The Girl He'd Overlooked (13 page)

‘I thought you were completely wrapped up with the company,’ she said, looking at him. ‘When would you have had time to go out socialising? Dad and I nicknamed you The Invisible Man because we knew you were around but we just never saw you.’

‘Well, I didn’t go out socializing. The socialising came to find
me.
’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Anita Hayward was the accounts manager. She looked like something that had just stepped off the cover of a magazine. Long legs, long hair, long lingering looks whenever she came into my father’s office where I had set up camp. She struck just the right note between sympathy and a matter-of-fact acceptance that, tragic though the circumstances were, life had to go on. It was a break from seeing the pity in everyone’s eyes and hearing the sympathy oozing in their voices. It seemed to be what I needed at that moment in time. She made it her mission to fill me in on everything that was going on in the office. I was sharp enough to know the mechanics of how things worked but I knew nothing about the people and I needed to get them onside. Twenty-minute briefings at the end of the day turned into dinners out.’

‘Your mum said that you were working at the company, making sure that loose ends were tied up… but you weren’t working…’

‘Nope. I was being worked over.’

‘What do you mean?’

James had intended to throw her the bare bones. It was more than he had ever thrown anyone else. Now, as he lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling, he was reliving a time he had relegated to history.

‘I should have been at home. At least, I should have been at home more than I was. Instead, I was being seduced by Anita Hayward of the long red hair and the slanting green eyes.’

‘And you still feel guilty…’ Jennifer deduced slowly.

‘Very good, Sherlock.’

‘But no one operates on all cylinders when they’re experiencing great stress. We react in different ways. What… what happened… in the end?’

‘In the end,’ he said drily, ‘I discovered that she was
after a promotion. It was as simple as that. I had been used by an ambitious woman who wanted to make sure that she got the top job when the cabinet was reshuffled. And by the way, she had a boyfriend. I caught them in one of the directors’ offices when I happened to return to the building after hours because I’d forgotten something. Either the boyfriend was in on the game or else he was just another sap she was using for her own ends. The fact is that, at a crucial time in my life, I took my eye off the ball.’

He turned to her, cupped her breast in his hand and Jennifer covered his hand with hers.

‘You use sex as a substitute for talking,’ she told him and he smiled crookedly at her.

‘And you talk too much.’

‘So… because of one unfortunate experience, you decided… what…?’

‘I like the way you describe that wrong turn as an unfortunate experience… Well, because of that unfortunate experience, I made a rational decision to steer clear of anything called uncontrolled emotional involvement.’

For Jennifer, the long line of airhead blondes now made a lot of sense. He had fallen in love, or
thought
he had fallen in love, with a woman who was sensitive, intelligent, beautiful and mature, and, for his trouble, he had ended up being manipulated at a time when he had been at his most vulnerable. He had emerged from the experience with the building blocks for a fortress and behind the walls of that fortress he had sealed away any part of him that could be touched. The women he had dated since had been disposable and she would be as well.

Realistically, she might last a bit longer because of their history, because they had slightly more going for them than just sex, but she, like the rest of them, would be disposable.

‘What happened to her?’ Jennifer asked, and when he replied she could hear the ice in his voice.

‘She got the sack. Not immediately, of course, and not directly. There are all sorts of regulations pertaining to employee dismissal. No, she was treated to a series of sideways moves. The vertical line she had manoeuvred towards suddenly flattened out and became horizontal. Removing myself from the equation, she failed to realise that there was no way I could have someone working for me who was capable of deceit. Strangely enough, even after I caught them having sex on the desk, she continued to believe that she could patch things over and pick up where we had left off. When she realised that her career in my company was over, she decided to lay all her cards on the table. Not only had she slept with me to further her career but she was no young girl of twenty-four with a ladder to climb and a sackful of qualifications. She was thirty-three and I later found out that most of her qualifications had been fabricated.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer said quietly and he shrugged against her.

‘Why? We all need a learning curve in our lives.’

Jennifer, resting against him, thought that she had already had hers except she seemed to have learnt nothing from it. He had once rejected her and she had thought she had learnt to keep away and yet here she was, in his arms and busy repeating the same process, except this time the hole she had dug for herself was a lot deeper.

‘And you’ve told me this because… you want to warn me off getting too involved with you,’ she surmised thoughtfully. ‘You don’t have to worry on that score.’

‘Because I’m your unfinished business?’

‘I’m sorry that you found that offensive. I’d always wondered…’

‘You don’t have to explain, Jen. I’ve wondered too.’

‘You have?’

‘I’m only human. Of course I have. I had very graphic dreams about you for a long time after that incident.’

‘What was I doing in those dreams?’

‘When you’re back in London and we have the benefit of a bed with a wrought-iron bedstead and some cloth, I’ll demonstrate…’

As she had predicted from past experience, the snow stopped abruptly overnight and the temperatures rose sufficiently for the settled snow to start thawing.

They went to sleep that night and by the following evening, the outlines and contours of the fields around the house and cottage were slipping back into focus. His back was still not in top condition but between them they could clear the drive and he disappeared up to the house to get his car, which he drove down to the cottage. There was snow on the roof and the bonnet but it was melting almost as she looked at it.

In the space of a few days, she felt as though her well-ordered life had been turned on its head. She had grown, developed, matured and become an ambitious, successful and single-minded career woman in Paris, but emotionally she now thought that she had been sleepwalking. She hadn’t moved on from James, she had just held herself in abeyance until they met again.

He wanted her to quit her job but he had been careful to give her no promises of a future. They would be lovers. He had treated her the same way he had treated all the women he had ever gone out with. Up front announcing his lack of commitment, making sure she didn’t get it into her head that long term was part of his vocabulary.

