Читать книгу It Started With... Collection - Miranda Lee - Страница 17

‘ERIC!’ Rachel exclaimed, startled. ‘What…what are you doing here?’ Possibly a silly question when he’d always worked in the Central Business District in Sydney. It was inevitable that one day, now she was working in the city, she might run into him.

But to run into him only three days after running into him on the Gold Coast seemed to be stretching coincidence too far.

‘I was looking for you,’ he explained. ‘I asked around about your boss and found out he worked in this building.’

‘How enterprising of you,’ she said coolly.

‘I am, if nothing else, enterprising,’ he returned, and smiled what she’d once thought of as such a charming smile.

She no longer thought anything about Eric was charming.

She no longer thought he was all that gorgeous, either, despite his grooming still being second to none. His sleek black business suit would have cost a fortune. And he would have spent half an hour blow-drying his hair to perfection this morning. It must be killing him, she thought a bit spitefully, to find that it was receding at a rapid rate.

‘Why were you looking for me?’ she asked in a less than enthusiastic tone.

‘I was worried about you.’

She could not have been more surprised if he’d proposed marriage.

‘Good lord, why?’

‘Can we go somewhere and talk in private? There’s a coffee shop just off the foyer facing the street. How about in there?’

She shrugged with seeming indifference. ‘If you insist.’

He didn’t enlighten her till the coffee arrived, and she refused to press, despite being curious. The days when she’d hung on Eric’s every word had long gone.

‘You didn’t come to the dinner on Saturday night,’ he began, throwing her slightly. What to say to that? Rachel cast her mind back to the night in question and decided to go with the fiction Justin had created.

‘We had no need after my boss met with his client.’

‘Mr Wong decided against Sunshine Gardens?’

Rachel maintained her cool. ‘You don’t honestly expect me to discuss my boss’s business with you, do you? If that’s why you’ve come, to pump me for inside information for your girlfriend, then you’ve wasted your time. And the price of this coffee.’

‘That’s not the reason,’ Eric said hastily when Rachel made to rise. ‘I came to warn you. About your boss.’

Rachel sat back down, blinking. ‘Warn me. About Justin?’

‘Look, I know I hurt you, Rachel. I’m not a fool. The way you look at me now…you probably hate my guts and I can understand that. But I don’t hate you. In fact, I think I made a big mistake breaking up with you. You are one special lady and you deserve better in life than getting tangled up with the likes of Justin McCarthy.’

Rachel opened her mouth to deny any involvement with Justin, but after their performance on Saturday night it would be difficult to claim they weren’t lovers. Not that it was any of Eric’s business who she slept with.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said stiffly. ‘Justin is a wonderful boss, and wonderful in every other way. What could you possibly be warning me about where he’s concerned?’

Eric laughed. ‘I have to give him credit. He puts on a good act. But he’s not in love with you, Rachel. He’s just using you.’

‘How kind of you to tell me that,’ she said, struggling now to control her temper. ‘Might I ask what right you have to say that, what evidence? Or is it just that when you look at me you see a pathetic, foolish woman that no man could really love?’

‘There’s nothing pathetic or foolish about you, Rachel, and you know it. You’re still as beautiful and bright as you always were. But you do have one fatal female flaw. You fall in love with bastards.’

‘I am not in love with my boss,’ she denied heatedly.

But when Eric’s eyes searched hers she felt her face flame.

‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘Because he’s one bitter and twisted guy. Not that he doesn’t have a right to be. I’d be bitter and twisted if my wife did to me what his wife did to him.’

Rachel’s mouth went dry. ‘What…what did his wife do?’

‘I thought you wouldn’t know about that. It’s not the sort of thing a man would spread around. Charlotte didn’t put two and two together on Saturday night when you first introduced him. After all, his is not such an unusual name. But she got to thinking about it last night and made some discreet enquiries, and bingo, he was the one all right.’

‘Eric, would you kindly just say what it is you’ve come to say?’

