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She reached up and linked her fingers behind his black head, and her breasts pushed against his chest. His hand curled into her hair and she gasped as his other hand moved to cup her breast, kneading it gently. The sensation was agonisingly exquisite.
The fever which had started in the pit of her stomach now spread outwards until she felt as if she were burning up all over. He unbuttoned her jacket and continued caressing her through the fine material of her aquamarine blouse. Her nipple was aching, and his finger found the hard nub and he began rubbing it, playing with it through the lacy bra, making comforting noises.
She squirmed against him, breathing thickly, and he unbuttoned her shirt and scooped his hand down inside the bra so that her breast nestled into the palm of his hand.
Was there ever an experience as erotic as this? His black eyes never left her face, even though his breathing was as uneven as hers and there was no longer anything at all soothing about his actions now. There was an urgent demand there, matching hers, making her head spin.
When the taxi pulled up outside her house, neither of them was aware of it until the driver coughed discreetly but firmly from the front seat. The practised cough of someone who had seen it all before, and Abigail jerked away from Ross and began buttoning her blouse, her jacket, her coat with unsteady fingers, not looking at him.
There was nothing to be said. She wished that she could blame something, but she couldn’t. The effects of the champagne had worn off long ago and face it, she told herself with scathing disgust, you didn’t exactly scream with outraged horror when he began comforting you.
‘Abigail…’ he muttered, impatiently reading her expression of mute hostility.
‘Don’t say a word. Just don’t.’
His lips thinned, but she was beyond caring. She snatched up her evening bag and pulled open the car door and the freezing air wafted in, another sharp dose of reality.
She turned to him and said distantly, ‘I’ll be in at the usual time tomorrow morning. I don’t expect I shall see you first thing; you’ve got two meetings lined up.’
He looked back at her, his eyes hooded, then he shrugged and drawled indolently, ‘In that case, I shall see you after lunch. I’m expecting two calls from Bob Reingate and the marketing director. Could you fix meetings for me with them the week after next?’
‘Yes.’ There was a silence, then he nodded briefly, dismissing her, and she slammed shut the taxi door.
Pity, she thought, two hours later when she still couldn’t get to sleep and had been over what had happened between them in such detail that she was going crazy. I was a sobbing wreck and he took pity on me. First an object of curiosity, now an object of pity.
She would pretend that nothing had happened because what other option was there? But she couldn’t pretend to herself. She was violently, stupidly attracted to him and the only halfway good thing about the whole situation was that that attraction had been controllable.
Last night, she thought, as she prepared for work the following morning, was the culmination of a week of worry. He was there, a sympathetic shoulder, but now she realised that if she couldn’t control her responses to him, then she would have to leave.
She worked swiftly and silently through until three o’clock, skipping lunch, and feeling that now familiar lurch inside her when the office door was pushed open and Ross strode in, pausing to stand by her desk.
‘You’ve been busy,’ he said, looking at the stack of letters neatly piled on her desk, and she smiled.
‘They need your signature.’
‘In that case…’ He perched on her desk and took his fountain pen out of his pocket. She watched his dark, bent head as he flicked through the letters, signing them.
When he raised his eyes to hers, she was proud of herself for her outward appearance of calm.
He knew that she was attracted to him, but she was also going to make sure that he knew, just as clearly, that she was not about to have an affair with him.
‘Where’s your engagement ring?’ he asked abruptly, and she frowned.
‘Forgot it by the sink in the kitchen,’ she lied swiftly, acknowledging that the pretence of still being engaged was no bad thing.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m not asking you to.’
He shrugged and smiled drily.
‘You’re damned stubborn, Abigail Palmer,’ he said.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Is it your way of telling me that last night never happened?’
She flushed but didn’t look away. ‘How did your meetings go?’
There was an odd tenderness in his eyes, but he said easily, ‘Fine.’ He stood up and adjusted his tie absentmindedly. ‘Profits are going to go way beyond target, at least for the first six months.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘A good time for investment,’ he said, ‘which is why I shall be flying to Boston in a couple of days’ time. Have you got a passport?’
‘Yes, why?’ Then the impact of what he had asked hit her between the eyes.
‘Because you’re coming with me. I’ll give you details and you can book the flights. First class.’
‘No,’ she said instinctively, because even in the space of one second she could see all the problems posed by being continually in his presence for days on end, and not liking any of them. ‘I mean, surely you need me here…’
‘If I did, I wouldn’t have asked you to come along,’ he replied with irrefutable logic.
‘Martin and I…’ she persisted, mentally rummaging around for any excuse, and his expression went a shade cooler.
‘Cancel whatever has been arranged. I’m not asking you to come, Abigail——’ he leant towards her ‘—I’m telling. If you value your job, you’ll unearth your passport and pack your bags in time for tomorrow.’
‘How long will we be there?’ she asked with a sigh of angry defeat.
‘Three nights.’ He began walking towards his office. ‘Book us at the Boston Harbour Hotel.’
‘Planes could just be full,’ she informed him with an edge in her voice. ‘Hotels could just be booked up.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He shot her a lazy smile over his shoulder. ‘Not if you use my name.’
It was only when she later replaced the receiver of the phone, when the airline and the hotel proved as accommodating as he had predicted, once his name was mentioned, that the dreadful uneasiness which she had felt the minute he had issued his command began to sink in.
The thought of being with him in Boston filled her with dread. She knew all about being sensible, she could write a book on the subject, but she had already seen how weak good sense became when faced with that frisson of sexual excitement that both lured and terrified at the same time.
In her neat, ordered life, everything had suddenly gone haywire. Boston, she knew, was not the place to try piecing things together again.
CHAPTER FIVE
ROSS was resting in the seat next to her, his eyes closed. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, aware that at any minute he might suddenly open his eyes, with the alertness of a cat, and she didn’t want him to catch her staring at him. But he fascinated her. He had, she acknowledged, always fascinated her, right from the very beginning, but that sort of stolen fascination was only a seed. It needed the elements to nurture it, to make it grow, and she had always made sure that those elements were never allowed to get a foothold. She worked hard, head bent, eyes down, aware of his love-life but making no comment on it, and making damn sure that her personal life stayed right out of the picture. But things had changed. The overall picture was the same, she still arrived for work and did her job, but the emphasis had shifted. Now her personal life seemed to swamp her all the time, and Ross Anderson invaded her thoughts like weed that had taken root and in so doing had begun a steady takeover.
She reverted her attention to the screen in front of her. The in-flight movie was a thriller which seemed to have remarkably few thrills and a disproportionate amount of violence, but her mind continued on its one-way track, analysing emotions which she would have preferred to keep buried.
Martin had been casual enough about her sudden departure to Boston and she had been relieved about that, but also a little saddened. She could already feel them drifting away from one another, and even though part of her wanted that, there was another part that felt alarmed and scared that a relationship which, at least on paper, had been so promising could end with such apparent ease. What did that say about her ability to fall in love with a man who could provide her with the emotional security she wanted?
‘You’ll live to regret it,’ her mother had said, the voice of doom as always. ‘You would have had a good, solid life with Martin.’
‘Perhaps I don’t want good and solid,’ she had ventured, and she could almost hear her mother puffing in irritation down the telephone.
‘Fine,’ her mother had said. ‘Well, you just go right ahead searching for adventure and, mark my words, you’ll end up with egg on your face. I don’t want to remind you of the state you were in when that business with your last boss came to an untimely end!’
‘I wasn’t in a state,’ she had pointed out reasonably. ‘A little upset, maybe, but hardly in a state.’
