Undressed by the Boss (Mills & Boon By Request) (55 page)

‘Of course I’m all right,’ she snapped.

What did he think—that she was too unsophisticated to move on from a minor embarrassment? At once she was transported back to that frantic moment when she parted her legs so he could plunder her with his mouth. Against her will, she couldn’t repress the hot sensual tide that rose at ankle level and flooded her all the way up through her neck to the roots of her hair.

Anger with him for having such inflammatory power over her when she was struggling for poise made her terser with him than she might otherwise have been.

Anyway, with that predatory alcoholic glow in his eyes, should he even be drinking champagne?

‘I see you’ve put my suitcase in your room,’ she asserted coldly.

His brows made an amused twitch. ‘It seemed the best place.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Well, the bed is comfortable, and I thought you’d enjoy the bathroom. The spa in there is—quite good.’ His black lashes flickered sensuously down.

‘Is it? And where do you think you’ll be sleeping?’

He scratched his ear. After the briefest hesitation, he said, ‘Ah … well. Along here. Come, I’ll show you.’ He held out his hand to take hers but she coolly avoided it.

She accompanied him along the small hallway that led past the kitchen, where a small crowd was now busily ensconced, and showed her into his study.

Her jaw dropped. To her complete surprise she saw that a bed had been set up in there. After a few nonplussed seconds, in which she tried to look as nonchalant as if she’d expected it all along, she followed him inside.

The room was a gracious and pleasant-sized second bedroom. Its walls were lined with bookshelves from ceiling
to floor, much like Gran’s, only on a grander scale. There was an
en suite
bathroom she hadn’t noticed at her earlier visit, showing signs of masculine occupation. Although its fittings were similar to the one in the master suite, it was smaller and not equipped with a spa.

‘I work in here at night,’ he explained, leaning his tall frame against his desk and ravishing her with smiling, heavy-lidded eyes. ‘I wouldn’t like to think I was disturbing your sleep.’

‘Oh.’ She felt her flush rise again, and turned sharply away to conceal it. It should have been a relief to be able to exonerate him, but somehow it made things more complicated than ever. Everything felt wrong. Posh penthouses with their Persian rugs and gold-fitted marble only irritated her. And how …
how
could a woman talk to a man she barely knew … after …?

‘It’s—it’s very good of you to give up your room. Are you sure you want to do that? I’m sorry if I seemed … I didn’t want to think you might have made some assumption …’

His eyes were glinting in that way that made it hard to know if he was being sincere, or subtly mocking her and dying to laugh. ‘No need to apologise. If you think about it, it would look strange if you weren’t sleeping in my bed. It would certainly arouse the suspicions of the staff. And then if anyone were to drop by …’

‘Oh, you mean … Malcolm Devlin?’ He hesitated to reply, and she added, trying to read his expression, ‘You did say he was coming tonight. Isn’t that why it was so urgent for me to—be here?’

His eyes shimmered, and a small prickling silence fell. ‘One of the reasons,’ he said at last. ‘As a matter of fact, I—put him off.’

He didn’t smile. His stirringly sensuous mouth was grave, but she had a sudden piercing insight. Malcolm Devlin wasn’t coming. He’d never been coming. And she knew without a doubt that Tom Russell was as aware as she was of the
question clammering in her head and pulsing between them like an electric current.

She tried to bury its insidious little voice and consign it to the outer regions of hell, but it
would
come back and insist on asking itself.

If, it shrilled in her frontal lobes, a man and a woman had engaged in an activity that had failed to reach its natural conclusion, what happened then?

D
INNER
on the balcony had a certain ambience. From her chair Cate could see the harbour lights, the streaming blaze of headlights overhead on the great bridge, and, rising tier upon tier from all around the shoreline, millions of glowing golden dots that were people’s private windows.

It was magic. It gave Sydney a cosy, intimate feel, as if personal communications were bouncing from shore to shore across the harbour, and she and Tom were part of them.

The fairyland effect was enhanced by the excellence of the food. It convinced her that a billionaire employing a private chef didn’t have to be a social evil.

A chef needed a job, after all. And when Tom introduced her to his chef, his butler, and the waiter with friendly humour, as people he valued and respected, she found it hard not to see him through their eyes. Certainly, he was their boss. She was pretty sure he’d be exacting, even impatient. But she could see they liked and respected him, and weren’t too in awe of him to crack a joke.

