First Love, Last Love (8 page)

She met that look without flinching. ‘What do you think?’

The anger seemed to ebb out of him. ‘I think,’ he said, huskily soft, ‘that you look beautiful when you’re angry. There’s a slight flush to your creamy cheeks, and your eyes are sparkling like emeralds.’

That flush changed to a brilliant blush. ‘Don’t change the subject!’ Already she could feel herself weakening towards him. Damn the man!

‘
You
are the subject.’ The warmth in his gaze was unmistakably desire.

Lauri looked about them selfconsciously. Luckily they were the only two people in the corridor, but they couldn’t be that lucky for long, and if someone should see them together … ‘I’m going to lunch,’ she turned on her heel and walked off.

Alex fell into step beside her. ‘What a coincidence,’
he grinned. ‘So am I.’

Lauri came to a halt, glaring at him furiously. ‘Not with me you aren’t.’

He quirked an eyebrow. ‘Willingly I thought you said.’

She flushed. ‘That was for Saturday.’

He shrugged. ‘So, I wanted to see you before then.’

‘You’ve seen me, now leave me alone.’

His hand came out to grasp her arm. ‘You don’t mean that.’

She trembled. ‘But I do!’ she insisted forcefully, knowing just how weak she sounded.

‘Like me to prove otherwise?’ Alex taunted.

She remembered only too well the way he had proved her attraction to him the last time. ‘Not here, Alex,’ she pleaded.

He smiled. ‘For calling me Alex so naturally I’ll let you off—for the moment,’ there was a promise in this last comment. ‘But you are having lunch with me,’ he added firmly.

‘No—’

‘Yes!’ His grip tightened. ‘I’ll meet you outside in the car park in five minutes. And remember, I couldn’t give a damn about people knowing about us, so if you aren’t there in that five minutes I’ll come looking for you.’

‘I’m having lunch with Daryl,’ she said desperately.

‘Not any more you aren’t. I need you more than he does.’

‘You—you need me?’

He nodded grimly. ‘You’re becoming a necessary part of my day. Saturday was too damned far away. Daryl will just have to learn to do without you.’

‘Not because you say so!’ Her rebellious nature surfaced against. ‘I don’t—’ she broke off as a man from the Accounts Department came towards them. ‘No, I’m sorry, Mr Blair, I have no idea where my aunt could be.’ The glitter in her eyes dared him to refute
her effort to provide an excuse for them to be talking together. ‘Perhaps Mr Davies has seen her,’ she added when he didn’t reply. ‘If you’ll excuse me …’

She gave a triumphant smile as Alex had no choice but to engage in conversation with the other man, the expression in his eyes warning her of the reprisals he would make the next time he saw her.

Their next meeting wasn’t long in coming. Alex caught her up just outside the building, taking her elbow in a firm grip as he led her over to the car park.

‘Let go of me, Alex,’ she tried to shake off his hand. ‘Daryl will be expecting me,’ she protested as he bundled her inside the newly mended Rolls-Royce.

‘Then he can damn well wait,’ he snapped, coming round the car to get in beside her. He pulled her roughly into his arms. ‘This is your punishment for trying to avoid me.’ His head bent and his mouth claimed hers in a savage kiss.

It might have started out as a punishment, but it soon changed to the exchange of mutual passion. Lauri’s arms crept about his neck as she clung to him with her body and her lips.

Her face was flushed by the time Alex released her mouth, and she turned away in embarrassment. ‘Aren’t you ever going to kiss me for any other reason but as a punishment?’ she challenged to hide her confusion.

‘Yes.’ He pulled her towards him again, kissing her slowly, lingering over the possession of her mouth as if he wanted the caress to go on forever. Afterwards he cradled her against his side, her head resting on his shoulder. ‘Better?’ he asked huskily.

She nodded wordlessly, not even caring what she was doing any more. This man made her mindless, completely devoid of any desire but to be with him, to be in his arms and be kissed by him.

‘I meant to leave you alone until Saturday,’ he
murmured into her hair. ‘But I found I had to see you again. I wanted to be with you last night too, but I thought you would be with your boy-friend.’

‘I was,’ she confirmed.

His arm tightened painfully about her shoulders. ‘Did you sleep with him?’ he demanded in a ragged voice.

‘No!’ Lauri struggled to pull out of his arms, but he refused to let her go.

‘Have you ever slept with him?’ he asked, his face grim, his expression the one of the cold haughty stranger of their first meeting.

