Undressed by the Boss (Mills & Boon By Request) (60 page)

There was a sudden tension in the big frame holding her. But he spoke easily. ‘Ah. Someone you have to meet?’

She hesitated. ‘Well, yes. My grandmother.’

He held her away from him, scanning her face with a narrowed gaze. ‘But—didn’t you say you saw her yesterday? Wouldn’t she understand if you phoned to let her know?’

There was an inflection in his voice, and she knew she must sound like a bore. For a moment she even considered his suggestion. She supposed she could phone Autumn Leaves. Beg one of the busy staff to find the time for Gran. Except …

‘No. No, I promised.’ His frown deepened, and she drew away from him, adding in a small, remorseful voice, ‘Honestly. She isn’t very well. I do need to see her.’

‘I see.’ He gave a light shrug. ‘Well, then. In that case, we’d better be on our way.’

On the trip back, Tom tried to concentrate all his attention on the driving. But he was only human. He still had a brain, despite his insatiable, never-ending desire, and it would have been insane of him not to at least weigh up the evidence.

He asked her a few searching questions about her grandmother’s health, and her answers were plausible. Very plausible. It all fitted. A warm, generous woman like Cate
would
visit her ailing grandmother every day. And she’d already proven herself to be as straight as a die. Why else would she have come back that first Friday evening? And when he thought of the fantastic, intense connection, the transforming passion …

It
had
to mean as much to her. She couldn’t be faking it.

Although … women did.

He glanced at her. She turned her head and met his gaze with an anxiety that made his chest pang.

‘You’re disappointed. You’re not angry with me, are you?’

‘No, no. Not at all,’ he said warmly. And he wasn’t. Not angry, anyway. Disappointed …? Perhaps. He was loath to return to the harsh reality of the working week.

He had no right to doubt her, like some obsessed Othello. If she hadn’t been a reporter … If he hadn’t seen her that fateful night, talking to that little guy who went after stories like a fox terrier … the guy she’d been involved with.

A heaviness invaded his heart. In spite of himself, he had to ask the unaskable question.
Had been
involved with him, or still was?

He glanced at her profile. She was chewing her lower lip, her hands twisting in her lap. Worrying about her gran. Or …? His gut tightened. Was she in fact wondering how to get rid of him so she could safely meet her accomplice? Her—the word speared him—
lover?

He pushed the thought away. It was pure paranoia. Just because once or twice …

Forget it. In a very short time she’d be proving him wrong and directing him to her grandmother’s front door. If she didn’t, if she evaded that, he’d have to really start wondering.

Almost without him noticing it, they reached the city. The machine purred through the outskirts with its legendary smoothness. As they cruised through the northern suburbs she said suddenly, ‘If you could just drop me off at my place, Tom, I’ll catch a taxi over to Gran’s from there.’

His insides clenched like a fist. Here it was. As far as he knew she hadn’t been home to her boarding house for weeks, so why would she need to go now?

Though his lungs were in a stranglehold, he kept his voice smooth enough. ‘Your place? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to drive you to your grandmother’s?’

She hesitated, then gave him one of those clear, straight
glances. ‘There’s a few things I need to pick up. Then I might freshen up and change, and … Well, I—I need to see Gran on my own. You understand.’

‘Yes,’ he said drily. ‘I think I do.’ The words tasted like bile on his tongue.

He drew up at the Lady Musgrave, and turned his mocking gaze on her. Unaware of the vice gripping his chest, she leaned over and pressed her lips to his. Why did the kiss of betrayal always taste sweetest of all? Swiftly she opened her door and got out.

He gripped the wheel, anger and some other nameless emotion churning in his chest, then without another glance at her drove on up the street to the roundabout. He was forced to wait there several minutes, his fingers drumming the wheel as he pictured her running upstairs to wash off all traces of
him
before stepping into her lover’s arms. When he eventually drove back he was in time to see her climb into a cab.

Contrary to what she’d told him, she’d made no attempt to change her clothes. Too urgent to get there. A grim feeling of inevitability gripped him. One way or the other, he had to know.

He slowed to allow enough distance, then followed the taxi.

