More Than a Fling? (9 page)

If it worked out the way he planned they could spend the
weekend together before he needed to be back at Heathrow to catch a plane on
Monday night—

Eli jabbed him in the ribs and Ross frowned at him. ‘What?’

‘Stop tapping that bloody mobile and concentrate!’ Eli
hissed.

Yeah, okay
, Ross thought. But his
mind immediately went sliding back to Ally. He was going halfway across the
world to have sex. Was he mad? There were plenty of willing girls in Cape Town.
But he didn’t want them. He wanted her. He just didn’t understand why. He had no
idea as he certainly didn’t want to be intrigued by an uptight workaholic whose
life was her job.

She was the perfect hook-up—she had no expectations and didn’t
‘do’ emotions. It was a good job he wasn’t thinking of her in terms of anything
more—like a lover or a partner—because then he’d be screwed. He just needed to
get this woman out of his system. If he slept with her maybe he could banish her
from his thoughts and dreams.

No, if he were looking for a lover then no way would he choose
an uptight workaholic like his dad. Loving someone who was wedded to their job
was a good way to get kicked in the teeth and to end up feeling lonely, unloved,
emotionally and physically abandoned.

No, the minimum he expected from a lover was to come first, and
that would never happen with Jones. And that was okay. This was only about
making
her
come first anyway.

Ross grinned and Eli jabbed him in the ribs again. ‘For God’s
sake, Bennett, get a grip and concentrate!’

Ross looked around at the faces of the people—some annoyed,
some amused, all curious—and thought that maybe Eli was right.

He might not be corporate but he was normally professional.

* * *

‘You still enjoying my flowers, Jones?’

Ross’s deep voice slid across the miles and over her skin and
Ally shivered. She automatically glanced at her watch and saw that it was past
ten. It was still raining. Leaning back in her chair, she placed her feet on her
desk— something she would never normally do, but since she was pretty sure she
was the only one in the Bellechier building at this time of night she thought
she could.

‘They are looking a bit sad,’ Ally admitted, looking at the
drooping bunch on her desk. ‘The orchids are still fine, so I’m going to take
them home with me tonight.’

‘You’re still at work?’

Ross swore and she imagined him raking his hand through his
hair.

‘You need to get a life, woman.’

‘Apparently I am—unless you’ve called me to rescind your
invitation,’ Ally said. Her voice was cool although she sucked in shallow
breaths.

‘Not a chance. But why are you still at work?’

‘Long day... Looking over sponsorship deals and the set-up for
two new stores in Hong Kong and Miami. Brainstorming storyboards with the ad
agency for your campaign.’

‘Do
not
make me look like a wuss,’
Ross threatened.

‘Ah...there goes my idea of dressing you up in skintight shirts
and pants and having you arranging flowers and composing haikus,’ she
teased.

Ross chuckled.

‘Where are you?’ Ally asked, needing to know.

‘Standing on my veranda overlooking the Atlantic Ocean,
listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks. Drinking a glass of
red wine.’

Ally closed her eyes. ‘Damn, that sounds good.’

‘Well, get your ass over here. I’ll ply you with wine and do
wicked things to you,’ Ross suggested, his voice deep as night, rich as Swiss
chocolate and so, so sexy.

Dear God, she was tempted. So tempted. But she couldn’t; she
had too much on the boil here—too many responsibilities, too much that could go
wrong. She needed to make this job work, needed to make these projects a
success...failure was not an option.

‘I wish I could but it’s simply not possible. Even the time I
spent in Cape Town has put me days behind in my schedule.’

‘Yet the world keeps turning,’ Ross muttered. ‘You’re a
workaholic, Jones.’

No, she wasn’t. ‘I’m just dedicated.’

‘Trust me—I know one when I see one.’

Ally heard Ross take a sip of his wine and wondered why he
sounded so bleak, so sad.

‘Don’t burn out, Jones.’

She frowned at his terse tone. ‘I’m fine.’ Dammit, she was
saying that a lot lately.

Ross was quiet for a little while and Ally was happy to listen
to him breathe, to hear the occasional thud of a wave in the distance.

‘How close are you to the beach?’ she asked eventually.

‘Not far. You walk out of my yard onto the dunes; the beach is
just beyond that. Easy access—which is perfect since I surf most days.

‘So...the reason for my call. I am going to be in London in two
weeks’ time. I have business on the Tuesday and Wednesday and thought I could
fly to Geneva on the Thursday evening. Does that suit?’

Ally asked him to hold on while she consulted her diary. She
knew that she was flying in from Hong Kong on the Wednesday. She’d have Thursday
at the office to catch up, so she could probably skip out early that evening.
Was she going to do this? Really?

