Taming the Bad Girl (4 page)

I was debating whether to have another drink or
just admit defeat. I could go home, have a steaming hot bath, eat some much
needed food and fall asleep. If I timed it all right I could be wrapped up in
my duvet before the clock struck midnight.
A long night’s
sleep.
I so rarely made it through the night in one go these days. Of
course all those hours by
myself
with no distraction
were going to be hard, but looking down into my empty glass now, and maybe
because of today’s events, I felt something strangely like resolution whisper
through me. I realized in that moment that I was going to have to do it at some
point. Work things through, because my current strategy was getting me nowhere.
Just more of the same.

I looked up from the bar, the decision made to
head home. But before I could so much as move a weird tingling travelled down
my back. I shivered and pushed my glass aside, grabbed my messenger bag and
slung it over my shoulder. Someone was watching me and as the tingles increased
the face of the girl who’d jostled me flashed through my mind. The connection
was made in an instant. Of course she’d looked familiar! I’d seen her at the
office more than once. Giles’ sister, Penelope, which meant….

“Giles…”

“Lucy.” In comparison to my breathless whisper
his greeting was clipped.

“I…” I swallowed and shifted, not even sure what
to say. He looked so freaking good.
Dressed in jeans and a
checked blue shirt, his hazel hair falling over his eyes, and those amazing
eyes boring into me.
I’d always had a thing about the eyes.
A thing about all of it, if I was honest.
The fact that he
towered over me, the fact his chest was so broad. That night we’d spent together
he’d gathered me in his arms and made me feel so fragile.
Delicate,
like a flower, or something precious.
Of course that feeling lasted
about as long as every other good feeling in my life.

“I didn’t expect to bump into you here,” I said,
and I was proud that my voice came out sounding pretty much normal.

“I come here every week with my sister,” he
replied.

“Penelope.”

“Yes.”

Well, that was this bar scribbled off my
boomerang list. I swallowed, shifted again and racked my brain for something to
say. It had been so long since we’d spoken like this. After that night Giles
had disappeared for weeks, and then I’d gone off on vacation and a month and a
half had passed.
After that, nothing until the meeting today.
Nothing.

“I—”

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked and I
started.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard,” he said. “You’re still in your work
clothes. Is this the first bar you’ve been to? Or are you on number five or
six?”

Outrage fluttered through me, chasing away the
longing of just a moment ago. The hurt too, which was a miraculous feeling in
itself. I’d been working late for
crikes
sake!
Trying to find a way out of my predicament.
To do what he’d
asked me to! I glared at him, gripped my bag until my fingers hurt and hissed
back, “How dare you! And more to the point what fucking business is it of
yours?”

Without so much as a warning he pulled me to
him. His palm wrapped around my upper arm. Heat raced from that spot down to my
fingers and I jerked. Memories threatened to overwhelm me and I pulled back.
How could his touch still affect me like this?
After all
these months?
When no other man’s did.
God
freaking knew I’d tried my hardest to find one.

“It’s not,” Giles grated. “What you do is
nothing to do with me. But I wanted to stop you making some sort of fool of
yourself all over again.”

The outrage intensified, battling with the
startling feeling of being so close to him. Ignore it, I told myself. You hate
him, hate him…don’t you? But already my stomach was doing little flips and I
could feel heat racing across my skin. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

He waved his free hand around the bar. “Planning
to pick one of these up, were you? Take another one home just like you did with
me?”

“Excuse me?”

“No doubt there’s a bloody queue willing to
allow it if office gossip is to be believed.”

He was seething, practically a different man to
the one in my office just earlier in the day. Part of me thrilled to see it but
the other part raced in confusion.
Like full on
what-the-fuck-confusion.
Why should Giles care how many men I fucked?
What difference did it make to him? And more to the point why was he even here,
gripping me to him like he was never going to let go? Surely the moment he’d
spotted me he should have made a run for it, like he always did.

“And if I was?” I said, unable to resist. “Why
should you care?”

“We’re colleagues—”

“You can’t stand the sight of me.”

“Is that right?”

I tugged my arm but he didn’t let go. “Yes. It
is. So let me go.
Now.”

He pulled me closer. “It’s easy for you, isn’t
it?” he said. “A trail of men through your bed and you just chuck them out in
the morning like it means nothing.”

I shook my head, adrenaline running through me.
Tingling along my veins like a long remembered whisper. I could feel my nipples
puckering,
actually feel them pushing themselves out.
One touch, just one fucking touch and they were there—perking up, wanting him.
How pathetic.

I glared and tugged my arm
again
.“Your
point?”

“There is no point,” he growled. “No point
beyond the fact that I’d like to spare one of these poor fools the experience.”

He was goading me, making me feel a million
different things.
Loathing, lust.
Hate,
love.
Anger, excitement.
And all the while my
body clamored towards him.
Wanting more than a mere touch.
Damn him.
I reacted in my usual
fashion. How could I not? “Men do it all the time. I don’t see anyone saying
anything to them.”

“I don’t care what other people do.”

