by Anne Mather
Snatching the phone off the wall, she jammed it between her shoulder and her ear as she took a couple of eggs and a pack of cheddar out of the fridge. A cheese omelette sounded appetising, and there was a head of lettuce in the salad drawer.
‘Yes,’ she said, expecting it to be for Tom and preparing to tell whoever was calling that he wasn’t available. But the phone nearly dropped onto the floor when she heard a deep, vaguely familiar, voice say, ‘Grace?’
It was Oliver Ferreira. She didn’t know why she was certain; she hardly knew the man, for heaven’s sake. But his dark attractive voice was unmistakable and she put down the cheese and eggs and took hold of the receiver.
‘Hi,’ she said, hoping she sounded less agitated than she felt. ‘Um—Tom’s not here, I’m afraid.’
‘Is he not?’ Oh, why did she get the feeling that he’d known that all along? ‘That’s a shame.’
‘I can leave a note for him to ring you when he gets in,’ she offered lamely, not knowing what else to say, but Oliver demurred.
‘No need,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch him some other time.’ There was a pregnant pause, and then he added softly, ‘Has he left you all on your own?’
Grace pursed her lips. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ she said, resenting his mocking tone. ‘I am on my own, yes. But that’s how I like it.’
‘Pity.’ She heard him give what sounded like a regretful sigh, but what did she know? ‘I was going to ask if you’d like to have supper with me. Providing you haven’t eaten already, of course.’
Grace sucked in a breath. ‘I—’ The cheese and eggs lying on the counter mocked her now, but she couldn’t bring herself to refuse him. Not outright, anyway. ‘I haven’t eaten, as it happens.’
‘Does that mean you’ll come?’
Grace hesitated. ‘Why do you want to have supper with me, Mr Ferreira?’
‘Maybe I want to explore my attraction to you,’ he said drily, and Grace was overcome with embarrassment at the memory of what she’d said the last time they were together.
‘I—don’t think so,’ she said at last and Oliver immediately took her up on it.
‘You don’t think what?’ he queried. ‘That I’m attracted to you or that you’ll accept my invitation?’
Grace swallowed. ‘I—both, I guess.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why,’ she said, the cheese and eggs regaining a little of their attraction. ‘But thanks for the offer.’ And without waiting to say anything more, she put the receiver back on its hook.
To her annoyance, she found she was trembling, and despite her hunger she shoved the makings for the omelette back in the fridge. A sandwich would have to do, she decided, no longer in the mood to cook for herself and, pulling a plastic-wrapped loaf out of the bread bin, she started to unwind the fastener.
She’d pricked her finger on the metal insert and was sucking it frustratedly when someone rang the doorbell. Now what? she fretted, striding impatiently out of the kitchen and along the hall to the door. The only person she could think it might be was Sophie, but surely she still had her key.
Not even considering she was taking a chance by opening the door after dark when she was alone in the house, she turned the latch and pulled it open.
‘Oliver!’
His name sprang from her lips, almost without her volition, and for a moment she could only stare at him as if she didn’t quite believe her eyes. She blinked. It was barely five minutes since she’d put down the phone. How could he be here? It didn’t make sense.
Yet, here he was. She had only to feel the familiar prickling of her skin to know she wasn’t imagining it. In a black shirt, black jeans and a black leather jerkin, he looked vaguely foreign, but she knew it was just his Spanish blood that was showing tonight.
‘You really shouldn’t open the door without checking to see who it is first,’ he remarked, one hand outstretched to support himself against the frame. ‘Or were you expecting someone else?’
‘I think that’s my business, don’t you?’ she retorted, unconsciously aping his reply when she’d asked if he wanted a family. A faint smile touched his thin lips.
‘I’ll take that as a no,’ he said, placing one booted foot on the lower step. ‘May I come in?’
No!
Grace pressed her lips together. How could she refuse him? It wasn’t her house. ‘If you like,’ she replied rather ungraciously and, turning on her heel, she retreated along the hall.
