скачать книгу бесплатно
‘I see. Well, we’ll have to go to lunch together one day next year, dear. I’d love to put a face and figure to the voice. I asked Lewis once what you looked like and all he said was you were a brunette with intelligent brown eyes. When I asked what kind of figure you had, he looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, “short of medium.”’
Although piqued, Olivia couldn’t really blame Lewis. The tailored black suits she favoured in the office were not designed to stand out, or display her body. Her skirts were never too short or too tight. Any deep Vs in her jackets were always filled in with a simple top or shirt-style blouse. Today’s outfit was no exception. If she’d remembered the Christmas party Olivia might have worn something a little brighter. But she hadn’t and that was that!
‘You know, I haven’t been into the office since that other awful girl was ensconced behind your desk,’ Mrs Altman senior was saying. ‘The last time I visited, she was wearing a dress cut down to her navel. Not to mention very little underwear. As for perfume... I think she must have bathed in it. Poor Lewis. I finally understood why his ex-wife used to complain he smelt like the cosmetics counter in David Jones every time he came home at night.’
Olivia didn’t go perfumeless. But the small spray of Eternity she allowed herself every morning was very discreet.
‘Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to get rid of employees these days,’ the boss’s mother rattled on. ‘If Lewis had sacked the infernal girl, he’d have found himself in court before he knew it, trying to explain to a judge why he’d fired this suddenly prim and proper creature dressed in pin-tucks and a Peter Pan collar.’
Olivia felt the corners of her mouth crinkling with amusement. ‘I gathered Lewis was very relieved when she left to go overseas.’
‘More than relieved, I can tell you. But he’s been very happy with you, dear. You haven’t given him a moment’s worry or trouble!’
Olivia wasn’t sure if she liked the sound of that, or not.
‘Although he did express some concern the other night about your having had a lovers’ tiff with your boyfriend. He said you were very down in the mouth about it.’
‘Yes, well...’ Her voice trailed off. She really didn’t want to discuss Nicholas with Mrs Altman any more than Lewis.
‘Don’t let pride get in your way, dear,’ came the unwanted advice. ‘Call him. Say you’re sorry, even if it was his fault. After all, what’s a bit of grovelling when all’s said and done?’
Olivia’s eyebrows shot up. She’d never grovelled to anyone in her life and she wasn’t about to start now. Still... Mrs Altman did have a point. Pride did sometimes get in the way of reconciliations. She reasoned there was a huge difference between grovelling and giving Nicholas a call. She could use the excuse of wishing him a happy Christmas. He would be in his office right now. She could be talking to him in seconds. Her heart raced as hope reformed.
As soon as Olivia put Mrs Altman through to Lewis she dialled before she could think better of it. Nicholas’s telephone rang several times before being picked up.
‘Nickie’s desk,’ breathed a female voice.
Olivia was taken aback. ‘Renee?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘Is that you?’ Renee was a colleague of Nicholas who sometimes answered his phone when he was away from his desk.
‘Renee resigned some time back,’ came the husky reply. ‘I’m Yvette. Her replacement.’
Renee’s replacement. Named Yvette. And she called Nicholas Nickie.
Olivia began to feel sick. ‘Could I speak to Nicholas, please?’
There was a small silence on the other end of the phone, then a melodramatic sigh. ‘Is that Olivia, by any chance?’
‘Put Nicholas on, please.’
‘I can’t. He’s not here. He’s gone to the little men’s room. You’re wasting your time, anyway. He doesn’t want to see or talk to you ever again. He has me now and I’m all he wants.’
Olivia sucked in a shaky breath. With a great effort of will, she kept her voice quite calm. ‘And just how long have you been everything Nicholas wants?’
‘Longer than you think. Face it, honey,’ Yvette purred down the line. ‘You haven’t got what it takes to keep a man. It’s not a female’s organisational and management abilities which win the day. Nickie could get that from a computer. Or a cleaner. What he wants is passion. And spontaneity. And fun.’