‘Your boss’s ex-wife has been Carl Toombs’ personal assistant for a couple of years now. And I mean very personal. He pays for her apartment and she travels everywhere with him. Their relationship is a well-kept secret but that’s the reason she left her husband, to shack up more often with her high-profile boss. You do know who I’m talking about, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course I do,’ Rachel snapped. ‘I might have been out of the workforce for a few years, but I wasn’t dead. I don’t know of anyone in Australia who wouldn’t know who Carl Toombs is.’

‘OK, OK, don’t get your dander up. Anyway, Toombs is Charlotte’s client, the one who wants to buy Sunshine Gardens. Because of their business association, Charlotte’s had quite a bit to do with his beautiful blonde PA over the past few weeks, and you know girls. They like to chat. Anyway, the ex-Mrs McCarthy confided in Charlotte over lunch and a few Chardonnays the other day. Apparently, darling Mandy is still suffering great gobs of guilt over her ex-hubby. She told Charlotte how cut up he was when she left him. She confessed she said some pretty dreadful things so that he would hate her and forget her, but that she’d never forget the look on his face when she told him she’d been having sex with Toombs for some time. She said she did love her husband and he was mad about her, but she simply couldn’t resist Carl’s advances. She said Carl wanted her and nothing was going to stop him having her. She said she thinks she broke her husband’s heart.’

Rachel didn’t say a word. She was too busy absorbing the full ramifications of Eric’s news.

‘From what I gather he’s one very bitter man,’ Eric went on. ‘Knowing you, Rachel, you probably think he’s in love with you. You’re not the type of girl to jump into bed idly. But it’s not love driving your boss these days. More like revenge.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Eric. For one thing, I’m not in love with Justin. And I don’t imagine for one moment that he’s in love with me.’

Eric frowned. ‘Then…what is it between you two?’

‘That’s my business, don’t you think?’

‘You are sleeping with him, though.’

‘That’s my business, too.’

‘Look, I’ve only got your best interests at heart, Rachel. I care about you.’

She laughed. ‘Since when, Eric? Are you sure you didn’t seek me out today to tell me this because you’re getting bored with Charlotte and think you might have a bit more of what you once used to take for granted?’

‘I never took you for granted, Rachel. I loved you in my own way. I just couldn’t see our marriage working with you becoming a full-time home carer. I’m a selfish man, I admit. I wanted more of your time than that. I need a wife whose first priority is me.’

‘Then you chose a strange partner in Charlotte. Her first priority is her career. And her second priority is herself.’

‘I always knew that. Why do you think I didn’t marry her? It was you I wanted for my wife, Rachel. I still do…’

‘Oh, please. Spare me. Thank you for the coffee,’ she said, rising without touching a drop. ‘And thank you for your very interesting news. You might not know this but you did me a huge favour in telling me about Justin’s ex. It’s made everything much clearer.’ Which it had. She might not know the full details of Justin’s thoughts and feelings. But it wasn’t revenge driving him. Revenge would have acted very differently at the weekend, and today. Revenge would have used her.

Rachel walked away from Eric without a backward glance, her mind wholly and solely on Justin. Alice hadn’t exaggerated. Her son’s wife certainly was a cold-blooded bitch. Either that, or terribly materialistic and disgustingly weak.

He was better off without someone like her in his life. The trouble was…did he realise that yet?

Maybe. Maybe not. Clearly, he’d been deeply in love with this Mandy. Possibly, he still was. It was hard to say.

Still, time did heal all wounds. Just look at herself. She’d once thought the sun shone out of Eric. She’d been devastated by his dumping her. Today, she hadn’t turned a hair at his declaring he still wanted her as his wife. The man meant nothing to her any more, and being free of him felt marvellous.

Rachel suspected, however, that Justin was not yet free of his ex. His beautiful blonde ex, Eric had said. Naturally, she would be beautiful. Very beautiful. Men like Carl Toombs didn’t take ugly women as their mistresses. They chose exquisite creatures with perfect faces and figures, women with a weakness for money and a fetish for the forbidden.

