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'Accept it, Josie, please.' He wasn't smiling any more, and there was something in his glance that made her toes curl. 'It would give me great pleasure to think of you wearing it sometimes. Partly because…' He raised a quizzical eyebrow as he paused, then said, 'You will have to think of me, however fleetingly, on those occasions.'
'You have worked hard on the Night Hawk project,' he continued as she still stared worriedly at him, 'and it was very important to me to get it right—to my mother too. We both know how much it would have meant to my father. So, the necklace is just a thank-you, if you would prefer to think of it like that. A small bonus for a job well done?'
'A small bonus?' She shook her head as she allowed a wry smile to play round her lips at the easy way he had explained away such a magnificent gift. 'If it gets out how you view a 'small bonus' you are going to be inundated with requests from people desperate to work for Hawkton Enterprises.'
'But they won't all have hair like red silk and golden eyes with flecks of green, will they?' he said, in such a conversational tone that the import of his words didn't strike home for a second or two. 'Do you have a coat?' he added coolly.
'A coat?' Her face was as blank as her voice.
'For the wearing of?' He eased himself off the desk and walked casually to the door. 'Because I'm taking you out to dinner…early.'
'I can't go now—'
'Oh, but you can, and you are.' He turned, and there was that quiet, calm determination in his face that wouldn't take no for an answer. 'Andy and Mike are delighted to have you leave before them for once; you make them feel most inadequate, you know.'
He spotted her coat in the corner of the room and flicked it off the hanger with his finger before slinging it across to her. 'Put it on and be quiet, there's a good girl. We'll call in and feed that striped hunter of yours on the way, of course. I've some salmon for him in the car.'
'Salmon?'
'I promised him some when I hauled him out of that stinking garage,' Luke said matter-of-factly. 'I figured I owed him. It's not often a man's given such a chance to impress his lady love, is it? It did impress you, I hope?' he added mockingly.
'Luke, this is crazy,' she said helplessly as she slipped her arms into her coat. 'You know there's no point—'
'Everyone can be a little crazy sometimes—didn't you know?' He smiled in satisfaction as she walked across the room towards him, the emerald glowing in the hollow of her throat like a green flame. 'And this is your birthday. This is your turn to be crazy. Besides which, according to one of my close friends, who was the only one with the nerve to tell me, I've become impossible to be around the last few weeks.' He smiled cynically with his mouth but the smile didn't reach the intent, narrowed eyes. 'So I decided I needed another fix.'
'Another fix?' She stared up at him as she reached his side, tiny and fragile against his hard bulk.
'Another fix of the drug called Josie Owens,' he said coolly. 'It's the very devil, but once you've had a taste…'
Mog viewed the salmon with something approaching ecstasy, winding ingratiatingly round Luke's legs as he tipped it onto a saucer and then making a thorough pig of himself as he ate it without pausing for breath.
'Right, that's one satisfied customer,' Luke said easily, his eyes glinting at Josie as she stood watching him in the kitchen doorway. 'Now bid him a fond farewell and we'll be off.'
'I can't go like this.' She glanced down at her office clothes in horror. 'I must change first, Luke. Is it formal or informal?'
'Informal. Definitely informal.' His eyes were warm. 'And you look fine to me.'
'No, really. I must just freshen up.' She fled to the bedroom, pulled off the neat tailored blouse and skirt she had worn all day and opened her wardrobe door as she kicked off her high heels. And then she froze as she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Was that bright-eyed, flushed, radiant girl really her? A trickle of dark warning iced down her back. She had to be careful—so, so careful. She had been right when she had called this craziness; it was. Mad, dangerous insanity.
She glanced down at herself, deliberately folding back her bikini pants and running the tip of a trembling finger along her scar. There could be no future in this, not ever— not even if Luke himself wanted it that way. He wanted children, a family, an heir one day; he had told her that himself.
And then the memory of how she had felt this morning came back in all its darkness, and she shook her head at the reflection in the mirror, her eyes suddenly hostile. There was nothing wrong with having dinner with him this once; there wasn't. And she was going to. Damn it all, she was going to.
The rebellious mood lasted until Luke drove the Mercedes through two massive iron gates set in an eight-foot-high brick wall, having opened the fortress from the car by remote control, and proceeded along a long, curving drive which finished in front of an elegant, Georgian-style mansion surrounded by leafy trees and smooth green lawns.
'This is your house,' she said flatly as reality dawned.
'Frequented by a resident housekeeper and her handyman husband along with several cats, in case you're worried you will be all alone with the big bad wolf,' Luke drawled mockingly. 'Mrs Hodges has been in the kitchen all day preparing for tonight, so don't throw a wobbly on me now,' he added warningly.
The interior of the house was stunning, as she had known it would be, from the uniquely beautiful galleried entrance hall to the large, high-ceilinged reception rooms, right through to the massive olde-worlde kitchen, where Josie met the redoubtable Mrs Hodges, flushed and busy, in an atmosphere that was redolent with the smells of delicious home cooking. Traditional elegance was married with a softer, more homely feel, the effect of which was heightened by the presence of several plump, well-fed cats in the luxurious drawing room who were lying in cosy harmony around a roaring log fire.
She loved it all, but then she had known she would. He lived here, after all.
'It's very nice,' she said stiffly as he gestured for her to be seated in the drawing room. 'Lovely.'
'Thank you.' That quizzical look was back in his eyes as he watched her sit on the very edge of a soft cream leather sofa, her knees pressed tightly together and her hands resting primly on her lap. 'I know you don't usually drink, but as it's your birthday…' He indicated a bottle of vintage champagne resting in the cradle of its ice bucket at one side of the cocktail cabinet. 'One glass, perhaps?'
She wanted to say no—tonight more than any other she needed to stay fully alert and razor-sharp—but it would have been too rude, so she nodded smilingly, and when she sipped the faintly pink, icy-cold liquid a moment or two later it tasted like silky, sparkling nectar, in no way resembling the champagne of lunchtime. 'It's—'
