Partners by Contract (10 page)

The light breeze blew back her hair and drew the silky loose fabric of her pyjamas tight against her slim body, moulding the firm curves of her small high breasts and
tracing lovingly the long shapely line of her slim hips and thighs.

It was an image that made Connor forget completely the prepared speech that was meant to get him over the threshold without any big drama. As it happened, he didn’t need to say anything because Phoebe showed no signs of slamming the door in his face. She was just standing there, the thin silky things plastered to her like a second skin.

‘It’s you!’

Phoebe, it seemed, was only slightly more articulate than himself. Sweating lightly with the effort, Connor dragged his lustful eyes up to eye level.

Phoebe discovered that she wasn’t actually surprised to see Connor standing there. Lack of surprise wasn’t the same thing as lack of response. She ran her tongue over her suddenly bone-dry lips as the obligatory shivery response slid all the way down her spine to her curling toes. Her sleepiness had totally vanished.

‘How are you this morning?’

‘Perfectly fine,’ she responded impatiently. ‘Is that what you came to say?’ Grasping the doorhandle in a businesslike manner, she slid behind it, effectively hiding everything but her head from his view.

‘It isn’t.’

‘This had better be good,’ she warned him. ‘This is my first day off in a fortnight.’

‘I’m not here in my capacity as senior partner, Phoebe.’

This perfectly innocuous statement made her heartbeat kick up another notch. ‘Then why are you here?’

‘You’re pretty grouchy for a birthday girl.’ Surprise flickered briefly in her amber eyes. ‘Happy birthday, Phoebe.’

It didn’t feel a happy day, her birthday—Penny’s birthday. Of all the days of the year, this one reminded Phoebe
most of what she’d lost. The grief and sense of bereavement were, as always, mingled with a sense of guilt, and the reason for that guilt was standing there as large as life and twice as attractive.

‘I was trying hard to forget what day it is,’ she admitted, eyeing him in a wary, resentful fashion.

‘I can understand that.’ His eyes skimmed her delicate pale features, noting the pale purplish shadows in the hollows beneath her eyes. He wondered how much sleep she’d had last night or if, like him, she hadn’t had any. ‘Were you asleep?’

Lust was replaced by less fierce, but no less intense emotions as he contemplated a time when he’d be able to watch her sleep, her head on the pillow beside him.

Phoebe lifted a self-conscious hand to her hair. ‘Tousled’ was too polite a word to describe what she felt.

‘If I say yes will you go away?’ she asked hopefully.

Connor’s good humour was frustratingly impervious to her unfriendly attitude.

‘Not possible. I’ve sent the taxi away.’

‘You think of everything,’ she grumbled, clenching her teeth in frustration.

‘I try.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Is that coffee I smell?’

‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you?’ she muttered sarcastically as she was left with little option but to follow him into the kitchen. He seemed to know his way around.

‘Well, it was never my home exactly, but I did spend some school holidays next door when Gran was alive.’ He turned in time to see the startled expression across her face.

‘You didn’t know I owned this place? I assumed...’ He shrugged. ‘No matter. It was the original surgery I was telling you about. My grandparents lived in the house next door,’ he explained. ‘The old place is too big for a single man. It needs children to fill up the rooms, and it seemed
highly unlikely that I’d ever have any.’ Phoebe bit back the automatic protest that rose to her lips at this unemotional statement—Con would make a great dad. ‘So I rented out the big house and at the same time converted the old surgery into this neat bijou residence you now see.’

‘Nobody told me,’ she protested weakly. There was a distracting soft-focus image in her head of Connor living in the sprawling Victorian house surrounded by rosy-cheeked children. If he married Ellen they’d all be blonde, though Ellen didn’t come over as the maternal type, but that, she conceded ruefully, could be her bias speaking.

‘I don’t expect they thought it was relevant. Have you been comfortable here?’

Phoebe nodded, but didn’t think it necessary to mention the fact that the comfort factor had recently diminished dramatically. Connor’s shoulders were almost as wide as the narrow space between the work units that ran either side of the room, and the effect was distinctly claustrophobic. Her heart had gone into pitter-pat mode and her mouth was dry.

‘That’s good. I seem to recall the last incumbent had some problems with the heating.’