It was no wonder Justin had an aversion to sex in the office. Rachel understood completely. But it was time for him to forget the past and move on, as she had decided to do.

Of course, she’d had four years to come to her present state of heart and mind. Justin’s wife had betrayed and abandoned him much more recently. Only two years ago. And she’d said truly dreadful things to him, according to Eric.

What kind of things? Rachel wondered during the lift ride back up to the fifteenth floor. Had she criticised his skills in bed? Hard to imagine that. Justin left Eric for dead as a lover. And every other boyfriend she’d ever had. Perhaps the wretched woman had told him he wasn’t rich enough, or powerful enough? Who knew?

Rachel didn’t dare ask him, but she dared a whole lot more. She dared to go back and tell him she’d changed her mind about resigning. She dared to stay. And she dared to go after some more of what they’d shared on Saturday night.

If truth were told, she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Surely he had to be thinking about it, too. Rachel could be wrong but she suspected she was the first woman Justin had had sex with since his wife left him.

The thought amazed, then moved her to anger. Selfish people like Eric and Mandy had a great deal to answer for. But you couldn’t let them get away with trampling all over your emotions, and your life. You had to stand up and fight back. You had to stop playing the victim and move on. There were other people out there. Other partners. But you had to be open to finding them. You had to embrace new experiences, not run away from them.

Rachel left the lift at her floor and hurried along to her office, her new-found boldness waning a little once she approached the door she’d slammed shut less than an hour ago. Suddenly, she was biting her bottom lip and her stomach was churning. Was Justin still there behind that door, sitting at his computers, slaving away? Probably. It wasn’t lunch time yet, and her boss had no reason to go home. He had nothing in his life except his work, a bruised ego and a broken heart.

Till now, that was. Now he had her. Her friendship and companionship. Her body too, if he still wanted it.

Her hand was shaking by the time she summoned up enough courage to knock. But it was a timid tap. Annoyed with herself, she didn’t knock again. Instead she turned the door knob and went right in.

‘Oh, no,’ she groaned, her gaze darting around Justin’s empty office.

Rachel was battling with her disappointment when she heard a banging noise coming from inside one of the adjoining rooms, the one with the bar and the sofa in it. Before her courage failed her again she marched over and flung open the door.

Justin almost dropped the ice-tray he was holding. He hadn’t expected to see Rachel again. Not that day, anyway. After she’d left he’d tried to work, but he’d been too distracted, and too depressed to concentrate. In the end, he’d come in here in search of some liquid relaxation.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she threw at him.

Her accusing tone—plus her unexpected reappearance—didn’t bring out the best in him.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he countered belligerently. ‘I’m getting myself some ice to put in my Scotch. But the bloody stuff’s stuck.’

‘But…but you never drink during the day!’

‘Actually, you’re wrong there,’ he said drily. ‘I often drink during the day. Just not usually during the week.’ He gave the ice-tray another bang on the granite bar-top and ice cubes flew everywhere.

‘Don’t do that!’ he roared at her when she hurried over and began picking up the ice cubes. Damn it all, the last thing he wanted was for her to start bending over in front of him.

She ignored him and picked them up anyway, giving him a good eyeful of her derrie`re-to-die-for. ‘You shouldn’t drink alone, you know,’ she said as she straightened and dropped several cubes into his glass.

‘What do you care?’ he snapped, irritated by her presence beyond belief. ‘You’re not my keeper. You’re not even my PA any more.’

‘I am, if you still want me to be. I came back to tell you I don’t want to resign. I want to keep working for you.’

He laughed. ‘And you think that’s good news? What if I said I don’t want you working for me any more? What if I said your resigning was exactly what I wanted?’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘She doesn’t believe me,’ he muttered disbelievingly, and quaffed back a mind-numbing mouthful of whisky. ‘So what do I have to say to make you believe me?’

‘There’s nothing you can say,’ she pronounced, and gave him one of those defiant looks of hers. Damn, but she had a mouth on her. What he wouldn’t like her to do with it!