She took a huge breath and jumped. ‘That could work.’

‘Good,’ Ross said, his voice so low and so hot that it set her
nerve-endings on fire, her pulse jumping and her panties damp. Dear God, if this
was what he could do to her over the phone, then he’d be lethal in the bedroom.
‘Two requests, okay?’

Oh, frig, what?
Whips? Chains?
Blindfolds?

Ally licked her lips. ‘What?’

‘Wear those red panties for me.’

‘Okay. What else?’
Please let it not be
anything weird...please.

‘Leave the office now. Eat something. Get some sleep.’

Okay, not what she was expecting. Ally looked at her monitor
and the half-finished report on the screen.

‘It’ll still be there in the morning, Jones,’ Ross said,
reading her mind from miles and miles away. ‘Drop your feet, push your chair
back, grab your bag and go.’

Surprisingly, Ally found herself doing exactly what he’d
said.

Her last thought as she drifted off to sleep—the first time in
months and months that she was in bed before eleven—was that if he could get her
to do his bidding over the phone, how much more difficult would it would be to
refuse him anything face to face?

Ally pulled a pillow over her head and prayed that he wasn’t
into kinky sex. She just wasn’t ready for anything like that...

Yet.

SEVEN

Ally stood
in her
bathroom in her one-bedroom, open-plan loft apartment in the heart of Geneva and
realised that she was sweating.

Buckets.

Wiping her face with her facecloth, she looked at her
sheet-white face in the mirror above the sink and blanched. Her face was
green-tinged and her eyes were huge and round, red-rimmed. She wished she could
blame it on jet lag—the flight back from Hong Kong had been diverted and
delayed—but she flew first class, which wasn’t exactly torture.

No, it was time to admit that she was getting sick...and within
twelve hours Ross would be here.

Ross—here. And she was looking like something the dog had
rolled in.

She’d be okay, she told herself, ignoring her pounding head.
She was just stressed and on edge. Nothing that three layers of make-up and a
bucket of aspirin couldn’t fix.

Ally had thought that a fortnight would give her ample time to
prepare for her night of—she fervently hoped— debauchery. Before she’d left for
Hong Kong she’d dashed out of the office for a bikini wax, a pedicure and a full
body scrub. Yet, despite her primping and preening, she was having second, third
and sixteenth thoughts about what she was doing.

On one hand the idea of him flying in to see her made her feel
like the world’s sexiest woman; on the other she was really worried about how
she’d interact with him once they’d finished scorching the sheets. Would it be
awkward? Weird? Should she ask him to leave straight away or would he stay the
night? She had to be at work early on Friday morning for a meeting—would she
leave him to sleep or wake him up and kick him out?

Dilemmas...dilemmas.

And, on top of it all, she’d started feeling...well,
blah
yesterday—light-headed and headachy. She’d
initially put it down to not eating enough, and had ordered a chicken salad on
the flight, but even after eating it she’d still felt sub-par.

Ally looked at the sweat beads on her forehead and shivered in
her thick dressing gown.

She could no longer ignore the band of pain that encircled her
stomach like the gnawing, heated teeth of a Tasmanian devil. She could
practically trace the path of the pain—it felt like a red-hot wire under her
skin. Unlike the heartburn, which came and went, this was relentless hell.

Ally gripped the basin as misery, wet and cold, encircled her
heart. How was she supposed to be a sex goddess—even have sex—feeling as she did
now? Looking like an extra in a zombie movie? As much as she wanted to sleep
with Ross, what she
really
wanted to do was to crawl
up into a ball and suck painkillers.

Ally straightened, pulled out her tongue at her reflection,
opened her bathroom cabinet and rooted around for a bottle of painkillers. She
shook a couple into her hand and swallowed them down with a half-glass of water.
Bunking off work was not an option. Apart from her tryst with Ross later that
day, she had a meeting with the creative director of her favourite ad agency to
discuss the commercials for the new line and she had a directors’ meeting that
afternoon.

She’d be fine. She just had to get to work and get busy and
she’d forget that she wasn’t feeling well.

By midday Ally realised that she wouldn’t be doing much for the
rest of the day, never mind showing Ross her brand-new, orchid-blue Bellechier
negligee. She was running a temperature and the pain in her stomach was almost
debilitating. Getting from her office to the ground floor of her building
without passing out would be a challenge, and she felt so ill that driving home
was not an option.

She couldn’t do Ross—ha-ha-ha—not today. After calling for a
taxi, she looked at her watch and nodded grimly. It was just on noon—plenty of
time for Ross to cancel his flight. It wasn’t fair to make him fly all the way
to Geneva for a date with Morticia from the Addams Family. This simply wasn’t
going to work...

