‘Damn...’ There was a pause, then Josh muttered something and grunted. ‘You’d better put him on so I can apologise personally.’
‘I—er don’t think that would be a very good idea at the moment,’ she said, lowering her eyes and her voice from the two watchful people listening to her to add, ‘We’re not alone.’
She didn’t hear Josh’s answer to that, because Cassie had leapt at her desk, eyes flashing green fire—and something else that Jemma could not interpret but hinted oddly at terror. ‘Is that Josh? Give me that!’ she demanded, trying to snatch the phone from Jemma. ‘I have a few things I want to—’
‘I don’t want to speak to her!’ Josh grated into Jemma’s ear.
‘Give, Jemma!’ Cassie insisted, her eyes fire-bright with anger. ‘It’s time that rat learned a few home truths!’
‘Get her out of my office—now!’ Josh barked.
‘I can’t!’ she answered both of them, jumping to her feet in an effort to stop Cassie from wrenching the phone from her, and Josh hurled out a string of abuse aimed entirely at Cassie while Leon Stephanades viewed the whole scene with a look of lazy amusement sparking his eyes.
Jemma hated him at that moment. The whole thing was utterly ridiculous. She felt stupid being a part of it, and he thought it was funny!
He glanced up at her then, caught the look burning in her eyes, and suddenly the amusement left him to allow something so elemental to take its place that she gasped as everything inside her went haywire in answer to it, heart, lungs, pulses, even her skin—as if every minute hair follicle she possessed had been delivered an electric shock which set her whole body tingling.
Josh was growling, Cassie was shouting, but suddenly they might as well not have been there for all Jemma knew. She was lost in a seething hot raid on her senses, and what really threw her into hectic confusion was the fact that he was feeling the exact same way—and doing nothing whatsoever to hide it!
Then it all came crashing in. With the help of a sudden pained cry from Cassie, Jemma refocused her attention on the other woman just in time to hear her choke, ‘Whatever I am, you bastard, I am still pregnant with your child!’ Then she crumpled on to the floor.
In a state of stunned shock, Jemma watched the lightning-quick reactions of Leon Stephanades as he caught Cassie’s weight before she hit the floor, listened to Josh cursing and swearing on the other end of the line, his voice so thick that it was obvious he was feeling the pressure of his emotions as much as Cassie was.
‘The bitch trapped me, Jemma,’ he was saying hoarsely. ‘She deliberately laid a trap for me.’
Jemma did not know what to say. In the end, she just murmured, ‘I’ll call you back, Josh. I’ll call you back,’ and slowly replaced the receiver.
By the time she had collected a cool cloth and a glass of water, Cassie was beginning to show signs of life. Leon Stephanades had carried her into Josh’s office and placed her on the leather sofa in there and was now squatting beside her, gently chafing at one of her hands.
Jemma knelt down beside him and offered him the cloth. He took it without speaking, his expression grim to say the least as he applied the cloth to Cassie’s brow.
It was him Cassie saw when she eventually opened her eyes. ‘Oh, God, Leon,’ she whispered tragically. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Nothing, until you feel well enough,’ he answered calmingly. ‘Then I will take you home.’
Tears blurred the wretched green of her eyes. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ she claimed fretfully.
‘Didn’t you?’ he said. That was all, but even as Jemma stiffened in violent protest at what his tone was implying Cassie’s eyes were going dark with guilt, and on a pained choke she hid her face in her hands and began to sob wretchedly.
Shocked, Jemma sat back on her heels, the fact that any woman would set out deliberately to trap a man that way just too awful for her to take in.
Leon Stephanades turned his head to look at her, then grimaced. ‘Don’t look so appalled, Miss Davis,’ he drawled. ‘Your sex use this ploy all the time. To them, it is the next best thing to a genuine proposal—especially when it is a man like your Mr Tanner who is involved. Or me,’ he then tagged on cynically.
Feeling sick, Jemma got up and walked back into her own office. She felt ashamed of her sex, if what Leon Stephanades had said was true. Ashamed for Cassie whom she had liked and even admired for what she’d seen as her candid honesty about her intentions.
And Josh? She sat down behind her desk and wondered what she felt for Josh.
She felt sorry for him, she realised. For the first time in two years of witnessing the way he used women for his own purposes, she actually felt sorry for him.
Because, no matter how much he deserved his come-uppance in one way or another, he did not deserve this.
The phone rang. And for the next few minutes she had to turn her attention strictly to business as a spate of calls followed one on top of the other.
She was just replacing the receiver for the final time when Leon Stephanades came through to her office. ‘She is calmer now,’ he said. ‘When she has tidied herself, I will take her home.’
Jemma nodded dumbly, refusing to look at him, shock and distaste at what Cassie had done still evident on her face. He studied her for a moment, then closed the connecting door between the two offices and walked over to her desk.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.