The Thorn in His Side (14 page)

‘We did not meet casually. You almost killed me.’

‘And you’re never going to let me forget it!’

If only she could let herself. Her brain had recorded and stored every second of the time she had spent with him along with a few that hadn’t happened—
yet!

Libby’s gasp of horror locked painfully in her aching throat; her eyelashes lowered in a protective sweep. The moment she started acting as though this was inevitable she was in trouble.

‘Will you stop staring at your shoes and look at me?’

‘No.’

Rafael’s lips curved into a reluctant smile. ‘You sound like a sulky five-year-old. Look,’ he said, dragging a hand through his hair as he took a step closer. ‘Neither of us chose for this to happen but it has.’

Libby shook her head. ‘Nothing has happened.’

Rafael, not a man inclined to wrap things up with pretty words, opened his mouth fully expecting to hear himself say something along the lines of, I want to have sex with you, with the option of throwing in the additional information of the imminent risk to his sanity if he didn’t.

Instead he heard the sentence, ‘I would like to get to know you better,’ come out of his mouth.

She did look at him then. The astonishment on her face did not even begin to approach the shock he was feeling, but then she did not know that he had just said something he had never even thought, let alone voiced, in his life.

The wheels of Rafael’s mind began to turn. For whatever reason he had given voice to subconscious thoughts he would have been more comfortable ignoring, but they were out there now.

He had not so much actively avoided emotional entanglements as not felt the need to become involved. He was self-sufficient and not into sharing himself with others.

Without him even realising it, his interest in a woman had for the first time in his life gone past the physical. Not only had Libby aroused a primal hunger that refused to subside, she had somehow got into his head.

‘Because you’re interested in my mind and not my body.’

Rafael cut her an impatient look. ‘And my body does nothing for you at all, I suppose.’ He flicked the button
on his jacket with one finger, a slow mocking smile curving his lips as he held his hands wide.

A distracted expression drifted across Libby’s face as she was unable to refuse the unspoken invitation in his actions—her first mistake. The next was to allow herself to imagine what lay beneath the silk shirt he wore, to allow the image of hard satiny skin and taut muscle to form in her head, an image so strong, so tactile, that it seemed more real to her than the pain she felt as her teeth dug into the soft flesh of her lower lip.

Libby felt things twist and tighten low in her belly, her appreciation sliding seamlessly from the aesthetic into primitive fascination.

The effort of dragging her eyes away brought a sheen of moisture to her smooth brow. She was horrified. She had never felt this level of fascination for a man’s body before. She was mad with herself for being so weak and with him for being so damned sure of himself.

So damned unbelievably gorgeous.

‘You don’t like what you see.’

‘I see a man who has serious self-esteem issues.’

Despite the frustration that was stretching his frayed control to the limit, the sarcastic sally drew a laugh from Rafael.

‘Look, the fact is we have chemistry.’ A week to think about little else and that is the best you can come up with, Rafael?
Chemistry!

Chemistry was a pathetically inadequate word hardly covering the wanting that had filled his every waking moment since he had laid eyes on her. The primitive power of the reaction she evoked in him was like nothing he had ever experienced.

‘You know I’m attracted to you.’

Libby turned her head, ashamed of the flutter of excitement low in her belly.

‘And don’t pretend that knowledge does not excite you.’

‘We may have …
chemistry,’
she admitted the charge, enunciating the word with distaste. ‘But I
also have a brain.’ She saw no point in mentioning the fact it was not functioning at that moment. ‘Nothing is ever going to happen between us. Even if I wanted it to I couldn’t …’

‘Why?’

‘You’re not serious!’ She studied his chiselled patrician features with an expression of sheer incredulity.

‘I see nothing stopping us enjoying a sexual relationship.’

Libby forced a laugh and struggled to maintain a veneer of calm, conscious as she did so of how fragile it was. ‘Me not wanting to sleep with you?’

He gave a shrug of acknowledgement. ‘If it were true, yes, it would.’

