‘Oh, I do the usual things when I have the time. Hang out with my friends. See my family.’ She leaned forwards a little, her eyes shining and her smile broadening. ‘Don’t tell anyone but I also have a bit of an obsession with medical dramas on TV.’
‘Medical dramas?’ he echoed, faintly distracted by the way the gold glints in her hair caught the light of the candle.
She nodded. ‘I can’t get enough of them,’ she said, and with effort he switched his focus to what she was saying. ‘I think it’s the sense of urgency and imminent chaos that appeals. The way things happen without warning. Failure is always a very real possibility even if four times out of five everything turns out fine and I guess that’s the attraction. Chaos and failure aren’t options for me, but nevertheless I do find them strangely addictive.’
‘They’re your vicarious ki
cks.’
‘Exactly.’
‘Did you know Jake’s date for the party is the producer of St Jude’s?’
Abby’s jaw dropped and she nearly leapt out of her seat. ‘Seriously?’
‘Apparently so.’
‘Someone’s going to have to hold me back,’ she said, and Leo’s head instantly swam with images of him restraining her. With cuffs, scarves, belts, whatever came to hand, really, as long as she was naked and at his mercy.
Cursing his surprisingly active imagination, he shifted on his chair to ease the sudden pressure gripping in his lower body, and muttered, ‘I’ll warn her to be on the lookout.’
CHAPTER TEN
SO FAR, THOUGHT ABBY, smiling up at the waiter who was placing her starter of smoked salmon in front of her, so good. The evening was absolutely going as well as it could given the circumstances.
Admittedly it had been touch and go for a while at the beginning. She’d walked through the door and spotted Leo frowning down at the table, clearly deep in thought and looking tired and dishevelled but nevertheless so gorgeous that for a second she’d gone a bit dizzy.
For a moment she’d wished she’d rung him up and told him she couldn’t make it. Then she’d contemplated turning around and leaving because suggesting they meet up had been reckless and foolish and she still had the smidgeon of a chance to rectify that.
But then he’d seen her and it had been way too late to back out. So she’d got a grip and told herself that her reaction was simply down to the initial shock of seeing him after so long. That she’d be fine once she’d got over it, and they’d got down to business.
Things had taken a slight turn for the worse when he’d kissed her cheek and she’d nearly passed out with the need to kiss him back, only properly. She’d looked up at him and had had the almost overwhelming urge to stroke away the lines of tiredness from his face and tell him that she’d missed him. But she’d got over that quickly enough.
By taking an unnecessarily long time to sit down and faff around with her handbag she’d more or less managed to haul herself under control, and now much to her surprise—and relief—she was enjoying herself.
Up until now they hadn’t really engaged much in the way of general conversation, and so now she was finding it, well, kind of nice to be able to talk normally, without tension and without subtext.
As they chatted about everything from work to films to books, she discovered he was interesting. Dryly amusing and probably unintentionally entertaining.
Best of all, though, he was once again nothing more than a client, and therefore everything was absolutely back on track.
* * *
If he’d known what torture dinner was going to be Leo would have suggested meeting Abby somewhere else entirely. Like a supermarket. A car park. His office. Hers. Anywhere that wasn’t softly lit and encouraged seduction.
He’d known that after the long flight he’d be hungry for good food and he’d assumed a restaurant would be safe enough, but it wasn’t because at no point had he taken into consideration the fact that once the food arrived he’d be unable to resist the temptation to watch her. As she ate, as she drank, as she talked and as she moved.
He couldn’t help it. She was so expressive, her movements so fluid and graceful as she talked about the events she’d organised and how, by way of a recommendation, she’d come to work for them.
And then there was the way she’d sighed over the food. With every tiny sigh he’d itched to sweep the table aside and tumble her to the floor, and once that thought had entered his head kissing her, undressing her and touching her was all he could think about. He was finding it so hard to concentrate on what she was saying with the images that were spinning through his head that he’d had to resort to non-committal hmms and vague agreement or disagreement depending on her expression.
He watched her put down her coffee cup, turning it so that the handle sat exactly at ninety degrees, and he even found that arousing, which meant that he was in a bad, bad way.
‘So we should talk about the party,’ she said, and for a split second he was about to ask, Party? What party? before sense returned and in the nick of time he remembered the whole original point of this evening.
‘That’s what we’re here for,’ he said, astonishingly sounding as if he actually meant it.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ she said, and then with the help of a folder that she extracted from her bag, placed on the table and started flicking through, proceeded to outline exactly what was planned and how it was all going to work.