She knew he was following her. Although the sound of the outer door slamming might have meant anything, she was conscious of him with every fibre of her being. If only he weren’t so big, so dark, so disturbingly male, she thought, despising herself for wanting him to stay. But what on earth was he doing here?
She paused in the centre of the kitchen, briefly unable to remember what she had been about to do before he rang the bell. Then she saw the loaf of bread and the fastener that had caused her so much grief and expelled a heavy sigh. A sandwich, she reminded herself firmly. She had been about to make a sandwich.
He halted in the doorway, propping his shoulder against the jamb, studying her with deeply intent dark eyes. ‘What are you doing?’
Grace lifted one shoulder in a dismissive shrug. But she was wishing she were wearing something a little more alluring than a cropped tee shirt and jeans. Okay, the jeans were cut low on her hips and her tee shirt exposed tantalising glimpses of her midriff and the tiny rose tattoo that she’d had done in a weak moment and regretted ever since. But they were definitely not what she would have chosen to wear had she had a choice.
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ she asked, taking a knife from the drawer. ‘What do you want?’
‘It looks like you’re about to make yourself a sandwich,’ he remarked, answering her first question but not her second. ‘Should I feel insulted, I wonder? It appears you’d rather make do with a—what? A cheese sandwich?—than have supper with me.’
Grace expelled a tight breath. ‘What are you doing here, Oliver? Where were you when you phoned me? In the pub?’
‘I was sitting in my car at your gate,’ he confessed ruefully. ‘I thought I’d better phone before putting in an appearance.’
‘What for?’ Grace permitted herself a brief glance in his direction. ‘You obviously had every intention of coming here.’
‘Well—yeah.’ He conceded the point. ‘But I don’t like being hung up on. Do you?’
Grace shook her head. ‘I didn’t hang up on you,’ she protested. But she knew she had. ‘In any case, as I said before, Tom’s not here.’
‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘I knew that before you told me.’
So she hadn’t been wrong. ‘How did you know? Have you spoken to him?’
‘No.’ Oliver hesitated a moment and then he said, ‘His bank manager is a friend of mine.’
Grace frowned. ‘So you set up this meeting for him?’
‘No.’ Oliver sighed. ‘George Green told me he was meeting Tom for dinner.’
‘Why would he tell you something like that?’ She stared at him. ‘Aren’t clients’ affairs supposed to be confidential?’
Oliver made an exasperated sound. ‘He didn’t betray any confidences, Grace. We were both at a planning meeting this afternoon. He mentioned he was having dinner with Tom this evening.’
‘So when you rang earlier, you knew perfectly well that Tom wouldn’t be here?’
‘Looks like it.’
Grace put down the knife, her fingers curling into her palms. ‘So why did you pretend you thought he was?’
‘As I recall, you told me Tom wasn’t here before I could say anything,’ he essayed evenly. ‘I just played along.’
Grace pressed her lips together. ‘So why did you ring?’
‘Need you ask?’ Oliver straightened away from the door. ‘I wanted to see you again. On my terms, not Tom’s.’
Grace’s mouth felt dry and when he moved, smoothly but inexorably, towards her,
she couldn’t prevent her tongue from emerging to moisten her parched lips. ‘I think you should go,’ she said, but one of his hands had fastened around her wrist and before she had finished the words he raised it to his lips.
‘You don’t mean that,’ he said, his tongue exploring the sensitive network of veins he’d turned towards his mouth. His teeth nipped at the thin veil of skin. ‘So vulnerable,’ he murmured huskily. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t want to find out where this is going.’
Grace had the feeling she knew exactly where it was going, if she let it. This close to him, it was difficult to think of anything else, her senses assaulted by the heat of his nearness, the clean scent of his maleness. The awareness that he could overpower her so easily should have scared her, but it didn’t. Yet she couldn’t deny she had little resistance to his dark magnetism.
A trickle of perspiration ran down between her breasts, dampening her bra, and although she knew he couldn’t possibly see it, she felt as if he could. His head was still bent over her wrist, but when she shivered in response to her thoughts he looked up. Eyes that seemed to have no trace of lightness in them searched her unguarded face, and a sensual smile softened the hard contours of his mouth.
