‘I resign.’ She raised her chin defiantly, her back ramrod-straight. ‘As of now.’
‘Don’t be childish,’ he said cuttingly, and before she could say anything more he had stepped past her and opened the door onto the stairs, leaving her alone and shaking.
Childish? She stared at the door, nonplussed by the sudden end to what she had considered the most devastating experience of her entire life. Childish? How dared he?
She stood for a moment more and then forced her shaking legs to carry her into the office where she made straight for her little cloakroom.
The flushed, bright-eyed girl in the mirror, with the bruised mouth, was not someone she recognised, and she gazed at herself for a full minute before she could persuade her trembling hands to do something about her dishevelment.
Childish. The word had stung and she couldn’t get it out of her mind. Possibly because she had to acknowledge, ruefully and only after another five minutes had ticked by in painful self-assessment, that there was more than grain of truth in it.
She had handled it all wrong from the moment his mouth had touched hers. What she should have done—what any normal, level-headed, experienced woman would have done—was to accept the kiss lightly, move gracefully out of his arms after a moment or two and make some casual comment to defuse what had been—by his own admission—a momentary impulse on Lucas’s part.
Instead she had nearly eaten him alive and then accused him of—she didn’t like to think what she had accused him of. She gave a little groan, scraping every tendril of hair back so tightly into the knot that her scalp ached.
He must thing she had a screw loose. The mirror told her that she was once again transformed into the neatly tailored, cool and efficient Mrs Allen—on the outside, at least. Perhaps she did have a screw loose, she admitted weakly. In fact she suspected she had whole box of them jangling about with regard to Lucas Kane. Certainly he had the power to turn her into someone she didn’t know, someone who was very different from the reserved, cool, careful person she had believed herself to be before she had worked for him.
She was typing away at her word processor, her mind ten per cent on her work and ninety per cent on Lucas’s return, when she heard his voice in the corridor outside talking to someone. Her heart jumped up into her throat but she forced her hands to keep up a
steady rhythm, even as every sense in her body tuned itself in to the moment when he would walk through the door.
She thought the other voice belonged to Lucas’s general manager, who had his office at the other end of the corridor, but she couldn’t be sure; most voices had a habit of lowering themselves deferentially in Lucas’s presence.
And then the door opened and, although she kept her eyes on her work, she knew he was looking at her.
‘Kim?’
She’d half hoped—coward that she was, she conceded silently—that he would simply carry on as though nothing had happened, but she might have known Lucas wouldn’t take the easy way out. She raised reluctant eyes to meet his piercing grey gaze and the butterflies in her stomach did a war dance.
‘We have to discuss this properly. You know that.’
It was a statement, not a question, but she answered it as though it had been the latter when she said, her voice as cool and distant as she could make it, ‘There’s nothing to discuss.’
His compelling light eyes narrowed at the words. ‘If you felt disturbed enough to make that ridiculous suggestion about resigning I’d say there’s every need,’ he said grimly. He perched on the edge of her desk—a habit of his and one which always sent her senses haywire—and continued to survey her unblinkingly.
Why did he have to be so attractive? she asked herself rawly. So incredibly, overwhelmingly attractive? She dared bet that there wasn’t a female in the building, in the whole of Cambridge, who wouldn’t jump at the chance of having an affair with Lucas Kane.
Was he seeing someone at the moment? The thought was entirely inappropriate in the circumstances but she couldn’t help it.
‘I’ve…I’ve change my mind about that,’ she managed at last.
‘Of course you have.’ It was dismissive, as though the idea had been so ludicrous it wasn’t worth mentioning. ‘But nevertheless we need to discuss what happened.’
Her cheeks were scarlet again, she could feel them burning, and yet he was as cool and unfeeling as the polished granite his eyes seemed to have been fashioned from. But he hadn’t been so unfathomable and cold when he’d been holding her in his arms. The thought made Kim’s cheeks even hotter. He had been aroused then, hugely aroused, and it had been her body, her lips and mouth and tongue that had made him tremble with desire. She didn’t know if she found the thought alarming or comforting but she did find it exciting, and that was more than dangerous enough to cope with.
‘Look, Lucas, I’m prepared to look at it as a mistake, one of those things that happen now and again when people of the opposite sex work so closely together as we do,’ Kim said with a steadiness she was proud of. ‘It didn’t mean anything—’
‘The hell it didn’t.’
It wasn’t at all the response she’d expected and cut off all coherent reasoning. ‘Wha…what did you say?’
‘Kim, I don’t know what sort of man you think I am,’ Lucas said smoothly, his thick black lashes masking the flicker of anger her words had wrought, ‘but when I kissed you it sure as hell meant something to both of us.’
‘I didn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it,’ she said quickly, without thinking. She heard him draw in a quick hard breath and realised her faux pas. ‘I mean…’ Her voice trailed away helplessly.
Lucas rescued her with his normal calm composure. ‘You’ve worked for me for five months and I’ve wanted to see what you tasted like from day one,’ he said as coolly as though he was asking her to type a letter. ‘Why do you think I haven’t dated anyone in all that time?’
‘You haven’t?’ She checked herself quickly. Breathless murmuring was not the way to deal with this.