He frowned quickly. ‘Heaven forfend.’
‘So tell me like a friend.’
Jay was surprised. He hesitated for a moment. Then shrugged.
‘Fine. If you want the truth, as a friend, I think you’re making a fuss about nothing.’
Zoe took some time to assimilate that.
‘So why doesn’t it feel like nothing?’
‘That’s what interests me, too,’ he said. She could feel him watching her. ‘What does it feel like?’
‘A bloody great mountain range with me on the wrong side of it,’ she said explosively.
Jay’s eyes narrowed. ‘The unknown is always intimidating.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Zoe exasperated. ‘It’s not just that I haven’t done it. It’s that all my friends think I have.’
‘So do it,’ he said, bored.
‘How?’ she almost screamed.
‘Tell one of all those men that there’s a vacancy,’ he advised. His eyes glittered like some particularly satanic polished stone. ‘Does it really matter who?’
It did, but Zoe did not know why. Or how to explain it. Or how to defend her sentimentality from this super- sophisticate’s derision. He probably saw this as a strictly practical problem. He would have no patience with her quivering vulnerability.
Get a grip, Zoe.
She muttered, ‘Probably not, if it’s happened thousands of time before. But first time—if you don’t know your way around at my age, it’s sort of embarrassing. I’m not a freak, and I’m not a victim of nameless tragedy.’ She thought about it. ‘Well, actually, yes, I am a freak, I suppose. But I’m not anti-sex. Just anti-embarrassment.’
There was a silence. Suddenly Zoe realised that the middle of the middle of the nightwas cold.
‘If you really want my advice,’ said Jay in a level voice, ‘and strictly as a disinterested bystander, I’d say find a stranger, do it once, and forget about it.’
She swallowed. ‘That’s easier said than done.’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The hard voice sounded almost like an insult. As if he meant it to be an insult. ‘What you need is something disposable. A lover to go.’
It hurt. Zoe did not know why, but it made her feel like a piece of trash. Boring trash, at that. Tears threatened again, shockingly. She bit down hard on her lower lip. She was not going to cry in front of Jay Christopher.
‘Thank you for your advice,’ she said coolly. ‘I’ll give it some serious thought. And now you really mustn’t keep that poor driver waiting any more.’
She held out her hand again, firmly. This time he was not going to ignore it and talk his way into her confidence again.
But it seemed that this time he did not want to ignore it. He took her hand. Crushingly. Shook it twice, hard.
And then—
And then, he jerked her off balance and back into his hard arms. This time she had no time to think about elbows or feet or anything else. This time she had to concentrate on breathing.
It was a hard kiss. Not the sort of kiss you gave a girl who had just told you her most shameful secrets. Not a kiss you gave a girl you had made feel naked in your arms. Not a kind or gentle kiss at all.
‘How can you?’ choked Zoe, cut to the heart.
She hauled away from him, dashing her hand across her mouth as if she wanted to wipe away the memory of his touch. ‘Why did you do that?’ she said in despair.
He glittered down at her, his jaw rigid.
‘Don’t think you’ll have a problem,’ he drawled. He brushed his thumb across her lower lip, where it still throbbed. ‘You can stop worrying about being cold. Not a chance.’
Zoe stood as if turned to stone. Jay waited a second or two, then gave a soft laugh.
He walked out before she could think of one single thing to say.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NEXT morning Jay went for a run. A long run on the Heath. He was furious with himself.
Why had he done that? Zoe was a member of his staff. Okay temporary. But that did not make any difference. He had his standards. Hell, he had sacked Barbara Lessiter for breaching them. And then, alone in the small hours with a woman he had known was tired to the point of exhaustion, he’d done exactly the same thing.
No, what he had done was worse. She had trusted him. And he’d betrayed that trust.
His feet pounded rhythmically on the rough grass. Later the sun would bake it dry, but at this hour of the morning he sent up little silver sparklers of dew with each footfall. Normally he would enjoy it. There were stages of his long- distance runs which were pure purgatory. But this piece of Heath, high and relatively flat, with the distant towers of the City shimmering in the dawn light, was balm to body and spirit. Usually.