If Gran could have seen her now. Actually, she was glad Gran couldn’t. So much would be hard to explain. And she knew what the people in the newsroom would say. They’d accuse her of selling out her principles to big business interests.

‘Does your butler always serve you dinner out here?’

Tom Russell’s mouth quivered in amusement. ‘I don’t often
eat in the apartment. Tonight they thought it was special. They wanted to impress you.’

Soon afterwards, the subtle delicacies of asparagus soup and gnocchi with truffled mushroom sauce washed down with wine eased some of her tensions. Then coral trout flown in from the Great Barrier Reef, and served with fried potatoes and a lime-and-honey-dressed salad, slid down into her grateful interior and quelled the rest of her qualms. She began to forgive Tom for the kiss debacle. A woman had to eat, after all.

Although he’d had a few drinks, Tom’s lean, tanned hands moved with the same swift grace as ever, and the only hint of his high-flying mood were the shocking, irreverent stories he told her of celebrities who’d been at the service. She felt that he’d let down his guard to her. He made her laugh and kept her imagination on the simmer, her spine tingling like a thrill-seeker on a fun-park ride. Was this how it would feel to be close to him, like a real girlfriend? What dangerous excitement might he plunge her into next?

Why not admit it? She was hooked on the adrenaline.

By the time the dessert came, though, his mood grew more pensive, as if laughter was becoming too much of an effort to sustain. She sensed the fragility of his emotions, although he still seemed determined to keep serious issues at bay, and concentrated all his energy into finding out about her. He asked her searching questions. Grilled her, in fact, about her friends at work. At one stage when she was relating an amusing anecdote about the newsroom, he interrupted her with, ‘Who was the guy you were engaged to? One of your workmates?’

When she hesitated, he said, ‘Was it Steve Wilson?’

She raised her brows in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

He made a vague, noncommittal gesture then. Later on in the meal, he brought the subject up again. ‘So—what went wrong?’

Glancing up, she met his veiled gaze. She shrugged and plunged her spoon into her raspberry and chocolate mousse tart. ‘Let’s just say he made a mistake.’

His brows shot up. ‘Only one?’

She lowered her lashes and slid the spoon into her mouth. ‘Mmm.’ She closed her eyes to savour the rich, smooth lusciousness.

When she opened them he was watching her with an intense, wolfish hunger. His hot gaze drifted to her throat and breasts. Her thrumming heart began to bump against her ribs. He was thinking about something else, she felt sure. The something that drummed on the breeze like the call of the wild.

Eventually, the remains of the sumptuous tart were cleared away, and he suggested they take their coffee and the dregs of the claret to the sitting room. ‘Where we can talk,’ he said.

They were drawn to the same sofa he’d occupied earlier. This time Tom replaced the cello suites with a bluesy Miles Davis trumpet recording of ‘Summertime.’ There was no reason not to relax and engage in some intelligent conversation. So why, all at once, had her speech dried up?

Tom Russell gazed broodingly down at the rich red and blue oriental rug, while the delicate subject loomed silently between them, then he raised his eyes to hers. ‘I’m sorry about before, Cate. I do apologise. Very bad timing.’ He shook his head. ‘Bloody criminal.’

She nodded in stiff acceptance. ‘That’s—all right. It should never have happened.’

‘It certainly shouldn’t have.’

‘It wasn’t part of our agreement. ‘

‘I know. I was a bastard, kissing you like that.’

She glanced quickly at him. His expression was solemn, but she wasn’t sure she could trust his sincerity, especially with that sensual glow in his eyes.

He lounged carelessly back against the sofa, and heaved a sigh. ‘You know, I think we got off to a bad start this morning.’ He stretched his arm along the sofa back. It was an intimate move, and brought him closer. His mouth was relaxed, his
warm gaze intent on her face. ‘I know I may have seemed—abrupt. I am sorry.’

Her heart swelled with gratitude that he cared enough to apologise. Less than an arm’s length away from him, she felt infused with a dangerous tingling warmth, like a small feminine moon sucked irresistibly towards a strong, hot sun.

