by Annie West
‘You’re so cynical.’ She put the well-thumbed paperback down on the window seat.
He shrugged and propped one shoulder against the door jamb as if settling in for a chat.
Chloe knew an illicit thrill of pleasure at the way their relationship had developed. Instead of snapping her head off when she occasionally voiced concern for him, Declan took it in his stride, accepting her in a way he never had before they’d begun working together. She reminded herself it was the ease of a good working relationship, no more. Yet she couldn’t help feeling there was something personal in the way he was so easy with her.
‘If you were a single man with a fortune you’d understand.’
‘You’ve had women set their caps at you?’
‘If that’s a quaint way of asking if they’ve tried to trick me into marriage, then yes. But never with caps. Transparent lingerie is more the norm,’ he mused, rubbing his chin. ‘Or lace. Or even—’
‘I get the picture!’ Chloe sat up, discomfited by the idea of so many women—doubtless sophisticated, accomplished women—throwing themselves at him.
A dart of pure jealousy shafted through her, stealing her breath. It was ridiculous when he was her boss, but she still hadn’t been able to scotch her attraction to him.
‘Attraction’! Such a mealy mouthed word for the searing swirl of awareness that was an ever-present undercurrent. Knowing him better, watching him fight every day, every hour, to find ways around his blindness—pushing himself to the limit with exercises to heal his leg, tackling life as best he could—Chloe felt so much more than desire. There was respect. Admiration. Sympathy. And more.
She felt … too much. Even without putting a name to it, surely what she felt for Declan was too much, too soon?
How had he sneaked past her defences? She’d been content for so long, living her quiet, contained life. He challenged her, invaded her space, made her think and feel.
She remembered the toll Mark’s loss had taken and knew real fear.
By comparison this was no gently nurtured sentiment but a fierce alloy of emotions forged so deep in her soul she shied from dwelling on it.
‘At least my condition means I’ve been spared that for a while.’ He sighed. ‘Sooner or later some enterprising female will decide I’m an ideal target for matrimony. Poor Declan with his scars and his blindness—he’d be grateful for a little female attention. Easy to dupe too.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’ Chloe surged to her feet, her hands fisting at her sides.
‘Sorry.’ His tone was short. ‘I don’t usually wallow in self-pity.’
‘It’s not that.’ Her voice was uneven as she strove to breathe normally. ‘It’s …’ She shook her head, unable to put into words the protective emotion filling her. She hated it when he spoke of himself as less than he was, as an object of pity.
‘You’re too canny to be conned. You’re a good judge of character.’
‘You think? Not always. I’ve made mistakes.’ He scowled and she guessed he was thinking of his brother. She’d seen and heard enough to know he blamed himself for not being here when Adrian had needed him. That knowledge made him all the more human. More likeable.
‘You’ll fall in love one day and that will be it.’
‘Love?’ His brows rose. ‘I doubt it.’
‘You don’t believe in love?’ The idea shocked her. Love had been what turned her life around. Her foster parents’ love, then Mark’s. Without that she’d still be the angry, anti-social victim she’d believed herself as a teenager, hiding a sense of inadequacy behind bravado. Love was the one solid comfort when the world turned bleak.
‘And you do?’
‘I do.’
Was it his imagination that her words sounded like a vow?
Declan tried to summon the sceptical attitude that had seen him through years of success in the cut-throat world of international construction, countless grasping females and a false paternity suit. He sought the words to deny her certainty but, to his amazement, couldn’t find them.
Instead he wondered what it would be like to have a woman like Chloe—forthright, honest and sexy as hell—believe she was in love with him.
Heat sizzled along his veins. His belly hollowed with something like excitement. Almost as if he wanted the picture she painted: the love of one woman.
A woman like Chloe?
He rubbed the back of his neck. What the hell was happening to him? He’d even taken to following her, needing her presence more and more to fill the void of emptiness.
