Her mother could be downright objectionable at times, although she had a point. Martin would have been a very stable, reliable husband, and high adventure was a risk she was not prepared to take.
She stared at the screen. Now there appeared to be some kind of frantic car chase taking place which involved quite a lot of guns and screeching of wheels.
She would have to watch herself with Ross. She had never had to before because she had always suspected that when he looked at her he saw an efficient piece of office machinery, but now he knew that she was attracted to him and that made her vulnerable.
Physically Ross Anderson was a sexy man, a powerful man who was as ruthless as he was charismatic. Men like that might as well have had ‘Danger’ stamped on their foreheads in bright neon lettering, as far as she was concerned.
She was absently thinking, letting her mind drift along where it wanted, when she felt her headphones being lightly pulled off her head and she turned to see Ross looking at her with sardonic amusement.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, startled.
‘You’re not paying a blind bit of notice to what’s going on up there,’ he said, dropping the headphones into the pocket of the seat in front of him. He sat back and clasped his hands on his lap, his head tilted at an angle so that he could look at her.
‘Of course I was!’ she protested immediately, because not paying a blind bit of notice to the movie was infinitely preferable to feeling the rush of nervous tension that his dark eyes induced in her.
‘Well, then, tell me what it was about.’
‘Two prisoners,’ she said succinctly, ‘a daring escape, a few car chases and several policemen looking earnest but baffled.’
‘So something intellectual, in other words.’ He gave her a warm, relaxed smile and she smiled back at him drily.
‘In other words.’
‘Not your cup of tea?’
‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘I prefer something a bit more soothing on the nervous system.’
She lay back, offering her profile to him, her eyes closed.
‘Like The Sound of Music perhaps?’
‘Don’t knock it! I saw that five times when I was young!’ Ross could be very friendly, she thought drowsily, when he wasn’t being provocative or else bellowing orders out at her.
‘And I haven’t seen it once,’ he said ruefully. ‘Was I missing anything?’
‘You’d have hated it. It’s very sentimental and a little on the sloppy side.’
‘How do you know I would have hated that? I can be very sentimental when the situation demands.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Abigail muttered drily and he laughed.
‘Now who’s guilty of making sweeping generalisations?’
She opened her eyes to look at him. ‘I just can’t imagine you being sentimental,’ she mused. ‘It’s a bit like trying to imagine primitive man being sentimental with a club in one hand and a dead boar in the other.’
‘I don’t think I could lift a dead boar single-handed.’ His eyes swept over her face, vaguely unsettling her. ‘I see that the engagement ring is still conspicuous by its absence.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ The question caught her by surprise and she sat up, frowning at this turn in the conversation.
‘I’m surprised you haven’t got around to retrieving it from the kitchen sink.’
‘All right.’ She sighed. ‘If you must know, we’ve decided to call off the engagement. There. Satisfied?’
‘The question is, are you?’
She looked across at him and maintained a facade of calm self-assurance.
‘Of course I’m not satisfied,’ she retorted. ‘Of course I’m not happy that my relationship with Martin has ended. He was—is—an extremely nice man.’
‘But niceness wasn’t invigorating enough for you.’
He phrased that as a statement rather than a question and she could feel herself getting angry at the unspoken satisfaction in his voice that she had merely done what he had recommended in the first place. No doubt he was also thinking that the reason behind it was the fact that she was attracted to him, and that made her even angrier.
‘We’re still good friends,’ she said through gritted teeth, and he gave a hoot of laughter.
‘Friends! The concept of a man and a woman being good friends without some element of sex involved is beyond me.’
‘Well,’ Abigail said coldly, ‘it would be, wouldn’t it?’
‘Meaning?’ he asked, but his voice was still amused.
‘I feel sorry for any man who only sees women as conquests.’
‘You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying.’ He was still smiling. ‘It’s perfectly possible for a man and a woman to be the best of friends, but not without at least an awareness of sex. They might mutually choose not to act on that awareness, but it would still be there.’ His voice was husky. ‘Wouldn’t it, Abby?’
She heard the timbre of his voice with a jolt of alarm.
‘If you say so,’ she agreed with a shrug. ‘You’re the expert.’
He frowned at the lack of response. ‘Well, I’m glad that you came to your senses.’
He relaxed back in the seat and there was a smile playing on his lips.
‘So am I.’ She paused, then carried on without inflection in her voice. ‘Although, unlike you, I don’t believe that the world revolves around sex. If it did, what hope would there be for anyone having a successful marriage?’
His eyes flickered across to her. ‘And a successful marriage is what you’re after?’
‘Of course it is. What woman isn’t?’ She gave him a blank smile. ‘I’m sure that Fiona is as eager to get married, for instance.’
‘Really.’ The smile had left his face now and she was glad.
‘She more or less told me so herself.’ She gave him a surprised glance. ‘Weren’t you aware of that?’
‘Stop trying to be clever.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She smiled again. He didn’t mind provoking her into awkward situations so that he could sit back and smile at his handiwork, but he disliked being at the receiving end of the same game. ‘Isn’t marriage on your agenda?’ she asked sweetly.
‘You are beginning to irritate me,’ he said with a heavy frown, and she manufactured a contrite expression which met with an even blacker expression.
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘And stop apologising,’ he muttered, ‘that’s beginning to get on my nerves as well.’
‘Your nerves do seem to be a bit delicate at the moment,’ she said, concerned. ‘I can’t imagine why.’
‘Oh, go back into your shell,’ he told her, ‘you’re easier to handle that way.’
That made her laugh and it forced an unwilling grin out of him. Their eyes met and she looked away quickly because in that split instant something strong and silent hummed between them.
‘OK. In that case, may I have my headphones back, please?’
‘Go right ahead.’
She bit back a sigh of frustration. He wasn’t going to reach them for her, and he knew as well as she did that for her to reach them herself would mean her leaning across him, practically lying across his lap.
‘You’re not enjoying the movie anyway,’ he said, when she made no move to get them, ‘you told me that yourself. You were having a far better time playing with me.’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ she said, going red.
‘No?’ he murmured lazily, flashing her a sideways smile that had a hint of challenge in it. ‘You seemed to be thoroughly enjoying yourself just then, trying to provoke me into a reaction. How could we have spent months working together without me realising that you have claws?’
‘I have not got claws!’ He was back in control now.
‘Point proved.’ He closed his eyes and yawned and she glared at him from under cover.
Shortly afterwards, the plane began to descend and the confused turmoil of thoughts running through her head was submerged beneath the general fuss of buckling the seatbelts and stretching slightly to steai glances through the window.
She didn’t see much, of course. They were landing in darkness and there was nothing to distinguish the twinkling lights of Logan airport from any other airport in any other metropolis.
A chauffeured car was waiting for them once they had cleared Customs. It was a relief not to have to stand in a queue for a taxi, especially as it was cold, much colder than it had been in London, with the sort of dry feel that made you long to have every exposed part of your body under wraps.
She had reserved one of the penthouse suites for Ross and something altogether less imposing for herself three floors down. Seeing the hotel now, she didn’t doubt that her less imposing room would be marvellous and the mind boggled to think what the penthouse suite would be like.
‘Dinner?’ he asked, turning to her after they had been checked in. ‘There’s a restaurant here, as well as a bar, and the food in both is very good.’
She shook her head, shying away from the thought of having dinner with him. ‘I’m very tired. Exhausted, in fact. I’m going to retire to bed and order room service.’
He shrugged, not bothered by her refusal.