‘I think I understand, Tom. You’ve been under stress, what with everything. Losing your dad, and all.’ She lowered her eyes. ‘And look … er … I’m sorry if I hurt you. With the things I wrote about him.’

Unconsciously, her fingers slid down the stem of her glass. She felt his gaze flick to them beneath his black lashes.

He gave a small sardonic laugh. ‘Don’t apologise. He’d be the first to agree he deserved every word.’

‘You must have been very close.’

He made a wry grimace. ‘I’d thought so, finally. Although not so much when I was young. He was already in his fifties when I was born, you know. It wasn’t until I reached my twenties that we really began to understand each other. At least … I thought we did. I thought we were close. But then, right at the end, he …’

The lean, bronzed fingers tightened on his glass, and he dropped his gaze and lapsed into a brooding silence. The humour lines around his mouth and eyes seemed to deepen and grow pained.

What had happened at the end? Had that old man turned away from his son? She wished she were close enough to him to ask. For a moment he looked so weary her heart ached for him.

‘You look so sad,’ she exclaimed involuntarily.

At once the shutters came down. His brows snapped together and his guarded gaze set her at bay like an intruder. She could have bitten off her tongue. The last thing Tom Russell wanted from her was sympathy. How inept of her to have trampled on his private feelings. She curled her hands in her lap. How insensitive he must have thought her.

She felt his keen glance on her face. As if he’d read her dismay, he swiftly moved to recover the mood, and gave an easy laugh.

‘Sad? Never.’ He waved his glass. ‘Don’t forget the real funeral was more than two weeks ago. It’s not as if I haven’t been anticipating his end for a long time.’ A darker edge crept into his voice. ‘It’s different when a death comes—suddenly. Then you can feel—knocked about.’ He stared, frowning, into his wine, then took a swallow and relapsed back into abstraction.

She remembered that his wife had died suddenly. Hadn’t two years been enough to soften the loss? Perhaps not, considering the sharp rebuke he’d given Olivia in the cathedral. The silence lengthened, and she wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the lamplight, but a harsh fierceness showed in his strong face, as if he were locked in battle with some private anguish. Her heart swelled with compassion. Despite his light words of denial, the signs of grieving were all there.

She wished she had the right to take him in her arms and offer him solace, and wondered who else there was in his life to help him bear his grief. Surely he should have spent this night in the company of loved ones. If anything happened to Gran, she knew she’d want someone to comfort her through the rugged night watches.

‘Sometimes it can catch up on you later,’ she observed huskily, needing to break the silence. ‘My parents were killed when I was five, then when I was nine I shut down for half a year.’

He roused himself from his musings.
‘Both
your parents? Oh, Goldilocks,’ he exclaimed softly, reaching out to touch her cheek. After a while he added, ‘What does that mean, shut down?’

‘I stopped wanting to go to school. In the mornings I stayed in bed and turned my face to the wall.
Me.
Don’t laugh, but I lost interest in everything. My friends, games, all the kids’ parties. It seems incredible now.’

He considered her for a while, then lightly brushed her hand. ‘I’m not laughing. So what did they do to you? Send round the Feds?’

‘Well, Gran talked to people at the school and I was allowed some time away. She had to take time off from her job at the paper, and I did my lessons with her. From what I remember, I must have been like a sleepwalker. For months I hardly did anything but practise my violin. I think the music must have helped.’

‘What snapped you out of it?’

She smiled. ‘Luckily—especially for the music lovers of the neighbourhood—Gran understood what was wrong, and she just waited until I was ready to talk about it. Then one day some friends who’d known Mum and Dad came to visit, and brought up some stories about them from the past. After they’d gone, somehow the floodgates opened.’

She laughed in ridicule of herself, but her eyes still misted over with the glimpse of the old tragedy.

He sat very still, his eyes intent on her face. She could feel him analysing, searching inside her brain with his sharp intelligence. After a while he sighed and frowned down at the rug, then with an impatient gesture tossed off the last of his wine.

‘Let’s not dwell on it all now. They’ve gone, all of them. Ashes to ashes.’ He turned his slumbrous gaze to her. ‘But we’re here.
You’re
here. And you’re so very—very alive.’ He reached out and lightly traced her jawbone with his thumb, then his hand slid to her throat. ‘I can feel your blood pulsing just here.’