Not this morning. He kept seeing Zoe scrubbing her hand across her mouth as if his kiss had contaminated her. And he lost focus.
A stitch knifed into him. Jay was used to running with pain. You just made your pace even, breathed regularly, and ran through it. In the end it went away. Not this morning.
He kept hearing himself say, ‘What you need is… a lover to go.’ He did not recognise the hard voice as his own. Yet he knew he had said it.
The pain intensified, as if someone was turning a stiletto in his side. He tried to breathe through it. It was no good. He stumbled. Nearly fell. Slowed to an uneven lurch.
Jay was enough of an expert to know that this was going to get him nowhere. He stopped dead, a hand to his side.
What was he going to do? Somehow he had to put it right. He wanted—no, he needed—to wipe out that look of betrayal. Zoe had such an expressive face, God help him.
He breathed with care until the pain subsided. Then he straightened slowly.
What was he thinking? What did it matter how expressive her face was? She was an employee. A temporary employee, sure. But still she worked for him. She could be as expressive as she liked. It had nothing to do with him.
And yet—he had not liked it when she’d first come to work for him and she had told him he’d never be a candidate. He went hot, remembering. No, he had not liked that at all. He had told himself it was all for the best. But he had called her in to his office every chance he had. Some of his excuses had been so thin he’d half expected her to challenge them, too.
Face it, Jay. You broke your own rules with Zoe Brown. And you did it long before she spilled out her secrets.
He was shaken. He did some stretches, carefully. Then he walked back to his house, frowning. He did not even try to break into a jog.
Okay, so he’d broken his own rules. Well, he would pay his own price. He would keep out of the office as much as possible. Certainly he would keep away from Zoe. When her contract was up—well, then he could think again. But until then he would just give her some space.
It cost him restless days and sleepless nights. He snapped at everyone. He jumped every time his mobile phone rang. He got a mountain of work done. And he bit the head off anyone who asked him what was wrong.
He scanned his e-mail hourly for messages from her. But when they came they were only about the Venice speech.
On Friday morning he gave up and went in to the office. He told himself it was to pick up the material he would need for the seminar. But he knew perfectly well that Poppy could have had the stuff biked round to his Hampstead house if he’d wanted. He didn’t. He wanted the chance—just the chance—of seeing Zoe.
And his gamble paid off. Almost as soon as he was in the building, he saw her coming down the silver staircase with Abby and Molly di Paretti. The other two smiled broadly but Zoe would not meet his eyes. In fact she dodged round Molly and disappeared, while the Fab Ab buttonholed him.
‘You’ve got a new wall ornament,’ she said.
Jay was looking after Zoe’s retreating figure. ‘What?’
‘The London Youth Clubs have sent you a presentation baseball bat,’ said Abby. ‘Along with an invitation to run in their All-Time Greats event in September.’
Jay wanted
to follow Zoe so badly that it hurt. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
Abby looked surprised. ‘The Youth Club is my account. You gave it to me. I think it would be great if you did the run.’
‘You know I don’t compete any more,’ he snarled. He took a step towards the door, in the direction that the girls had taken.
Abby took hold of his arm and made him face her. ‘And I need to talk to you about the PR for Lemon Sherbet Three. The film company is having a row with the UK distributors.’
Jay gave up. ‘We’ll have a round up meeting at midday,’ he said, resigned. ‘Tell me then.’
She nodded. ‘Boardroom. Noon. Got it.’
She sped away. As she got to the door he called, ‘Ab—’
She turned warily. ‘Yes?’
‘Sorry I snapped.’
She gave him a kind smile. ‘Don’t worry about it. We all have off days.’
But when she got to Patisserie Patricia her smile had died.
‘If you ask me, the Volcano is going to blow,’ she said, sinking down behind a tall glass of iced coffee. ‘Is that why you didn’t want to talk to him, Zoe?’
Zoe seized the excuse thankfully. ‘He’s been getting mad at me. This Venice talk.’