Their glances locked; it was Libby who looked away from his steady gaze first. ‘Even if I was into casual sex I couldn’t go to bed with a man who my family believes is responsible for …’ She stopped and gave a twisted smile. ‘Actually it would be easier to say what my family don’t think you’re responsible for.’ It had been simpler when she had shared their feelings.

‘I am not asking your family to have sex with me.’

Libby controlled the childish urge to stamp her foot—just. ‘It would be sleeping with the enemy!’ His inability to grasp the obvious was frustrating—almost as frustrating as looking at his mouth and not being able to kiss him. ‘I couldn’t do that to them, so short of having a secret affair … It’s bad enough the way they look at me
now,’ she reflected with sigh. ‘Imagine if …’ She gave a shudder at the thought of how betrayed they’d feel. ‘I’d die if it came out!’ And things like that inevitably did.

Rafael searched her face. She seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that she had offered him any offence.

It was not as though he wanted to advertise details of his personal life on a billboard, but he had never before encountered a woman who announced that she would be ashamed to have it known she shared his bed.

‘What have you told your family?’

‘Some but not all,’ she admitted. ‘They don’t know that you might not close the firm.’

A look of amazement chased across the surface of his lean face. ‘They don’t know?’

She shook her head.
‘Maybe
they’d be all right with it, but the truth is I honestly don’t know how they’d react, not after the way they reacted when I said I’d handed in my notice to work for you.’

A look of shock crossed his face. ‘You handed in your notice?’

She nodded. ‘I’m serious about this.’ She looked at him and thought uneasily, Are you? ‘It didn’t seem worth telling them everything when I might blow it anyway.’

‘But you are trying to save them.’

‘They might not see it that way.’

‘So you lied to them.’

‘That’s the thing with lies and half-truths—once you start it is difficult to stop.’ She finished speaking when the anger in his eyes brought her frowning scrutiny to his face.

For a man who was very good at hiding his feelings, he was not hiding them now. Libby did not have to look very closely to see that he was inexplicably angry—very angry.

‘However, relax. I am not about to be any woman’s dirty little secret, so consider the subject of our hypothetical affair closed.’

The pressure was off, she ought to be happy—of course she wasn’t. Perversely the moment the offer was retracted, almost before the door had closed behind him, Libby realised how much she had wanted to say yes, wanted to be persuaded to throw caution to the winds and be selfishly reckless.

L
IBBY
slipped on her trainers and popped her heels in her bag.

She had the timing down to a fine art and, as she had learnt, unforeseen delays could mean she missed her connection and got home even later.

The unforeseen delay this evening was Rafael’s tall blonde PA stroke mistress. On two occasions since she had started here Libby had caught glimpses of her outside the office. She wasn’t easy to miss; each time she had dodged her. It was not an acquaintance she felt eager to renew!

This time she did not have the option of running away. She stumbled into her and knocked the oversized designer bag the blonde was carrying out of her hands.

The contents spilled out across the corridor.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Libby mumbled, dropping to her knees to gather them up.

‘No problem,’ Gretchen said, opening her bag to allow Libby to drop the retrieved items back in. ‘No, the lipstick goes in the compartment and the tissues … great.’

The smile, all warmth and teeth, made Libby blink.

‘I’ve been hoping to get a chance to talk to you outside the office,’ the girl continued. ‘I know that the first time we met, you must have thought I was rude or barking, which as you now know I am—well, the barking bit anyhow.’ She looked at Libby’s face and laughed. ‘You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?’

Libby shook her head, struggling to reconcile her mental image of the statuesque blonde who had blanked her with this warm and effervescent woman.

‘I thought the grapevine would have filled you in, the general weirdness you witnessed at the crash scene, and I’m sorry I didn’t explain at the time. Poor you—that was my OCD kicking in, two of my worst nightmares being lateness and dirt. Most of the time I’m fairly normal.’

Libby, not quite sure how to respond to this confidence, mumbled an embarrassed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Oh, don’t be, you wouldn’t believe how much better I am. That therapist that Rafael made me go to, he’s just—’ She shook her head. ‘But enough about me. I’m really glad I bumped into you. I heard about earlier.’

Libby’s stomach took a sickening lurch. Did the entire building know or had Rafael not posted the events online yet?

