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‘Not at all.’ He sat up, hooking his arms on the backrest of the bench in a totally relaxed manner, smiling at her as though he was perfectly at peace with her decision. ‘I’m not looking for a wife at this point in my life and you’re not looking to fill that position. With that understood, do you want any part of me, Laura?’
Which put her right back on the spot.
His eyes glittered with the knowledge that she did, but wanting and taking were two different things. As Eddie said, she’d be better off not going there. Jake could be lying, secretly thinking he could seduce her into becoming his wife. Not that he’d be able to, but if she entered into any kind of relationship with him, he could report to her father that everything was sweet between them, and she’d hate that.
Yet looking at him, remembering how it had felt with him, the thought of not experiencing more of him actually hurt. Which was probably another danger signal. He did have power over her.
‘I want you,’ he said quietly, seeing her struggle with his question. ‘Not because you’re your father’s daughter. I think the chemistry between us makes that totally irrelevant. I want you because I can’t remember wanting any other woman quite as much.’
It echoed her response to him. Jake Freedman was definitely the ultimate ten out of ten. But he could be saying those words because they were what any woman would like to hear. He was such a sexy man, he might affect every woman this way and she was no exception at all to him. Clever, playing all sides, Eddie had said.
She eyed him sceptically. ‘Is that the honest truth, Jake?’
‘Much to my own dismay, yes,’ he said with a rueful grimace.
It was an odd thing to say and she looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Why to your dismay?’
The riveting brown eyes bored into hers with heart-stopping intensity. ‘Because I don’t want to want you, Laura. Any more than you want to want me. And with that said, why don’t we both take time to think about it?’
He rose from the garden bench, apparently preparing to leave her. Laura was so startled by the action, she simply stared up at him.
‘Do you have a mobile phone?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Give me your number. I’ll call you at the end of the week if I’m still thinking of you and you can then say yes or no.’
It was so abrupt, hard, cut and dried, and the turbulent feelings it set off inside her made it difficult to think. Time…yes…time to decide if she couldn’t bear not to know more of him…or time to have his impact recede to something less significant.
He took a slim mobile phone out of his shirt pocket and she rattled out her number for him to enter it in his private file.
‘Thank you,’ he said, pocketing the phone again and flashing an ironic smile at her. ‘I’ve seen enough of the garden. You might like to join Eddie and your mother playing Scrabble. I’ll say goodbye to them and then to your father on my way out.’
Relief poured through her. No more stress today. Decision-making could wait. She returned his smile as she rose from the bench. ‘I didn’t have you pegged as a garden man.’
‘I shall take up smelling roses.’
‘You need a garden for that. The hothouse ones don’t have much scent.’
He raised one eyebrow in a lightly mocking challenge. ‘Perhaps we can give each other new experiences.’
She shrugged, deliberately noncommittal. ‘Perhaps we can.’
No more was said.
He accompanied her back to the dining room and with every step she sensed him withdrawing from her, wrapping himself in self-containment. It was a weird, cold feeling—in sharp contrast to the wild heat of their physical connection. He was leaving her alone and that troubled her far more than it should.
Eddie and her mother said all the polite responses to his polite appreciation of the day spent with them. Her mother took him in tow to the lounge room so he could say goodbye to her father and she was left behind in the dining room with Eddie, whose eyes were full of questions.
‘So?’ he asked, as soon as their visitor was out of earshot.
‘So, nothing,’ she answered. ‘I showed him the garden.’
She couldn’t bring herself to open up a discussion on what had happened between her and Jake Freedman. Somehow it was too personal, too private.
Besides, it would probably come to nothing.
And it was probably better that way.
Probably.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u88344777-0a29-5978-86f6-4112556745ea)
THE end of the week, he’d said.
It was the first thought Laura had when she woke up on Friday morning.
If he was still thinking of her, she mentally added, half-hoping that he wasn’t so she wouldn’t be faced with the decision of whether or not to see him again.
It had been impossible to get him out of her head. She couldn’t look at a guy without comparing him to Jake Freedman. None of them measured up to him. Not even close. Her uni studies had suffered with him slipping into her mind when she should have been concentrating. As for being a Director of First Impressions at her receptionist job, no impressions at all had got through to her. Directing the doctors’ patients had all been a matter of rote this week. It was like her whole life was revolving around waiting for his call.