‘Are you cold?’ He raised his dark eyebrows, but she could only shake her head. ‘I thought not,’ he said with some satisfaction, and tucked an errant strand of red-gold hair behind her ear. ‘Do you still want me to go?’
Grace quivered. ‘Would you? If I asked you?’
Oliver’s mouth tugged down at the corners. ‘No,’ he said irrepressibly. ‘But you haven’t answered my question.’
Grace swallowed. ‘What do you want from me, Oliver? If this is some ploy to make your brother jealous—’
‘It’s not.’ His eyes darkened. ‘I wouldn’t be so crass.’ His fingers stroked her cheek, his thumb rubbing insistently across her soft lips. ‘I know you don’t need me to tell you that you’re beautiful, but you are, you know? So beautiful it hurts.’
Grace moved her head from side to side, dislodging his fingers from her face. ‘I don’t need any unnecessary compliments,’ she said a little hoarsely. ‘I just want to know why you’re doing this?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ And now his hands were on her bare midriff, urging her towards him, bringing her lower body into intimate contact with his. ‘Does that tell you anything?’
Grace’s legs had turned to jelly at the first touch of his hands on her body and an unfamiliar ache in the pit of her stomach made her feel weak. He parted his legs then so that she was drawn between them, the heavy pressure of his arousal unmistakable.
But almost before her brain had had time to process that thought, Oliver bent towards her, his lips brushing softly but insistently over hers. The breath she’d hardly been aware she was holding escaped on a sigh as he continued to tease her, and she swayed towards him, her breasts flattening eagerly against his hard chest.
It was so different from any kiss she’d experienced before. He wasn’t forceful or urgent, but when he caught the soft flesh of her lower lip between his teeth and bit her, her bones felt as if they were melting into water.
She was hardly aware of his hands sliding over her hips to the rounded curve of her bottom. It was only when he started to caress her, when the tips of his fingers invaded the soft cleft at the top of her legs, that she sagged against him. A pulse in the moist hollow he had barely brushed against was throbbing with a powerful, sensuous beat and, as if he knew exactly how she was feeling, Oliver deepened the kiss, his mouth settling hotly and surely over hers.
Her head swam as the wet thrust of his tongue invaded her mouth. A low moan—half protest, half invitation—escaped her, the blood thundering hotly through her veins. He was seducing her with his mouth, was her last coherent thought before a mindless lethargy gripped her. He was using his tongue to imitate what he wanted to do with another part of his body, and when he rotated his hips against hers she was instantly drenched with a wet, sexual heat.
‘I want you,’ he said thickly, backing her up against the unit behind her. The pressure of his body on hers kept her there, his hands supporting him at either side as he continued to bestow long, drugging kisses on her lips, her cheek, the soft, yielding curve of her throat. ‘I wanted you the first time I saw you. Crazy, huh?’
Grace trembled. ‘I don’t think it’s crazy at all,’ she gulped unsteadily, tipping her head to one side to make it easier for him to nuzzle her shoulder. ‘I was attracted to you, too. But then, you know that.’
‘Do I?’ He looked down at her, watching her reaction when his hands sought the hem of her tee shirt, sliding beneath it to caress the creamy flesh that covered her ribs. His thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts, his eyes darkening when he discovered she wasn’t wearing a bra. ‘I think we’re wearing too many clothes.’
‘So do I,’ she confessed, her hands spreading against his shirt, feeling the powerful throb of his heart beneath her palms.
‘We should get naked,’ he murmured, his tongue making a lazy pass over the hard nipple that was clearly visible against her tee shirt, and she shivered in pleasurable anticipation. ‘But not here,’ he went on, resisting her efforts to remove his jacket and stepping back from her. ‘Not in Tom’s house.’ He looked about him with sudden dislike. ‘Not where he f—brings his women.’
Grace sagged against the unit. It took an effort but she managed to put her own hands on the counter beside her, supporting herself as she had done earlier. ‘You—you mean Sophie,’ she said, her bemused brain taking time to assimilate his words. Of course, she thought, this house would for ever be associated with his ex-wife’s betrayal.
