Lovers in law (18 page)

I gasped and
m
y cheeks flushed scarlet at the
unfortunate turn of phrase but, luckily, Aiden was too busy helping
himself to hors d’oeuvres to notice. Radford appeared equally
horrified and, for the first time, I read exactly what was going on
behind his eyes.

I didn’t tell
him anything, Radford was thinking. Aiden
doesn’t know about our weekend at Claridges. Your secret’s
safe.

Th
e
unspoken conversation sent the memory of those two days hurtling
towards me and the blood pooled in my feet. Without warning, I was
back in a hotel suite, naked in Radford’s arms.

My whole body ached to be
held by him again. My skin tingled at the memory of his touch, my
tongue re
called the taste of him and my
heart…my poor, damaged heart…

But le
t’s not even go there.

As my chest tightened
painfully and
I thought about excusing
myself, I felt Radford’s steadying hand on my elbow and a squeeze
of reassurance.

“Deep breath,” he whispered,
leaning in closer while Aiden was still distracted. “Do you want to
sit down?”

I shook my head, not trusting
myself to speak, my breathing laboured. I’d been doing fine keeping
it together until Radford touched me but even this innocent contact
hijacked my senses, leaving me unable to think straight.

Aiden turned back towards us
and Radford hurriedly let me go, breaking the connection and
leaving me feeling cold suddenly. I wondered whether I could get
him alone on some pretext. Even though I didn’t have a clue what
I’d say to him. But there was no telling when I might see him
again.

As if reading my mind,
Radford glanced at his watch and grimaced. “I need to go,” he said,
excusing himself. “Dinner date.”

I deflated with a mixture of
disappointment and relief.

Aiden gave Radford a knowing
look. “Anyone I know?”

“Sorry. That’s privileged
information.” Radford raised an eyebrow
,
leaving the rest unsaid, even though I could probably guess at it.
He whipped round to face me again. “Are you free Friday morning,
Allie?” he asked.

“Yes,” I spluttered,
completely blindsided by the question. I hadn’t a clue what my
diary looked like but I’d cancel everything for a chance to see him
again.

“Great. So why don’t we all
go and have a look at this site? It’s impossible to get an accurate
picture from a file.”

Aiden shrugged,
also apparently caught off guard by the
suggestion. “If you think it’s necessary. I’ll call my
surveyors.”

“No
, not yet.” Radford was quick to counter the idea. “No
point running up costs until we see what we’re dealing
with.”

He
shook Aiden’s hand warmly and suggested meeting for a drink
the following week. When it came to say goodbye to me however, he
mouthed my name, gave me a cursory nod and promised to see me first
thing Friday.

I don’t know what I’d
expected – he could hardly scoop me into his arms and kiss the life
out of me at an office party – but it wasn’t as if we were
strangers to one another. You can’t lie naked in bed with someone
for forty-eight hours and maintain any level of formality – in my
opinion at least.

However, a
few seconds later, he doubled back through the crowd
towards us. “A word of advice, Allie,” he said, giving me the first
genuine smile of the evening. “If Aiden’s going to be a regular
client, buy yourself a very warm coat and a pair of Wellington
boots. You’ll spend half your life trudging across freezing
building sites, knee deep in mud.”

Not the most alluring outfit
he’d ever asked
me to wear but beggars
most definitely couldn’t be choosers.

The ground gave way beneath
me the minute I laid eyes on her and my legs faltered.

She stood next to Aiden,
wearing
a green, silk dress that left
very little to my imagination, and looking so beautiful I thought
the pain in my chest had collapsed my lungs. Her hair was swept
back off her face and up into a sleek bun, leaving her
honey-skinned neck naked and just begging to be kissed. I don’t
know how I got through the evening without running my tongue along
the lines of her collarbone, or pulling the pins out of her hair so
I could bury my face in it.

No one else had come close to
Allie Lawless and I suspected no one ever would. Six months on,
I
still couldn’t get past the thought of
her naked body and that I’d been too much of a coward to try and
persuade her to stay. The sense of loss had seeped into my bones
until it had become a part of me.

Missing didn’t even begin to cover
it.

I knew she’d been back in
London for a while – Stephen had told me that – but I hadn’t wanted
to unsettle her in those first few weeks. Too soon and she’d point
blank refuse to
talk to me. I had to take
things gently. Slowly. But all the while I would have walked
barefoot over broken glass for a chance to see her
again.

Then suddenly, there she was,
involved in a case with one of my closest friends, and handing me
the perfect excuse to spend time with her. Who said there wasn’t a
God?

Seeing Allie
that night opened up every old wound, making me
as vulnerable and defenceless as I’d ever been around that dazzling
smile and that sensual body. But this time I was determined to be
braver and, having been handed my golden opportunity, I wasn’t
prepared to let her slip away again so easily.

When we met at
Aiden’s offices a few days later, I was relieved
to see Allie had taken my parting advice.

“It’s cold this morning,” I
said, noticing how the short walk from the Tube had brought out the
roses in her cheeks. I wondered what she’d do if I went to kiss
some warmth back into her pink nose. “I’m glad you’ve wrapped
up.”

“I never ignore
counsel’s
opinion.” She raised her
eyebrows impishly before holding up a brand new pair of Wellingtons
in a carrier bag. “And I’m wearing so many layers, I must look
twice my normal size.”

“No y
ou don’t. You look wonderful.”

My eyes feasted on the way
her skin tight jeans clung around those
long, slim legs and very sexy arse. More than once, she’d
had me flat on my back, riding my cock, and I’d gripped those
softly-rounded hips to force her down harder onto me. My hands
still carried the memory of their shape and the velvet softness of
her skin.