Which was really, really bad.
What had happened to her strong sense of independence? It should be rising above this obsessive thinking about a man, putting him in a place of relative unimportance. She didn’t like not being in full control of her life. It was as though a virus had invaded her system and she couldn’t get rid of it. But as all viruses did, it would run its course and leave her, she told herself.
Especially if Jake didn’t call.
However, if he did…
Laura heaved a fretful sigh and rolled out of bed, unable to make up her mind on what she should do. Would she always wonder about him if she didn’t try him out?
It was an unanswerable question. Nevertheless, it plagued her all day, distracting her from the lectures at uni. By late afternoon she had decided it was best if Jake didn’t call so a choice wasn’t even available. She felt so woolly-headed, it was a relief to board the ferry from Circular Quay to Mosman and stand on the outside deck, needing a blast of sea breeze to whip away the fog in her mind.
The ferry was halfway across the harbour when her mobile phone rang. Her heart instantly started hammering. It might not be him, she told herself, plucking the phone out of the side pocket of her bag. He would not have finished work yet. It wasn’t quite five o’clock. Her father rarely arrived home before seven.
Gingerly she raised the phone to her ear and said, ‘Hello.’
‘It’s Jake, Laura.’
His voice conjured up his image so sharply, her breath stuck in her throat.
‘Would you like to go out to dinner with me tomorrow night?’
Dinner! Her head whirled. To go or not to go…
‘I thought we could try Neil Perry’s Spice Temple. A new experience for both of us if you haven’t been there.’
Neil Perry…one of Sydney’s master chefs! His restaurants were famous for their wonderful food. The Rockpool. The Rockpool Bar and Grill. The Spice Temple. She would love, love, love to eat there, but…
‘I can’t afford it.’
‘My treat. You gave me a great meal last Sunday.’
True. He owed her. ‘Okay. I’d like that very much,’ she said recklessly. A Neil Perry dinner was worth one evening with the man, regardless of what inner turmoil he caused. And maybe that would stop on further acquaintance. ‘I’ll meet you there,’ she quickly added, not wanting her father to know she was seeing Jake Freedman again. ‘What time?’
‘Will seven o’clock suit?’
‘Yes.’
‘You know the address?’
‘I’ll look it up.’
‘It’s a basement restaurant. Go straight downstairs. I’ll wait for you inside.’
‘I won’t be late. Thanks for the invitation.’
She ended the call, quite pleased with herself for handling it with a fair amount of control. This meeting could be contained at the restaurant…if she wanted it to be. Eddie would let her stay over at his apartment in Paddington on Saturday night so being taken home by Jake could be avoided, too.
Excitement buzzed through her…wicked, wanton excitement.
A sexy man, a sexy meal…impossible not to look forward to experiencing both.
Jake steeled himself for the Friday afternoon wrap-up meeting in Alex Costarella’s office, suspecting there was only one issue of real interest on the agenda. He was right. After a half-hour chat about the week’s work, Costarella leaned back in his executive chair, a smug little man-to-man smile on his face as he asked, ‘Will you be seeing Laura this weekend?’
‘Yes. We’re having dinner together tomorrow night,’ he answered, hating this matchmaking farce, but knowing that going along with it was to his advantage, keeping his position in the company ripple-free until he was ready to strike.
‘Good! Good!’
Jake smiled back, playing the game to the hilt. ‘Thank you for introducing me to her.’
‘Pleasure. Laura needs a man to take her in hand and I hope you’re the man to do it, Jake.’
The only way he was going to take her in hand was in bed, if she agreed to it. ‘She’s certainly very attractive.’
It was a noncommittal statement but Costarella found it encouraging enough to let the matter pass. ‘Enjoy your weekend,’ he said, and Jake was free to leave.
He’d thought a lot about Laura Costarella since last Sunday. She was hostile to her father, hostile to his wishes, and he’d anticipated her saying no to the dinner invitation. Since he very much wanted her to say yes, he’d deliberately used the Neil Perry draw-card, knowing that her interest in cooking had to make her something of a foodie.
Temptation…
The stronger it was, the harder it was to resist.
