Old Desires/A Stranger's Kiss (2-in-1 edition) (22 page)

Tara turned on Jim Matthews. ‘Have you any idea what time it is?’

‘I’ve been waiting all evening to see you.’

‘Waiting where?’ she demanded. ‘You weren’t here when I got in.’ Which on reflection she decided, was probably just as well. Adam was not likely to be amused at having to send him packing two days running.

‘Oh, I’ve been wandering around,’ he said, absently. ‘It’s given me a great idea for a book. Have you any idea how terrifying those cat’s eyes in the road are when they look up at you? Suppose they were real — have you got a notebook handy, I ought to make a few notes...’

‘No!’ Tara shuddered. ‘And I don’t want to hear about your horrible cat’s eyes. It’s time you gave up, Jim and accepted the fact that I’m never coming back. You’ll have to find someone else. I’m not the only...’ She stopped as another thought struck her. ‘How on earth did you manage to find out where I live? I’m quite certain that Beth wouldn’t take your money. No matter how much you offered.’

‘She was very rude, Tara. I was shocked to hear such language from a woman.’ He sank onto her sofa.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘There are always ways to find out things. You just have to think it through.’ He shrugged. ‘I wrote detective stories for a while you know. I just imagined this was a detective story. How would my hero find out where the lovely lady lived?’ He glanced at the table. ‘Is that cocoa?’ He picked up the cup and ignoring her outraged protest he began to drink it. ‘This is wonderful. I’m absolutely freezing.’

‘I’m not surprised. You’re not wearing a coat.’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘It wasn’t difficult. I just went to the public library and searched through the electoral rolls.’

‘Good lord!’ His persistence stunned her. ‘How long did that take?’

‘Mmmm? Oh, not long. I had narrowed the area down quite a bit. I knew which side of town, and that you walked, even when it was raining, so it couldn’t be that far. But I admit that I was damned lucky you live in Albert Mews rather than Washington Lane.’

‘Well, your luck just ran out, Jim Matthews. If you don’t leave right now you had better prepare yourself—’ A thunderous knocking at the door stopped whatever she was going to say. ‘What on earth...’

She ran to the door, fully expecting it to be her next door neighbour with some emergency.

Instead Adam Blackmore burst through the door. ‘Tara, are you alright?’ He grabbed her arms, staring at her as if to reassure himself. ‘I’d just got back to the penthouse and I realised I hadn’t got the report you typed, so I went into the office.’ He’d been running and he paused to catch a breath. He shook his head. ‘I saw that man who was bothering you last night. He was headed this way. I know you said he wasn’t dangerous, but he was walking down the middle of the road poking about in the cat’s eyes. Quite odd and I thought—’

He stopped as a movement behind Tara alerted him to the fact that she was not alone. He stepped forward as if to protect her, then halted as he took in the casual manner with which Jim had made himself totally at home on the sofa, feet propped upon the coffee table, the cup of cocoa warming his hands.

His mouth a thin, angry line, Adam allowed his gaze to travel around the comfortable room, taking in every detail, the small circular window set into foot thick walls, the posts and beams that framed the building decorated with bunches of dried flowers, the little red pot belly stove in the hearth. It came finally to rest on Tara, hair tumbled about her shoulders, feet bare. Dressed for bed.

‘I was concerned.’ His eyes, dark and deep as a glacier, met Tara’s. ‘But I see that I needn’t have worried.’ His mouth managed a smile, but it didn’t quite make it to his eyes. ‘I told you he would wait.’

‘Adam...’

He ignored her. He nodded, tight lipped, at Jim. ‘My apologies for the interruption.’ Jim raised a languid hand in acknowledgment. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, Tara.’ There was nothing reassuring in this utterance. Nothing reassuring about the careful way he shut the door on his way out.

Tara turned and stared at her intruder, wondering just what he had cost her. He looked so harmless, so insignificant, totally unaware of the havoc he had caused and the unaccountable misery that lay like a lump of lead in her stomach.

