in her CV. Her years in the bank, the promotions she’d earned. Just as soon as her office was ready and she could start her own work, she’d show him how efficient she could be.
She could have done with a few private moments to give her galloping pulse time to settle, but she noticed Patterson’s curious gaze follow Joe then shift to her, and she knew she had to glide on like a goddess and act as though nothing had happened.
Standing here now in his apartment, searching for some lingering essence of the lazy, laughing, teasing Joe she used to know, she wondered how she could still be so affected by him. Time should have done its work by now. She was a mature woman, hardly that green girl who’d worshipped him and been his adoring slave.
She supposed running into him again had dragged it all up again in her mind. The truth was, she’d never experienced anything like the intensity of the passion she’d had for him. Although at the time, during all the months of grieving, Auntie Mim had made the observation that Joe wouldn’t have given her up so abruptly if it hadn’t been purely about the sex.
Mim had been right about some of it. There was no denying she’d been followed by a string of wild little hussies, as Mim had termed Joe’s other girlfriends. Hot chicks. Even so, she could never regret her wild time with him. Joining the chicks. How could she, when it had been the most exciting time of her life? The time she’d felt most alive.
Perhaps that was why gazing into his bedroom now exerted a violent fascination, though her conscience was telling her loud and clear that a man’s bedroom—especially a boss’s—an ex-lover’s—was his fortress. Or should be.
Sadly, while her scruples tried to assert themselves, her feet in their four inch heels were itching to push that door wide and cross the forbidden threshold, and before she was half aware of it she was in, staring at a rather severe four-poster heaped with pillows and richly draped in luxurious brocaded fabrics.
Oh, yes. The master suite.
Somehow Joe’s bed made her awash with sensations, not all of them positive. Its decadent appeal was amplified by its reflections in several long mirrors.
How would it feel to lie in there at night with him? Her pulse quickened as she imagined his handsome dark head on those champagne satin pillows. They looked soft enough, but looks could be so deceiving where pillows were concerned. For herself, she preferred hers very soft, though as she recalled the younger Joe had never worried about anything so domestic.
A simple mattress on the floor, those green patterned sheets—that had been their passion bed, the candle shedding its glow into the small hours on their entwined bodies Joe’s concession to romance.
She stared at the four-poster, then, on an impulse, sat on the edge and slipped off her shoes. She dragged a pillow into position, then gingerly lay her head on it. After a moment she lifted her feet onto the bed, then stretched out and, involuntarily relaxing, released a long and languorous sigh.
Ah-h-h. She let herself sink into the bed’s soft, sensuous and at the same time buoyant embrace, her head cradled by one of the softest, most delicious pillows she’d ever experienced.
Oh, the comfort. Fearful at first of letting herself go, she lay still a moment, imagining herself floating on a cloud. Perhaps it was inevitable, given her experiences with Joe Sinclair, but her thoughts started to drift down a certain illicit alleyway. One she’d fought and struggled to avoid ever since the coffee-room encounter.
Imagine, for example, it was midnight. Suppose Joe arrived home unexpectedly and found her here?
Her blood warmed to the scenario. For all his powerful six-three Joe was a quiet guy. He never raised his voice when gutting someone with a few well chosen words, and he seemed capable of walking as silently as a cat when prowling the corridors at work. It wasn’t impossible to imagine he might walk in and catch her unawares.
Almost unconsciously, she changed position to arrange herself more voluptuously, like Goya’s painting of ‘The Naked Maja’, though of course she didn’t take her clothes off. Her little fantastical indulgence was only for a second. She closed her eyes, picturing the scene.
He’d come in, find her here, and be overcome with the old desire. He’d take off his tie and slowly unbutton his shirt.
How well she remembered his beautiful chest and hard, muscled abdomen. Even in his Armani suit it was clear he still looked after his athletic frame. Perhaps he worked out in a gym. There was probably one in this very building.
Although… Shouldn’t they start with a kiss? After so long she wouldn’t enjoy being rushed.
She banished the undressing scene and started afresh. He’d come in and catch her here, and be so overwhelmed by desire he’d swoop onto the bed beside her, take her in his arms and kiss her with deep, romantic passion. Forget that it was a bit like the Sleeping Beauty or Goldilocks, or whoever. Those babes wouldn’t have known how to savour the kiss, anyway, whereas she…
Her lids sprang open. Was that sound from inside the apartment, or something next door? The pipes, perhaps? She strained her ears for seconds, then, hearing only silence, relaxed back into the fantasy.