‘Whatever,’ he said, but before she could ask him what he meant by that they both heard the sound of a car turning into the driveway outside.
‘That’s Tom,’ she exclaimed, all other considerations forgotten in the sudden shock of his return. She glanced half guiltily at the clock, tugging her tee shirt back into place. ‘He’s early. It’s only nine o’clock.’
‘Maybe his meeting didn’t go as well as he’d expected,’ remarked Oliver, his expression hardening. ‘I guess this is where I came in.’
‘What do you mean?’
Grace was still staring uncomprehendingly at him when Tom’s key rattled in the lock. The front door opened and slammed behind him with a definite thump. Then he was striding down the hall and, unable to stand there as Oliver was doing, pretending that nothing had happened, Grace turned away to snatch up the knife again as Tom appeared in the doorway.
His greeting to his brother was hardly friendly. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped, looking suspiciously from one to the other of them, and Grace thought that if he was still hoping to get some financial assistance from Oliver, he was hardly going the right way about it.
‘Yeah, I’m pleased to see you, too,’ Oliver responded drily, and Grace envied him his apparent complacency even as she resented it.
‘Well…’ Tom’s jaw bunched, but Grace noticed that much of his anger had been defused by his brother’s coolness. ‘I’ve had a bloody awful evening, haven’t I?’
‘And finding me here hasn’t improved it?’ suggested Oliver evenly. ‘No, well, it’s not my fault that you got yourself into a mess.’
‘I know that.’ Tom’s nostrils flared. ‘You don’t have to rub it in. Anyway, you still haven’t told me why you’re here. Have you had a change of heart?’
‘You wish.’ Oliver was sardonic. ‘No, as a matter of fact, I knew you were supposedly having dinner with George Green this evening and I called to ask Miss Lovell if she would care to have supper with me.’ His lips twisted. ‘Not unexpectedly, she declined.’
Tom’s bushy eyebrows drew together in obvious surprise but Grace, meeting Oliver’s enigmatic gaze, felt the sudden chill of knowing that what had happened had meant nothing to him.
‘Yeah, well, Gracie’s fussy about who she has supper with,’ Tom declared smugly, evidently deciding that her de
cision must have had something to do with him. He slipped a possessive arm about her shoulders. ‘Have you had a good evening, babe? Did you go to the gym?’
Grace could hardly bear to have him touch her, but anything was better than allowing Oliver to see how humiliated she felt. ‘It’s been—interesting,’ she said, moving out of Tom’s embrace. ‘I—think I’ll go and take a shower. I feel—dirty.’
‘Don’t go on my account,’ said Oliver abruptly as she dropped the knife and made as if to leave. ‘I’ll see you later, Tom.’ And without giving either of them the chance to detain him, he strode back along the hall to the door.
The door had hardly banged behind him before Tom turned on Grace. ‘What was that all about? What’s been going on here, Gracie? What did he really want?’
‘He told you why he came here,’ she retorted, feeling the anger of knowing she’d been used stirring again. ‘And don’t call me Gracie! I don’t like it.’
Tom ignored that. ‘He actually came to ask you out?’ He snorted. ‘He’s got a nerve!’
‘Why?’ Grace was just incensed enough to argue with him. ‘Why shouldn’t he ask me out? I’m a free agent and so is he.’
Tom sneered. ‘I wouldn’t let Sophie hear you say that if I were you,’ he retorted. ‘She still considers Oliver her property. She always has. Even when she was with me, she was always keeping tabs on him, checking who he went out with, who he slept with.’
‘I don’t want to hear this,’ exclaimed Grace, ignoring the way her stomach clenched when Tom spoke of Oliver sleeping with anyone else. ‘I’m not going out with him, so whether Sophie would approve or otherwise is a moot point.’ She swallowed. ‘And now I really am going to have a shower. Okay?’
Tom hesitated. ‘I’m really glad, you know,’ he said, stepping into her path as she started for the door. ‘That you turned Oliver down, I mean. You and me—we’ve got unfinished business.’
Grace’s jaw dropped. ‘Tom—’