‘Truly, Jim Matthews,’ she declared with a sudden burst of anger, ‘you are the most annoying man it has ever been my misfortune to meet.’ But her words had no effect. Jim Matthews was blessed with supreme selfishness, totally unconcerned with anything but his own desires and anger had no power to dent his complacency.

And the damage had been done. Getting angry with Jim could never change that. But when he repeated his suggestion that she marry him, she finally snapped.

‘Don’t you ever listen?’ she demanded. ‘No! No! No!’ Something of her distress must have got through to him and he offered no further argument when she insisted that he must go. She would have demanded his promise that he never return. But she was too tired to bother and she was only too aware that it probably wouldn’t make any difference if she did.

CHAPTER THREE

EXHAUSTION supplied the balm of sleep but Tara had to drag herself into Adam Blackmore’s private lift the following morning, and it sped upwards far too fast in its eagerness to decant her onto the twenty-first floor the following morning.

And yet, as she took a deep breath and lifted her chin, she knew there was no point in putting it off a moment longer. She’d given it her best shot, but some things were just never meant to work. She tapped on his door and opened it. The room was empty. Having screwed herself up to face him, Tara felt suddenly angry. She had done nothing wrong…

She snapped the door shut and went into her own office. A pile of mail was waiting for her attention and attached to her screen a little

Post-it note simply said “Carry on, Tara. I’ll be in later.” She pulled it off the screen and stared at it for a moment. She checked the diary but it was blank and there was no clue as to when later might be.

‘Carry on, Tara,’ she said, to herself. She sat down rather suddenly on her chair. ‘Just, carry on. That’s it?’ She picked up a letter opener and attacked an envelope. ‘No, Tara Lambert. I doubt that. I doubt it very much.’

She began to open the mail and sort it for attention. Some she put to one side to deal with herself. Some would need his personal attention. One, a bill from a private London clinic for a Mrs Jane Townsend would certainly need his personal attention she thought a little grimly.

The phone rang at intervals, each time her ragged nerves springing to attention in case it was Adam. She took messages, answered queries where she could. Where she couldn’t, she found out who had the information, gradually putting together an idea of the impressive scope of Adam Blackmore’s empire.

She was deeply engrossed in a copy of the annual financial report when a sudden warning prickle at the back of her neck made her look up.

How long he had been watching her was impossible to say. The relaxed manner in which he was leaning against the frame of the door, his hands in his pockets, the silver streak of hair fallen across his forehead, suggested it had been some time.

‘A little light lunchtime reading?’ His voice, interrupting her thoughts, made her flinch.

‘Is it lunchtime?’ She glanced nervously at her watch. Anywhere but at his face. ‘I hadn’t realised it was so late. The morning has gone so quickly.’

‘Really? I’m glad you weren’t bored. Bring in your notebook, I’ll do my best to keep you amused for the rest of the day.’

She gave him his messages and the mail. ‘Is this all?’ he asked.

‘I dealt with the run of the mill stuff. I’ve put copies of my letters at the bottom of the folder.’

‘You take a great deal on yourself,’ he remarked as he flipped through them.

‘You told me to carry on. If you simply want a shorthand typist, Adam, just say. I’ll have a competent lady here within the hour.’

‘I don’t doubt it.’ He raised his eyes briefly from the letter he was reading. ‘But we’ll leave things the way they are for the moment. A day is hardly sufficient time to judge whether you meet the required standard. Is it?’

She compressed her lips into a straight line. What did the man want? Blood?

‘Perhaps you could give me an idea of the time scale you have in mind?’ she asked. ‘I do have a business of my own to run.’

He looked up then, giving her the benefit of his undiluted personality. It was not a comfortable experience. His scouring eyes seemed to ransack her mind, picking over the thoughts he found there and discarding them as completely without interest.

Then his eyes dropped back to the document in his hand. ‘Until Jane gets back.’

Tara felt the heat rising in her cheeks and quickly looked down at her notebook. The next hour was spent in furious concentration until they were interrupted by a call on his direct line. He listened for a moment and then waved her away. ‘That’ll do for now.’ She let out a long sigh of relief and set to work.

‘Tara.’ She visibly jumped as he appeared a few moments later in the doorway.