The pain clenching her heart was the twin of the one biting her
stomach. Sucking up her courage and picking up her mobile, she dialled Ross’s
mobile number and couldn’t help feeling relieved when it went immediately to
voicemail.

‘Ross, this is Ally. Sorry, but I really am not well and I have
to cancel tonight. So, so sorry, but I wouldn’t be any fun. At all. I hope you
get this message in time so that you can cancel your flight.’

Ally rested her mobile against her chest and, fighting
dizziness, quickly sent Ross an e-mail in the same vein. Leaning back in her
chair, she blinked back the tears in her eyes... Well, that was that. She’d just
blown a fantastic night by getting sick. She couldn’t even have casual
mind-blowing sex without stuffing it up.

Typical.

* * *

Ross was, to put it very mildly, supremely irritated as
he stood in front of Ally’s apartment block, staring up at the half-arch windows
on the first floor. He’d spent the day chasing his tail around London, had
barely made his flight to Geneva and had only picked up his messages in the taxi
that he’d caught at Geneva Airport.

She was too sick to see him? BS! She’d just changed her mind
and didn’t have the guts to tell him. It had probably finally dawned on her that
sex with him wouldn’t be clinical, professional, quiet and calm, and she wasn’t
ready for hot and wild. Down and dirty.

Well, he was here, and he wasn’t going to tuck his tail between
his legs and just leave because Miss Uptight wanted him to. He wasn’t one of her
corporate lackeys that she could boss around and dismiss at a whim, Ross thought
as he lifted his finger to hit her apartment’s bell.

What if she ignored him? Wouldn’t let him in? Well, he’d break
down the damn door if he had to.

Luckily for him the door swung open and a teenager stepped out,
bopping her head to the music blaring out from the headphones perched over her
head. Ross caught the front door before it clicked shut and walked into the
hallway. Ignoring the lift, he walked to a set of narrow stairs, hoping to take
the edge off his anger before he reached Ally’s top-floor apartment.

Sick, my ass
, Ross thought at the
top of the stairs. Fourteen, sixteen...there was her door. She probably had some
work that had landed on her desk today and she needed to complete, because if
she didn’t it would signal the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the friggin’
Apocalypse.

And if she wasn’t home he’d bloody well wait for her. He might
even barge his way into Bellechier itself, he was that angry. Ross pounded on
the door and felt his temper ratchet up at the resulting silence. He pounded
again and heard the creak of a door opening, the faint shuffle of feet.

‘Who is it?’

There she was, Ross thought, stupidly relieved. ‘Open the door,
Jones.’

‘What the hell...? Ross?’

The door opened and Ross looked into a snow-white face and
pain-addled eyes. His irritation disappeared and was swiftly replaced with
concern.

‘Crap, you
are
sick.’

Ally’s hair was scraped back from her face and she wore a loose
pair of track pants and a baggy long-sleeved top that hid her curves and draped
over her braless, perky breasts.

‘I said that I was sick! Didn’t you believe me?’

‘Sorry,’ Ross said, stepping into the hallway and dropping his
overnight bag to the floor. ‘I thought it was an excuse. What’s wrong with
you?’

‘Damned if I know,’ Ally muttered, walking into her lounge and
sinking onto the couch, immediately lying down and placing her head on the
armrest. She pulled up a thin blanket. ‘Headache, pain in and on my stomach, and
a rash. And I am so damn cold.’

Ross narrowed his eyes as he shrugged off his coat and laid it
over the back of a chair. The temperature in the flat was like summer in the
Karoo, and he immediately stripped off the V-necked jersey that covered his
white T-shirt. Better, he thought, moving to sit on the couch next to her hip.
She looked clammy, and when he touched her forehead with the back of his hand
even he, novice that he was at Florence Nightingale stuff, could tell that she
was running a temperature.

‘Where’s the rash, Jones?’

‘Stomach,’ Ally mumbled, and kept a firm grip on the
blanket.

He easily tugged it away from her and lifted her shirt. He
swore when he saw the belt of angry blisters below her navel. They looked
vicious and painful and Ally winced when he rested his fingers on her bare hip,
far away from the sores.

‘That sore?’ he asked, quickly lifting his hand.

‘My skin is super-sensitive,’ Ally said, her voice and face
miserable.

‘Guess sex is out, then. Unless you’re prepared to get
creative...’ Ross teased, as much for his sake as for hers as he picked up a
strand of damp hair from her cheek and pushed it behind her ear.

‘You have about as much chance of getting lucky with me as you
have of knitting fog.’ Ally closed her eyes. ‘I’m really sorry for putting you
out but—and I’m asking you nicely—can you go now?’

