The condom that had been through the wars was finally serving its purpose and as he thrust into her she bucked and cried out in ecstasy. The feel of him inside her was beyond all expectations. He was big and powerful and he filled her in a way she would never have dreamed possible. It was as if their bodies were made for each other. They moved in perfect rhythm and her orgasm, when she finally came, was wave upon wave of such pleasure that her whole body quivered and shook from the strength of it.
The used condom joined the logs burning in the open fire and she curved her body against his with a gurgle of contentment.
‘Amazing,’ James murmured softly. ‘It’s done my back a world of good. I think we’ll have to carry on with this method of physiotherapy if I’m to improve and suffer no lasting damage.’
Jennifer had never felt so blissfully happy and completely whole. For the first time in her life, her body was complete.
Then she wondered how long the physiotherapy was destined to continue. She glanced outside through the window and the snow reminded her that this was a snatched moment in time.
‘Pretty incredible.’ She brushed his cheek with her hand. He had shaved earlier but she could feel the stubble already trying to make a reappearance. She nuzzled his chin and settled on top of him so that she could feel every inch of his body underneath her.
‘Everything you dreamed of?’ There was laughter in his voice but the navy-blue eyes were solemn.
‘I’m not going to feed your ego by telling you how great it was, James.’ She unglued herself from him to allow his hands to wedge over her breasts where he could tease her nipples.
‘Cruel woman.’ He laughed out loud this time and continued to roll the pads of his thumbs over her nipples, which were already standing to attention even though it had only been minutes since they had been lavished with devotion. ‘I’m tempted to punish you by not allowing you to get any sleep tonight. In fact, if I had my way I wouldn’t let you leave my side…’
And he almost succeeded in doing just that. At least for the next forty-eight hours, during which the snow began to slacken in its fury and the unremitting leaden grey skies gradually showed glimpses of pale, milky blue.
Jennifer yielded to the bubble in which there were just the two of them, playing house like babes in the wood and making love wherever and whenever, which was everywhere and often. Her one condom had done its job but James had more at the house because he would never, she assumed, take risks of any kind with any woman.
He told her repeatedly that he couldn’t get enough of her and, with every smile and every touch, she fell deeper and deeper into love. It consumed her and it was only when, lying on her bed, wrapped up with him, she looked outside and noticed that the snow had finally and completely stopped.
‘It’s not snowing any longer,’ she said and James followed her gaze to see that she was right. He hadn’t even noticed. In fact, over the past three days there was a great deal that he hadn’t noticed. Starting with the state of the weather and ending with his work, which he had rudimentarily covered. Most of the time, his computer lay on the dressing table, which neither of them had bothered to relocate to the bedroom, untouched.
‘If I know anything about the weather here, we’ll wake up tomorrow morning to find bright sunshine and the snow melted.’
She couldn’t prevent a certain wistfulness from creeping into her voice because with the end of the snow came the beginning of the questions that she had conveniently put to one side. What happened next? Where did they go from here? Was this a relationship or was it only a consequence of the fact that they had been cooped up for days on end?
She wasn’t about to start asking questions, though.
James was adept at picking up the intonations in women’s voices. He waited for her to continue and frowned when there was nothing forthcoming.
‘I don’t want you to return to Paris,’ he surprised himself by saying, and Jennifer looked at him in astonishment.
‘Well, we can’t stay here for ever pretending the rest of the world doesn’t exist,’ she pointed out. She turned back to face the window, resting in the crook of his arm. The moon was big and fat and round and it filled the bedroom with a silvery glow.
James was accustomed to women making demands on his time. It irritated him that she made no attempt to demand anything. Having spent the past few days living purely for the moment, he was now driven to get inside her head and discover what she was thinking. He had just nailed his colours to the mast and told her that he wanted her to quit her job immediately for him, and was her only response to be that they couldn’t stay put and block out the rest of the world? As if that were the only logical option to ditching her Paris placement?
‘I’m not implying that we should do that,’ he said edgily. ‘But we’re going to have to start thinking about leaving here… and we’re going to have to decide what happens with us now.’
‘Maybe we should go our separate ways,’ Jennifer told him. He might want her to give up her job immediately but that was just him reaching out and taking what he wanted without a scrap of thought for what she wanted. She had been a keen observer of his girlfriends down the years. None of them had ever lasted longer than a holiday. He had taken what he wanted from them and discarded them when he thought that it was time to move on.
‘You mean that?’ He raised himself up and spun her round to look at him because he wanted her undivided attention.
‘Look, you’re not into long-term relationships—’
‘And that’s what you want?’
Of course it was! But she knew what would happen next if she were to say that. His pursuit, such as it was, would come to a grinding halt. She might play hard to get, but, really and truly, did she want this to end so abruptly? Eventually, it would, but why shouldn’t she enjoy herself for as long as she could and let tomorrow take care of itself? She hated the weakness behind that choice but even more she hated the hypocrisy of pretending that it would be worthwhile to walk away now and become a martyr to her principles.