‘Yes?’

‘Book a couple of seats on a flight to Bahrain next week. Tuesday I think.’

‘Where do you want to stay?’ She reached for a pencil.

‘Our hosts will arrange accommodation. You only have to organise the flight.’

‘Oh, right. Who’s the other passenger?’

‘You, my dear.’ The pencil snapped against the pad. ‘Is something the matter?’

‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘Of course not.’

His lip curled. ‘No, I didn’t think it would be a problem. You must want to work for me very badly, Tara. Just how far are you prepared to go, I wonder?’

‘As far as Bahrain, apparently,’ she said, sharply. ‘I had assumed that Jane would be back by next week.’

‘I’m touched by your concern,’ he said, with heavy irony. ‘But you needn’t worry. There’s nothing seriously wrong with Jane, other than a slightly raised blood pressure. She’s not ill, Tara. She’s pregnant.’

‘Pregnant!’ His eyebrows rose at the sharpness of her response. ‘I thought...’ She stopped. What she had thought was so dreadful that she couldn’t even think the word. Relief brought a smile to her lips. ‘Well, that is good news. But are you absolutely sure?’

‘Yes, Tara, I’m absolutely sure,’ he said, with conviction. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason, particularly. It’s just that working for you — well I can’t imagine when she ever found the time.’

‘Can’t you?’ His smile was unexpectedly wolfish. ‘I’d offer to demonstrate right now, but I’m afraid I have a meeting that I can’t avoid.’

Heat suffused her cheeks. ‘I’m here as your temporary secretary. I don’t have to prove whether I have reached the “required standard” in any other subjects. Even if it comes under the heading “double time”.’ Even before the words were out of her mouth she knew she had made a stupid mistake.

He moved swiftly to her desk, his eyes snapping angrily as he caught her chin and forced it up.

‘You’re quite wrong there, Tara. In this job sex comes under the same heading as washing-up. You do it on your own time.’ His mouth fastened upon hers with brutal determination. She struggled briefly, but first she was trapped by her chair and then trapped by the treacherous willingness of her lips to respond. But as they parted and she began to kiss him back, he abruptly straightened and stepped away from her, his green eyes glittering with anger. He strode swiftly to the doorway, but turned there, breathing heavily, as if he had just run up a long flight of stairs. ‘Remind me to deduct that from your bill.’

* * *

For what seemed an endless time Tara sat fixed to her chair, turning the phone in her hand, but Beth had enough to worry about without her partner going all weak and wobbly on her.

The trip to Bahrain was purely business. He couldn’t have made it plainer and until the contract was in the bag she would simply have to keep her head and mind her tongue. No more late night suppers in the penthouse. No more stupid remarks that gave Adam Blackmore openings to score the kind of point he had just made.

The tips of her fingers brushed her lips, still tingling from the lightning raid he had made there. She withdrew them abruptly. It should be easy enough. She only had to think of Jane.

 ‘Pregnant.’ She repeated the word, recalling the conviction with which he had affirmed Jane’s condition. He had been absolutely certain. Jenny Harmon must know, but hadn’t said a word. She had merely said that Jane was taking some sick leave. There could be only one reason why it was a secret, why Adam was paying for her to attend a private clinic.

A long sigh escaped her lips and she made an effort to move. It was none of her business after all. Jane wouldn’t be the first secretary to have an affair with her boss, although not many husbands were accommodating enough to look the other way when a baby was involved. Unless her husband was no longer part of the equation and they were merely awaiting her divorce before she became Mrs Blackmore.

‘It’s none of my business.’ She said the words out loud to remind herself more forcefully of this fact. She would simply have to forget that he had kissed her. That he had disturbed a thousand slumbering longings. The kiss had meant nothing at all to him.

It meant nothing at all to her, she thought, furiously. The fact that he had been able to draw such an eager response from her owed everything to his expertise. He probably spent all his spare time practising. With Jane.

She took a deep shuddering breath.

Airline tickets.

She glanced down. Her hands were clenched together so hard that the knuckles had turned white. As she carefully straightened painful fingers she wondered just how long she had been sitting like that. Too long. She had a job to do and she’d better get on with it.

