The Girl He'd Overlooked (14 page)

‘Nice to know you’re planning the demise of what we have before we’ve even begun.’

‘These are
your
rules, James. You don’t do involvement.’ He couldn’t argue with that. She was the perfect woman for him. She challenged him intellectually, which he found he enjoyed, and they were brilliant in bed together. In fact, they couldn’t have been more compatible. She also respected his boundaries. There had been no coy insinuations about the importance of commitment, no leading questions that involved long-term planning, no shadow of disappointment when he had told her about his ill-timed disastrous affair with Anita and the consequences of it. Nor had she tried to lecture him on the importance of letting go of the past. In that respect, she ticked all the boxes.

He wondered why he wasn’t feeling more pleasantly satisfied.

‘Besides—’ she thought it a good idea to move on from the commitment angle, just in case he got scared that she was hinting that
she did do commitment
and
preferably with him
‘—we’ve both agreed that we’re not each other’s type…’ Or something like that. The night before, when the conversation had mysteriously returned to Patric, even though he was no longer in her life
in that way.
James seemed obsessed with Patric and she couldn’t understand why unless it was to confirm his singular position in her life, with no spectres at the feast. He wanted her in place and at his beck and call, without distractions from anyone, even an ex-lover, although, in return, she knew that he would never give those assurances back to her. The playing field would never be level as far as James went.

‘So I’m not trying to sabotage what we have,’ she concluded. ‘We both know that this is just physical attraction. It’ll pass in time and we’ll both move on so why involve other people when there’s no need?’

‘Why indeed?’ James grated.

‘Let’s just have fun. And no complications…’

J
AMES
glanced at his watch for the third time in ten minutes. She was running late, which was unusual for her, but he didn’t mind. For the first time in nearly three and a half months, she had actually suggested meeting up, as opposed to waiting for him to take the lead. She had called him on his mobile and he had immediately booked dinner at an exclusive restaurant where, and this was just one of the upsides of wealth and power, his request for a secluded table at the back was instantly accommodated.

Of course, despite the fact that he had always loathed a woman who tried to insinuate him into a social life he didn’t want and engineer arrangements without plenty of prior notice, it annoyed him that Jennifer was so completely the opposite.

She engineered nothing. She was impossible to impress. She declined his gifts. She was irritatingly elusive. Twice she had laughingly turned down his invitations to the theatre because
she was busy
and then failed to come up with an explanation why. Busy doing what? Once she had bailed on him claiming tiredness. Admittedly, he had telephoned her at short notice, in fact at eleven o’clock at night, but after a series of exhaustive meetings the only person he had wanted to see had been her. In fact, he had brought the meetings to a summary conclusion because
visions of her lying naked in bed had been too much. He had failed to laugh along when she had told him, yawning, that he couldn’t possibly come over because a girl needed her beauty sleep.

She wasn’t playing hard to get. Far from it. When they were together, she was everything a man could wish for. She made him laugh, turned him on to the point where he was capable of forgetting everything, argued like a vixen if she didn’t agree with something he said and had no qualms in teasing him on the grounds that everyone needed to be taken down a peg or two now and again. She didn’t play games. She was up front in everything she did and everything she said. He had had no option but to swallow down his intense irritation when she failed to put him first.

And she never talked about a future. Everything was done on a spur-of-the-moment basis and he had gradually, inexorably and frustratingly come to the conclusion that, however sexy and accommodating she could be, he was a stopgap. When he thought about that for too long, he could feel a slow anger begin to build so he didn’t think about it. Instead, he told himself that that was a good thing because stopgaps didn’t lead to attachments and attachments, as he had made perfectly clear to her at the beginning of their relationship, were not on the horizon. Clearly they weren’t on hers either.

A waiter came to refill his drink, a full-bodied red wine, asked him if there was anything,
anything at all
, they could bring for him while he waited for his companion. The chef, they assured him, would be more than happy to concoct some special delicacies, nothing heavy, perhaps something creative with the excellent fois gras they had only today taken delivery of…

James waved the man aside and turned on his iPad.

He sipped his red wine while lazily scrolling through
the pictures in front of him. Pictures of a house, neatly positioned in one of the leafy London suburbs, within handy commuting distance of the offices. Not a flashy apartment, which Jennifer accused his place of being… no porter sitting at the front behind a marble desk, which she found impersonal… no opulent artificial plants in the foyer, which she exclaimed weren’t nearly as good as the real thing and must take for ever to dust, what a waste of someone’s time.