In her anxiety to see Gran, Cate nearly ran through Reception, down the hall and into the ward. Gran was sitting up doing a cryptic crossword, her earphones on so she didn’t have to listen to constant replays of mall music. When she saw Cate her face lit up, as always. Cate kissed her, then sat on the steel chair and examined her closely.

Gran had news. She’d been informed that her number had come up at last and her operation was slated for some time in the next month. Cate was listening to the details with mixed feelings when she noticed a tall shadow in the periphery of her gaze. She looked over at the ward entrance and her lungs nearly froze with shock. Tom was standing there, scanning the ward.

After a moment’s stunned immobility, she sprang up from her chair and flew across the room, threading her way around the beds and the small scattering of faithful Sunday visitors. Tom smiled when he saw her, but before he could speak she grabbed his arm and pulled him into the hall.

‘You can’t come here,’ she muttered urgently. ‘You mustn’t be here.’

His black brows shot up. Surprise registered in his eyes. ‘I mustn’t?’

‘No. Please leave, Tom. Now. Right now.’ She gave him a sharp little push, anything to get him out of Gran’s view.

Involuntarily, Tom fell back a few paces. He spread his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … but there’s something I want to …’

‘Just leave, will you?’ Cate glanced back to see if he was still in Gran’s line of vision. ‘I don’t think she saw you, but that doesn’t mean someone else won’t. Just go now. I’ll … we’ll talk later.’

He’d moved beyond the entrance to the ward, and she tried pushing him further, but met the implacable resistance of a body larger and more solid than hers. She gathered her strength for a greater effort, but he grabbed her arms and held her still.

‘Don’t push.’ His voice, though gentle, held steel. ‘It’s too late. She has seen me. I think now you’ll just have to introduce me.’

Alarmed, she just blurted what came into her head. ‘Absolutely not. Her health is fragile. I have to be very, very careful who I bring here.’

The stunned look in his eyes sent a rush of remorse to her heart, but in a matter of life and death she knew what she had to do.

She glanced about her as people came and went, aware she and Tom were attracting curious glances. Panic gripped her. ‘Please,’ she begged, gasping for breath as if she’d been in a race. ‘It would worry her if she thought I was with—’

His eyes glinted. ‘Me.’

He said it so quietly she flushed.

Realising at last that she was causing damage here, she caught his hand. ‘Tom,’ she said, her voice strained with distress, ‘can we please go outside?’

Outside, they faced each other in the light from the windows. Tom’s lean face was serious and unsmiling. In desperation to explain before disaster became irrevocable, she scrabbled for the words.

‘I’m sorry, Tom, so—so sorry.’ She placed a hand on his arm in supplication. ‘You see, Gran’s heart is unable to sustain a shock. That’s why she has to stay here while she waits for her operation. And if she thought I was seeing
you
—’ A thought struck her. ‘How did you know I was here?’

He didn’t reply and she stared at him, uncomprehending for several seconds. Then she understood. ‘You followed me.’

A flush darkened his cheeks, but he met her gaze steadily. ‘I wanted to see where your grandmother lived.’

For a second she gazed at him in a haze of confusion, then the obvious burst upon her. ‘You thought I was lying.’ He didn’t reply, and as full comprehension dawned she opened her eyes wide. ‘You thought I was meeting someone.’

His grey gaze met hers and slid away. ‘I—it seemed a possibility.’

She stared at him in amazement. Barely aware of its origins, she felt pain slice through her. Her lips hardly seemed able to form the words. ‘But how could you, after—?’

Images crowded in on her. Their first night. All the times they’d made love, the things they’d said to each other, the tenderness, her passion for him. What had it all meant? She made a helpless, inarticulate gesture. ‘So what did you think?’ Her voice trembled. ‘That I run from your arms to someone else’s? I sleep with
you
so I must be a slut?’

He winced. ‘Of course I don’t think that.’

‘But that must be what you think.’ Tears sprang into her
eyes. The unbearable implication seeped through her brain and solidified into an ice cold certainty. There was no way he could love her, if he thought about her in such a way.

Her voice grew hoarse. ‘Have you been thinking this all along? Is it because I’m a blonde? An easy screw?’

His eyes flared and he gripped her shoulders. ‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Why? Because that is what you think?’ She shook him off. ‘Or … Oh, no, no. It’s because I’m a reporter.’ An absurd possibility swam into her mind. ‘Do you think I’m working to expose all your secrets?’