He marched across the kitchen, flicked the switch on the kettle and reached for the tea caddy on the bench just below the window.
‘How did you do that?’
Chloe’s voice arrested him as he was in the middle of levering the top off the caddy.
‘Do what?’ If she was going to cross-question him about his views on love and marriage …
‘Find the tea caddy so easily.’
Her words trickled into his consciousness and his heart gave an almighty thump.
How had he known it was there? The kettle needed no explanation.
Chloe was meticulous in putting it back in exactly the same position so he could find it easily when he wanted it. But usually it was coffee he wanted, not tea.
There was a metallic clunk as the container slipped from his hands to the bench. His fingers spasmed as if trying too late to retrieve it.
Declan blinked but the unrelieved blankness gave no clue. Except that he could have sworn he remembered seeing light and darkness, sunlight and shadow, a moment before. As if the edge of the window where the caddy rested had been highlighted.
Impossible.
Yet his breath hissed in as he relived the illusion.
‘Could you … see something?’ Chloe’s voice, soft and hopeful, came from right behind him. He felt her presence and inhaled her vanilla scent.
But before him was nothing but blackness.
Fury scorched him, incinerating the tiny bud of hope that had, for a moment, begun to unfurl. His fist thumped the counter. Bad enough to be blind, but to have the doctors keep hope alive, saying there was no reason he shouldn’t regain his sight—it was too much!
Better to kill hope dead than face continual disappointment. He couldn’t live like that. Nor could he hold out false hope to this woman who had come to mean so much.
‘Of course not,’ he snarled. ‘I can’t see a damned thing. You know that.’
Her silence was heavy with words left unsaid and Declan knew regret for lashing out.
It wasn’t Chloe’s fault. A better man would apologise, would explain. But, he realised as emotion grabbed his throat and stifled his larynx, he was scared what he might blurt out to her if once he started.
With Chloe he felt … different. He wanted more, though he managed to hide it most of the time.
‘I have something for you.’ Her voice was calm, blessed relief from his turbulent emotions.
‘You do?’ As ever, he turned towards her voice.
‘Here.’ She pressed something into his palm and closed his fingers around it.
Declan swallowed hard, unmoving. In all these weeks he hadn’t touched her. Not since that day in his bathroom when the mere feel of her hand in his, the caress of her soft cheek, had almost blown his mind and his good intentions.
Now, without knowing it, she’d just unleashed the howling need he’d rammed into a dark corner of his soul, carefully guarded with every protection wit and hard work could provide.
A great shudder racked him and his hand shook in hers.
‘Declan? Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ he croaked. ‘What is it?’
‘You’ll like it,’ she assured him brightly. A shade too brightly. ‘It’s a sensor. You slip it over the rim of your mug. Here.’ She guided his hand to a mug he heard her take from the cupboard. ‘Put it on the lip, then when the water boils you make sure you’ve got the spout above the cup and pour. The sensor beeps
when the water reaches it so you won’t overflow the mug. Cool, eh?’
Declan felt her shift away. The warmth of her skin faded from his and he knew loss so profound it terrified him. He wanted to haul her back and hold her close. He wanted to keep her with him, the one bright spot in his murky world. She made life bearable.
‘Declan?’
‘Thanks, Chloe.’ He forced his lips into a tight smile. ‘It’s perfect. No blind man should be without one.’
Chloe floated on her back in the heated pool. The sun had set in glory over the mountains and only the pool lights illuminated the scene. She should be in bed after another taxing day but she couldn’t sleep.
Because of Declan.
He was always on her mind: his restless energy, his piercing intellect, his surprising humour once he lowered his guard enough to let her know the real man, his insight and understanding. Working with him daily, she was no longer surprised to discover he funded his staff to build clinics in India, a hospital in Haiti and wells in Africa, as well as taking on prestigious commercial projects. He didn’t suffer fools but he was generous and had a conscience some of her previous employers had lacked.