‘Sex, you mean,’ Olivia shot back, knowing now where Nicholas had got most of his verbal armoury during their final argument.
‘Same thing.’
‘You think he didn’t get sex from me?’ she threw at this heartless creature who thought nothing of taking someone else’s man.
‘Not the kind he wanted, honey. Gotta go. We’re all off down the pub for Chrissie drinks. Bye bye. Oh, and happy Christmas!’
Olivia was left listening to a dead line.
Suddenly, a rage began to simmer deep within her, a dark rebellious rage. Slamming the phone down, she jumped up from behind her desk, hot blood racing through her veins.
Going for Chrissie drinks, were they? Well, good for them. But she was going one better. She was going to a Chrissie party and by God she was going to party. She was going to party all day and she was going to forget. Forget Nicholas and Yvette. Forget that her future had been cruelly smashed. Forget everything but having fun!
Olivia stripped off her jacket and dropped it over the back of her chair. Having fun shouldn’t be too hard. Not once she got a few glasses of champagne into her.
She was a happy drunk. Or she thought she would be. She’d never actually been drunk before. But a couple of glasses of wine always made her feel good.
And, dear God, she needed to feel good. She needed to feel good very, very badly!
Tugging the anchoring bow from the nape of her neck, she shook her head till her hair spilled halfway down her back. Flicking open the top two buttons of her blouse, she gave another defiant toss of her head, then marched determinedly in the direction of the music.
CHAPTER TWO
BY TWO that afternoon, Olivia felt more than good. She felt fantastic. If she’d known champagne was such a great antidepressant she’d have tried it earlier. From her third glass, everything had begun to improve. Her mood. The music. The men.
By the time she’d consumed her first bottle of bubbly, one of the sales reps, a thirtyish womaniser named Phil, whom she wouldn’t normally have given the time of day, started to seem genuinely charming. He’d been chatting away to her for over half an hour when Olivia first became aware of Lewis frowning at her. He was standing with a group from marketing near one of the trestles laden with food, a glass of beer in one hand and a slice of Christmas cake in the other.
Her boss’s near scowl evoked a dark defiance in Olivia. Lewis wasn’t her keeper. She had every right to have some harmless fun if she wanted to. Anyone would think she was doing something wrong instead of what every other single, unattached female here was doing: flirting and having a generally good time!
When Phil asked her to dance, Olivia didn’t hesitate. Putting down her near empty glass and placing her hand in his outstretched fingers, she allowed him to draw her into the centre of the factory floor. The music switched from a softer number to a heady, throbbing beat which stirred her blood, and her general feeling of rebellion, ensuring that she smiled at Phil a little more widely, and danced a lot more provocatively.
Olivia discovered a primitive sense of rhythm she hadn’t known she had, her body taking on a life of its own, undulating with all the grace and sensuality of a belly dancer, her arms reaching up above her head like two cobras under the hypnotic influence of a snake charmer’s music.
The realisation that Lewis’s narrowed blue gaze was riveted to her suddenly sinuous body did not go unnoticed by Olivia. Instantly, she became very conscious of her femininity: the way her full breasts were swaying beneath her blouse; the sensual swing of her womanly hips; the heat being generated in her secret places. It was a most exhilarating and arousing experience.
Olivia felt so sexy, it was sinful! She could have danced for ever, displaying herself shamelessly in front of the men’s gawking eyes.
But especially one man’s.
Shocking her boss out of his complacent attitude towards her was giving her a real buzz. It felt good to have him look at her for once as a woman capable of attracting men, maybe even capable of attracting him.
Actually, it felt more than good. It felt ... thrilling.
The music, however, came to an end, and the disc jockey announced he was having a break.
‘I had no idea,’ Phil murmured as he guided her from the factory floor, ‘that you could be like this.’ Picking up a frosted glass of champagne from a nearby table, he pressed it into her hot little hands.
‘Like what?’ she asked in a breathy voice to rival Yvette’s.
