More Than a Fling?

by Joss Wood

If it worked out the way he planned they could spend the weekend together before he needed to be back at Heathrow to catch a plane on Monday night—

  Eli jabbed him in the ribs and Ross frowned at him. ‘What?’

  ‘Stop tapping that bloody mobile and concentrate!’ Eli hissed.

  Yeah, okay, Ross thought. But his mind immediately went sliding back to Ally. He was going halfway across the world to have sex. Was he mad? There were plenty of willing girls in Cape Town. But he didn’t want them. He wanted her. He just didn’t understand why. He had no idea as he certainly didn’t want to be intrigued by an uptight workaholic whose life was her job.

  She was the perfect hook-up—she had no expectations and didn’t ‘do’ emotions. It was a good job he wasn’t thinking of her in terms of anything more—like a lover or a partner—because then he’d be screwed. He just needed to get this woman out of his system. If he slept with her maybe he could banish her from his thoughts and dreams.

  No, if he were looking for a lover then no way would he choose an uptight workaholic like his dad. Loving someone who was wedded to their job was a good way to get kicked in the teeth and to end up feeling lonely, unloved, emotionally and physically abandoned.

  No, the minimum he expected from a lover was to come first, and that would never happen with Jones. And that was okay. This was only about making her come first anyway.

  Ross grinned and Eli jabbed him in the ribs again. ‘For God’s sake, Bennett, get a grip and concentrate!’

  Ross looked around at the faces of the people—some annoyed, some amused, all curious—and thought that maybe Eli was right.

  He might not be corporate but he was normally professional.

  * * *

  ‘You still enjoying my flowers, Jones?’

  Ross’s deep voice slid across the miles and over her skin and Ally shivered. She automatically glanced at her watch and saw that it was past ten. It was still raining. Leaning back in her chair, she placed her feet on her desk— something she would never normally do, but since she was pretty sure she was the only one in the Bellechier building at this time of night she thought she could.

  ‘They are looking a bit sad,’ Ally admitted, looking at the drooping bunch on her desk. ‘The orchids are still fine, so I’m going to take them home with me tonight.’

  ‘You’re still at work?’

  Ross swore and she imagined him raking his hand through his hair.

  ‘You need to get a life, woman.’

  ‘Apparently I am—unless you’ve called me to rescind your invitation,’ Ally said. Her voice was cool although she sucked in shallow breaths.

  ‘Not a chance. But why are you still at work?’

  ‘Long day... Looking over sponsorship deals and the set-up for two new stores in Hong Kong and Miami. Brainstorming storyboards with the ad agency for your campaign.’

  ‘Do not make me look like a wuss,’ Ross threatened.

  ‘Ah...there goes my idea of dressing you up in skintight shirts and pants and having you arranging flowers and composing haikus,’ she teased.

  Ross chuckled.

  ‘Where are you?’ Ally asked, needing to know.

  ‘Standing on my veranda overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, listening to the sound of the waves crashing on the rocks. Drinking a glass of red wine.’

  Ally closed her eyes. ‘Damn, that sounds good.’

  ‘Well, get your ass over here. I’ll ply you with wine and do wicked things to you,’ Ross suggested, his voice deep as night, rich as Swiss chocolate and so, so sexy.

  Dear God, she was tempted. So tempted. But she couldn’t; she had too much on the boil here—too many responsibilities, too much that could go wrong. She needed to make this job work, needed to make these projects a success...failure was not an option.

  ‘I wish I could but it’s simply not possible. Even the time I spent in Cape Town has put me days behind in my schedule.’

  ‘Yet the world keeps turning,’ Ross muttered. ‘You’re a workaholic, Jones.’

  No, she wasn’t. ‘I’m just dedicated.’

  ‘Trust me—I know one when I see one.’

  Ally heard Ross take a sip of his wine and wondered why he sounded so bleak, so sad.

  ‘Don’t burn out, Jones.’

  She frowned at his terse tone. ‘I’m fine.’ Dammit, she was saying that a lot lately.

  Ross was quiet for a little while and Ally was happy to listen to him breathe, to hear the occasional thud of a wave in the distance.

  ‘How close are you to the beach?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Not far. You walk out of my yard onto the dunes; the beach is just beyond that. Easy access—which is perfect since I surf most days.

  ‘So...the reason for my call. I am going to be in London in two weeks’ time. I have business on the Tuesday and Wednesday and thought I could fly to Geneva on the Thursday evening. Does that suit?’

  Ally asked him to hold on while she consulted her diary. She knew that she was flying in from Hong Kong on the Wednesday. She’d have Thursday at the office to catch up, so she could probably skip out early that evening. Was she going to do this? Really?

  She took a huge breath and jumped. ‘That could work.’

  ‘Good,’ Ross said, his voice so low and so hot that it set her nerve-endings on fire, her pulse jumping and her panties damp. Dear God, if this was what he could do to her over the phone, then he’d be lethal in the bedroom. ‘Two requests, okay?’

  Oh, frig, what? Whips? Chains? Blindfolds?

  Ally licked her lips. ‘What?’

  ‘Wear those red panties for me.’