The kiss. No, it was annoying, but before she could really enjoy kissing him she would need some sort of discussion about what had happened. Why he’d suddenly become so cold and unapproachable at the time she’d most needed him.
Why he’d changed overnight from her tender, teasing lover into that grim, distant stranger. Though, on the other hand, recriminations about the past at that exact point could destroy the magic.
So. First he’d kiss her and caress her, and then he’d say.
An instant later a surprised growl jolted her back to earth and she looked up to meet Joe Sinclair’s stunned, incredulous gaze. He was standing in the doorway in the lean, solid flesh, staring at her as if she were an hallucination.
CHAPTER THREE
TRANSFIXED INTO A SORT of paralysis, he was holding a phone glued to his ear.
Mirandi scrambled off the bed and made a useless attempt to smooth the coverlet.
‘Oh, Joe. I didn’t expect… I was just…’ She noticed the folders on the floor where they’d fallen. She stooped to snatch them up, conscious of the burning tide of sheer mortification rising through her limbs and chest and turning her face red hot.
But she hadn’t lived through the past ten years without acquiring a few life skills. Faced with total humiliation, with her back to the wall, Mirandi Summers could schmoozle her way out of a situation as well as the next woman.
Drawing herself up to her full five-seven, she met Joe Sinclair’s bemused gaze with resolve. ‘I think you should know you have a mouse problem.’
His black brows twitched. A glint lit the deep blue of his irises.
Without taking his gaze off her, he shot a few words down the phone. ‘It’s no one. I’ll talk to you later.’ With a deliberate calm, he snapped the phone shut and slipped it inside the jacket of his sleek suit. It buzzed again, but he cut it off and directed the full force of his stunning gaze at her.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Mirandi.’
It had always thrilled her that for a guy of such few words, his voice had a deep, rich, almost musical quality. Eighty per cent cocoa, the rest pure cream. But something in the tone of that little exclamation, something smooth and satisfied, as if he’d always suspected she was dying to crawl back into his bed any way she could, and now he was proven right, roused an indignant spark in her.
Forget that from her current vantage point he was tall, with his big athletic frame easily able to block a doorway. She’d been towered over by him before, perhaps not with him having the power of life and death over her job, so to speak, but the situation had occurred, as her body seemed vibrantly aware.
She eased into her shoes, grateful for the added inches, then thrust the folders into his hands. ‘I was asked to deliver these.’
‘To my bedroom?
‘Of course not, Joe. Absolutely not. I intended to put them on the table in the foyer, but when I opened the door and I saw the mouse… I—must have disturbed it. I didn’t think you’d want to have to deal with that when you got home, so naturally I—took off after it.’ She gave an uncertain laugh he didn’t join in with, then glanced about her and gave her most convincing shudder. ‘It’s in here somewhere.’
‘In my bed, presumably.’
She felt her flush deepen, especially when she noticed him make a familiar, scorching inventory of her curves. Some things never changed.
His mouth had always been so stirringly expressive. As though sculpted by some sure celestial force, his lips were firm and masculine, the upper one narrow, the lower one fuller, the whole stern ensemble promising the ultimate in sensual pleasure. And delivering, as her body now yearningly recalled.
‘Well, it ran—in here, yes. I lost sight of it and… Well, I got scared it might run at me. So I’m afraid I—had to jump up on the, er.’ A hollow in the pillows was glaringly the size and shape of her head. ‘It may not still be in here right now, of course.’ She tried for her most earnest expression. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t have time to think out a strategy.’
‘You seem to be doing quite well now, though.’
She evaded his sceptical glance, her face afire just when she needed it to be cool. All right, so her story was thin and he didn’t believe a word. He didn’t look half as furious as he should be. Warning bells were clanging in her head. It was a situational rerun. Joe, Mirandi, bed.
Fantasy may be one thing, reality was definitely another.
‘Anyway,’ she said, marshalling some faux briskness, ‘I have to get back to work.’ She made a move to walk past him, nerve-rackingly conscious this was a sackable offence and she’d handed him a platinum-plated advantage in the male/female adversarial stakes.
At the last possible instant he stood aside to allow her through, to her intense relief, though at the moment of passing closest by him the intense masculinity radiating from him singed the skin cells on that side of her body to the third degree.
As she escaped into the hallway and made for the sitting room other phones started ringing, though the sound was cut off almost at once.
‘I can’t talk now, Kirsty,’ she heard him say, the merest hint of irritation in his voice. He raised it a little. ‘Hold it there, Mirandi. Just a minute.’