Employers. She sucked in a quick breath. That taboo had crumbled before the force of her feelings.
She saw him as a man, not a boss.
Declan Carstairs had a dark intensity that made her shiver even as it tugged her closer.
He wasn’t like Mark—gentle and decent in a quiet, unassuming way.
Declan was larger than life, demanding all her attention, stretching her, challenging her. Making her feel different. She liked and respected him and his pain, so carefully hidden, haunted her.
His unspoken grief forced her to confront her negative memories of his brother and wonder about the man Adrian had been at heart, before illness had changed him.
Declan’s grief for his brother did him credit, proof of his deep capacity for love.
Love?
Her mind froze. She couldn’t, mustn’t think in those terms. Heart pounding, she tried to focus instead on the moment.
Chloe spread her fingers, letting water slide past. It was like swimming in liquid silk, the water caressing her hypersensitive body. A body Declan Carstairs had brought to life after six years of hibernation.
It frightened her that she couldn’t thrust him from her mind.
She couldn’t silence the voice of desire that whispered Declan’s name in a litany of need. He’d smashed through the careful equilibrium she’d painstakingly built since losing Mark.
Too often she found herself longing to hold him, cradle him in her arms and ease his pain. Or let the flames of desire consume them.
It was as well David Sarkesian was due back soon. She’d miss the intimate sessions listening to Declan’s voice, feeling it ripple across her senses like a call to heady pleasure. They worked in tandem, attuned to each other as if they’d done it for years.
Her feelings were too dangerous.
Soon she’d be safe. Not from Declan, but from her own longings.
The flagstones were warm from the long-vanished sun when Declan limped out of the house, stride lengthening as he approached the pool.
An instant later, arms overhead in a long, smooth dive he was airborne. That moment of heady anticipation was the closest he got to a thrill now extreme sports were denied him.
Water closed around him and, for a millisecond, he knew familiar regret at its safe embrace. How much simpler to throw himself over the edge and find not water but an end.
But Declan wasn’t his brother. No matter how heavy the burden, he couldn’t wish himself dead. Even now, half the man he was, weighed by guilt, there was too much to do. If not for himself, then to find justice for Adrian.
That was why sleep eluded him.
It had nothing to do with another day working with Chloe, her scent tickling his nose, her voice an invitation to pleasure.
What had David been thinking, hiring a woman whose voice, when she forgot to sound like Miss Prim, was sultry and beckoning?
For too long Declan had clamped down on unruly needs and wayward thoughts, on the seductive image of Chloe beside him, not just in the office but in his life. It was crazy but he’d found himself contemplating a relationship—not a brief sexual liaison, but a long-term partnership.
The sort of old-fashioned relationship he’d never had time for.
What kind of fool was he? Had blindness clouded his mind?
No woman in her right mind, much less a woman as bright, alluring and intelligent as Chloe, would tie herself to a scarred shadow of a man. Only a woman motivated by pity or greed could overlook what he’d become: a cripple, unable to do the smallest tasks without aid. A man who was hollow at the core, unworthy of love, unable to protect those most precious.
He didn’t need pity.
He needed to work himself into exhaustion.
Declan’s head broke the surface; he hauled his arm out of the water and brought it down in a stroke that collided with something floating in the pool.
Not something. Someone.
Automatically he righted himself. Slick flesh was beneath his hands; ripe contours of hip and waist; the heat of a breast against his chest. Long legs tangling with his.
His hold firmed at her waist, slipping into the neat indentation with a proprietorial ease that should have disturbed him. Instead it sent a jolt of instant pleasure to his groin. He kicked, keeping them both afloat, and again felt the slide of smooth legs between his.
Heat spiralled low like a rope pulling tight.
‘Chloe?’
What other mermaid would invade his private domain?
She moved as he raised his hand, and he brushed one sweetly curved breast. The pebble-hardness of her nipple teased his palm.
