The Passionate Mistake (13 page)

There was a glint in his eye that muted then became rueful as he read her expression and shook his head.
“I shouldn’t play with fire. You make me burn. Come on sunshine, let’s go feed ourselves and try to have a proper conversation before we fall back into bed.”

She felt like pouting and flouncing, piqued to be roused so easily then set aside. But she reined in her temper. He was being reasonable. She wouldn’t look like an idiot in front of him by snarling about it. So she was silent instead
. They walked the block to the restaurant, where they were shown to their seats.

She was a little stiff as he made small talk, but she soon thawed out. It was difficult not to respond to his natural warmth. Within minutes they were laughing
as he told a funny story about diving for shellfish, inspired by the menu. They settled on sharing a seafood platter, ordered that and wine, and as he moved into describing a recent holiday on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia she relaxed back into her seat, charmed by his enthusiasm and the vigorous hand gestures that added to his descriptions.

“I thought you never got away from wo
rk,” she said when he came to the end of his tale.

“It was hard to go. I wasn’t away long, and I was in touch more than I should have been,” he said with a faintly guilty
look. “I know chapter and verse about living a balanced life and avoiding stress. And I do try. But it’s hard to believe I’m not crucial.”

“Did your staff manage okay while you were gone?”

“Almost better than I’d like,” he said, and laughed. “Very unflattering. I suppose you don’t have the same problems, with your father in charge of the business.”

She smiled and raised her eyebrows in a deliberately ambiguous response. The family business was the last thing she wanted to talk about.

“Do you find it easier or harder to work for family?” he asked.

“I don’t really know. I haven’t worked anywhere else. Or . . . well . . . I did once for a short period of time.
Which left me wondering if perhaps I should move on.” She stopped, as she felt a wave of guilt to imply anything unpleasant about her family.

He tilted his head and raised his brows in a wordless inquiry.

“Oh,” she waved her hands helplessly, “It was just . . . you know. The other company I worked for was a happy place. I suppose you’d say there was much more of a drive for employee satisfaction.”

“The family firm suffered by contrast?” he asked, nothing but sympathy in his face
, though she half-expected disapproval at her disloyalty. She would have got short shrift within the family if she had ever ventured a criticism of the way things were done in Techdos, and she’d never really talked about the company with anyone else.

“Not the firm itself. I like the work. I like computers and software. But the . . .
” mentally she tried out ‘conflict,’ ‘politics,’ and ‘stress’ for size, before settling on the more neutral “. . . dynamics of the relationships make it a struggle sometimes.”

“Is it just you and your D
ad? Or do you have other family members involved?”

“
My brother too – my twin. And our employees.”

“You have a twin? That must have been interesting growing up.”
She breathed an internal sigh of relief as the topic moved to ground that felt less dangerous.

“Yeah.
Damian’s a force to be reckoned with. He’s a lot like Dad. Once he’s made up his mind you just can’t shift him. There was always plenty of yelling in our house. The rest of us had to shout just to be heard.”

“But a lot of love with it?
”

“For sure,” she said almost automatically. But his listening silence invited her to go on, and sh
e found herself saying: “Until Mum died. It was harder after that.” His lips pressed together and he took up her hand that was lying on the table in his large, warm one and waited. “It was about eight years ago now. She was . . . lovely. Very gentle. Soft voice. Soft hands. She poured oil on the waters. Always reminded us we were family, and family comes first, and we shouldn’t argue. We should be kind to each other. Without her it didn’t work quite so well.”

“That must have been very tough for you all.”

“Worst for Janet and Luke. He was eight and she was ten when Mum died. They really needed her. It was sad.”

“I’m sure you al
l needed her,” he said quietly, and she looked away as she felt the sting of unwelcome tears crowd her eyes. Damn, her emotions were close to the surface this week. In her head she heard Dad’s voice: ‘Sympathy is an enemy. It doesn’t fix a damn thing. It just encourages self pity. And self pity is a deadly trap. It can stop a person in their tracks.’ 

So she fixed a bright, empty smile on her lips and said dismissively, “
Probably. But that was years ago and we’re fine now. So what’s your family like? Lots of brothers and sisters?” She slid her hand out of his, pretending to adjust her hair as the reason for the withdrawal.

She watched him weigh her question before answering, and she dreaded him poking further at the tender spot she had thoughtlessly revealed to him. But after a moment he let it pass,
obviously respecting her desire to move the focus back to him.

“One sister.
Parents, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents. I’ve been lucky. Everyone’s still alive, and we’re close.”

“That’s nice. And
you said you worked with your Mum in your business for a while, so you know what that’s like. You don’t need me to tell you,” she said, remembering.

“Ah yes, but I was pretty careful to keep her offsite.
She was allowed to see the accounts. If I’d let her enter the building just once she would have taken it over and that would be the end of me managing my own company.”

“So she’s bossy then?”

“Capable, is the word I’d use. Commanding even. I don’t have the courage to be in the same city as her while I call her bossy,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes, the corners of them folding up into attractive creases.

“Coward,
” she taunted with a smile.

“I prefer ‘wise.’”
He assumed a dignified pose, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest.

“So she’s commanding and you’re wise.”

“That’s right.”

“Just making sure I’ve got that straight.”

“Flawless. I think this is our platter.”

“Are you changing the subject?”

“Now why would I do that?”