The tall blonde patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry, you weren’t being singled out for special attention.’

‘Good to know.’ Did this mean he propositioned all staff or just the female ones? Libby wondered, biting back a bubble of hysterical laughter.

‘He’s got this thing about not bringing personal stuff into work, and there’s a zero-tolerance policy on office romances. It was just bad luck he walked in and saw you with your boyfriend.’

‘He wasn’t my boyfriend.’

‘Really?’ She arched a brow. ‘Not like Rafael to jump to conclusions, but you wouldn’t believe the mood he was in this evening. I hope he didn’t upset you too much. Remember, it’s not just you—he’s even got cranky with me in the past when I’ve taken calls from my partner, Cara, which is taking it too far.’

‘Cara, nice name.’ The penny clicked and Libby’s eyes flew wide. ‘A girl, you’re … oh, no, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the other girl said with a serene laugh as Libby blushed. ‘I get a lot of that. Some people even think that Rafael and me are an item.’

‘Amazing!’ Libby breathed faintly.

‘I sometimes think he only gave me the job in the first place because there was no chance of me falling for him. Well, you’ve seen him, so I don’t have to tell you how many girls get crushes on him.’

‘No … yes, you do have to tell me. I don’t find him at all attractive.’ Libby closed her eyes and thought, Please let me die now!

‘You’re not …?’

Libby blushed again and thought, Could I seem more provincial. ‘No, I’m not.’ Did the women of the world really fall into two categories: those in love with Rafael and those who were gay?

‘Not that I have a problem. I like men, just not
that
man … he …’ Judging it was about time she stopped digging the hole she was standing in, she glanced at her watch and said she’d miss her train if she didn’t run.

As she legged it down the corridor she heard Gretchen yell after her. ‘Oh, by the way, I love muffins and brownies …’

Actually she would probably miss the train anyway.

* * *

Outside Libby hunched her shoulders inside her thin coat. The temperature had dropped ten degrees since that morning and the wind was biting. She glanced at her watch and grimaced as she broke into a trot; she didn’t hear the car until it stopped right beside her.

Rafael leaned across and opened the passenger door. Libby, her heart pounding like a sledgehammer inside her ribcage, barely noticed as the door swung against her legs.

‘I’m in a hurry. My train—’

Rafael acted as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Get in.’

To her shame Libby found herself obeying the terse direction without even putting up a token protest. Telling herself as she slid into the leather seat that it was because someone might see her.

‘How long will it take you to get home on the train?’

‘It depends if the train’s on time,’ she said, thinking, Why are we having this conversation? ‘And if I catch the first connection, not the—’

Rafael cut through her calculations. ‘I can get you home earlier,’ he announced confidently.

‘You could,’ she agreed, suddenly breathless. ‘But why should you?’

‘I am a considerate guy?’

Libby didn’t respond to the dry humour in his voice, or register that it was not echoed in the driven expression glowing in his deep-set eyes, she was too busy with basic stuff like breathing. Her imagination was running riot. Was he about to repeat his earlier proposition?

The possibility made her throat grow dry. Was this a chance to change her mind, to make a total fool of herself?

Both maybe?

He arched a brow and studied her tense face. The inner fire he always sensed tantalisingly beneath that cool façade seemed closer to the surface as his glance connected with her wide blue eyes.

‘No?’ Then, impatience creeping into his manner, he added, ‘Does it matter why? The fact is I am willing to deliver you safely home, guarantee you get there when you should.’

‘I’m hearing a but.’ She was also hearing bells, which she was studiously ignoring.

‘Fasten your seat belt.’ He fastened his own and flashed an irritated look her way. ‘If I stay here much longer I’ll get a ticket. There is no but.’ He scanned her face, reading the scepticism and seeing the dark shadows under her eyes, the lines of strain etched in the skin around her mouth.

While he was not directly responsible for putting them there, he had to struggle to keep his protective instincts in check.

Something about this woman seemed to exaggerate all his emotional responses. One second he wanted to protect her from a light wind, the next he wanted to throttle her. The desire to fling her down and slide deep into her warm body was pretty much a constant.