‘Let me finish,’ she inserted, picking and choosing her words very carefully. ‘We… this… I guess, for me, this is unfinished business…’
‘Unfinished business?’ He flung aside the duvet and strode towards the window to glare outside at the picture-postcard winter scene before swinging around to scowl at her. ‘I’m unfinished business?’
‘Okay, maybe I didn’t phrase that quite as well as I should have…’
She sat up and drew her legs up. ‘Come back to bed. I… I…’ Some truth forced its way out. ‘I don’t want to go back to Paris either,’ she confessed, at which he slowly returned to lie down next to her.
‘Then pack it in. Tell them something. Anything. I want you here with me.’
‘Yes… it’s fun… it would be nice to carry on seeing one another, I guess…’ But for how long? That was a question that was definitely off the cards. ‘I mean, no strings attached, of course…’
He could feel a return of that groundswell of dissatisfaction, the same dissatisfaction that had slammed into him when she had labelled him as unfinished business, and he couldn’t understand why because what she was saying tuned in perfectly with his own personal philosophy. No strings attached had been his motto for a very long time. And wasn’t she, in her own way, his unfinished business as well? Something had been started four years ago and it had now reached fruition.
‘I never took you for a no-strings-attached kind of girl.’
Jennifer stilled. He knew her so well, but did she want him to ever suspect how much he meant to her? Did she really want to open herself up to being hurt all over again? She couldn’t face his pity for a second time.
‘It just shows how much you have to learn about me,’ she murmured lightly.
‘So you’ll email your Paris office… bid them a fond adieu…?’
‘I’ll go and discuss the matter with my boss over there,’ she said firmly.
‘I don’t know how long
I can wait before you return. If we’re talking in terms of months, then forget it. I’ll go over there myself and drag you back to London.’
He propped himself up on one elbow, rested his hand on her stomach and traced the outline of her belly button. Jennifer, caught in the now familiar tide of longing, fought to stay in control.
‘Do you always get your own way when it comes to women?’ she asked breathlessly, staring straight up at the ceiling and not pushing him away when he dipped his fingers lower to sift the soft, downy hair between her thighs. Before he could start doing even more dramatic things to her body, things that always seemed to wreak havoc with her thought processes, she wriggled onto her side so that their bodies mirrored one another, both of them propped up on their elbows, staring directly into each other’s eyes. She didn’t want to get hopelessly lost in making love. She wanted to talk, really talk.
‘I can’t tell a lie…’
‘What do they hope for?’ she asked in genuine bewilderment. She knew what she hoped for, but she was a lost cause and had been from as far back as she could remember. Other women, women he had gone out with for a matter of a few weeks, surely they couldn’t all be silly enough to think they could tie him down? Or was he only attracted to women like himself, women who wanted affairs and were happy to part company when the lust bit was exhausted?
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do they honestly think that you’re going to offer them a lasting relationship?’
‘How can they?’ James said impatiently. ‘The women I date always know from the beginning that I’m not interested in walking down the aisle. Why are we having this discussion, anyway? When we both agree that you’re going to leave Paris immediately and come back here…’
Jennifer ignored his interruption. ‘And they don’t mind?’
‘I suppose,’ James admitted grudgingly, ‘there are instances when one of them might have wanted to take things to another level, but, as far as I am concerned, if a woman chooses to go out with me, then she chooses what she’s signing up for.’ No-strings-attached fun… He swept aside the unsettling memory of how her easy acceptance of that had thrown him.
‘And you’ve never been tempted?’
‘You talk too much,’ he growled.
‘You’ll have to get used to it.’
‘You never used to ask so many questions.’
‘I never used to ask any questions… but then again, we were never in the place we are now, were we?’
‘I’ve never been tempted.’ He lay back and shielded his face with his arm, then he pulled her against him and slung his arm around her shoulder so that the tips of his fingers were brushing her nipple, although his mind appeared to be far away.
‘You probably don’t remember when my father died,’ he surprised her by saying. ‘You would have been… what… fifteen? It was a pretty terrible time all round. Daisy was in pieces.’
‘I remember. You abandoned your gap year and went to work. It was tough. I know.’
‘They had just lost their figurehead. The employees were edgy and so was the bank. I’d worked there before, summer jobs… well, you know that.’ He felt her nod against him and he inhaled deeply. He had always thought it a myth that confessions were good for the soul, so why was he telling her this? ‘I knew a bit about the accounts but I was green around the ears. Like it or not, though, I was a majority shareholder and responsibility fell on my shoulders.’
‘And you were still grieving for your dad… How hard that must have been, James…’ Her heart went out to him because, however mature he might have been for his age, he had still only been a kid, really, one forced to grow up very, very quickly.
‘It was… very hard. I was in a bad place. I got involved with a woman.’
‘You got involved with a woman?’
