Passion Becomes You

by Michelle Reid

The man’s soft laughter shivered down her naked back. Then suddenly he appeared in front of her and stuck out his hand. ‘Jack Bridgeman,’ he introduced himself.

  Jemma glanced down at the hand then back into his amazing eyes. ‘I know who you are,’ she said drily. ‘One would have to be blind and deaf not to—wouldn’t one?’

  The eyebrows shot up again. ‘Now who’s being insulting?’ he challenged.

  She sighed, accepting that he was right, and took the proffered hand. ‘Jemma Davis,’ she said. ‘Most definitely not a name you will recognise!’ She sent him a rueful glance.

  He grinned. ‘Let’s go and find you a drink,’ he offered, and took her arm.

  She let him guide her away, out of one room and into another—just as crowded—but where a superbly stocked bar stood against one wall, manned by white-coated waiters.

  She saw Leon then, standing in a group of laughing people, his arm draped across the shoulders of the woman in the white dress. Red-hot humiliation swam up from the pit of her stomach to encompass her whole being. He had forgotten all about her! In among this lot she was nothing, and she felt like a nothing.

  I hate him! she thought and took a deep gulp at the contents in the glass that had arrived in her hand. The cocktail almost took her head off, whatever was in it burning like fire down the back of her throat. It took all her control not to fall into a fit of choking. Beside her, Jack Bridgeman watched her lazily.

  ‘Whose is this party, anyway?’ she asked him when she felt able to speak.

  ‘Hers,’ he informed her, nodding his head towards the woman who was draped all over Leon.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jemma, looking down to hide the jealous look in her eyes. Why had he bothered bringing her if he preferred his hostess’s company?

  ‘She looks like a fluffy black kitten when in actual fact she’s a dangerous, money-eating panther,’ he added with a small smile which didn’t meet his eyes. ‘Which is why you only see her with men who stink of the stuff—like your Mr Stephanades.’

  ‘He is not my Mr Stephanades,’ Jemma denied, and realised bleakly that that was probably the truest thing she’d allowed herself to say about her relationship with Leon since it began.

  ‘Good,’ Jack Bridgeman said. ‘So let’s you and me go and dance.’

  He took her arm again, but Jemma hesitated, her eyes helplessly drawn to the other side of the room where Leon still stood talking with their hostess. Should she just boldly go over there and claim his attention? The urge to do just that was burning alongside the jealousy in her blood. But, even as the idea entered her head, she watched Leon draw the woman closer and lower his dark head to drop a kiss on her upturned cheek.

  She looked away, her eyes glazed over with hurt. Then, on a mammoth gathering-together of all her pride, she smiled brightly at Jack Bridgeman. ‘Dance, you said?’ She took a final gulp at her drink and put down the glass. ‘Just lead the way and I’ll follow!’

  He guided her on to the tiny dance-floor. ‘Right,’ he said as he drew her into his arms. ‘Tell me about yourself, Jemma Davis!’

  So she did, prattling on about anything so long as it kept her mind off Leon. By the time they had circled the room for two records, she was beginning to relax and enjoy herself, Jack’s easy manner and needle-sharp sense of humour actually managing to make her laugh.

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed ages later when the music went even slower and he took it as a cue to pull her closer and slide his fingers lightly along her uncovered spine. ‘You’ve no idea how much I’ve been aching to do this. You’re the first woman, Jemma Davis, whose back view has managed to turn me on even before I took a good look at the front!’

  ‘Charming!’ she mocked. ‘Was that supposed to be another one of your compliments?’

  He grinned boyishly. ‘Oh, don’t worry, sweetheart,’ he murmured huskily. ‘The back view is a delightful appetiser but the front is positively lethal!’

  ‘You aren’t so bad on the eye yourself,’ she told him, flirting deliberately. ‘Despite the sex symbol image,’ she tagged on teasingly.

  ‘Or because of it, maybe?’ he suggested drily.

  Jemma studied his face for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No,’ she decided. ‘Sex symbols tend to strut their wares for all to see. You don’t strut, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume your ego is not as big as it’s reputed to be.’