He tossed back another decent swig and decided to shock her into leaving again.

‘What if I told you that since Saturday night whenever I look at you I’m mentally undressing you? What if I confessed that after you made that joke about you not wearing any underwear it became my favourite fantasy, you not wearing any underwear around the office? What if, when you accused me of having screwed you good and proper, my first thought was that I hadn’t screwed you nearly enough?’

She just stared at him, clearly speechless.

‘That’s only the half of it,’ he went on after another fortifying swallow of straight Scotch. ‘When you brought me that coffee this morning after Guy left it wasn’t coffee I wanted from you but sex. I wondered what you’d do if I asked you to lock the door and just let me do it to you right then and there across my desk. From behind,’ he added for good measure.

Her eyes grew wider but she still hadn’t said a word. She seemed rooted to the spot, frozen by his appalling admissions.

The trouble was, giving voice to his secret sexual fantasies about her had also had the inevitable effect on his body. Or was it just her, standing there in front of him, within kissing distance?

‘Well? What would you have done?’ he demanded to know, his raging hormones sparking more recklessness.

She finally found her tongue. ‘I…I don’t know,’ came her astonishing answer.

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ he shot back, floored by such an ambiguous reply.

‘I mean I don’t know. I was angry with you back then. Why don’t you ask me now?’

My God, she meant it. She actually meant it.

His hand tightened around his glass and his head spun. So that was why she’d come back, was it? Because she wanted him to seduce her again. He’d suspected this might be the case when she’d come in this morning looking good enough to eat, but he’d been hoping he was wrong.

Any hope of that, or that he could keep resisting temptation disappeared as swiftly as the rest of his Scotch. Emptying the glass, he banged it back down on the bar-top and faced his nemesis.

‘Would you go and lock the door, Rachel?’ he asked in a gravelly voice. ‘Not the one that separates this room from my office. Or the one separating my office from yours. The one out in your office. The one that lets the outside world in.’

She did it. She actually did it. Justin’s mind reeled with shock. But nothing could stop him now.

‘Now come here to me,’ he ordered thickly when she reappeared in the open doorway, looking both beautiful and nervous.

She came, her cheeks flushed with excitement and her eyes glittering brightly.

‘I’ve been wanting to do this,’ he growled, and reached up to release the clip. As her hair tumbled down around her face and shoulders Justin knew that he wasn’t simply crossing a line here, he was about to propel them both into a world from which there was no turning back, a word where lust ruled and love was nothing but a distant memory. She had no conception of the demons in his mind, or the dark desires that had been driving him crazy since Saturday night. She probably thought he loved her.

Now, that was one transgression he would not be guilty of. Deception. The games he wanted to play with her were sexual, not emotional.

‘You do realise I don’t love you,’ he said as he flicked open the buttons on her jacket.

‘Yes,’ she surprised him by admitting, though her voice was trembling and her eyes had gone all smoky.

‘I will never fall in love with you,’ he added even as his hands slipped inside her jacket to play with her breasts through her bra. God, but her nipples were hard. So incredibly hard.

And so was he.

‘I…I don’t expect you to,’ she replied somewhat breathlessly.

‘You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,’ he told her before his conscience shut down entirely.

‘But I want you to,’ she choked out.

‘Want me to do what?’ he murmured as he slipped the jacket off her shoulders and let it fall to the carpet.

‘Wh…whatever,’ she stammered.

Justin suspected she was too turned on to know what she was saying. He was rapidly getting to the point of no return himself.

For a split-second, he almost pulled back and saved her from herself. And from him. But she chose that moment to reach round and unhook her bra herself. Blood roared into his ears as she bared her beautiful breasts to his male gaze. And then she did something even more provocative. She dropped the wisp of a bra on the floor then reached up and rotated her outstretched palms over her rock-like nipples.

Any hope of salvation fled. He was lost, and so, he realised when he looked down into her dilating pupils, was she.