‘Why?’

‘I look like hell, I have something on my stomach that is
probably going to kill me soon, or infect the entire human race, I’ve been
sweating buckets so I probably stink, and this isn’t how I wanted you to see
me.’ Ally sighed. ‘I bought a negligee.’

‘Really?’ Ross stood up and pulled his mobile from the back
pocket of his jeans. He logged onto the internet and searched for hospitals.
‘What colour is it?’

‘The most beautiful blue.’

‘Damn, I would’ve liked to have seen that,’ Ross responded.
‘Deep blue is my new favourite colour. I’m calling a taxi; where’s your
bedroom?’

‘If you’re leaving why do you want to know where my bedroom
is?’ Ally asked, her voice croaky.

Nice to know that she hadn’t lost all of her smarts, Ross
thought.

‘I’m not leaving—we are. I need to get you a coat and a pair of
shoes. I’m taking you to the nearest emergency room.’

‘No, you are not. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest.’

‘Stop being an idiot, Ally. You are burning up, you have a rash
that looks dreadful, and you’re going to an ER if I have to throw you over my
shoulder and carry you downstairs.’

Ally told him what to do with himself and Ross grinned at her
feistiness. ‘Actually, I had planned to do that to
you
.’

‘Funny man.’ Ally sat up and immediately shoved her head
between her thighs. ‘Why don’t you just go and I’ll take myself to a
doctor?’

‘I’m not that gullible. You’ll just lie down again and in a
week your family will find your bloated corpse. If you think you look bad now,
just think how you’ll look then,’ Ross stated on a teasing grin. ‘Stop arguing,
sweetheart, you’re going to the hospital.’

‘Dear God, if I had known you were this annoying I would never
have agreed to sleep with you,’ Ally muttered as he walked back into the hall
and down the short passage.

‘I’m not annoying—you’re just stubborn,’ Ross said when he came
back, a pair of comfy slouch boots in his large hand. ‘Get your feet in these,
Jones.’

‘I don’t need to go to the ER. I’ll call for an appointment
with a doctor.’

‘Alyssa.’ He sighed. ‘Do me a favour...please? Since I’ve
travelled over twelve thousand kilometres to see you?’ Ross used his best
woe-is-me voice and guilt immediately swept across her pain-gripped face.

‘What?’

It worked every time. It was such a girl trick, but he had no
compunction in using manipulation to get his way quickly.

‘Let’s just get this done. Because it’s going to happen with or
without your cooperation.’ Ross hauled her to her feet and guided her to the
door. He shoved her arms into the coat he’d found hanging on a hook behind the
door, not fastening it so that the material didn’t rub against her blisters.

Ally’s face turned mutinous. ‘Your bedside manner sucks,
Bennett.’

Ross’s look was full of irony. ‘That’s because what I had
planned for you involved being
in
your bed, not at
its side.’ He dropped a hard but brief kiss on her lips. ‘Let’s go,
zombie-girl.’

Ally had to smile. ‘Screw you,’ she said, but this time there
was no heat in her words.

‘Again, those were my plans...’

* * *

‘Shingles.’

Ally looked down at the dark head of the doctor who was peering
at the rash on her stomach and thought that he had a nicer bedside manner than
Ross. He was kind and patient and rather cute... She looked at Ross, who was
standing with his back to the wall, scowling at his mobile. He had a right to
scowl. He’d had his night of nookie screwed up by—what had he
said?—shingles.

‘What causes it?’ Ally demanded.

‘It’s a viral infection; most of us have the virus in our
system and it takes something to trigger the infection. Suppressed immunity,
sickness, stress...’

‘Ding, ding, ding,’ Ross said, not lifting his head.

‘Why are you still here?’ she demanded rudely.

‘Oh, hoping for a miraculous recovery of both your libido and
your sunny disposition,’ Ross said lazily. ‘Oh, wait...you don’t have a sunny
disposition.’

The doctor laughed and Ally wanted to throw something at him.
Ross—not the doctor.

‘So, on a scale of one to ten, how stressed are you?’ the
doctor asked.

Ally tried not to squirm in her chair. Okay, the last two weeks
had been crazy, and she could lay a huge part of that on Mr Too-Sexy-To-Breathe
over there. If he’d just said yes to the campaign and then left her alone, then
she wouldn’t be going clucking mad.

‘Well?’ the doctor demanded.

‘Four.’ Well, maybe a seven or a nine, but she wasn’t going to
admit that!

‘A hundred and four. Frig, woman, you are like the poster child
for what corporate stress looks like. Thin, wired, sleep-deprived,’ Ross
commented.

‘
He
has the stethoscope around his
neck, not you!’ Ally pointed out.