‘But you’ve done such a good job on getting all the material together,’ said Abby, indignant. ‘You really saved his bacon. It’s not like Jay to ignore that. Is it, Molly? He’s always really nice if you do a good piece of work.’
Molly said slowly, ‘I’ve never seen him like this.’
‘Too right,’ said Abby with feeling. ‘I thought I wasn’t going to hold him off for you, Zoe. There was one point he looked like he was going to pick me up and put me out of the way.’
Zoe did not meet their eyes. ‘The Venice talk must be getting to him.’
‘Garbage,’ said Molly. ‘He gives talks all the time.’
‘Yes, but I don’t think he’s even started on it yet,’ Zoe said earnestly. ‘And he’s supposed to deliver it on Monday.’
‘That would do it for me,’ agreed Abby.
Molly said nothing. But she narrowed her eyes in a way that made Zoe feel guilty. She did it again when later a summons came from Jay’s blonde PA.
‘He wants to talk to you, Zoe,’ Molly said, putting the phone down. ‘Better get up there now.’
Zoe went white.
Molly picked up the pile of cuttings and prints-offs in her pending tray and slapped them into her arms. ‘He probably wants you to do a first draft of his speech,’ she said with emphasis. ‘God knows, you’ve done everything else.’
Everything else? Zoe stared at her in wild suspicion. Were her feelings for Jay Christopher written all over her face, for heaven’s sake?
‘Keep your head down and don’t say more than you have to,’ Molly advised, oblivious. ‘Good luck.’
The advice was unnecessary. As soon as Zoe came face to face with Jay across his impressive desk she was absolutely tongue-tied.
Where was Performance Zoe when you needed her? she thought in despair.
Jay seemed to be preoccupied. He waved her into a seat and concentrated on the papers in front of him for what felt like hours. It was intimidating. It occurred to her that it was meant to be intimidating, and her sense of justice reasserted itself. After all, she was not the one who had laid hands on him first.
Zoe glared at the top of his head and began to feel a bit better.
She said acidly, ‘Am I going to sit here all day, or would you like me to come back when you’ve finished the crossword puzzle?’
Jay looked up at that, though he did not meet her eyes. He said abruptly, ‘I owe you an apology.’
Zoe stared. ‘What?’
‘The last time we met I kissed you. I knew you didn’t want it and I kissed you anyway. I had no right to do that. I’m sorry.’
It was what she had been saying to herself all week. He had no right! And now that he’d come right out and apologised she felt—well, cheated.
‘Guys don’t normally apologise for kissing me.’
‘I’m not a guy; I’m your employer. It was—inappropriate.’
‘You know, you can sound so stuffy sometimes.’
He smiled faintly. ‘Stuffy, maybe. It’s still the truth. You work for me. That puts you off-limits. I shouldn’t have forgotten that.’
Zoe found her anger had evaporated. It was rather a lonely feeling. She had been talking to that anger all week.
She said sadly, ‘I suppose I was inappropriate, too. Telling you all that about—’
‘It didn’t help,’ agreed Jay. ‘Turned up the volume on intimacy, I suppose you could say.’
She shook her head. ‘It may have felt like that to you. To me, it was like spilling everything out to one of those late- night phone-in programmes on the radio.’
‘A faceless voice in the dark? Gee, thanks.’
‘Well, not faceless, maybe. But remote. And—’
‘No come-back,’ said Jay slowly. ‘I’m strictly disposable in your life, aren’t I?’
Did he sound hurt? Zoe could not believe it. Yet somehow she felt ashamed. As if she had stamped on his feelings in pursuit of her own need to unload. She bit her lip.
‘I think it was more that we had no history,’ she said honestly.
He looked at her for a long moment. The heavy-lidded eyes were quite inscrutable. Then he leaned back in his chair.
‘Explain,’ he invited.
‘You see, all my friends know me very well. If they find out I’ve been keeping this huge secret they will either not believe me or feel cheated. Maybe even both.’
‘A stranger is safe because you have nothing to lose?’ he said on a note of discovery.
‘I suppose so.’ She sounded subdued, even to her own ears. She rallied, trying to make a joke out of it. ‘I guess I wanted you to turn into a psychiatrist and tell me what to do.’