Phil’s leering smile sent warning bells ringing faintly in her fuzzy brain. The realisation of where Phil thought their flirtation was heading brought a momentary jab of conscience, but she easily brushed it aside. That was another thing about being deliciously drunk, she realised. You didn’t fret over things. So Phil was going to be disappointed at the end of the day. So what? No real harm done.
Sipping her drink, she glanced idly around to see if Lewis was still watching her.
He wasn’t. In fact, he was nowhere in sight.
Perversely, Olivia felt quite put out.
‘Another dance?’ Phil suggested.
Olivia was startled to find that the prospect of dancing without Lewis watching her held no appeal at all. In fact, all of a sudden, she’d lost interest in staying where she was.
‘Sorry,’ she said abruptly, ‘but there’s something else I have to do right now.’
Leaving Phil gaping after her, she strode across the factory floor to where the champagne was chilling in a huge vat. Extracting an opened bottle from its bed of ice, Olivia collected two clean glasses and set off in the direction of the main office block.
She found Lewis not in his laboratory, but in his office. He was standing at the window which had a view of the rolling front lawns, but not much else. His grey suit jacket had been discarded along with his tie, both thrown carelessly across the black leather chesterfield standing between them. Staring through the window, he absently undid his cuffs and began rolling up the sleeves of his crisp white shirt.
Without making her presence known, Olivia stood in the open doorway and just stared at him.
He was an exceptionally good-looking man, she finally conceded. A fact she’d always known but which she hadn’t faced before with such honesty. That was another fringe benefit of being tipsy. Smiling ruefully to herself, Olivia decided to call it alcoholic enlightenment.
‘So there you are!’ she exclaimed gaily, and launched herself towards his desk, kicking the door shut behind her.
He whirled, then frowned at her. ‘What in hell do you think you’re doing?’ he said when she set the glasses up on his desk and slopped in some champagne, spilling a little on the black lacquered top.
‘Bringing the party to you, boss.’ She threw him a saucy smile as she weaved her way over to him, thankful that the glasses were only half full. ‘This is the one day in the year when we don’t work around here. And that includes you. If you think you’re going to hide yourself away in that infernal laboratory today, then you can think again. Here. Take this!’ Having deposited one glass into his reluctant grip, she clinked her glass to his then lifted it to her lips, her eyes dancing at him over the rim. ‘Merry Christmas, Lewis.’
‘Olivia,’ he said drily, making no attempt to drink. ‘You’re not just merry, you’re sozzled.’
She laughed. ‘I am, aren’t I?’
‘You’re going to have one hell of a hangover in the morning,’ he warned.
‘I’ll worry about that in the morning. Meanwhile, I’m having fun.’
One of his dark eyebrows lifted in a sardonic arch. ‘So I noticed. You haven’t forgotten Phil Baldwin’s reputation with women, have you?’
‘No.’
‘For pity’s sake, Olivia, if you must have revenge on Nicholas then pick yourself someone with a little more discretion. I really don’t want the likes of Phil going round boasting that he had sex with my secretary at the Christmas party, all right?’
‘You think I’d let him do that?’
‘I don’t know what to think.’ His eyes carried a strange confusion as they roved over her, taking in her wild tumble of hair before dropping down to the shadowed cleavage between her breasts. ‘When you let your hair down, Olivia,’ he muttered tautly, ‘you really let your hair down.’
The air was suddenly thick between them. Thick and hot and electric. The storm which had been brewing in Olivia all day gathered intensity. Lightning licked along her veins. Thunder roared in her temples. Her heart began to pound. Her eyes flashed and glittered.
‘At least you noticed I was a woman,’ she said huskily.
‘Hard not to.’
‘Would you like to have sex with me, Lewis?’
He was shocked, she could see. Yet along with the shock lay a decided fascination. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. She took advantage of his momentary stillness to close the distance between them and press herself against him, oh, so lightly. His nostrils flared with more shock.