  ‘Okay. What else?’ Please let it not be anything weird...please.

  ‘Leave the office now. Eat something. Get some sleep.’

  Okay, not what she was expecting. Ally looked at her monitor and the half-finished report on the screen.

  ‘It’ll still be there in the morning, Jones,’ Ross said, reading her mind from miles and miles away. ‘Drop your feet, push your chair back, grab your bag and go.’

  Surprisingly, Ally found herself doing exactly what he’d said.

  Her last thought as she drifted off to sleep—the first time in months and months that she was in bed before eleven—was that if he could get her to do his bidding over the phone, how much more difficult would it would be to refuse him anything face to face?

  Ally pulled a pillow over her head and prayed that he wasn’t into kinky sex. She just wasn’t ready for anything like that...

  Yet.

  SEVEN

  Ally stood in her bathroom in her one-bedroom, open-plan loft apartment in the heart of Geneva and realised that she was sweating.

  Buckets.

  Wiping her face with her facecloth, she looked at her sheet-white face in the mirror above the sink and blanched. Her face was green-tinged and her eyes were huge and round, red-rimmed. She wished she could blame it on jet lag—the flight back from Hong Kong had been diverted and delayed—but she flew first class, which wasn’t exactly torture.

  No, it was time to admit that she was getting sick...and within twelve hours Ross would be here.

  Ross—here. And she was looking like something the dog had rolled in.

  She’d be okay, she told herself, ignoring her pounding head. She was just stressed and on edge. Nothing that three layers of make-up and a bucket of aspirin couldn’t fix.

  Ally had thought that a fortnight would give
her ample time to prepare for her night of—she fervently hoped— debauchery. Before she’d left for Hong Kong she’d dashed out of the office for a bikini wax, a pedicure and a full body scrub. Yet, despite her primping and preening, she was having second, third and sixteenth thoughts about what she was doing.

  On one hand the idea of him flying in to see her made her feel like the world’s sexiest woman; on the other she was really worried about how she’d interact with him once they’d finished scorching the sheets. Would it be awkward? Weird? Should she ask him to leave straight away or would he stay the night? She had to be at work early on Friday morning for a meeting—would she leave him to sleep or wake him up and kick him out?

  Dilemmas...dilemmas.

  And, on top of it all, she’d started feeling...well, blah yesterday—light-headed and headachy. She’d initially put it down to not eating enough, and had ordered a chicken salad on the flight, but even after eating it she’d still felt sub-par.

  Ally looked at the sweat beads on her forehead and shivered in her thick dressing gown.

  She could no longer ignore the band of pain that encircled her stomach like the gnawing, heated teeth of a Tasmanian devil. She could practically trace the path of the pain—it felt like a red-hot wire under her skin. Unlike the heartburn, which came and went, this was relentless hell.

  Ally gripped the basin as misery, wet and cold, encircled her heart. How was she supposed to be a sex goddess—even have sex—feeling as she did now? Looking like an extra in a zombie movie? As much as she wanted to sleep with Ross, what she really wanted to do was to crawl up into a ball and suck painkillers.

  Ally straightened, pulled out her tongue at her reflection, opened her bathroom cabinet and rooted around for a bottle of painkillers. She shook a couple into her hand and swallowed them down with a half-glass of water. Bunking off work was not an option. Apart from her tryst with Ross later that day, she had a meeting with the creative director of her favourite ad agency to discuss the commercials for the new line and she had a directors’ meeting that afternoon.

  She’d be fine. She just had to get to work and get busy and she’d forget that she wasn’t feeling well.

  By midday Ally realised that she wouldn’t be doing much for the rest of the day, never mind showing Ross her brand-new, orchid-blue Bellechier negligee. She was running a temperature and the pain in her stomach was almost debilitating. Getting from her office to the ground floor of her building without passing out would be a challenge, and she felt so ill that driving home was not an option.

  She couldn’t do Ross—ha-ha-ha—not today. After calling for a taxi, she looked at her watch and nodded grimly. It was just on noon—plenty of time for Ross to cancel his flight. It wasn’t fair to make him fly all the way to Geneva for a date with Morticia from the Addams Family. This simply wasn’t going to work...

  The pain clenching her heart was the twin of the one biting her stomach. Sucking up her courage and picking up her mobile, she dialled Ross’s mobile number and couldn’t help feeling relieved when it went immediately to voicemail.

  ‘Ross, this is Ally. Sorry, but I really am not well and I have to cancel tonight. So, so sorry, but I wouldn’t be any fun. At all. I hope you get this message in time so that you can cancel your flight.’

  Ally rested her mobile against her chest and, fighting dizziness, quickly sent Ross an e-mail in the same vein. Leaning back in her chair, she blinked back the tears in her eyes... Well, that was that. She’d just blown a fantastic night by getting sick. She couldn’t even have casual mind-blowing sex without stuffing it up.

  Typical.

  * * *

  Ross was, to put it very mildly, supremely irritated as he stood in front of Ally’s apartment block, staring up at the half-arch windows on the first floor. He’d spent the day chasing his tail around London, had barely made his flight to Geneva and had only picked up his messages in the taxi that he’d caught at Geneva Airport.