  ‘You precocious little madam!’ he choked, not slow on picking up on her hidden meaning. ‘Give me five minutes alone with you and I may well just prove you wrong there!’

  He stopped dancing, teasing her by grabbing hold of her wrist and turning towards the doorway. Still laughing, Jemma tugged against his grip—then saw Leon leaning against the open door a mere two feet away, his black eyes fixed on her, and she went still beside the other man.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jack, seeing the reason for her stillness. ‘Do I see a royal summons written in those frightening eyes, ma’am?’ he mocked.

  ‘Yes, I think you do,’ Jemma confirmed with a nervous little laugh.

  Jack looked down at her, his expression suddenly serious. ‘You don’t have to go with him, you know,’ he said quietly. ‘All you have to do is turn your back on him and that will be the end of that. Stephanades is not a man who likes to make scenes. He won’t come after you.’

  Jemma knew that, even as she stood there, locked in silent battle with those eyes; she knew that Leon was not going to make a single move towards her. That pride-shrivelling gesture was down to her.

  ‘So?’ Jack prompted, bringing her eyes flickering up to meet his sardonic ones. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Goodnight, Jack,’ she said a trifle ruefully. ‘And—thanks.’

  Reaching up, she kissed his lean cheek, her eyes full of a silent apology before she turned and walked slowly to Leon. ‘I’m ready to leave if you are,’ she told him stiffly.

  He didn’t answer or even acknowledge her for the space of ten turbulent seconds, his gaze fixed on something beyond her shoulder—which had to be Jack, she assumed, or Leon’s eyes would not look so shiveringly steely. Then his dark lashes flickered, forming two perfect, sleepy arches over his eyes as he lowered them to her hot, defiant face.

  ‘More than ready, agape mou,’ he answered quietly, and to her utter confusion he smiled. Not a threatening smile nor even a deriding smile, but a warm, if slightly rueful smile, and his hand, when it reached out to curve around her waist, was surprisingly gentle. He drew her against him and kissed her softly on the lips. As he drew away again, his gaze slid over her shoulder and hardened fractionally. But when it returned to her it was warm again, revealing no hint of anger at all. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  She went willingly enough. But her confusion at his manner did not leave her, so nor did her own stiff manner. Whatever he was up to, she decided as he saw her indulgently into the car then came around to join her, she wasn’t going to let down her guard to find out. If he was trying to soften her up before jumping on her for kissing Jack Bridgeman, then he was in for a disappointment! she decided huffily as they drove away. And she answered his light conversational remarks with monosyllables, her own mood becoming blacker the lighter his become.

  ‘You are angry with me,’ he decided after several attempts to draw her out failed.

  ‘What could you have done to make me angry?’ she drawled.

  ‘All but dumping you as soon as we arrived there is a good enough reason,’ he admitted. ‘Business, I’m afraid,’ he shrugged.

  Funny business, Jemma derided bitchily on an upsurge of that evil jealousy she was beginning to feel so familiar with.

  ‘At least you fond some light relief with Jack Bridgeman. You enjoyed your—dance?’

  This is it, Jemma thought with a slight stiffening of her spine in readiness. ‘I enjoyed his company very much!’ she stated coolly. ‘He was charming and attentive and a very good dancer, and without him I would have been bored to death!’

  ‘Then I must thank him next ti
me I bump into him,’ was all Leon said to her outright provocation. And changed the subject.

  To her surprise and confusion, he didn’t refer to it again. And over the ensuing weeks she noticed that, wherever they went and whoever tried to make a pass at her, he never revealed any hint that it concerned him overmuch. He often left her alone while he went off to ‘discuss business’, as he called it, and, no matter whom he found her with when he eventually came looking for her, he was always aggravatingly at ease about it.

  It was meeting Tom on the stairs a couple of days later that put the missing piece into the puzzle, when he asked if her boyfriend had got over his fit of jealousy. And it clicked suddenly that Leon had not liked revealing that hint of weakness in himself when he’d reacted jealously to her kissing Tom. Since then he had gone out of his way to show the opposite reaction, as if he was determined to quash any idea she might develop that he thought more of her than their relationship suggested.