She wanted him, too. No doubt about that. If she was up for a wild fling with him, Jake would be only too happy to oblige. He’d been itching to oblige all week. Satisfying the lust she’d triggered in him was fast becoming a must-do, though he did feel ambivalent about taking on Costarella’s daughter. He hadn’t counted on liking her and he certainly didn’t want to begin caring about her.
Spicy company, spicy food, spicy sex.
That had to be the limit of his involvement with the daughter of his enemy because a line would be driven between them when he brought charges against her father, ensuring that the corrupt insolvency practitioner could never again bury another struggling business to secure his obscene liquidator’s fee.
Lust always burned out after a while, he assured himself.
In the meantime, the fire had been lit for tomorrow night and he looked forward to some very spicy heat.
Laura stood in front of the billowing turquoise hologram that gave an exotic curtain illusion to the doorway leading to the Spice Temple. It should have added pleasure to her dressing up for this dinner date. She was wearing her sexiest dress—a short turquoise silk bubble skirt attached to a tightly fitting black silk bodice—and the gorgeous black-and-turquoise high heels her mother had bought her for Christmas. Nothing, however, could dispel the anger festering in her mind and churning through her stomach.
Jake Freedman deserved to be stood up. Only the lure of Neil Perry’s food had brought her here and she was owed a dinner. As for her outfit, she hoped it made Jake Freedman want her all the more because he could eat his heart out for sex tonight. No way was he going to get as much as a piece of her.
‘Have a nice night with Jake!’
Her teeth gnashed over those words—accompanied by her father’s beaming smile of approval. He’d been told about this date. Maybe the two men had plotted it together. Whatever… Tonight was no longer a private and personal meeting. It reeked of other agendas in the wind and she hated the thought of playing a part in either man’s scheming.
Determined on focusing on the food and giving Jake Freedman a very cold shoulder, she stepped past the doorway and made her way downstairs. Red dominated the decor of the basement restaurant. The scent of joss-sticks wafted through it. Definitely the hot, in place to be, Laura thought, noting that most of the tables were already occupied, even at this relatively early hour.
Jake had a table for two. He rose from his chair as he saw her being led to it, his gaze swiftly raking over the high points of her femininity, before shooting her a look of sizzling appreciation. Laura sizzled, too, not only with the acute, physical awareness he sparked off, but also with resentment at the sheer animal magnetism that clutched at her heart and turned her insides to jelly.
His clothes were completely nondescript—white shirt, grey slacks. They were irrelevant to the stunning impact of the man, as though it was his natural right to hold centre stage anywhere, in any company without any effort whatsoever. He waited for her with easy confidence and Laura wished she could knock him down and sweep him out of her life as though his existence was of no account.
Somehow she had to make it of no account.
‘You look spectacular,’ he said in greeting, grinning wickedly as he added, ‘Great shoes!’
‘They’re good man-stomping shoes,’ she replied, doing her best to appear cool and collected.
One black eyebrow quirked upwards. ‘About to do some stomping?’
She returned a glowering look. ‘I’ll eat first.’
‘Good idea! Work up some energy.’
He was amused.
Laura seethed over his amusement as she sat down. They were handed menus by a waitress who offered to help them make choices if they wanted anything explained.
‘Not yet,’ Laura said firmly. ‘I want to salivate over every dish before I start choosing.’
‘We’ll call you when we’re ready,’ Jake put in, smiling his charming smile, which, of course, would bring the dazzled waitress running the moment he caught her attention.
Laura fixed her attention on the menu. She read the Spice Temple philosophy first. It described what the restaurant aimed for—unique and special dishes, seasoned by an unmistakable Chinese flavour and driven by a long-fostered passion for Asian cuisine, all designed to delight the senses with their contrasting tastes and textures. She hoped they would dominate her senses and block Jake Freedman out.
‘Why do you want to stomp on me?’
She set the menu down and glared at the curiosity in his eyes. ‘How many brownie points did you get for telling my father we were meeting for dinner tonight?’
‘Ah!’ He made a rueful grimace. ‘I didn’t offer the information, Laura. He asked me directly if I was seeing you again. Did you want me to lie about it?’
She was unappeased. ‘I bet you knew he would ask. That’s why you called me when you did. Before you left work yesterday.’
He cocked his head on one side, the dark brown eyes challenging her stance on this issue. ‘I thought you were determined on not having your father rule your life.’
