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‘And whose fault is that? What on earth am I supposed to do in here without a skirt for an hour?’ she snapped unthinkingly, and went the same colour as her blouse as he started laughing. ‘Damn it, Blake—’
‘I’m sorry, Sparrow, I can’t help it—I love seeing you with ruffled plumage.’
Still laughing, he fetched a long black towelling robe from the adjacent bathroom and, flustered by the rare endearment and by his casual use of the ‘L’ word, Nora put it on, wriggling out of her skirt under his amused eye and stripping off her tights to drape over the bathroom rail while he spoke to his middle-aged secretary. When his poker-faced employee had left, he remained leaning against the closed door, looking at Nora as she nervously tightened the belt of the bulky robe.
‘I’m sorry about your job, ’he said gravely. ‘But I was serious about wanting to offer you one here. PresCorp has a big IT department and they’re always aggressively head-hunting for experienced staff of your calibre. I also regret I didn’t handle the problem of Hayley earlier, and protect you better from the inevitable fallout when our relationship went public…’
‘I don’t think I was going to stay on at Maitlands anyway,’ she admitted with a sigh. ‘It would have been too awkward. Ryan and Kelly have just got engaged—’ She broke off, suddenly remembering the reason she had been given a whisky bath. ‘Why did you want to stop me talking to Sir Prescott?’ She tensed in alarm as she foresaw a potentially cringe-making scene. ‘He wasn’t serious, was he, about getting everyone in for a champagne toast to our engagement?’
Blake’s shoulders lifted under the black silk. ‘Unfortunately, when Scotty gets his mind fixed on something it’s well nigh impossible to change it. He’s ferociously stubborn and a rampant opportunist—’
‘Gee, now who does that sound like?’ said Nora wryly, receiving a potent glare for her interruption.
‘I just didn’t want him putting words into my mouth. I prefer to speak for myself.’ He squared his shoulders against the door, as if facing a firing squad. ‘He’s been at me for years to settle down and marry. He thinks it would make me a better CEO, more loyal to the idea of staying with the company for life. He doesn’t want me making his mistake and having no one of the blood to carry on his legacy….’
‘So he was keen for you to marry Hayley,’ she dared to say thinly.
His head tipped back arrogantly. ‘He knew that was never on the cards. Besides, it wouldn’t have made any difference—she’s no more of a blood relation to Scotty than I am.’ The dry tone confirmed that he knew of the slanderous rumours.
Nora was beginning to picture a very demeaning scenario. She bit her lip. ‘So when that newspaper came out, you told him we were engaged as a temporary way of getting him off your back and defusing the likelihood of a scandal…’ she said hollowly.
Blake snibbed the lock on the door and walked across to where she stood, her slender back to his heavily laden desk.
‘There is no s
candal as far as I’m aware, and I certainly didn’t tell Scotty that I’d asked you to marry me.’
‘Oh!’ Her cheeks flaming, she deflated into mortified silence. Sticking her hands into the deep pockets of the robe, she forced herself bravely on. ‘You mean…he just assumed—’
‘I mean that I merely said I was thinking of asking you to marry me. Scotty being Scotty immediately advanced to the next step. Modesty should forbid me to say it, but it doesn’t seem to occur to him that any woman would refuse me….’
Nora’s breathing had stopped somewhere in his first sentence. ‘I—you—I don’t understand,’ she choked.
He reached up to gently finger the lapel of the robe, adjusting it where it folded across her breasts with meticulous hands. ‘Don’t you? And here I thought you might be feeling some of the things that I was feeling. It’s all happened so fast for us, though, hasn’t it? That’s what makes it so scary,’ he murmured, his eyes on his fingers rather than her pale face, and it came to her that he was as nervous as she was, that his hands weren’t quite steady….
‘It gives me a tiny inkling of what it must feel like for you when you’re somewhere up high, at the mercy of an uncontrollable force inside you that seems to be pushing and pulling you at the same time.’
He described the feeling so exactly that Nora shivered. His eyes flicked up to her face, dark and intense.
‘I’ve never asked a woman to marry me before, so I’m sorry if I’m not doing a very good job,’ he said softly. ‘We need each other, Nora.’
Her vulnerable mouth quivered, her golden eyes huge as they clung to his face, her hands stealing from her pockets to still his restless fingers.
‘Y-you’re talking about a sort of—marriage of convenience—?’
He looked thunderstruck. ‘The hell I am! I’m obviously not doing this right…’ He drew a breath, trying to curb his savage frustration. ‘You told me once that I can be very overwhelming, so I’ve been trying to hold back, to give you a chance to feel comfortable with me, rather than helpless or overpowered—’
‘Liar!’ she said, exultation battling her disbelief. ‘You’ve done your best to overwhelm me since the day we met!’
‘Only because I was so overwhelmed myself,’ he admitted with devastating sincerity. ‘You always gave as good as you got.’ His mouth quirked reminiscently. ‘Better, sometimes…I admire that.’ His voice dropped to a quiet, almost boyish, awkwardness. ‘I admire you.’
The simple declaration was unbearably moving. ‘Oh, Blake—’
His jaw clenched, as if she was daring to disagree. ‘Life happens, Nora. Sometimes when you’re least expecting it, fate throws a fantastic opportunity your way and you have to grab it with both hands, or risk losing it for ever.’ He turned his hands over, interlacing his fingers with hers. ‘I know you think I don’t trust you, but it was myself I didn’t trust, my own judgement that I had to question. I rarely act on impulse and yet with you I’ve been nothing but impulsive. But then, that’s what love is, isn’t it? Meeting someone you feel an instinctive connection with, someone who excites and surprises you, someone who rouses you to passion and makes you laugh, someone who makes you feel good about them and about yourself, who convinces you that the world is actually a wonderful place….’
Nora made a soft, inarticulate sound which he was quick to interpret as assent. He tucked her hands against his heart, a slight edge entering his voice as he talked fast, his face close to hers as he ruthlessly worked the most important deal of his life. ‘Some people go through their whole lives never having that feeling about another person. I thought I would, too. Until I met you, Nora….’
‘But we hardly know each other,’ she murmured weakly.