The mental image provoked a
predictable reaction.

“First time I’ve seen you in
jeans,” she said, her eyes
doing a
leisurely stock take of my lower portions and I doubt she could
have missed the bulge in my groin. Perhaps that’s why she took so
long over it. “Well-worn denim doesn’t really match your
successful-barrister image, if you don’t mind me saying. You look
too rough and ready to win a jury over.”

I recognised flirting when I
heard it
and unleashed my inner Romeo.
“Does rough and ready win you over?” I asked. “Or do you prefer men
in suits?”

“It depends what mood I’m
in.” She thought hard for a second as if I’d thrown a difficult
legal problem at her. “And what kind of suit we’re talking about.
Business suit, dinner suit or…” She dropped her voice to a
suggestive whisper. “…birthday suit?”

Game on, I thought and took
the flirting up a notch.
“Personally, I
prefer the latter. Someone once told me I do all my best work in
the nude.”

“Who was that then?”

I shrugged, playing along. “I
can’t remember now. Some woman with a fantastic arse and great
tits. We spent a weekend at Claridges.”

“That’s a coincidence.” She
pretended to be amazed. “I had the greatest sex of my life at
Claridges.”

“What did you do?”

“I daren’t say in case I
incriminate myself.”

“Perjury’s a very serious
business.”

“I know, but he’s my dirty
little secret. Telling the truth might get me into much more
trouble.”

“Who’s in trouble?” Aiden
asked, walking in on the tail end of our conversation
and only catching the last word.

“Allie,” I said immediately,
enjoying watching her face drop. “She’s worried she might not be
warm enough on site.”

Aiden took a quick look at what she
was wearing and couldn’t resist giving Allie’s arse an appreciative
glance.

I caught his eye.
Aid
en and I had hunted as a pair in bars
often enough for him to recognise my warning look that said, back
off, this one’s mine.

He had the decency not to
unleash his devastating charm. If there was one guy in London who
could out-charm and out-flirt me
, it was
Aiden Thirstan and the tabloids had the photographs of him leaving
nightclubs with a string of beautiful women to prove it.

“You’ll be fine,” he
said
to Allie. “If you get cold, stand in
front of Radford. His ego’s big enough to act as a
windbreak.”

I mouthed the word bastard at
Aiden as we piled into his Range
Rover
and he grinned at me before driving us out to the East
End.

If we’d thought the City was
cold,
the abandoned factory site was
something else. The temperature dropped by a good ten degrees and
the raw wind seemed shot through with razor blades. With our
collars turned up, we huddled down into our coats and walked the
perimeter, trying to get a sense of the area and how it might be at
risk of contamination.

In spite of her
extra layers, Allie looked frozen and tried very
hard to hide it. I couldn’t bear to see her shivering and wished I
could put my arms around her, or pull her inside my coat to get her
out of the biting wind. From there my imagination made the short
leap to heating up every beautiful inch of her with kisses as she
lay naked on my bed, making her as hot for me as I was burning for
her.

When it came to raising my
temperature, Allie Lawless was off the scale.
Offering her my scarf seemed a very poor
substitute.

“Here, take this,”
I said, unwinding it from around my neck and
holding it out to her.

“I can’t. You’ll
freeze.”

“Please.”

She ducked away but I
persisted and she eventually let me
wrap
the chunky scarf twice around her. I pulled it up high to cover her
dainty diamond earrings and snuggled it in tightly under her chin
to block the gaps in her coat.

Made brave by all the talk
of
Claridges, I let my fingers graze the
soft skin behind her ears, all the while wishing I could bury my
face against her neck and kiss her. No other woman could have skin
that smooth, and that touchable, or a body curved to fit mine so
exactly. The thought of it had driven me insane for six
months.

When Allie
d
idn’t back off, my thumb traced the line
of her cheekbone, wiping away a stray tear where the wind had made
her eyes water. If I’d have bent my head slightly, I’d have been
within an inch of kissing her, and had Aiden not been standing a
few feet away, I might have risked it.

Allie read my mind
however and the look in her beautiful, green
eyes begged me not to. I pulled away and swallowed down the regret
at a missed opportunity.

“Thank you,” she
breathed, although I wasn’t sure whether she was
grateful for my scarf or my restraint.

Aiden walked back towards us
across the frozen ground, shaking his head. “We need a
proper
underground survey,” he said.
“It’s impossible to guess what’s going on twenty feet
down.”

But before
he could say any more his phone went off, his ring tone
playing Erika Fenn’s latest hit song. Allie laughed.

“I love Erika Fenn,”
she said to me when Aiden stepped away to take
the call, raising her voice above the wind. “Aiden had her playing
in the car the whole way out here.”

“He’s mad on her,” I
confirmed. “Never plays anything else. And last time she was on
tour, he followed her round America for three months.”

Allie laughed
again at a grown man being so smitten. “She’s
very talented though. Not to mention incredibly beautiful. I don’t
blame him.”

“But unattainable,” I pointed out.
“I prefer my women a little closer to home.”

If that wasn’t a hint, I
don’t know what was, but sadly Aiden came back over to us and
stopped the conversation dead.

“There’s a problem on the new
apartment block in Rochester. They need me out in Kent right now.”
He turned to Allie, his face one big apology, but I got the
impression that Kent wasn’t quite as urgent as he was making out.
“Sorry, Allie. Would you mind if Radford saw you back into
town?”

“Not at
all.
” Her hesitation was only slight but
I caught it. “I’ll tell the legal team to hold off until the
surveyors have been in. Call me when you’re ready.”