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rawing her on to a place she had never been before. The shadowed darkness had enclosed them in their own little world of touch and taste and smell and he had pulled her into him so she’d been half lying across him, his mouth doing wonderful things to the sensitive flesh of her ears, her throat, the soft, silky skin over her collar-bone above the cashmere jumper.
She had known her control had been paper-thin and she didn’t doubt he’d picked up the signs her body had been giving, so why hadn’t he tried for more intimacy? Desire had dampened her skin and brought a throbbing ache in the core of her, but he had done no more than kiss and caress her. Of course they had been in the back of the taxi, but he hadn’t so much as brushed her breasts on top of her clothes. Not that she wanted him to, of course, she lied vehemently. And she definitely did not want to see him again either, so it was just as well he hadn’t suggested it. They had parted on relatively good terms—her skin burnt as she recalled the last lingering caress just before the taxi had drawn up outside Ivy Cottage—so that was a civilised ending to what had not been a civilised day in parts. One hand moved to her knees, which were tight and sore.
And now she had to get some sleep. She breathed slowly and deeply, consciously shutting off her whirling thoughts as she employed a technique she’d perfected during the last caustic months with Perry and the ensuing aftermath. It took longer than usual but eventually she fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, curled under the duvet like a small, solitary animal.
The next morning bedlam reigned, as it so often did in the mad rush to get the twins dressed, fed and ready for school and herself out of the house by eight o’clock, but when Peter pipped his horn outside the cottage gate Kay was ready.
‘Hi.’ Her brother’s greeting was distracted but that wasn’t unusual; he’d never been much good in the mornings. Kay welcomed this today, it meant he’d probably forgotten all about her lunch with Mitchell the previous day and so she needn’t go into the whole wretched story. She normally rode to work on her motorbike and Peter and Tom had a van each, but the bike had needed an overhaul and so she was picking it up at the garage near the office first thing.
‘Hi yourself.’ She settled herself into the seat beside him. She was already dressed in her leathers and intended to go straight to the first job from the garage. ‘I’m out all day but there are a couple of breaks for both you and Tom in the schedule; make sure you check the answer machine as soon as you get back to the office, won’t you? And of course any new deliveries you can fit in today take on, and don’t forget to write everything down.’
‘Sure thing, boss.’ Peter spared her a fleeting grin before pulling away into the traffic.
‘We’re going to have to get someone in to man the phone if nothing else,’ Kay mused out loud as the van sped along. ‘With all the work we’ve got I’m rarely in the office these days, and it would be great for someone to be in charge in there and do some of the day-to-day paperwork. I’m so behind with it.’
Peter nodded. ‘Talking of all the work we’ve got, how did your meeting with Mitchell Grey go?’ he asked casually. Too casually.
Kay stared at him. ‘Mum phoned you,’ she said flatly.
‘Well, not exactly, it was more… Yes, she did,’ he admitted wryly, keeping his eyes on the traffic ahead.
She might have known! There were times when she felt she was living her life in a goldfish bowl. ‘So? What exactly did she say?’ She tried, and failed, to keep the annoyance out of her voice.
‘Just that the lunch hadn’t gone too well—something about you having jumped out of a window,’ Peter said, as though such an occurrence were perfectly normal—and that he’d turned up at the house and you were seeing him last night.’
‘That about sums it up,’ Kay said shortly.
‘Any business coming our way from him?’ It was hopeful.
‘No.’
‘Right.’
The rest of the journey to the garage was conducted in silence.
By the time Kay drew up outside Ivy Cottage at six in the evening she was bone-tired. The day had gone well without any hitches, the weather had been kindness itself—mild, sunny with a positively warm breeze—and she’d had plenty of time for a snack at lunch time plus a couple of coffee breaks during the day. So why, she asked herself as she wearily parked the bike at the side of the house and pulled off her crash helmet, did she feel as if everything was wrong? It wasn’t like her.
She flexed her aching neck muscles, looking up into the dark evening sky as she did so. It was Halloween in a day or two, then Guy Fawkes night and before you knew it Christmas would be upon them and the end of another year would be fast approaching. And it had been a good year. The business had grown, the twins were well and happy and had taken to big school like ducks to water. Her mother was settled and comfortable in her mind again, and Peter and his family were financially secure after finally paying off the last of the debts that had accumulated during the time her brother had been out of work, before she’d started Sherwood Delivery.
So—everything positive and nothing negative. Moonlight lay in silver pools in the garden and someone somewhere had lit a bonfire earlier, the smell of wood smoke drifting in the breeze and adding to the perfection of an English autumn evening. Stars sparkled above, the last of the dying leaves on the trees whispered below—and she couldn’t stop thinking of Mitchell Grey. It was a relief to finally admit it to herself.
Kay lowered her head, staring blindly into the sleeping garden as the faint sounds of a television and children’s laughter from within the house brushed over her.
What was it about him that had so got under her skin? she asked herself silently. She knew there wasn’t one single thing going for any sort of relationship between them, and they were as far apart as east was to west, so why had he been there in her head for every second of every minute of the day?
Was it just the dizzying and lethal combination of fascination and danger? Or the sexual magnetism he exuded like no other man she had ever come into contact with? Or the potent aphrodisiac of wealth and success and power?
She leant back against the wall of the house, taking a deep lungful of sweet smoky air. Whatever, she was in a spin and she had never felt like this before, alive from the top of her head to the soles of her feet—tinglingly, frighteningly, thrillingly alive.
‘Stop it.’ She actually spoke the words out loud, needing to hear them. ‘Stop this right now. It’s over, finished, not that it ever really began. You were just an irritating hiccup in his busy life, that’s all. He didn’t ask to see you again, which is just as well. You are a mother of two children, not exactly the sort of woman Mitchell Grey would go for.’
She took a few more lungfuls of air before straightening her shoulders and raising her chin.
It would be dangerous to get mixed up with him, very, very dangerous; every instinct in her body was telling her so. And with Georgia and Emily relying on her to be both mother and father, danger was not an option. Everything had worked out for the best and these ridiculous feelings would soon shrivel and die. They would have to.
She marched round the side of the house to the front door, opening it and stepping into warm light and the delicious smell of one of her mother’s pot roasts—that and the sweet perfume emanating from the most gigantic basket of flowers set at an angle on the coffee-table to catch her eye as soon as she came in.
‘Kay! Hallo, darling.’ Her mother appeared from the direction of the kitchen at the same time as the twins jumped up from the sitting-room carpet where they had been lying in their pyjamas playing a board game together.