“I—”

“I haven’t fucked them,” he interrupted. “But
you…”

I gasped. It was the first time I’d ever heard
him refer to what happened between us. To admit it had
ever
happened. The look in his eyes made me shiver in an unbearable
way. He was standing so close. Too close. I never imagined I’d be this close to
him again. The distance between us was negligible.
His hand
gripping me so tight, his breath heating my face.
I could smell lemons.
The citrus scent he wore was everywhere. I was bathed in it.

“Me what?”
I whispered. He shouldn’t have even heard me over the din of the
bar.

“You,” he said. “You, I have fucked.
And had the wonderful experience of being thrown out the next
morning.”

Chapter Six

Giles: You can’t have closure with someone you feel so deeply for.
You just can’t.

Why was I doing this? What was wrong with me?
There she stood. Her chest heaving, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips,
and I wanted her so badly. I wanted to drape her across the bar, bunch her
skirt up and bury myself so deeply she’d never think of another man. But I’d
already done that, hadn’t I? And it hadn’t worked. She’d soon moved onto the
next, and the next, and the next….

Jealousy reared again and I tried to bat it
down. To push it into the place it had lived all these months but it wouldn’t
go. It seemed that our meeting had opened the floodgates and no matter what I
tried the dam was surging forth. I couldn’t stop it.

“That’s not quite how I remember it,” Lucy said.

I opened my mouth to retort but someone jostled
me, and I lost my grip on her arm. I took my wallet out of my pocket, beckoned
to the bartender and dropped a fifty on the counter, pointing to my table. She
nodded, scooped the money up and retreated to serve another customer.

I grabbed Lucy’s arm again and dragged her to
the bar entrance. I thought I heard her splutter and pull back, but I ignored
it. I had no intention of discussing this in front of a bunch of people, and
discuss it we were going to. Pen was right. The time had long since come and
gone. I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to get this over and done with.

We halted outside the bar and I took a ragged
breath. “Then how do you remember it, Lucy?”

She pulled on her arm again. I did not let go.
“What does it matter?”

“I’m sure it doesn’t for someone who has a
different man every weekend, but I’d finally like to fucking know.”

She shivered and shook her head. “Why?”

Why? I opened my mouth, closed it and opened it
again. Why indeed, what the hell was I supposed to say to that?
Because I can’t stop thinking about you?
Because
I’m sick to death of feeling like this?
Because I have to know why you
didn’t want me? “Because I deserve an explanation,” I finally settled on.
“Today has shown us that until we talk this thing through we’re not
gonna
be able to work together.”

“Maybe you should have thought about
that
four months ago,” Lucy said.

I was so startled by her words that my grip on
her arm slackened and she pulled herself free. “What?”

She took a step back and shot me a glare. “You
know, after you walked out and then disappeared for weeks on end.”

“I walked out on you?” I growled. “You chucked
me out.”

“That’s a fucking lie!”

Confusion shot across my mind and I grappled to
pull it back into place. The memories of that morning hit me and I growled.

Lucy stood
there in a skimpy towel, the dazzling smile of moments ago gone.
Replaced by blazing anger.
“How dare you look through my
phone!
”

Me shifting, baffled by her words.
“I didn’t. I was just
going to bring it to you so you could answer the call.”

Lucy
grabbing the
iPhone
, where the words
“Alex
calling”
continued to flash. “You had no right.”

“What the
hell’s the matter with you? I was just coming to give it to you in case it was
important. I see now it clearly was. Who the fuck is he, Lucy? How many other
men call you at three in the morning?”

“What?”

“A man
calls a woman at this time for one thing and one thing only.
Unless
it’s a family member?
Is it?”

Lucy stiffening.
“I have no family.”

I shuddered and pushed the memories aside, but
even as I did my cock hardened, completely against my will. Lucy stood in that
towel.
The same Lucy now shivering in front of me.
How
fucking beautiful she was. How much I’d reveled in burying my shaft to the
hilt. I wanted her so badly, and it was all just so wrong.

“You know what happened,” she said, dragging my
thoughts back. “You were there.”

“I was pissed off another man was calling you,”
I said, trying to keep my anger in check and willing my cock to deflate. It was
so distracting. How easy it would be to forget everything and just take her. To
pretend she wanted me as I wanted her. To just lie to myself for a little
while….

“You looked through my phone,” she hissed.

I growled.
 
“No, how many times do I have to say it? I didn’t. But you have an
iPhone
, sweetheart,
the
name
flashes up when someone calls. Just like it did that night, and excuse fucking
me if I expected the woman I was sleeping with to have the decency not to be
sleeping with other men!”

“We fucked once.”

The words she used told me everything I needed
to know.
Fucked
.
Not slept with, not spent time together.
Just fucked.
The anger drained away.
Replaced all over again with the
wearying feeling that had plagued me for so long.

“We’d been building up to it for weeks,” I said
slowly. “We both knew that, and I thought….” I halted, running a hand through
my hair.

“What?” she prompted. “What did you think?”

That it
was the start of something. That maybe….
I shook my
head and stepped back, putting even more distance between us. My heart was
heavy and my judgment was clearly so far off the scale it wasn’t even funny.
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Giles—”

“Forget it, Lucy. Let’s just forget it.”

Because I knew then in that moment that I should
never have come over and spoken to her.
Never have tried to
get any sort of closure.
It was never going to happen.
Impossible.
The only way forward now was to let this go.
Just forget it all.