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Even though she’d known that this moment was going to come, she still felt unprepared. Things had to end, and she only wished that she had stood her ground and got in there with her speech first, before him.
Now she was going to be at the receiving end of one of hisDear Johntalks, and the only consolation was that she wouldn’t be sending a bunch of flowers to herself.
At least she wouldn’t be weeping and wailing and making a nuisance of herself, whatever she happened to be feeling inside. And at least she had not once given in to the temptation to over-confide. She’d respected his boundaries and kept her dignity and pride in place.
She wondered whether she could head him off at the pass, but when she finally met his eyes it was to find determination stamped there along with...a suggestion of satisfaction. Or maybe it wasreliefthat she had broached a subject that might have been playing on his mind.
She hadn’t got the impression that he was fed up with her, but then he was a guy who knew how to keep his cards close to his chest when it suited him.
Grace felt her heart thud inside her. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She had become too used to feasting her eyes on him, appreciating his sheer masculine beauty. She guarded her love like a thief with stolen treasure but when it came to lust, there were no holds barred. He enjoyed her looking at him, devouring him greedily with her eyes, and she had always been more than happy to oblige.
‘What we have here...’ Nico paused but only for a couple of seconds. ‘I don’t want it to end.’ He gestured and smiled at her ruefully and with some bewilderment. ‘I know... I know...this isn’t how I expected things to play out but something about you, Grace... I see you and I want to touch.’ He shrugged his shoulders with yet more incomprehension.
Nico noted that she was staring at him with a dumbfounded expression and he smiled slowly,
‘And you want it too,’ he murmured with sweeping self-assurance. He reached out and placed his hand at the nape of her neck and absently stroked the sensitive skin while he continued to maintain the sort of eye contact that would have had most women reaching for the smelling salts. ‘I touch you and you go up in flames. Like me. I don’t understand it but I’m not going to fight it. I know,’ he continued with the same, mesmerising softness, ‘you might have some concerns that if we continue with what we have, it might impact on our work relationship, but it won’t. Trust me. I’ve never mixed business with pleasure but there’s a first for everything and this is going to be my first...’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘TRUSTYOUTHATit won’t make a difference to our working relationship?’
Grace managed to get her vocal cords into working order, but she was still gaping at him with incredulity.
This wasn’t what she had expected. She had expected to be gently given her walking papers. So he was now saying that he wanted things to carry on? That he didn’t want things to end? Grace knew him so well that she could read everything between the lines, everything that hadn’t been actuallysaidbut was there as big and as bold as a billboard advertisement.
Nico hadn’t expected things to have ended up where they had. She doubted he’d ever looked at her twice until that fateful accident of chance when he’d bumped into her on her pointless Internet date. Maybe he’d seen her for the first time, then, as a woman rather than an extremely efficient robot? Maybe his curiosity had been piqued? He was never one to deny the beckoning of sexual curiosity—being marooned on an island that was the essence of heady romance might have prompted him into doing what he would never, ever have done within the confines of an office. As he’d just said, he’d never mixed business with pleasure.
At any rate, here they were and what he was essentially saying to her in that charming, self-deprecating, humbly confused way of his was that he wasn’t ready for the sex to endyet.
That it would end was a given. It had always been a given. He was simply, now, laying down his terms for when it ended.
Grace knew that she should not be annoyed by that, and she definitely shouldn’t be surprised because that was how his love life functioned. He called the shots.
The very thought of him shoving her into the same category as all the other women he had dated made her grit her teeth and clench her fists and want to throw something hard and heavy at his handsome head.
Did he honestly think that she was now so much under his magnetic spell that she would do as requested? Was their relationship now puppet master with the empowering hand and pliable, mindless puppet with no more self-determination?
Unfortunately, she could see just why he might have come to that conclusion, and she winced with bitter regret that she hadn’t had the strength to walk away when she’d had the chance, but her own secret longings had been dry tinder to a match suddenly struck. She had gone up in flames because her fantasies had suddenly come true.
She surfaced to hear him in full flow, and she frowned. ‘Sorry, I missed that...’
‘For me there would be no problem working with you. Yes, yes, yes... I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say that I was never a man who encouraged work and play to happen in the same place. You’re going to remind me of those times when I’ve complained at calls interrupting meetings and unexpected visits screwing up my work schedule, but aren’t there always exceptions to every rule? Isn’t that a sign of flexibility? Not being tied down to dogma? It’s no good lamenting the fact that we started this. In fact, I don’t regret a minute of it.’ He shot her a devilish smile. ‘Would it be so wrong of me to say that I think we’re on the same page with this? Making love has never felt so good. Just thinking of you gives me a hard-on and that’s a first for me. So we’re both adults and if we break new ground by seeing one another and working with one another as well, then who are we hurting?’
‘So to recap,’ Grace said slowly, ‘what you’re saying is that we carry on having this...fling when we return to London because we’re both adults and why bother to try and find the energy and willpower to call it quits when we can just carry on going with the flow until...well, until the whole thing fizzles out.’
He’d announced his offer with a note of triumph and all guns blazing, assured of victory.
For him, she was just someone else, another body he wasn’t quite tired of.
For her, he was the embodiment of everything she knew she shouldn’t want or love but wanted and loved anyway.
The man beyond cynicism had met someone not cynical enough.
‘How long do you think that’ll take?’
‘Who can put a number on something like that?’
‘Actually, if I had to think of one person who could, then it would probably be you.’