By the time they left the estate, the insurance company had been contacted and she had also spoken to her father
and emailed him a list of things that would need doing when he returned.

As James drove them away she looked back at the disappearing cottage as though it had been a dream. When she turned to look ahead, she wondered how she was going to fare in the real world and, as though sensing her doubts, James rested his hand over hers and flicked her a sideways glance.

‘I’ve been thinking. Perhaps I should come with you to Paris. It’s been a while since I had a holiday…’

Jennifer had had time to think about everything. From her perspective, she had run into her past and discovered that she had never managed to escape it after all. Locked away in the cottage, she had found how fast a youthful crush could turn into hopeless adult love. She had had no weapons at her disposal powerful enough to protect her against the man who had stolen her heart a thousand years ago.

She wasn’t, however, stupid. James liked her. He certainly adored her body. That was where the story ended. He had warned her off looking for anything more than sex and she had successfully convinced him that they were both on the same wavelength.

She didn’t have enough good sense to walk away from him but she had enough good sense to know that when the time came for them to go their separate ways, she wanted to be able to do so with her head held high.

‘Come with me to Paris?’ she said now. ‘James… Paris isn’t going to be
a holiday
.’

James stifled a surge of irritation. ‘I realise you’re going to be working but it wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility for me to arrange to be in Paris for a week or so.’

Bliss, Jennifer thought. That would be absolute bliss. Getting back to her little apartment, knowing that she
would be seeing him later. Cooking together and showing him all the little cafés and restaurants where the owners knew her, taking him to that special
boulangerie
that sold the best bread in the city and the markets where they could stock up on fresh fruit and vegetables and tease each other about who could concoct the most edible meal. She could introduce him to her friends and afterwards they could lie in bed and make love and he could tell her what he thought of them in that witty, sharp, amusing way of his…
Bliss.

The pleasant daydream fell away in pieces. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if she was to take that first step down the road of doing whatever he wanted it would the first step down a very slippery slope.

‘You’ve been out of your office for several days. How on earth would you be able to wangle a week-long trip to Paris?’

A slashing smile of satisfaction curved his lips. ‘Because I’m the boss. I call the shots. It’s an undeniable perk of the job. Besides, I’ve always maintained the importance of having good people to whom responsibility can be delegated. I have a queue of people lining up to prove to me how capable they are of covering in my absence.’

‘Well, I’m sorry but I don’t think it would be a very good idea.’

‘Why not?’ He slipped his hand between her legs and pushed his knuckles against her and the pressure was so arousing that she began to dampen in her underwear. The past few days had taught her that he was an intensely physical man. He relied on his ability to arouse to make his point and to win his arguments and it would have been so easy to let him have his way.

He returned his hand to the steering wheel. He couldn’t keep his hands off her and he knew that she felt the same
way about him. There were times when he looked at her and he knew, from the faint blush on her cheeks, that if he reached out and felt her she would be hot and wet for him. So what, he wondered with baffled exasperation, was the problem in capitalising on the time they spent together?

‘I feel badly enough about leaving everyone there in the lurch.’

‘You’re not leaving them
in the lurch
,’ James pointed out irritably. ‘They understood perfectly the circumstances surrounding your resignation. Your father’s getting older… the emergency at the cottage further proof that you will be needed here more and more over time… The fact that there’s the offer of a job that might not be on the cards for ever and you owe it to yourself and your father that you take it while it’s there… You’ve offered to see in your successor and train them up. Why would you think that they’re being left in the lurch?’

‘Because I do.’

‘That’s insane feminine logic.’

Jennifer clicked her tongue and sighed because he could be so
black and white.

‘From my perspective,’ he continued, proving to her how well she knew his thought processes, ‘you’ve acted in the most sensible, practical way possible.’

‘Well, I don’t want you around distracting me.’

‘But you know how much fun a bit of distraction can be…’ James murmured, savouring that small admission of weakness from her. They were few and far between. Much to his annoyance.

‘I’ll be there for two weeks. Maybe three. Not long. Enough time to clear my desk, pack up the things in my apartment I’ve gathered over the years, go out with friends…’

Which, to his further annoyance, was something else
on his mind. The goodbyes to the old friends… everyone knew about
making love one last time for old times’ sake…
He swept aside that ridiculous concern. Hell, she wasn’t like that! But he was scowling at the mere hint of any such thing, the mere suggestion in his head that she might be tempted to go to bed with the good friend and ex-lover artist of the fedora and the earring.

Jennifer saw that scowl and smiled because, even though she knew where he stood on matters of the heart, his unrestrained possessiveness still gave her a little quiver of satisfaction. She hugged it to herself and savoured it for a few seconds.

‘So let me get this straight,’ he gritted. ‘You don’t want me in Paris and you also don’t want either of us to tell our parents about what’s going on…’ It wasn’t cool to behave like a petulant teenager and he forced a tight smile, which he was pretty sure wasn’t fooling anyone.

‘Well, I explained why I thought it wasn’t such a good idea to tell Dad and Daisy,’ Jennifer said vaguely. Her father knew her better than anyone else. He would never buy the fiction that she was the sort of girl who would indulge in something passing and insignificant with the guy who had stolen her vulnerable teenage heart. He would immediately know that she was in too deep. There would be questions and speculation and she wouldn’t be able to wriggle out of telling him the truth.

‘And I explained why I didn’t get it.’

‘I’m practical.’ She began listing the reasons once again while her treacherous mind broke its leash and started imagining how wonderful it would be if she could shout her love out to the whole world. ‘We both are… we know that this is just about having fun, so why drag other people into it?’ She and James, lovers and in love, building a future together… she and Daisy planning a wedding,
nothing too big… just the local church… friends and neighbours… ‘It would just make it awkward when the inevitable happened.’