Instinctively he cupped her breast, loving the fit of her in his hold, hearing her gasp through a veil of pounding sound as his pulse revved into gear. Did she push against his touch?
‘Declan!’ It was a soft plea. To his straining ears it sounded like a plea for more. Brutally he reminded himself it couldn’t be. It had to be surprise, disgust.
Sanity seeped in and he dragged his hand away to grasp her arm instead. His palm felt branded by her breast, the outline of its perfect nub still teasing him.
Again her legs brushed his, only this time his erection got in the way. Heat slicked his skin.
Her indrawn breath was loud. She stopped moving. Was she frozen in horror?
Declan reminded himself he had every right to swim naked. It was late at night. This was his pool, his place of solitude and solace. She was the interloper. He’d come here to avoid thinking of her.
His lips twisted. Everywhere he turned she was there. His senses had taken on a preternatural keenness, even able to discern her humming from the other side of the house. She drove him insane. He didn’t know which was worse: unrequited lust or the impossible dreams of long-term togetherness that corroded his commonsense.
‘Are you OK?’ he growled.
‘Of course I’m OK.’ Yet her voice was muffled, as if she had trouble getting her breath.
His own breathing had shallowed and his chest pounded.
‘What are you doing here?’ His voice, caught low in his throat, was gruff.
‘Swimming. Well, floating. Relaxing.’ Her voice was stilted, edgy. Who could blame her?
He tried to imagine her floating. Light hair and pale skin, she’d said. He imagined platinum hair rayed out, skin like moonlight, limbs spread as if waiting for him to come to her.
Inevitably frustration bubbled up. He wanted to see her for himself! He wanted …
‘Declan.’ Her voice whispered across raw nerves. ‘You need to let me go.’
He tried yet his fingers held fast.
‘You’re not struggling to get away.’ Amazingly she was pliant in his grip.
Because she feared what he might do? Did she recognise the beast within?
‘Do I need to?’ Her voice had a
husky edge that sent shivers of pleasure to his groin.
‘It would help.’ His own voice thickened. ‘But don’t worry. I won’t hurt you.’
‘I never thought you would.’
A brittle laugh escaped him. Such trust.
He needed a workout to exhaust him just so he could put her from his mind. He was too aware of her sweet, yielding flesh. He was so hungry, so needy. Not for just any woman; that was the curse and the piquancy of it. For this woman. The one who’d driven him to the edge of sanity. Who’d incited impossible yearnings.
He’d never felt so out of control nor so unsure of himself.
‘Declan?’ A hand touched his face, cupped his jaw, her thumb resting on the hated scar. ‘Are you all right?’
He didn’t intend to tilt his face against her palm, but somehow he was leaning in.
‘Perfect,’ he lied. He teetered on a knife edge. ‘Why aren’t you getting out?’
Her hand slid from his face. He was so desperate, he almost believed the move was reluctant.
‘You’re still holding me.’
Of course; he had to release her. Grimly he dragged his hand from her arm till he held her only at the waist. He needed to unhook his arm but couldn’t quite manage it.
He kicked slowly, keeping them afloat, and again his naked length brushed her. A shudder snaked down his spine and shot to his groin.
‘Declan!’
‘Sorry. It was unintentional.’
Was it? He yearned to press against her soft body, into her secret warmth. He longed to taste her.
‘It’s getting late,’ she whispered. ‘I should …’
It was a platitude he recognised. He sought relief in anger, knowing it was safer than anything else he felt.
‘Run away?’ he snarled. ‘I don’t blame you. Looking at my ugly face must be a trial. I …’
Her hand at his collarbone sucked the words away.
‘Chloe?’ She palmed his chest. It wasn’t the touch of a woman who wanted to escape. Tentative, yes, but with a thoroughness that awakened every nerve ending.
‘You’re not ugly.’ Again that throaty edge to her voice. ‘I’ve wanted to touch you …’