‘Did you come here to discuss the heating?’ Her clenched teeth were beginning to ache. ‘Why won’t you be having any children?’ she was horrified and unprepared to hear herself blurt out.

Under the steady, interested regard of his lusciously lashed eyes she went bright red.

‘I mean... Doesn’t Ellen...?’ She lifted her hands to her burning cheeks in a gesture of intense embarrassment. There came a time when sensible people stopped digging the hole they’d climbed into, and this was definitely that time!

‘What has the fact I don’t have children got to do with
Ellen?’ he demanded, a hint of hauteur in his blue eyes as they swept over her face.

‘It’s hard to keep private things private in a community like this,’ Phoebe commiserated, struggling nobly against her baser instincts—the ones that wanted to warn him that Ellen was a cold, manipulative bitch—and trying desperately to be big about his relationship with the other woman.

She wasn’t sure why she was bothering. It wasn’t as if he needed her approval, and the effort was obviously wasted as his expression remained distinctly disinterested.

‘No quicker way to fit in than to join in the cosy communal muck-raking sessions.’

The gross unfairness of this casual insult took her breath away. ‘For goodness’ sake, Con!’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘A bit of friendly gossip is hardly muck-raking, and you can hardly expect people not to notice when you go on holiday with the woman!’ she finished sourly. ‘They’re bound to draw their own conclusions.’

The contemplative smile that played about his lips as he surveyed her discomposed features made her drop her eyes self-consciously from his. ‘And what conclusions did you draw?’

‘If you want to keep your romantic liaisons secret, you ought to look further from home for your partners...not that it’s any of my business,’ she added a bit belatedly.

‘I thought my love life came into the realm of public property.’

Her chin went up.

‘Actually,’ she explained in a goaded voice, ‘I was about to say, before you interrupted, that I think you’d make a very good dad.’ So much for not digging the hole any deeper!

A silence followed her announcement, the sort of silence that had more undercurrents than was healthy.

‘Thank you.’

She finally worked up the courage to lift her head and discovered he was watching her with a lopsided smile that made her stomach flip over. There was an intensity—a fierceness—in his eyes that trebled the stomach effect.

She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘If you want a cup of coffee, go through to the sitting room.’ This was rather a grand term for the tiny box-like room just big enough for a two-seater couch and a single armchair.

‘Is that an invitation?’ Connor gave full rein to his charismatic smile, adding to her misery.

No, desperation, she could have replied.

‘No, that’s concern for the fixtures and fittings,’ she lied glibly instead. ‘I’ve no doubt it states in the small print that I’m liable for any breakages.’ Phoebe, her teeth dithering in helpless reaction to his presence, tightened her arms protectively around herself.

‘I know the landlord. I can put in a good word for you...but actually I don’t want a cup of coffee.’

‘I think we’ve covered what you don’t want. Do you think you’ll get around to what you do want any time soon?’ She was hard put not to scream at him to get on with it.

There was a lengthy pause during which Phoebe realised that, despite his languid attitude, Connor might not be as relaxed as he appeared. A faint nerve jumped spasmodically in his lean cheek and the bunched muscles of his neck and powerful shoulders didn’t give the impression of relaxation. In fact, the mega-tension his rigid body was radiating wouldn’t have been out of place in someone contemplating jumping into space off a tall building—there
was the same reckless expression, in his vivid blue eyes she imagined such a person might have.

‘Have you got anything planned for today?’

Anticlimax.

Phoebe got the impression he’d changed his mind about what he’d been about to say at the last moment.

‘Sleep.’

‘You can do that later,’ he announced in a high-handed manner. For a man on crutches he seemed to generate an almost indecent amount of energy and vitality, she reflected sourly. ‘I want to give you your birthday present first.’

‘I don’t want—’ she began stiffly.

‘You’ll want this one,’ he countered smoothly, pushing aside her rejection with an arrogant confidence that set her teeth on edge. ‘I’ve been waiting to give it to you for four years.’

Phoebe’s curiosity was piqued despite her better judgement. She thought about the first birthday gift he’d given her and a sparkle of merriment appeared in her eyes.

‘It’s not a parachute jump this time is it?’