A house in the suburbs that was already part of his vast property portfolio, which had last been rented out over a year ago and which had dropped off the radar since then. It couldn’t compete with the ultra-modern places more centrally located, which appealed to expensive overseas executives. It had been brought to his attention by one of his people three weeks previously as just one of a batch to be considered for sale. He had pulled it out, seen it personally himself and made his decision on the spot to hang onto it. With some decent refurbishment, it would be perfect, and he had relished the thought of how delighted she would be at being able to move out of her poky shared house to a charming little cottage with a small but well-developed garden, a butcher, a baker and a candlestick maker within walking distance and a busy but distinct village atmosphere. Since then he had sent an expensive team of decorators in and it had been transformed, updated, modernised but retained its period style, which was the only stipulation he had made to the head of the design team. Perfect.

To think that six months earlier he might have sold it! Who said that life wasn’t full of happy coincidences?

He sat back and contemplated, with satisfaction, the excitement on her face that he predicted he would see when he told her the good news. Whatever rent she was paying, he would make sure to charge less. In fact, he would
happily charge nothing but he doubted she would accept that, given her stubbornness and her pride. It would be a done deal and he would no longer have to make allowances for her friend every time he visited her, tiptoeing just in case Ellie was asleep, making sure not to drink wine that wasn’t Jennifer’s or open beer that belonged to Ellie’s boyfriend. Job done.

He glanced up, saw her hesitating by the door of the restaurant, casting her eyes around for him, and he turned off the computer, leaving it on the table next to him.

God, she was sex on legs. He had told her to don her finery, that the restaurant was one of the top ones in London, and she had. Winter was finally beginning to lose its icy winter edge as spring made itself felt and she was wearing a slim-fitting, figure-hugging dress in deep reds and browns with a pashmina artfully arranged loosely over her shoulders. Her curves seemed to grow more luscious by the day and his body was predictably reacting to the sway of her walk as she spotted him, to the sight of her cleavage, which even the modest neckline of the dress couldn’t quite hide because her breasts were so lush and abundant.

For the first time, Jennifer watched James’s lazy assessing smile and, instead of feeling thrilled, she felt the knot of tension in her stomach tighten.

How close she had come to cancelling out on this date! What an effort it had been to climb into clothes that had been so horribly inappropriate for her mood!

She had to force a returning smile on her face and by the time she made it to the table, her jaw was aching and her nervous system was in overdrive.

She slipped into the chair facing him, barely aware of the waiter pulling it out for her, and placed her hand over her wine glass, asking instead for a glass of fresh juice.

‘You look stunning.’ Deep blue eyes roved appreciatively
over her. ‘I’m going to enjoy taking that dress off you in a couple of hours…’

‘I’m… sorry I’m a little late,’ Jennifer said weakly, fiddling with the end of the pashmina.

‘Traffic!’ He threw his hands up in a gesture of frustration at the horrors of getting around London. He was picking up something, an uneasy atmosphere, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

‘Actually, the traffic was fine. I just… left my house later than I expected…’

‘Woman’s prerogative.’

‘I’m never late, James. I hate it.’

‘Well, you’re here now. At least you haven’t bailed on me because your house mate was feeling down and needed a shoulder to cry on.’

Jennifer flushed. Little did he know that her occasional cancellations had been carefully orchestrated. A sense of self-preservation had made her instil a small amount of distance and she was very glad of that now.

She fiddled with her hair, made a few polite noises about the restaurant, told him that there was no need to bring her to such an expensive place, that she was more than happy with cheap and cheerful.

‘I’ve never been out with a woman who hasn’t appreciated being taken to somewhere grand.’

‘I’m not impressed by what money can buy, James. How many times have I told you that?’ She heard the sharp edge in her voice and she watched as he frowned and narrowed his deep blue eyes on her.

‘Are we going to have an argument?’ He sat back and folded his arms. ‘I should warn you that I have no intention of participating.’

Now that he mentioned it, an argument was just what Jennifer wanted, something to release the sick tension that
had been building over the past few hours. An argument would be a solid staging post for what had to follow.

‘I’m not having an argument with you. I’m saying that I’m not impressed by.
all this.
I mean, it’s just one of the things that reveal how different you and I are. Fundamentally.’