‘You say that as though I started growing two heads and five arms,’ James said drily. This was new ground for him. This window in his life had always been kept a secret. No one, including his mother, knew about that indiscretion ten or so years ago. He had never been tempted to confide in any of the women he had dated, even though they had all pressed him for details of his personal life as though getting beneath the armour would guarantee a foot through the door.
Jennifer had a moment of feeling special until he continued in the same flat, neutral voice, ‘And the reason I’m telling you now, aside from the fact that we go back a long way, is that I want you to understand why I’ve made the choices that I’ve made with women.’
Jennifer was still trying to work out which woman he was talking about. She remembered that time quite clearly, although it was many years ago. He had lost the easy banter and the light-hearted teasing and was beginning the transition to the man he would later become. Controlled, single-minded, adept at channelling his incredible intelligence towards a single goal and getting there whatever it took. For the first time he had been around and yet she had hardly seen him.
‘I thought you were completely wrapped up with the company,’ she said, looking at him. ‘When would you have had time to go out socialising? Dad and I nicknamed you The Invisible Man because we knew you were around but we just never saw you.’
‘Well, I didn’t go out socializing. The socialising came to find me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Anita Hayward was the accounts manager. She looked like something that had just stepped off the cover of a magazine. Long legs, long hair, long lingering looks whenever she came into my father’s office where I had set up camp. She struck just the right note between sympathy and a matter-of-fact acceptance that, tragic though the circumstances were, life had to go on. It was a break from seeing the pity in everyone’s eyes and hearing the sympathy oozing in their voices. It seemed to be what I needed at that moment in time. She made it her mission to fill me in on everything that was going on in the office. I was sharp enough to know the mechanics of how things worked but I knew nothing about the people and I needed to get them onside. Twenty-minute briefings at the end of the day turned into dinners out.’
‘Your mum said that you were working at the company, making sure that loose ends were tied up… but you weren’t working…’
‘Nope. I was being worked over.’
‘What do you mean?’
James had intended to throw her the bare bones. It was more than he had ever thrown anyone else. Now, as he lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling, he was reliving a time he had relegated to history.
‘I should have been at home. At least, I should have been at home more than I was. Instead, I was being seduced by Anita Hayward of the long red hair and the slanting green eyes.’
‘And you still feel guilty…’ Jennifer deduced slowly.
‘Very good, Sherlock.’
‘But no one operates on all cylinders when they’re experiencing great stress. We react in different ways. What… what happened… in the end?’
‘In the end,’ he said drily, ‘I discovered that she was after a promotion. It was as simple as that. I had been used by an ambitious woman who wanted to make sure that she got the top job when the cabinet was reshuffled. And by the way, she had a boyfriend. I caught them in one of the directors’ offices when I happened to return to the building after hours because I’d forgotten something. Either the boyfriend was in on the game or else he was just another sap she was using for her own ends. The fact is that, at a crucial time in my life, I took my eye off the ball.’
He turned to her, cupped her breast in his hand and Jennifer covered his hand with hers.
‘You use sex as a substitute for talking,’ she told him and he smiled crookedly at her.
‘And you talk too much.’
‘So… because of one unfortunate experience, you decided… what…?’
‘I like the way you describe that wrong turn as an unfortunate experience… Well, because of that unfortunate experience, I made a rational decision to steer clear of anything called uncontrolled emotional i
nvolvement.’
For Jennifer, the long line of airhead blondes now made a lot of sense. He had fallen in love, or thought he had fallen in love, with a woman who was sensitive, intelligent, beautiful and mature, and, for his trouble, he had ended up being manipulated at a time when he had been at his most vulnerable. He had emerged from the experience with the building blocks for a fortress and behind the walls of that fortress he had sealed away any part of him that could be touched. The women he had dated since had been disposable and she would be as well.
Realistically, she might last a bit longer because of their history, because they had slightly more going for them than just sex, but she, like the rest of them, would be disposable.
‘What happened to her?’ Jennifer asked, and when he replied she could hear the ice in his voice.
‘She got the sack. Not immediately, of course, and not directly. There are all sorts of regulations pertaining to employee dismissal. No, she was treated to a series of sideways moves. The vertical line she had manoeuvred towards suddenly flattened out and became horizontal. Removing myself from the equation, she failed to realise that there was no way I could have someone working for me who was capable of deceit. Strangely enough, even after I caught them having sex on the desk, she continued to believe that she could patch things over and pick up where we had left off. When she realised that her career in my company was over, she decided to lay all her cards on the table. Not only had she slept with me to further her career but she was no young girl of twenty-four with a ladder to climb and a sackful of qualifications. She was thirty-three and I later found out that most of her qualifications had been fabricated.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer said quietly and he shrugged against her.
‘Why? We all need a learning curve in our lives.’
Jennifer, resting against him, thought that she had already had hers except she seemed to have learnt nothing from it. He had once rejected her and she had thought she had learnt to keep away and yet here she was, in his arms and busy repeating the same process, except this time the hole she had dug for herself was a lot deeper.
The Girl He'd Overlooked Page 11