‘You remembered. I’m touched.’

‘I think the fact I ended up with a fractured tib and fib has something to do with that.’ Phoebe, her expression wry, brushed her bare toes against the now healthily knitted bones of her lower leg, recalling how, with exams looming, a short stay in hospital to stabilise the fractures in her leg had been the last thing she’d needed. Connor had taken his responsibility for her predicament seriously. He’d brought in her books and notes and had helped her study—she’d passed with flying colours.

His rueful grin conceded this point. ‘You didn’t listen to a thing the instructor said about landing, did you?’

‘That could have something to do with the fact I was
virtually gibbering with fear at the time,’ she retorted indignantly. ‘I ask you, what sort of person gives someone with vertigo a parachute jump for a present?’

‘A creative, thoughtful person?’

Phoebe gave a scornful snort. Did creative and thoughtful men make creative and thoughtful lovers? The maverick thought popped into her head from nowhere. Copying the breathing exercises she’d taught to antenatal classes in her time, she surreptitiously exhaled long and hard and tugged fretfully at the neck of her top, creating a cool draught to cool her hot skin.

‘But seriously, Phoebe.’ As if in response to his own plea for less levity, the amused glitter faded from Connor’s eyes as they rested on her face. ‘We had a good day, didn’t we? Before you broke your leg, that is.’

Phoebe nodded, and swallowed past the emotional constriction that ached in her throat. They’d had a lot of good days. In fact, she hadn’t realised how good they’d been until they were gone.

‘We did, yes,’ she admitted gruffly.

Abruptly she tilted her head back and blinked several times at the ceiling while massaging the back of her neck, before framing a breezy reply.

‘I didn’t think you’d want to give me a present after yesterday.’

‘Oh, that. I’ve forgiven you.’

Phoebe’s mouth opened but, alerted by the gleam in his eyes, she just stopped short of rising to the bait. ‘I don’t see what the urgency is if it’s waited this long.’

‘Humour me.’

‘Do I have a choice?’

Phoebe watched, confused, as the laughter faded from his eyes, leaving a bleak, remote expression in its place.

‘I’m not the man to ask about choices, Phoebe. I’m an expert at making the wrong ones.’

Phoebe’s eyes slid uneasily from his. She got the impression he was leaving a lot unsaid—furthermore, she wasn’t sure she’d have wanted to hear what he’d had to say had he not clammed up.

‘If it makes you happy,’ she conceded abruptly, ‘I’ll go along with this, but I can only spare you an hour.’

Some of the tension seemed to ease from his broad shoulders. ‘Excellent!’

Uneasy about the wisdom of her swift surrender, she rationalised her reckless decision by reflecting on the innate stubbornness of Connor’s character. In the long run it would be simpler and less time-consuming to humour him. It had nothing whatever to do with the fact that she hungered for his company, it had even less to do with the fact she felt more alive in his presence than she had done for years.

‘It might be an idea if you got dressed,’ he said, wondering what she’d have said if he’d opted for the much more pleasurable option of, Let me undress you. His imagination provided a very stimulating mental image of his own hands pulling down those satiny trousers over pale slim thighs...

It wasn’t as if there was anything particularly suggestive about the way his blue gaze travelled over her body, but it did make her uneasily wish she’d paused to put on a dressing-gown earlier.

‘Why?’ Phoebe was alarmed to hear her voice crack huskily.

‘Don’t ask questions, just—’ The effort of getting his libido in line made Connor’s mellow voice unusually harsh.

‘Do as I’m told?’ she derided.

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ he drawled wryly.

Phoebe showered and dressed in record time. She sat in front of the dressing-table mirror and combed her wet hair, trying not to think about what she was doing. If she did, almost certainly panic would set in.

‘I brought your coffee through.’

Phoebe shot to her feet, sending several items off the dressing-table to the floor as the broad shoulders attached to the only man in the world who had a voice that could reduce her to a mass of inarticulate craving appeared in the doorway.

‘Your crutches!’ she cried out huskily in alarm. Of the two things which had sprung to mind, it was a slightly safer choice. Take me, I’m yours. That might have produced more dramatic results—although that might have been wishful thinking on her part—but on the whole she felt she’d made the grown-up decision.