by Lucy King
‘I’ll have a contract drawn up,’ he said, clearly able to read the scepticism that must have been written all over her face. ‘You can state the terms. I won’t challenge them.’
‘Things that sound too good to be true generally are.’
His jaw tightened. ‘Just accept my offer, Kate. It’s the only one on the table.’
True. But—‘I’d never be able to repay you.’
‘There’d be no need.’
‘I’d feel a need.’
‘Then I suggest you get over it,’ he said tersely, ‘because you should know that I will be doing this, with or without your consent. Your agreement will merely speed things up.’
And quite suddenly, in the face of such intransigence, what remained of Kate’s resistance suddenly crumbled. Why was she still fighting this? She was running on fumes and at her wits’ end. What Theo was proposing would obliterate all her worries and stresses overnight. So if he could afford it and wanted to help, why shouldn’t she let him? Maybe he did feel something after all. Maybe he and Mike had been good friends. Ultimately, did it even matter? She didn’t need to like him, and his motivations were none of her concern. He was offering her a ‘no strings attached’ deal, which would get the debt collectors off her back and, more importantly, ensure Milly’s comfort for the rest of her life as well as the best treatments available. So despite feeling as though she might be making a deal with the devil, she couldn’t not accept his help. She just couldn’t.
‘Okay, fine,’ she said with a brief nod. ‘You win.’
CHAPTER TWO
HE’D WON, HAD HE?
Hmm...
Theo wasn’t so sure. He might have achieved the outcome he’d been intent on getting, but in reality, given the massive debt he owed Mike, the provision of financial support for Kate and her sister was long overdue and it certainly didn’t lessen the crushing omnipresent guilt he felt over the part he’d played in their brother’s death. If anything, it made it worse because he hadn’t known about the loans and he should have.
And then there was the battle for his self-control, which he’d started waging the moment Kate had walked into his office and detonated a savagely fierce and wholly unexpected reaction inside him. Was he winning that? By the skin of his teeth, and only then because he had years of practice.
He had not been prepared for her effect on him. The first and last time they’d met—at her brother’s funeral, an insanely tough and gruelling experience for a number of reasons—had certainly given no indication. This evening, however, she’d come through that door and for some unfathomable reason every sense he possessed had instantly sprung to high alert. The way she’d moved—languidly and sinuously graceful—had mesmerised him, and as she’d approached his desk, that web page she’d set up had slammed back into his head. So much for thinking he’d successfully excised it from his memory. Clearly he’d merely drawn a veil across it, a veil that her appearance in his space had instantly swept back.
With every step she took towards him, his blood had begun to heat and questions had started ricocheting around his head. Forget her vital statistics and her hobbies, he’d thought, his pulse thudding heavily and his body hardening. What he’d like to know more about was the tattoo. Where was it, and what was it of?
Then there was the tiny yet somehow momentous detail regarding her sexual experience. The ‘none’ of it implied that she was still a virgin, but regardless of its meaning, it shouldn’t have been of the slightest interest. However, infuriatingly, he seemed to find it fascinating because all he could think was, why? She was twenty-six and it couldn’t be from lack of opportunity. She looked like a goddess. Not, perhaps, conventionally beautiful, but certainly breathtakingly striking with her long blonde hair and big blue eyes and above average height.
And last, but by no means least, there were the photos, the last two in particular, which once seen could not unfortunately be unseen and were now indelibly etched into his memory. Those had had him instinctively thinking about the suite adjoining his office, the oversized bed he had in there, and her sprawled across it wearing nothing but that negligee.
Such a savage and unexpected assault on his senses had decimated his self-control and his body had responded—and was still responding—in the inevitable way, hence the subsequent battle.
However, he was concealing the attraction scorching through his blood effectively enough and he was well used to conducting a conversation that bore no reality to what was going on inside him. He might have been momentarily distracted when she’d shifted and the movement had exposed even more lovely long leg that he’d suddenly, appallingly, wanted to touch, but their discussion had remained—and would continue to remain—firmly on track. Kate would never have any idea of the fierce need pounding away inside him. It was purely physical and of zero importance anyway, and nothing she could do or say would ever entice him to yield to it. Not the blush on her cheeks, not the darkening of her irises, not the soft breathy gasp.
‘Is there anything else you need?’ he said coolly, his voice bearing not even a hint of the inner turmoil he was experiencing.
‘No. Thank you. I have everything else under control.’
Lucky her. ‘Let me know if that changes.’
‘Of course,’ she said, about to move again before clearly thinking the better of it, thank God, and adding, ‘And, actually, thank you for your offer of help. That “you win” of mine was churlish.’
‘It was.’
‘Although, to be fair, you had just ridden roughshod over my plans without any consideration for my feelings.’
She had a point, just not one he could bring himself to apologise for. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Nevertheless, that’s no excuse,’ she continued. ‘I apologise. My parents were particularly hot on manners. They’d be spinning in their graves at my lack of them...’ She tailed off for a moment, a flash of sorrow flitting across her expression, but then gave herself a quick shake. ‘Anyway,’ she said briskly, ‘I really am grateful for your offer. And since this seems to be the moment for it, I suppose I also ought to thank you for closing down that website.’