He caught up with her just as she was scurrying across an enormous Persian rug towards the front door, faster even than the mouse. If there had truly been a mouse, that was.
‘Don’t go. Stay a minute. I want to—talk to you.’
He didn’t touch her, but it was as if an invisible arm had reached out and grabbed her by the scruff. There was no resisting. She turned to face him, eye to eye, and since he was the one asking her embarrassment over being caught subsided a little. She gave a stiff nod.
‘Sit down.’ He indicated a handsome chesterfield with deep cushions. His black lashes flickered. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘No, thanks.’ She allowed herself the glimmer of a smile. ‘I’m working, aren’t I?’
He smiled, raising his eyebrows, and she had a sudden vivid flashback to her vodka afternoon. The first time she’d succumbed and broken her pledge. After that, her solemn childhood promises had fallen thick and fast. Enslaved by her sexual sorcerer, she’d have drunk hemlock if she’d thought it would make her his equal in sophistication.
To her relief he didn’t allude to her youthful indiscretions. He strolled over to his drinks sideboard. ‘Do you mind…?’
She shook her head, gestured for him to go right ahead. She was the last person to dictate to others after her spectacular fall from grace.
He poured himself a whisky. ’Sit, sit.’ He waved his hand in an autocratic gesture, directing her towards the sofa, and she made the wary concession of perching on the edge.
He dropped into a chair across from her, leaning forward a little, his long, lean fingers wrapped idly around his glass. Fingers that had once been familiar with every curve and hollow of her body.
She faced him, her old partner in crime. In passion.
‘So…do you feel—settled into the firm?’ His glance sank deep, and she could feel the old pull. That magnetic attraction that sparked up her blood and made her heart quicken with excitement. So dangerous, so addictive.
She felt his gaze drift over her, flick to her legs, and her sexual triggers responded with shameless willingness. Even after everything, something inside her switched on to preen and revel in his appreciation.
She shrugged. ‘I’m settling in. Everything seems to be going well enough, I suppose, though to be honest I wish I could spend more time on my own work.’ She glanced at him from under her lashes. ‘I’m really looking forward to my own office.’
‘Ah, yes.’ His eyes veiled. ‘How’s it going with Patterson? Helping you find your feet?’
‘Oh, yeah.’ She nodded, smiling to herself as she thought of Ryan’s wry words of advice on everything a girl needed to know on how to survive at Martin Place Investments. ‘Ryan’s been fantastic. Nothing’s too much trouble for him.’
Beneath his black lashes his eyes glinted. ‘Fantastic. Tell me about you. How’s life?’
Did he mean at work, or personally? She doubted he’d be interested in her father’s health situation. Her social life, perhaps? Ah, no. She got it now. None of the above. Long after their year of living dangerously, he wanted to know if she had a partner. A lover.
‘Things are fine with me,’ she said. ’Splendid.’
‘Splendid? ‘ He lifted his brows.
‘Absolutely.’ Well, she was hardly likely to tell him she hadn’t been very successful in that regard. That she’d noticed in herself a regrettable tendency not to be able to hold onto a boyfriend. Possibly because she found it quite hard to open up. Her legendary passion must have been letting her down. Curiously, for one of her renowned temperament, they found her too—self-contained. Inhibited, one had complained.
‘Anyway, I finished my degree and—’
His eyes glinted. ‘Yeah, I’m sure I read that. Well done.’
She flicked him a narrow glance. Was he mocking her? At the time she’d known him he was juggling several part time jobs so he could pursue his ambitions, while she deferred her own education, reluctant to tear herself away from him, greatly to her family’s concern.
How they’d stressed over it. The nagging she’d endured.
‘Where did you say you studied?’
‘Brisbane.’
He lifted his shoulders in sardonic amusement. ‘As far away as possible from Joe Sinclair.’
‘No, not at all,’ she said, flushing, though of course it was true. ‘That was the best course of its kind available at the time. Anyway, it was after the…after we—broke up.’ She mumbled the last few words.
‘Not long after, though,’ he dropped in, searching her face.
‘No.’ A nerve jumped deep in her visceral region. He was sailing close to home. Someone should warn him to take care. There were things he wouldn’t want to know.
There was a jagged pause, then she said, ‘Well, anyway, I decided science as a lead-in to medicine wasn’t for me after all and found the job in the bank. It was only ever meant to be temporary, but to my surprise I found I had quite an aptitude for it.’
His brows edged together. ‘For finance?’
She nodded, wishing he didn’t have to look so dubious.
‘What’s your plan?’ he said. ‘Your ultimate goal?’
‘Careerwise?’