  She was too sick to see him? BS! She’d just changed her mind and didn’t have the guts to tell him. It had probably finally dawned on her that sex with him wouldn’t be clinical, professional, quiet and calm, and she wasn’t ready for hot and wild. Down and dirty.

  Well, he was here, and he wasn’t going to tuck his tail between his legs and just leave because Miss Uptight wanted him to. He wasn’t one of her corporate lackeys that she could boss around and dismiss at a whim, Ross thought as he lifted his finger to hit her apartment’s bell.

  What if she ignored him? Wouldn’t let him in? Well, he’d break down the damn door if he had to.

  Luckily for him the door swung open and a teenager stepped out, bopping her head to the music blaring out from the headphones perched over her head. Ross caught the front door before it clicked shut and walked into the hallway. Ignoring the lift, he walked to a set of narrow stairs, hoping to take the edge off his anger before he reached Ally’s top-floor apartment.

  Sick, my ass, Ross thought at the top of the stairs. Fourteen, sixteen...there was her door. She probably had some work that had landed on her desk today and she needed to complete, because if she didn’t it would signal the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the friggin’ Apocalypse.

  And if she wasn’t home he’d bloody well wait for her. He might even barge his way into Bellechier itself, he was that angry. Ross pounded on the door and felt his temper ratchet up at the resulting silence. He pounded again and heard the creak of a door opening, the faint shuffle of feet.

  ‘Who is it?’

  There she was, Ross thought, stupidly relieved. ‘Open the door, Jones.’

  ‘What the hell...? Ross?’

  The door opened and Ross looked into a snow-white face and pain-addled eyes. His irritation disappeared and was swiftly replaced with concern.

  ‘Crap, you are sick.’

  Ally’s hair was scraped back from her face and she wore a loose pair of track pants and a baggy long-sleeved top that hid her curves and draped over her braless, perky breasts.

  ‘I said that I was sick! Didn’t you believe me?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ross said, stepping into the hallway and dropping his overnight bag to the floor. ‘I thought it was an excuse. What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ Ally muttered, walking into her lounge and sinking onto the couch, immediately lying down and placing her head on the armrest. She pulled up a thin blanket. ‘Headache, pain in and on my stomach, and a rash. And I am so damn cold.’

  Ross narrowed his eyes as he shrugged off his coat and laid it over the back of a chair. The temperature in the flat was like summer in the Karoo, and he immediately stripped off the V-necked jersey that covered his white T-shirt. Better, he thought, moving to sit on the couch next to her hip. She looked clammy, and when he touched her forehead with the back of his hand even he, novice that he was at Florence Nightingale stuff, could tell that she was running a temperature.

  ‘Where’s the rash, Jones?’

  ‘Stomach,’ Ally mumbled, and kept a firm grip on the blanket.

  He easily tugged it away from her and lifted her shirt. He swore when he saw the belt of angry blisters below her navel. They looked vicious and painful and Ally winced when he rested his fingers on her bare hip, far away from the sores.

  ‘That sore?’ he asked, quickly lifting his hand.

  ‘My skin is super-sensitive,’ Ally said, her voice and face miserable.

  ‘Guess sex is out, then. Unless you’re prepared to get
creative...’ Ross teased, as much for his sake as for hers as he picked up a strand of damp hair from her cheek and pushed it behind her ear.

  ‘You have about as much chance of getting lucky with me as you have of knitting fog.’ Ally closed her eyes. ‘I’m really sorry for putting you out but—and I’m asking you nicely—can you go now?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I look like hell, I have something on my stomach that is probably going to kill me soon, or infect the entire human race, I’ve been sweating buckets so I probably stink, and this isn’t how I wanted you to see me.’ Ally sighed. ‘I bought a negligee.’

  ‘Really?’ Ross stood up and pulled his mobile from the back pocket of his jeans. He logged onto the internet and searched for hospitals. ‘What colour is it?’

  ‘The most beautiful blue.’

  ‘Damn, I would’ve liked to have seen that,’ Ross responded. ‘Deep blue is my new favourite colour. I’m calling a taxi; where’s your bedroom?’

  ‘If you’re leaving why do you want to know where my bedroom is?’ Ally asked, her voice croaky.

  Nice to know that she hadn’t lost all of her smarts, Ross thought.

  ‘I’m not leaving—we are. I need to get you a coat and a pair of shoes. I’m taking you to the nearest emergency room.’

  ‘No, you are not. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest.’

  ‘Stop being an idiot, Ally. You are burning up, you have a rash that looks dreadful, and you’re going to an ER if I have to throw you over my shoulder and carry you downstairs.’

  Ally told him what to do with himself and Ross grinned at her feistiness. ‘Actually, I had planned to do that to you.’

  ‘Funny man.’ Ally sat up and immediately shoved her head between her thighs. ‘Why don’t you just go and I’ll take myself to a doctor?’

  ‘I’m not that gullible. You’ll just lie down again and in a week your family will find your bloated corpse. If you think you look bad now, just think how you’ll look then,’ Ross stated on a teasing grin. ‘Stop arguing, sweetheart, you’re going to the hospital.’