Lauri could never understand how he could always look so calm, so unmoved, after one of their passionate embraces, whereas she felt sure she must look a wreck, her hair in disorder from the wild caress of his hands, her eyes over-bright, and her mouth red and throbbing from the hard pressure of his. ‘Always looked calm’—it seemed to imply that these onslaughts happened all the time, whereas she had in fact only known Alex three days. That he had kissed her every day of their acquaintance was beside the point, he had no right to do so and look so damned
normal
afterwards, not when she felt as if she had been drawn down into a whirlpool.

‘What my sleeping with Daryl has to do with you,’ she told him haughtily, ‘I have no idea.’

His mouth tightened ominously. ‘It has a lot to do with me,’ he said tautly. ‘I want to know.’

‘What’s the matter?’ she taunted, stung by his arrogance. ‘Don’t you like knowing who your predecessor was?’

‘So you have slept with him.’ He removed his arm from about her shoulders and leaned forward to start the car engine. ‘I’m sure that’s something else your Aunt Jane doesn’t know about.’

‘Things as personal as that are no one’s business but
my own.’ She felt suddenly chilled without his closeness. ‘And I can never understand why they call it “sleeping” together. I’m sure what you do when you’re awake has more importance than whether or not you sleep in the same bed.’

Alex turned to quirk an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you know?’ he asked softly.

Lauri met that look almost shyly. ‘No,’ she shook her head.

His hand momentarily left the wheel to squeeze her fingers. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’ She felt relieved as they left the Blair office building far behind them.

‘For not lying to me,’ he told her huskily.

‘I’ve told enough lies to other people since meeting you, I have no intention of lying to you too. Anyway, why should I lie about something like that?’

‘You must know how I would have felt if you’d said yes.’

Her eyes widened questioningly. ‘I have no idea.’

Alex turned to give her a considering look. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do. I’m not sure I know myself, I just know that if you’d slept with anyone I would want to kill him—slowly,’ he finished grimly.

‘Alex!’ she gasped.

He gave a rueful smile. ‘Primitive, isn’t it? It’s a new experience for me, so you’ll have to bear with me. But I’m glad you’re innocent, Lauren.’

‘I never said I was that,’ she said crossly, angry with him and yet not really sure why. She felt as if he were bulldozing her into a relationship, forcing upon her a closeness to him that frightened the life out of her. She just wasn’t up to his sophisticated games. ‘I think I was wrong to agree to go out with you. In fact, I didn’t agree to it, you seduced me into it.’

‘As I’ll seduce you again if you start being awkward.
And talking of us going out together, I’m too old to be creeping about like this. I’ve never considered myself that reprehensible that women are ashamed to say they’re going out with me.’

‘I’m not ashamed of it—’

‘Thank God for that!’ he mocked.

Lauri glared at him. ‘I’m not proud of it either. If it became public knowledge I would have a terrible time once you’ve finished with me. I can just imagine the sympathetic looks I’d get from your other employees when you stop dating me if they all knew about it. I’d have to leave my job, and I happen to like it.’

‘Wouldn’t that be rather extreme?’ He seemed to find it funny.

Her mouth set at his taunting. ‘You’ve obviously never heard the gossip that goes on around that place. I’ve only been there a few weeks, but I can see how someone’s life can be made hell through thoughtless gossip. You should hear some of the things they say about—’

‘Yes?’ he prompted.

‘Well, there’s a lot of gossiping done in a place that size,’ she told him resentfully. ‘And Jane and Steve would come in for their share of it too. They’d make mincemeat out of the fact that you’re dating your secretary’s niece.’ She shuddered. ‘I can just imagine some of the things that would be said!’

‘So can I,’ he acknowledged dryly. ‘But I believe you were going to tell me some of the things said about me …’ he quirked an eyebrow.

‘I wasn’t going to tell you anything of the sort! But now that I’ve met you I’m sure most of the gossip is true. I bet you’ve had a hundred mistresses,’ she recounted with relish. ‘And I bet you did walk away from them all unscathed,’ this last was added with an ebbing of her self-confidence. No doubt he would walk
away from her unscathed too—and she wasn’t sure she would be able to do the same.

‘Hardly a hundred mistresses, Lauren,’ he said mockingly. ‘Maybe ninety-nine,’ he added with humour. ‘And I doubt I walked away from them all unscathed.’

‘One of them you didn’t, anyway.’

He frowned. ‘Which one?’