Sitting back and ignoring the desire to respond to that moment of grief because he didn’t do emotion and it was no business of his anyway, Theo rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. ‘Oh?’ he said, arching an eyebrow since only five minutes ago she’d been outraged by what he’d done. ‘Why?’
‘There were emails,’ she said with a shudder. ‘Disturbing ones. There are some very sick people out there.’
‘What did you expect?’ he said, not even wanting to think about the offers she might have received.
‘I’m not entirely sure,’ she said with a naivety he envied because he’d give everything he had not to know the depths people could sink to. ‘A few emails perhaps, maybe resulting in one or two regular clients with more money than sense. Certainly not that kind of a response. To be honest, it never occurred to me that my virginity would cause such a furore.’
He’d never have imagined taking such an interest in it either. He still couldn’t work out why he did. ‘You are pretty unique.’
Her eyebrows lifted and another blush tinged her cheeks. ‘Am I?’
‘In this day and age a twenty-six-year-old virgin is unusual.’
She appeared to deflate for a moment, but then rallied. ‘I suppose so,’ she said with a shrug.
‘What’s the issue?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘True.’
She tilted her head. ‘Why would you want to know anyway?’
Good question. He barely knew her. He didn’t do personal and didn’t need to know. He certainly had no intention of helping her out with it, and where the hell had that idea even come from? Nonetheless, he could tell himself all he liked that it was important to be in full possession of all the facts so he could stop he
r embarking on any further acts of recklessness, but the plain truth was that for some reason he just wanted to know. ‘I’m curious.’
‘It’s hardly an appropriate topic for a boss/employee conversation,’ she countered. ‘And besides, I’m still on probation.’
No problem there. He’d spoken to her line manager in the accounts department earlier just in case she did need firing. Fortunately, she didn’t. Her work was superb and she was a reliable, valued member of the team.
‘You’re excellent at your job,’ he said. ‘You’ll pass it. And we crossed the boss/employee line the minute you tried to access the Belle’s Angels site from a computer I own.’
‘Nevertheless, no.’
‘Okay, fine,’ he said, annoyed with himself for pushing it. He wasn’t that curious, dammit. If she didn’t want to tell him, so what? In fact, it was a good thing, because she ought to go. The battle he was having to keep his eyes off her legs and his mind off the rest of her was taking more effort than he’d anticipated. Their business was concluded and, frankly, the sooner he could get back to work, back to normal, the better. ‘You can see yourself out.’
* * *
Kate watched Theo nod in the direction of the door and then turn his attention to whatever was on his computer screen, and thought that if that wasn’t a cue to leave, she didn’t know what was. As dismissals went it was unambiguous. She’d refused to play ball and he’d lost interest. Which was fine. There was no way she was going to share the issues surrounding her non-existent sex-life with her boss, of all people. Imagine the humiliation. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Therefore his cue was one she was going to take. Right now. She was going to get up, waltz out and go home, where she could ponder at length this evening’s whole surreal conversation and, when it came to her money troubles, pinch herself hard.
So why wasn’t she moving? Why did her bottom appear to be glued to the chair? Why was her heart hammering at such a rate it might crack a rib and why was a cold sweat breaking out all over her skin? She couldn’t actually be thinking of telling him what he wanted to know, could she?
No. It was out of the question. Theo Knox was the very last man she ought to want to confide in, although her brother had obviously had time for the guy and he was prepared to come through for Milly so maybe he wasn’t all bad. But that was irrelevant. Spilling her innermost thoughts and fears to him would be insane. Complete and utter professional suicide. Not to mention epically mortifying. Besides, why would she even want to? She shouldn’t. She didn’t.
And yet, to her horror, it was growing increasingly tempting to think to hell with it and throw caution to the wind. She could feel the pressure to do exactly that building unbearably inside her, and the words were on the tip of her tongue, piling up one on top of the other, clamouring for release.
What was going on? she wondered in mounting panic, clamping her lips together as horror thundered through her. Had the stress of everything that had happened lately finally broken her down? Had Theo cunningly deployed some sort of reverse psychology that suddenly had her desperate to share every tiny detail? Or was it simply that now she’d experienced a smidgeon of his interest she wanted more?
Impossible, she told herself as she took a deep breath through her nose and willed the dizziness to subside. That would be utterly ridiculous. She wasn’t that pathetic. She certainly wasn’t so starved of attention that she’d forfeit her dignity and fall on any crumb dropped at her feet.
But when was the last time a man had expressed any interest in her? Ever? Okay, so Theo had made it perfectly clear at Mike’s funeral he wasn’t interested in her like that, and that was fine because it wasn’t as if she wanted him to do anything about her little problem, was it? Heaven forbid. When she did finally get around to losing her virginity she didn’t want him anywhere near her. He was rude, high-handed and unpleasant and made her bristle with loathing, although, come to think of it, it wasn’t loathing she’d been bristling with for the last quarter of an hour. She wasn’t entirely sure what it was, any more than she understood what that charged moment when he’d looked at her legs had been about. The blessed relief that her money worries were over, most probably.