  Which was—what? she asked herself. Lovers. Nothing more, nothing less. Jealousy grew out of deeper feelings. Feelings that Leon just did not have for her. Or if he had, for one brief blinding moment when he’d seen her kissing Tom, he had firmly squashed them. And if he could do that so easily, then they couldn’t have been very strong feelings.

  The week after the party, he went off to New York for a week. She had come to realise that his business commitments seemed to flow equally between London and New York—with a trip to his head office in Athens thrown in only very occasionally. Friction with his father, she suspected—not that Leon had ever spoken about it. But his expression was tight-lipped whenever she broached the subject of his family and, remembering what Cassie had once said about a family rift, she drew her own conclusions.

  While he was in New York, she missed her period. Jemma was not overly worried about it since her cycle had never been that reliable at the best of times, and she accepted that the physical and emotional stress she had taken on since Leon had probably helped to throw her out of sync.

  For the next few weeks he remained in London. And they were barely out of each other’s company. Josh had found out about them by then, and his disgust was unveiled. ‘Are you crazy?’ he cried. ‘Of all the bloody men in London you have to fall for Leon Stephanades! I just don’t bloody well believe it!’

  ‘He’s what I want,’ she answered simply. ‘And for as long as he wants me I’m happy.’

  ‘And when he doesn’t?’ he challenged brutally.

  Jemma shrugged to mask the ache his words evoked. ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,’ she said.

  Josh sighed heavily, but let the matter drop.

  Late Friday afternoon, when she was just considering packing up to leave for the weekend, the telephone rang. Leon sounded grim and irritable. ‘Something has come up,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid this weekend is out.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her disappointment sounded clear in her voice. ‘So when will I see you?’

  ‘God knows,’ he sighed. ‘I have to be in New York on Monday and will be away the whole week. I’ll call you,’ he said, and rang off.

  She went out with Trina and Frew on Saturday night, meeting up with all her old friends for the evening. But she felt restless and out of place among them. Leon occupied her whole mind these days and she couldn’t seem to enjoy anything that did not include him.

  On Monday, she woke up feeling dreadfully ill. ‘Tummy bug,’ she said to Trina, and took herself back to bed. By Wednesday she was beginning to feel a bit better, but only marginally. Still, it was enough to send her back to work.

  Josh took one look at her and remarked, ‘You look shocking.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she drawled. ‘That does make me feel better.’

  ‘Beginning to get to you, is it?’ he drawled out cynically. ‘Hanging on to a man like Stephanades wears a woman down, doesn’t it? And I should know,’ he added bitterly. ‘I’ve had his leftovers, after all.’

  Jemma winced at his cruelty, hating the ugly twist he had put on Leon’s friendship with Cassie. And it made her realise that if there had ever been a seed of love growing inside him for the other woman, then it was well and truly dead now.

  Leon noticed her poor state of health the moment he saw her. When she explained, he just continued frowning and said, ‘Are you sure it isn’t something worse than just a stomach virus? You look pale and you’ve lost weight.’

  She just shrugged the question away. ‘You know what it’s like with these things. Once they get a hold of you they can take an age to go away again. I’m feeling a whole lot better, really.’ So long as she didn’t eat anything, she added grimly to herself.

  He ran his eyes over her slender figure. ‘Perhaps you need a break,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘When did you last have a holiday?’

  ‘Christmas,’ she told him, smiling wistfully. ‘I spent it in Barbados with Trina. We had a great time.’

  ‘Lots of men, I suppose,’ Leon growled, pretending to sound jealous, but Jemma now knew better. Leon did not get jealous—and why? Because he did not care enough for her, that was why. Not with any emotions which really mattered, anyway. He fancied her like hell still, could still lose himself in her body with enough passion actually to shock her sometimes. But as for any deeper feelings, they just did not exist.

  He was in London for a week. And they saw each other every night. But her continuing virus and all the late nights began to take their toll on her, and she was actually relieved when he went away again.

  She only wished she could have a break from Josh, too. He had become a boor to work for, his bitterness with Cassie reflecting in his attitude to all women—including her now. He was brusque and impatient all the time. ‘If you can’t do your work to your usual standard, Jemma,’ he snapped at her one day when she had somehow mislaid a file he wanted, ‘then perhaps you should start thinking about either giving up Stephanades or giving up this job!’