He stared at her for a long minute, unblinking. ‘I didn’t think psychiatrists were supposed to give advice.’
‘So what do they do?’
‘Listen, I gather. Ask the right questions, hopefully.’
For some reason Zoe was outraged. She snorted. ‘Money for old rope,’ she muttered.
His mouth tilted suddenly. ‘That sounds a bit harsh.’
Zoe waved that aside. Suddenly she was urgent. ‘Okay. Forget the radio psychiatrist. What would you have said to me if I’d told you that as a friend?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You mean, imagine we have a history?’
‘Yes.’
He pondered. She saw him reach a conclusion. He hesitated for a moment. Then shrugged.
‘Fine. I told you that night, if you remember. I gave you the full benefit of my considered advice then. You didn’t,’ he added with point, ‘seem to appreciate it.’
She flushed. ‘You said I was making a fuss about nothing.’
He had also said, ‘Find a stranger, do it once and forget about it.’ But she wasn’t going to think about that just now.
‘I might have been harsh,’ Jay allowed. He surveyed her watchfully. ‘I think you have to ask yourself why you are making such a fuss. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, after all. We all start out virgins.’
Zoe gave a startled little spurt of laughter, as if he had said something genuinely shocking.
‘I never thought of that.’
‘Well, hang on to it,’ he advised.
‘Yes, but—’
‘And it doesn’t matter what your friends think.’
‘It matters what I think, though. And I think I’m a fraud.’
She had never said it so baldly, not even to herself. She fell silent, feeling sick.
Jay’s expression told her nothing. He studied her as if she were an interesting specimen page for a long minute.
Then he said, ‘Maybe you didn’t go to bed with anyone because you weren’t in love.’
‘In love?’ She snorted with derision. ‘Now you’re really thinking I’m nuts.
’
‘It is just conceivable.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
His eyes glinted. ‘Many people think being in love is indispensable.’
Was he laughing at her? Zoe’s chin came up and she glared at him, eye to eye.
‘That didn’t stop any of my friends,’ she said deliberately. ‘Did it stop you?’
His expression did not change. But somehow she knew that she had struck home. She could feel his withdrawal, though physically he did not move a muscle. The elegant body still lounged there as casually as if they were old, old friends who bared their souls to each other all the time.
‘No,’ he said at last. His lips barely moved. His voice was light, level. ‘No, lack of love didn’t stop me. Maybe it should have.’
Zoe looked ironic. ‘Don’t do as I do, do as I say? Thanks for the insight.’
He looked irritated. ‘Look, this is no big deal. It’s a just a physical thing you go through. Like—like the pain barrier when you’re running. It’s not the reason you do it, but it happens. You get through it.’
‘Wow, sounds irresistible. Come to bed with me and I’ll get through it.’
Jay grinned. But he said, ‘I think you’re looking at this the wrong way. For some men it would be a great compliment.’
‘Yeah. The sad sickos who see virginity as a trophy. Like I’m going to do a deal with one of them.’
‘We’re not all like that. There are men for whom it would be—’ he struggled to put his feeling into words ‘—a great sign of trust. Respect. Even love.’
Zoe looked at him oddly. ‘Oh, yeah? Respect, huh? Do your girlfriends respect you?’
He stiffened. ‘I hope so.’
‘And how many of them have been virgins?’
‘None, as far as I know.’ He thought about it, and added involuntarily, ‘God, I hope not. No, I’m sure not. I’ve never been—’ He stopped.
‘A sad sicko who sees it as a trophy?’ supplied Zoe, half- weary, half-triumphant. ‘See what I mean? Catch Twenty- two.’
He got up and began to move restlessly round the room. ‘I don’t believe it. There has to be a solution.’
‘If there was, don’t you think I’d have found it?’ flashed Zoe. ‘I’ve been pretending like this for five years. Ever since I was the last eighteen-year-old virgin in Muswell Hill. Short of a miracle, I’m stuck like this for life.’
The Millionaire's Virgin (Mills & Boon By Request) Page 43