‘The one who made you cynical,’ she explained. ‘The one who made you distrust the rest of us.’

‘I see,’ Alex laughed. ‘A little psychology. But it’s wrong, I’m afraid, Lauren. It wasn’t one but all of those women who taught me those things.’

She gulped.
‘All
of them?’

He nodded. ‘They all wanted marriage, wanted a little lapdog of a man who they could claim they had tamed. Isn’t that what attracts women to men, the need to be the one who puts the ring through his nose, the collar and lead around his throat?’

‘My God!’ she spluttered with laughter. ‘What a conceited man you are! “Ring through your nose”, and “collar and lead around your throat”,’ she repeated disgustedly. ‘Any woman who wanted to tie herself to you for life would have to be insane. It isn’t only men who are ensnared by marriage, you know, some women can feel that way about it too.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes, I do!’

‘That’s because of your youth. Given a couple of years you’ll be in the marriage market like all the rest.’

‘Stop the car!’ she ordered furiously.

‘What?’ He blinked at her ferocity.

‘I said stop the car!’

‘What the hell for?’

‘So that I can get out! You insulting, self-opinionated, supercilious—’ she broke off her tirade as she
saw he was laughing at her, openly chuckling at her remarks. ‘How dare you!’ she exploded, her face fiery red, her eyes sparklingly green. ‘How dare you laugh at me! Stop this car, you arrogant, rude, pigheaded—’

‘Oh, Lauren,’ still he laughed, ‘you’re fantastic!’

Lauri frowned. ‘Fantastic?’

‘Mm,’ he smiled. ‘You’ve insulted me more in the short time I’ve known you than anyone else has in the rest of my life. I think you’re adorable.’

She blushed. ‘You won’t get round me like that,’ she told him sharply. ‘I don’t react to that sort of flattery.’

‘No, I know what you react to.’

‘Your arrogance is beyond bearing! Are you going to stop this car or not?’ she demanded.

‘Not.’

‘You—’

‘No more names, Lauren. If you force me to stop the car you know what the consequences will be.’

‘Consequences …?’

‘Don’t you remember what happened the last time?’

‘Oh!’ Colour flooded her cheeks once again. ‘Yes. I—In that case,
don’t
stop the car.’

She turned to stare stubbornly out of the window. She didn’t want any more reprisals like that. In fact, she didn’t even want to be here with him any more. He made her say things, things she didn’t mean. She did feel that with the wrong man marriage could be a trap, but with the right man … She dreamt of marriage like any other woman, but this man made a mockery of even that.

‘I’m sorry.’

Lauri raised startled green eyes, searching his face for some sign of that mockery, an apology the last thing she had been expecting from him. He looked perfectly
serious. ‘For what?’ she asked sulkily.

‘For being—now what was it?—insulting, self-opinionated, supercilious, arrogant, rude—’

‘Don’t say any more,’ she interrupted desperately. Had she really called him all those dreadful things? ‘You seem to have remembered what I said very well.’

‘I think so,’ he nodded. ‘I only missed pigheaded, and that was because you didn’t let me get that far. I’m sorry for being all of those things.’

‘That’s all right,’ she said cheekily. ‘You can’t help it.’

His mouth quirked with humour. ‘I shall have to stop this car and kiss you in a minute.’

‘Don’t you dare!’

‘There’s no satisfying you, is there?’ he laughed, a deep husky sound that stirred the senses. ‘You’re good for me, Lauren. You make me laugh, and not many women can do that. Did you really mean it about thinking marriage a trap?’

‘It can be,’ she evaded.

‘Weren’t your parents happy together?’

‘Does there have to be a reason for my distrust?’ she mocked. ‘Can’t I just have decided it isn’t for me?’

He shrugged. ‘It isn’t normal in one your age.’

‘You mean I should be dreaming of white lace and orange blossom?’ she mocked her own dreams before this hardened cynic did so. ‘As far as I can remember my parents were very happy together.’

‘As far as you can remember?’ he asked interestedly.

He didn’t miss much. ‘I was only seven when they died. Jane more or less brought me up.’

‘Did she bring Steve up too?’

Lauri nodded. ‘Their own parents died years ago. Steve was fifteen when Jane took over, but it can’t have been easy for her.’

‘Not if Steve was as much of a little devil at that age
as I was,’ Alex agreed seriously. ‘I’ve always admired your aunt, now I have even more reason to do so. Are you the reason she’s never married?’