  ‘This thing with Cassie has really soured him,’ she confided in Leon when Josh had been worse than nasty all day and she felt exhausted by the time she met Leon for dinner that night.

  ‘What do you expect?’ he countered coolly. ‘To be tricked as Cassie tricked him is, in my opinion, the ultimate betrayal.’

  Something in the way he said that hit her on the raw. It was if he was warning her—try that kind of trick on me and see what you get!

  She shuddered and changed the subject. But that weekend her manner towards him cooled slightly. It wasn’t that she wanted it to, it was just that, after over two months of living exclusively for him, she was beginning to realise how hopeless the relationship really was. After all, there was still the nice Greek girl with the dowry waiting somewhere for Leon to give in to family pressure and marry. And she could suddenly appreciate what Cassie had meant when she’d said, ‘What chance does a not-so-nice English girl with nothing to offer him but a great body have against all of that?’ None, Jemma acknowledged, and began to wonder if it was perhaps time to start weaning herself off Leon Stephanades.

  If he noticed her coolness, he said nothing, not until Sunday evening, that was, when he was dropping her off at her flat, and he surprised her by saying, ‘Before you go, Jemma, I have a proposition I want to put to you.’

  ‘A proposition?’ she repeated curiously.

  He nodded, his expression unusually grim. ‘Next week, I close a take-over deal I have spent the last year putting together in New York,’ he informed her. ‘When it is done, I will be hard put to come up for air during the following few months while I drag the company up to the standard the Leonadis Corporation requires of all its subsidiaries. The company is in a bad way, has been badly run, badly managed, and recklessly bled by its owners to the extent that nothing short of some ruthless tactics will give it a hope of surviving the next few months...’ He paused, watching her face. ‘I will not be able to come to London as often as I have been doing,’ he explained. ‘Maybe not at all, the way things are stacking up.’

  ‘So...’
Jemma kept her voice steady by sheer strength of will ‘...this explanation is your way of saying goodbye?’ she assumed, feeling the weight of knowledge bearing heavily down on her. She had been so busy trying to cool her own feelings for him that she had not noticed that Leon was going through a similar process for her!

  But his reaction surprised her. ‘No!’ he denied, reaching out to haul her across the gap separating them so that he could issue a hard, angry kiss to her lips. ‘What in hell gave you that idea?’ He actually sounded shocked enough to bring weak tears floating into her eyes. ‘Damn you, Jemma!’ he muttered. ‘I have never known such a difficult woman to read as you! You spend the whole weekend giving me the cold shoulder—then have the cheek to suggest it is me who is doing the cooling off!’

  ‘I haven’t been feeling well...’ she offered as a very lame excuse for her behaviour.

  He nodded curtly and kissed her again. ‘And you think I have not noticed—or, worse, have not cared? I said I had a proposition for you, and it is with your poor state of health and my refusal to let you go out of my life that I offer it! Come with me,’ he invited huskily. ‘Next weekend will be the last I can promise to devote to you here in London. But if you will come with me to New York, I will promise to devote every moment of my spare time to you!’

  ‘M-me—to New York?’ she choked, hardly daring to believe he was offering it. ‘But—my flat—m-my job!’ She sat up and away from him, trying to make her whirling brain think.

  ‘You said yourself that Tanner is becoming impossible,’ he inserted. ‘Losing that job will not come as any hardship—except financially, of course,’ he added when she sent him a wry glance. ‘But I am not just asking you to come to New York, Jemma,’ he went on softly. ‘I am asking you to move in with me, be my woman. Allow me to worry about all the practicalities of your life while you just worry about making yourself beautiful for me.’ His hand slid beneath her hair to curve her nape. ‘I want you—need you there with me, agape mou,’ he murmured softly. ‘Will you come?’

  Well, will you? she asked herself for the hundredth time that same night. She lay alone in her small single bed, missing him, missing the warmth of his body curled up against hers, missing the scent of him, the soft sound of his breathing when he slept.