They talked and laughed their way through a beautiful meal. For Kate everything was heightened by the knowledge of transien
ce. It would pass away so soon; she would snatch every moment and make the most of it. So perhaps she was warmer, quicker to enthuse, to reach across the table to hold Mike’s hand. It was like being drunk, without drinking more than two glasses of wine. She put her guardedness aside and relaxed into the moment.

It felt good. It felt so good.
And easy, and happy, and
right
. So she shut out that nagging, cautious part of herself that would urge her to be safe, to weigh her words and keep her feelings to herself. Let him see she liked him. Let him see she took pleasure in his company, a simple happiness that was beyond sex.

Though when she thought about it that undertone was there too, permeating everything.
When he took his jacket off she admired the breadth of his shoulders, saw them bare in her mind’s eye. She looked at his hair and could almost feel it between her fingers, wavy and thick. His hand stroking the stem of his wine glass made her quiver with the thought of that hand on the secret places of her body.

She slipped in and out of a day-dreaming anticipation, the brief silences between them teeming with possibilities of what would come when they were alone. She caught him returning
her sensual stare with a hot one of his own and it made the breath catch in her throat.

“Dessert?” he asked softly.

“I think I’ve had enough food,” she said, letting her lips curl into a smile of sultry significance.

He caught her meaning immediately, but when he lifted her hand to his lips and folded a little kiss into her palm he introduced
sweetness to it, a touch of romance. He was too good. She was falling too hard.

But she wouldn’t think about it like that. She would just enjoy him, she reminded herself again.
And when he held her hand as they walked back to his car she sighed and leaned into him a little. When had she ever held hands with anyone, man or boy, other than him? Never that she could remember. But from the first she had reached out to him like that, linked them together.

Like a couple. Like a pair, a partnership.

Stop thinking about it!

S
he waylaid him, stepping back against the wall of the building they were passing, dragging him by the lapels of his coat, pulling him in close. His eyes widened in surprise, becoming lascivious delight in an instant as he met her willingly. His arms went around her, one hand sliding under her bottom to hitch her further up the thigh he thrust between her legs, so she straddled it, toes only just touching the ground, his other arm a bar in the small of her back.

She grasped his head, brin
ging it down to her to kiss him ferociously, one hundred percent lust with no room for tenderness. He went her one better, sucking on her and drawing her in until she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, they were so tightly enmeshed. It was like the civilized dinner had never occurred, as if they were still stuck in that last kiss, where she had heard ‘I want to be inside you’ so clearly from him. She heard it again, and it made her knees weaken in compliance, in readiness to open to him, to bring him into her.

He staggered the last few feet to his car, virtually carrying her, opening the back seat and bundling them both in. If anyone saw them she didn’t know it, didn’t care to know it. All she could see, could feel, could breathe was him.

She straddled him, hands groping at the front of his trousers with frantic haste. But his fingers were already there, freeing himself. She took his hardness in her hand, placing the tip just so as she held the crotch of her panties to one side and lowered herself onto him.

They groaned in simultaneous relief as he slid home in her. Her soft wetness enfolded him gladly, after the long hour of subtle arousal.

He sat in the centre of the narrow back seat, no leg room, no clearance for their heads. But there was enough space, just enough, to squirm, rise and fall an inch or two, to grind and press into him until she felt the rise of sensation that signaled impending orgasm.

She couldn’t help herself. She opened her eyes, unable to keep her distance. He was staring straight at her at close range, watching her drive herself mad riding him, driving him mad too, if the flare of his nostrils, his lips drawn back from his teeth was any indication. His hands were cupping the breasts he had freed from the top of her dress, her arms pinned to her sides by the straps he had pulled down to get at them.

“This . . . is . . . insane,” he said in a guttural whisper.

“I know. I know,” she muttered, and came, burying her face in the curve of his neck, boneless, weightless and trembling. A moment later she felt him give a convulsive heave and shudder, and he
pulsed within her.

“Insane,” he repeated a minute later, on a whisper of a laugh, his breathing slowed almost
to normal. She nodded and made a small noise of agreement, her head resting on his shoulder. His arms had come round her, holding her in a gentle hug that was almost comforting in the aftermath of their reckless rush to join their bodies.

“I’m not normally quite this crass. I have been thinking about you a lot this past two weeks.”

“Crass? Who said anything about crass?” she responded lightly, avoiding the latter part of his statement. “Oh, you’re talking about
this
. Let me tell you, anything you do in the back of a car like this is
claaassy
.” She drew the last word out in imitation of an obnoxiously social-climbing character popular on prime time TV at the moment, and knew he had caught the reference when he snorted appreciatively.

“That’s good to know. I hadn’t tried it before.”

“Stick with me babe. It’s gravy all the way,” she continued, still in character, and he shifted her so he could grin into her face.

She must have looked odd, for his smile faded and he asked: “What is it?”
She had been thinking she could stay there forever, perfectly content with his arms around her, his laughter against her chest, his body and the essence of him deep within her.

“Nothing, nothing,” she hastily assured him, turning her own smile up to full wattage, and st
arting to lever herself off him, sliding her fallen shoulder straps back into place. She checked the hem of her skirt was where it should be, then opened the car door and stepped out onto the pavement, opening the front door and slipping inside in almost the same motion, leaving him alone in the back seat.

She hear
d the quiet sound of his zipper. A moment later he joined her in the front, looking virtually the same as he had in the restaurant. One couldn’t tell he’d just been ravished in the back seat. She hoped she looked as well put together, and took a fleeting glance in the rearview mirror. No obvious damage.