Читать книгу The Dare Collection February 2019 - Nicola Marsh, Avril Tremayne - Страница 22

I’M TOO STEAMED up to go home. Fury that began as a kernel in my stomach has grown like a weed, and it pokes out of all my pores now. I can’t believe Connor would be so heavy-handed! I buy a cheap pashmina from one of those pop-up stalls near a tube station, which at least lets me cover my cleavage as I stomp my way through London, trying to disentangle my feelings.

Disappointment that the date I thought we were on our way to was actually his attempt to further my career. His paternalistic, heavy-handed involvement in a matter I specifically told him to stay out of. Pleasure that he took an interest? Yes, it’s a confusing conundrum of mixed emotions and they drag along behind me like a misshapen Santa’s sack of gloom and doom. I stomp my way through the streets for hours and eventually dive into the Underground and jump on a Tube.

I’m not even sure where I’m going until I realise it’s the Jubilee line, and it stops at Canary Wharf.

Connor’s stop.

When I emerge from the station, the night has turned cool. It’s a firm reminder of something I am already aware of. Autumn is coming. The summer term will soon be over.

And then what?

Connor will no longer be my teacher. Does that matter? Does it change anything? Does he want it to? Do I?

Something lurches in the region of my heart—the thought of him not being my teacher. The thought of not seeing him again. The thought of not being able to hold him, kiss him, be held by him.

I swallow past the sudden dryness in my throat. That’s all beside the point. Right now, I’m pissed and I want to remember that.

I press the buzzer; nothing happens. I prop my hip against the edge of his building, glaring out into the night air. I lift my finger to press again and hear his voice. Deep and raspy, it makes my stomach flip, and I fume at the automatic response.

How dare his simple drawl of the word, ‘Yeah?’ fill me with this kind of heaven-sent need?

‘It’s me.’ I try—and fail—to keep the shittiness from my voice.

The front door of his building makes a buzzing sound and I push it inwards, jabbing my finger on the lift button before taking it to the top floor. He’s waiting in the doorway of his apartment when I reach the landing, his shoulder nudged against the frame, his eyes watchful, his expression blank.

And I know him! I know him well enough to understand that he’s waiting for me to speak first, to give him some idea of how I feel. For all he knows, I’m there for a little late-night sex—he wishes!

I grind my teeth together and move closer. ‘How dare you?’

Anger it is.

‘Come inside, Olivia,’ he says with a sigh, stepping back and holding the door to allow me in.

I glare at him as I pass, kicking my shoes off once I reach the lounge area. The white carpet is soft underfoot. I spin around to face him; he’s keeping a safe distance. Good.

‘Is something the matter?’

I thrust my hands on my hips. ‘Yes.’

‘What?’

‘Where do I start?’ Somewhere in the back of my mind, I notice that he’s changed into grey jeans and a white shirt. That his feet are bare and so sexy and his arms, all tanned and strong, are almost making me forget what I came here to say.

But I won’t let him do that to me.

Not now. This is important. ‘I didn’t want your help with my career.’

His eyes narrow. ‘You wouldn’t have got an interview without my help.’

Oh! Be still my angry, insulted, furious heart! A heart that is being stretched in a bazillion directions all at once by disbelief and indignation, pain and fury. ‘How bloody arrogant are you?’ I fume, the words quiet even as my temper soars into the stratosphere. ‘I’m a great candidate. I’ve got great grades. I’ve made everything I studied about getting a job with the CPS.’

‘You heard Dash,’ he interrupts, clearly not comprehending the degree of my anger. ‘The chances of getting a traineeship through the CPS are minuscule.’

‘But there is still a chance!’ I say angrily. ‘And I deserve that chance. I would have got an interview myself, Connor, believe me.’ I narrow my eyes unconsciously. ‘This is my life.’

The words hang between us like a gauntlet.

‘It’s my career,’ I continue. ‘And I don’t ever want to look back and think that maybe I got to wherever I get because I slept with you and you just happened to know someone!’

He runs his fingers through his hair, tension emanating from his powerful frame. ‘You’re being...’

‘What? What am I being?’

‘Childish!’ he snaps. ‘That’s not how it works in the real world. And Jesus, Olivia, if you think anyone is going to give you a job just because I recommended you then you’re delusional. This will all be about the quality of your application.’

‘We’ll never know that,’ I shout. ‘And I wore this!’ I unfurl the pashmina and throw it angrily to the ground, then gesture at the silk dress. ‘To what was probably the most important meeting of my professional life.’

‘You don’t have to remind me what you were wearing.’ The words are throaty, filled with the sensuality that defines us.

I brush it aside. ‘I thought this was a date!’

He is watchful, his features still. ‘A date with me?’

‘Obviously, a date with you!’

His expression is bemused, like the danger is over and he can go back to being charming and sexy. Who am I kidding? He’s never charming and that’s what’s sexy about him. His arrogance, toughness, darkness, his genuine, bona fide not giving a shit—this is what I love.

We are yin and yang—we are completely unalike and his differences to me are what draw me closer. The differences are what I crave—but it is all of him I love.

Oh, God.

I am stunned—silent and still as realisation begins to explode inside me. I am so angry with him—how can I possibly think I love him?

‘We don’t date,’ he says with a small smile. Perhaps he sees the way my features blanch of all colour. His wince is almost apologetic. ‘By mutual agreement, we don’t date,’ he reminds me.