He made an impulsive gesture as if to stop her from saying the unspeakable, and the extreme suspicion was confirmed. A couple came out of the entrance, forcing her to turn aside for dignity’s sake. When they were past she continued, her low voice croaky with emotion. ‘You know very well I could have flagged your deal with Olivia three weeks ago.
Should have.
So how
can
you—?’ She broke off, shaking her head. ‘You must think I’m very calculating. Do I seem so—dishonest to you, Tom?’

At the hurt in her white face something twisted in Tom’s chest. ‘You don’t,’ he said urgently. ‘Of course you don’t. I’ve made a mistake. I know you always said you were visiting your grandmother … I don’t know how I came to imagine …’ He felt his blood pressure rising, and gesticulated with both hands. ‘Don’t look like that. You—
this
—you don’t know what you—what it means to me.’

‘The sex, you mean?’ The wry inflection in her voice stabbed at his gut even as he tried to decipher what she intended by the words. She turned her back on him. ‘Well, it’s over now. Anyway, I have to go and help Gran with her meal.’

He grabbed her and turned her to face him. ‘Listen,’ he said, fierce in his need for reason to reign. ‘You’ve been bloody secretive. You
know
that businesswise this is a critical time for me. I needed to know … What did you expect me to think?’

The green eyes assessing him were stern and unrelenting. ‘I expected you to trust me.’ The smooth arms so recently alive to his caress felt stiff and unyielding in his hands. He had no option but to release her. Then she walked back inside.

H
E DIDN’T
love her. The knowledge filled Cate with suffocating pain.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Gran had recognised him.

She was forced to tell Gran some of it. The bitter irony was that while she tried to downplay the affair, since it was now irrevocably
over,
Gran seemed pleasantly enthused about Tom and kept talking him up. She said things like, ‘He looks like such a nice lad.’ ‘He doesn’t sound a bit like his father.’

When their conversation switched back to the surgery plans, Cate forced herself to concentrate, but, despite her concern, it was a struggle to keep her mind off Tom. His face kept swimming in front of her eyes.

It was over,
kept replaying in her mind. Her beautiful bubble had burst. And so fast she couldn’t believe it. For Gran’s sake she tried to keep up a smile, but was so close to tears, she actually felt glad Gran was long-sighted.

What a fool she’d been, telling herself it didn’t matter whether or not he loved her. It did. It mattered cruelly.

She didn’t go back to Tom’s after she and Gran said goodnight. Though most of her clothes as well as her make-up had found their way over to his place, her emotional energy had been laid too low for her to deal with him again so soon.

He phoned her several times through the evening, and she
let the phone’s jangly tune play itself out. Late at night it rang again. She knew why. This was their time for love.

He wanted her.

Only it wasn’t love, not on his side. In a former life she’d been through all this. As tempting as it was to accept any excuse he gave and crawl back into his bed as if she hadn’t seen the stark truth, she knew she had to be strong.

She sat on the edge of her narrow bed in the boarding house, the phone vibrating in her palm while she struggled with herself. She gave in, of course, and held it to her ear, listening for his voice with painful longing. But as soon as he spoke she cut in with, ‘This is no use, Tom. Please don’t try to sweet-talk me. It’s over.’

There was a long, pricking silence, then he said in a raw voice, ‘That sounds very definite.’

Her whole body clenched. ‘There’s no going back. There’s no changing what—what you think of me.’ Her voice wobbled at the end.

She heard his fierce intake of breath. ‘What I might have wondered for five minutes is
not
what I—’ He broke off, then after a few turbulent moments said very quietly, ‘It’s true I made a stupid mistake, but it may have showed us both some uncomfortable truths. Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we both need to take stock. Realistically speaking, I’m not sure how long I can stay with a woman who so clearly feels ashamed of me.’

She gasped. ‘Oh, Tom. That’s not—that’s in
no way
what I said. When it comes right down to it, I’m the one who—’

Her eyes swam with tears. What she wanted to say was that she was the one who loved him and had done all the giving, but the words were taboo and choked her up. Instead, she filled the gap with, ‘Being with you is—
was
—a risk for me.’