Olivia was beyond shock; beyond everything but having Lewis look at her as he had out on the factory floor. A blistering desire was inflaming her senses while obliterating her conscience. All she could think of was having her boss admit he wanted her, having him powerless to resist her incredible expertise.
Boring, Nicholas had called her. If only he could see her now. Lewis wasn’t looking at her as though she were boring.
Reaching up on tiptoe, Olivia brushed her lips tantalisingly against his.
He froze. But only for a second or two. When she kissed him a second time, more firmly this time, his lips softened against hers, parting as hers parted. When her tongue-tip darted forward to flick over his, he gave a low moan of sexual surrender.
A dark triumph filled her soul. Smiling, she drew back to survey his flushed face and startled mouth with a wicked satisfaction. ‘I’ll just be a moment,’ she murmured.
She sipped her drink all the way to the door, finishing it by the time she reached to snap on the deadlock. Turning, she arched a naughty eyebrow at him. ‘We don’t want to be disturbed, do we?’
Somewhere, in the furthest reaches of her mind, she knew she was being outrageous. But nothing was going to stop her. Any qualms were ruthlessly buried underneath the roller-coaster excitement of the moment.
His eyes never left hers during her slow return across the room. They glittered and flashed, telling her of his own excitement.
She deposited her glass on the desk on the way, but made no attempt to relieve him of his, taking his free hand in hers and drawing him round to the roomy leather chesterfield.
He sat down in the middle where she directed, hot blue eyes burning into her while she kicked off her shoes and curled herself up next to him.
‘Now,’ she breathed, and took the untouched drink from his hand, ‘we’ll finish this up together, shall we?’
When she pressed the glass to his lips, he drank obediently, saying nothing when it was her turn. Determined not to be unnerved by his silence, she drained the glass, then dropped it over the back of the chesterfield onto the plush carpet Cupping his face, she kissed him, at first lightly, then more deeply, making him moan.
With surprisingly nimble fingers, she managed to undo his shirt as she kissed him, pushing back the sides and smoothing her hands seductively over his bared chest.
He felt marvellous. Firm and muscular, with just enough body hair to exude a masculinity which was decidedly arousing. Lewis had a great body, she decided, probably because he balanced his sometimes sedentary lifestyle with rigorous workouts in the gym.
Olivia’s primary goal of seducing him began to blur as her own desires kicked in. Her head spun and she dragged her mouth from his to lick and kiss where her hands had been. When she grazed over a nipple, he sucked in sharply, tellingly. With a teasing wickedness she hadn’t known she possessed, she deliberately avoided his nipples after that till they grew erect on their own, only then doing what he obviously craved.
‘Oh, God,’ he groaned aloud when she tugged on one of the tight little buds with her teeth.
The naked passion of his outburst thrilled her, making her torment him further till his chest was rising and falling with a raw ragged panting. When her kisses travelled down towards his navel and her hands found the zip on his trousers, his hands clamped down shakily over hers.
‘No,’ he protested. But unconvincingly, she thought.
Smiling seductively, she took his hands and stretched them up and out, spreading them wide on the back of the chesterfield. Her own body had to practically lie on top of his to do so, her breasts squashing against the hard expanse of his chest. The feel of his impressive erection pressing into the softness of her stomach was both reassuring and arousing. Somehow, she didn’t think Lewis would object for long to what she had in mind.
And she had a lot of things in mind. All those things Nicholas thought her incapable of. All those things darling little Yvette had been giving her boyfriend in his office.
The need for revenge blended with her own need, bringing a reckless mix which sent fire licking along her veins and a ruthless determination into her heart.
‘Shh,’ she murmured as she licked Lewis’s parched lips. ‘You want me to. You know you do.’
His strangled swear word only made her smile. ‘Yes. Soon,’ she promised. ‘But first just lie back and enjoy. We don’t want to rush things now, do we?’
Olivia smiled again. There was something so dizzyingly delicious about feeling in control.