But it’s not a reminder; it’s an invention of a conversation we never had and, in the face of this dawning comprehension of my own feelings, it is like being lacerated with a sharp knife. ‘I don’t remember us agreeing that,’ I say stiffly, reaching for my pashmina, biting down on my lower lip to stop it from trembling.

He frowns, uncertain again, apparently sensing the rising tide of my anger anew, and realising a life raft is nowhere to be seen.

‘What are you saying?’ he prompts cautiously.

‘It’s what you’re saying,’ I mutter. ‘That you’re happy to fuck in some hotel room but not meet up in a bar. That it’s absurd of me to have thought that note meant...meant...’ Oh, help me, tears are stinging at my throat and I will not cry in front of him. ‘Forget it.’ I storm past him, but it’s an imitation of my earlier anger. All the fight has left me suddenly.

He grabs my elbow as I pass and his eyes are probing me, searching me, trying to finish the sentence I have left unspoken.

‘What do you want?’ he asks softly, and it’s a softness that renders me weak against the incursion of tears. I can’t stop them from filling my eyes but I glare at him as though he is to blame. And he is. I just need him to know that.

‘I want to go home, now.’

‘Wait.’ He shakes his head, his hand gliding down my arm, his thumb rubbing over my inner wrist. ‘You’re angry that this wasn’t a date. Does that mean you want that? You want us to, what? Go out?’

‘No.’ I shake my head, confusion at my own desires making my argument erratic. It sounds so juvenile. I’m reminded of our age gap and I feel squeamishly young and ill-prepared for this conversation. So I roll my eyes and feign a jadedness that doesn’t resonate within my soul. ‘Don’t overthink it. It’s just that I presumed it was going to be the two of us and instead I felt...ambushed...’

‘It was intended to be a surprise.’

I sweep my eyes shut and nod. ‘It was an insult.’ I pierce him with my frustration when I blink up at him. ‘You think I can’t make it without your help?’

He is stonily silent.

‘You think you owe me that? You laugh at the very idea of dating, like that’s more than I should expect from you after weeks of sharing your bed, but what? Now you’re my recruiter? No.’ I jerk away from him and move down the hallway. He follows, I feel it, but I don’t look back. I yank the door in and only then do I turn. Outside the privacy of his penthouse, I whisper, ‘The fact we’ve had sex has nothing to do with the rest of my life. My grades, my career, anything. I’m yours in bed—nowhere else.’

And I walk down the stairs, my temper broken like an eggshell in my fist—my heart not in much better shape.

* * *

It’s my turn to host the faculty poker game. Ten of the school’s professors are in my lounge and all I see is Olivia as she was last night. Her beautiful body in that dress that practically gave me a stroke at the bar, the way her hair was wild and untamed around her equally untamed and wild rage, the face that rocked me with accusations when her words weaved their indignation into me, hardening me and weakening me all at once.

‘Only two weeks left of term, then you’ll be back to the real world, eh?’

I smile at Simon Farrington and return my attention to the cards. ‘Yes.’ There’s a sharp twisting in my abdomen at this fact—that I will leave. I ignore it. My time in London is temporary. A reprieve from my normal life—a moment out of time.

‘Have you enjoyed your stint as a lowly law professor?’ Clive Amner chips in from my left.

Have I enjoyed myself? Far more than I should have. Flashes of memories slip through my mind, all of them starring Olivia, all of them sending my blood pressure skyrocketing.

She didn’t answer my calls today. I tried once in the morning, and again about an hour before these guys arrived, and both times the phone rang out. Both times I let it play her full voicemail message just because it makes me smile to hear her voice.

I get that she’s pissed. And I get why. I realised, around lunchtime today, that I didn’t even apologise to her for what she described as an ambush. It’s partly why I called—the second time. I am sorry, and anyone who knows me would know that it’s not often I admit to my faults.

This is one of those occasions when I have no choice but to do so.

She’d told me not to intercede with the Crown Prosecution Service on her behalf. But Dash and I are tight. We go way back. How could I not? And, despite what Olivia might think, calling Dash and setting up the meeting had nothing to do with the fact I think Olivia is sexier than sin. Her passion for the law, for prosecution, is a remarkable thing. How could I not bring her together with the only person I know who shares that same blinkered determination to ‘get the bad guys’?

She’s right about the fact that she has a life beyond this—what we are. That our very temporary, very secret affair can’t be allowed to ricochet through the rest of her existence. She’s right that I have no business meddling in her career.

I did ambush her. A cold trickle of recognition rushes down my spine.

I set up a meeting with Dash and I didn’t let her prepare for it, and she wore a dress that was pure seduction, and she felt...exposed.

I groan inwardly. She’s right. That was an asshole move.

I put everything she wants in jeopardy just because I wanted to be the guy who could give her the world. I wanted to lay her dreams out before her and the worst part of that is it’s not even just for her. It’s a selfish kind of gift. I want to give her the world not because I want her to have it but because I need to be the one who hands it to her. I made her dream about me.

Olivia is destined for greatness in law and I want to be part of that. I had my chance and I chose to defend low-life scum. So what? I think I can have two bites of the cherry? That I can somehow push my way into her career? Become a part of her dreams and hopes and future?

It’s just not possible.

Soon I’ll be back in Dublin, back at my desk, in my office, with my scum clients and Michael Brophy and this will all seem like a strange, distant dream.

She’ll go on to live her life, without me in it. And her life will be fucking amazing.