‘Come again?’ James sat forward and this time the navy eyes were sharp. ‘I thought you would like to be treated to a meal out somewhere fancy. I hadn’t realised that you see it as a direct attack on your moral code and I certainly hadn’t thought that I would be accused of… what is it exactly? That you’re accusing me of…?’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just saying that this isn’t the sort of place I would choose to eat. Waiters bowing and scraping, food that doesn’t look like food—’

‘Fine. We’ll leave.’ He made to stand up and Jennifer tugged him back down.

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing. Nothing’s going on. Well… ‘

‘Well… what?’

‘I’ve been thinking…’ She drew in a gulp of air and had to fight a sudden attack of giddiness. Did he have to look at her like that? As though he could see straight into her head? Her heart was beating fast, a painful drum roll that added to the vertigo.

‘Never a good idea.’ His unease was growing by the second. ‘My advice to you? Don’t think. Just enjoy.’

‘You don’t know what I’ve been thinking.’

‘I don’t need to know. I can see from your face that whatever it is, I won’t want to hear.’

‘I just want you to know that I stick to what I’ve said all along, James. You and I aren’t suited. We have fun together but, in the long run, we’re like oil and water. We
just don’t have personalities that blend together. I mean, not in the long term.’ She stared down at the swirling patterns of her dress.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about and if you’re going to say something, then I suggest you actually look me in the face when you say it.’

‘This…’ She looked at him. ‘All of this… has been fun, really great and I appreciated every second of it, but I think… I think it might be time we call it a day.’

‘I’m not hearing this.’ He kept his voice very low and very even. If he gave in to what he was feeling, he thought he might end up doing untold damage to the exquisite, mind-blowingly expensive decor in the restaurant. ‘You’re breaking up with me. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘What the hell does
that
mean? I don’t know what’s going on here, but this is not the place for this conversation. We’re going back to my apartment.’

‘No!’ Jennifer could think of nothing worse. The familiarity… the kitchen where they had prepared meals together reminding her of how much she was going to lose… the coffee table where they had sat only a couple of days ago playing Scrabble… which she had brought from the house with her and which she had forced him to play as a relaxation technique, although that had gone through the window when he had decided that there were other, more enjoyable ways of relaxing… the bedroom with the king-sized bed, which she would no longer occupy…

It would all be too much.

James held up both hands in surrender but his eyes were cool and questioning when they rested on her face.

‘Look.’ She splayed her fingers on the table and stared intently at them. ‘There’s something I need to tell you but, first of all, we need to get this whole relationship straight.
We need to admit that it was never going to stay the course. We need to break up.’

James raked his fingers through his hair and found that his hands were shaking. ‘Between last night and tonight, you’ve suddenly decided that we need to
break up
… and you expect me to
go along with you
? I’m not admitting anything of the sort.’

‘This isn’t how I meant this conversation to be, James. This isn’t where I thought I’d find myself, but something’s… something’s cropped up…’

‘What?’ With something to focus on, his mind went into free fall. It was a weird sensation, a feeling of utterly and completely losing all self-control. ‘You’ve found someone else. Is that it?’ His voice was incredulous. Break up? How long had she been contemplating
that
? Had there been some other man lurking in the background? One of those fictitious sensitive, emotionally savvy guys she had once told him made ideal partner material? He could think of no other reason for her to be sitting opposite him now telling him that
it had been fun but…

‘Don’t be crazy. I haven’t found anyone else. When would I have had time to go out looking?’

‘Are you telling me that you think I’ve monopolised your life? Is that it? Because I’m perfectly happy to take things at a slower pace.’ He could scarcely credit the levels to which he was willing to accommodate her.

Jennifer was sure that he would be. He hadn’t emotionally invested. He could always tame his rampant libido until such time as it was no longer rampant.

‘No, it’s not that.’

‘Let me get this straight. For no particular reason, you’ve suddenly decided that we can’t go on. There’s no one else on the scene, we’ve both been having fun and
yet it’s no longer enough. Am I missing something here? Because it feels as if I am.’

‘There’s no easy way of telling you this, James, so I’m just going to come right out and say it. I’m pregnant.’

She couldn’t look him in the face when she said it so she stared down at her lap instead while the silence thickened around them like treacle.

‘You can’t be. You’re using contraception. I’ve seen that little packet of pills in the bathroom. Are you telling me that you’ve been pretending to take them?’ At some point, the wires in his brain appeared to have disconnected. In possession of one huge, life-changing fact, he found that he could only fall back on the pointless details around it. ‘I can’t talk to you here, Jennifer.’