It couldn’t be anything else. It certainly couldn’t be attraction. What a waste of time and energy that would be. Even if she had liked him, Theo Knox was so far out of her league he was on another planet. He was a staggeringly handsome, enormously successful billionaire. She was an inexperienced ordinary woman of significantly above average height, who managed to look passable on a good day in the right clothes, of which, truth be told, she had few since it was expensive to clothe well a body like hers. She was moderately good at her job and reasonably intelligent, but she wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t special. In fact, she was the very opposite of special.
But regardless of her non-specialness, something about what she’d done had caught his attention enough to summon her up here and grill her when he could have just had her fired. And that was more appealing than it ought to be.
And so it seemed that—oh, dear—she was that pitiful and she was that starved of attention, because whatever the cost to her pride she wanted Theo’s interest back. She wanted to matter to someone. It was undoubtedly stupid and she definitely didn’t want to think about what it said about her, but the longer she sat there, the more inevitable it became, the more powerful was the urge to share, and she suddenly didn’t have the strength to resist.
‘Well, if you really want to know,’ she said, vaguely wondering if she hadn’t completely lost the plot, ‘mainly it’s my height.’
‘What?’ Theo snapped as he whipped his head round, his deep scowl clearly indicating his displeasure at her continued presence.
‘It’s my height.’
‘What the hell does that have to do with anything?’
‘Everything.’
‘Why? Lying down—or in most other positions, for that matter—height makes absolutely no difference.’
What?
Okay...
‘Well, naturally I don’t know much about that,’ she said, hoping she wasn’t blushing quite as madly as she suspected and wishing she had stronger willpower. ‘But I hit six foot some time around my fifteenth birthday. I was lanky and clumsy and towered over the boys in my class at school. When it came to adolescent hook-ups they gave me a wide berth. There were plenty of other more normal girls to choose from.’
‘There is nothing abnormal about you,’ he said darkly, his gaze roaming all over her and setting her skin on fire.
‘Others might beg to differ,’ she said, determinedly ignoring it. ‘It was a difficult time anyway. My parents had just died and my twelve-year-old sister was in hospital, fighting for survival. Life as I knew it had shattered. Most people were kind and full of sympathy. Others, not so much. Some didn’t know how to handle it, well, me, really, and teenagers can be cruel, can’t they?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What did they do?’
‘It was more a case of what they said,’ she said, her throat tightening as she recalled the grief, pain and confusion that had dominated her emotions during that time. ‘There were a lot of stupid, nasty rumours going round. A few bitchy comments. On one particularly memorable occasion a boy came up to me and said that my parents must have deliberately crashed because death was preferable to the embarrassment of having such a freak for a daughter.’
There was a pause, during which Theo’s jaw clenched imperceptibly and his entire body seemed to tense. ‘I literally have no words,’ he said eventually.
‘No, well, that wasn’t pleasant. It took me a while to get over it all, the loss of my parents, the new reality my sister faced, the bullying and then the guilt that my brother had been forced to leave university to come and look after me. And then when I did—which was no mean feat, I can tell you, not least because part of me was convinced that it wasn’t fair of me to live
my life when Milly’s had been so devastatingly curtailed—it was to discover that even grown men are put off by my height. Apparently it’s emasculating. Not to mention intimidating.’
A tiny muscle began to hammer in Theo’s cheek. ‘That’s pathetic,’ he said grimly.
‘I know,’ she said with a casual ‘what can you do?’ kind of shrug, as if the years of bullying and rejection that had crippled her self-esteem and destroyed her sense of self-worth meant nothing. ‘But, well, it was what it was and on the upside, all that time my classmates and fellow uni students were dating I spent studying. I got a first-class degree and now have a career I love.’
‘I find your height neither emasculating nor intimidating,’ said Theo, his eyes not leaving hers for a second.
‘Why would you?’ she said as a tiny shiver raced down her spine. ‘You’re a hugely successful businessman with the world at his fingertips. I doubt you’re intimidated by anything.’ Or emasculated. He oozed such virile masculinity it simply wasn’t possible.
‘You’d be surprised.’
As his mouth curved into a faint smile, Kate thought that this was another of those occasions she wanted to look away. More than she wanted to know what intimidated him, which was saying something. The intensity of his gaze was making her skin feel all hot and prickly and yet again she was finding it oddly hard to breathe. She felt trapped. On fire. And suddenly, quite out of the blue, acutely aware of him.
Inexplicably, the tiniest of details began to register. The minute scar that bisected his right eyebrow. The slight bump on the bridge of his nose. And was that a silvery grey hair she could see at his left temple in amongst all the ebony? She rather thought it was.
And it wasn’t only the physical details that she now noticed. She could sense the tension radiating off him and the power he was keeping tightly leashed. The non-verbal signals he was emanating gave her the impression he was furious. On her behalf. And although she had no idea why that would be the case it made her go all warm and fuzzy.