 As she reached for the phone another thought occurred to her. He had said she would have to stay until Jane returned. ‘Oh, dear God!’ she moaned. It could be months. The situation was getting worse by the minute and short of walking away from Victoria House and never coming back there seemed no way out.

* * *

‘What’s he like?’ Beth Lawrence was curled up in the corner of the sofa, hugging a mug of coffee to warm her hands.

Tara sank into an armchair opposite and used the time gained to choose her words carefully. ‘He’s... difficult.’

Beth’s eyes narrowed. ‘Now that’s interesting. I would have said that the man you can’t tame with ruthless efficiency has yet to be born.’

‘You’re forgetting Jim Matthews. Perhaps I’m losing my touch.’

‘Jim doesn’t count.’

‘No. Perhaps not. He’s something of an original after all.’ She thought about this. ‘But I think Adam Blackmore is an original too.’

‘Original enough to be unmarried?’

‘At the moment.’

‘Oh?’ Beth laughed. ‘You’ve plans in that direction then?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped, then buried her head in her coffee to hide her expression.

‘Just a joke,’ Beth replied, then rather more gently, ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’ And Tara realised just how close she had come to betraying herself.

‘There were no signs of a Mrs Blackmore in the penthouse anyway,’ she added, carelessly, then blushed as Beth’s eyebrows rocketed skywards. ‘I worked rather late last night and he gave me dinner.’

‘How very kind,’ Beth said, drily, but took pity on her partner and changed the subject. ‘So how long will you be working for him?’

Relieved, Tara shrugged. ‘I don’t know. At least two weeks. We’re going to Bahrain next week. Will you be able to manage the office on your own?’

‘I’m going to have to manage, love. The bank manager asked me over for one of his little chats this afternoon. He’s getting restless about the overdraft. Thankfully I was able to stall him with our dazzling prospects.’ Beth caught sight of Tara’s expression and frowned. ‘It is going to be all right?’

Tara forced a smile. ‘Of course it’ll be all right.’ It would have to be all right. ‘I’m just tired. Jim turned up here last night and it took a while to dislodge him.’ She didn’t elaborate. She wasn’t going to regale Beth with the heart-warming tale of Adam Blackmore rushing valiantly to her defence. His stinging little remark that evening still made her ears go pink.

He had made no reference to his precipitate arrival at her flat the night before. He had apparently decided that his need of her secretarial skills was more pressing than the small satisfaction he would gain in sending her packing. For a while she had even harboured the hope that he might choose to forget the incident altogether. In vain.

She had done everything he had asked without comment. Altered a financial report so many times that the figures began to merge before her eyes. Collected his cleaning. Made several hundred cups of coffee and in general had been treated exactly like a rather slow-witted office junior. But by six-thirty everything had been done to his apparent satisfaction, although he hadn’t bothered to say a simple thank you.

‘If there’s nothing else, Adam, I’ll go now.’

He kept her waiting for a full minute before he looked up from his writing block. She took this final insult without a murmur and finally he raised his head, fixing her for a moment with his eyes. Then he made a small gesture of dismissal. ‘No, Tara. I really don’t think that there’s anything else I want from you. Run along home to your little love nest.’ The words, the gesture were meant to hurt.

It frightened her just how much he succeeded in his intention. She had thought herself quite immune to the kind of casual sexual encounter he had intended. She had dealt easily enough with other men who saw the cool, efficient exterior as some sort of challenge to their manhood. But Adam Blackmore had caught her off guard and ruthlessly exploited the situation. And he had succeeded in keeping her off balance ever since.

‘Tara?’

She started. ‘Sorry, Beth, what were you saying?’

‘Only that I thought I might have got through to him yesterday.’

‘Him?’ It took Tara a moment to work out who Beth was talking about. ‘Oh, Jim. Sadly, no. But I’d be interested to know exactly what you said to him. He professed to being shocked by your language.’

‘Clearly not shocked enough.’ Beth was defiant. ‘But I did tell him that if he comes to the office again I’m going to call the police.’