‘I’ve never been called Maisie before—’ the darkly amused voice was deep and husky and made her heart jump into her mouth ‘—and I’m right out of croissants.’
‘Conrad?’ He was here, now, and she must look such a mess.
‘Sorry to disappoint you if you’re hungry,’ he said drily.
He was here, right now! She glanced in the hall mirror and inwardly groaned. Her face was shiny, her eyes still carried the penalty of the good cry and she was only clothed in her nightie beneath the robe. Don’t panic, Sephy, she told herself desperately.
‘What…what do you want?’ she stammered at last, somewhat ungraciously, before adding, ‘Thank you for the flowers.’
‘My pleasure.’ There was something so sexy about his husky voice it made her toes curl, which, no doubt, was exactly what he intended, she told herself caustically. Tried and tested formula.
She took a deep breath but her voice still carried a faint tremor as she repeated, ‘What do you want, Conrad?’
‘You.’
She swallowed hard. Okay, she should have expected that.
‘But then you know that,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘Don’t you?’
‘I’m…I’m not dressed yet,’ she said, before she considered her words.
‘And they say there isn’t a Santa Claus.’
‘Conrad, please.’ She glanced again in the mirror and groaned.
‘I want to take you out to lunch, Sephy, or is that a terrible crime?’ he asked softly, but this time there was a thread of naked steel running through the words that she recognised from her time as his secretary. It told her he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
‘I might have other plans,’ she managed after a few frantic moments. But she was only prolonging the inevitable.
‘Have you?’ He clearly wasn’t buying that one.
Some deep feminine instinct for self-preservation urged her to say yes, but the thought of a few hours with him was too tempting. Lunch was safe, nothing could happen during lunch, and she had already made the decision to leave Quentin Dynamics at the earliest opportunity. She deserved this day. She did. It was all she was likely to ever have.
She had hesitated too long, and now his voice was very dry when he said, ‘Get dressed, Sephy, and be downstairs in ten minutes or I’ll upset your friend—Jerry, isn’t it?—by breaking this door down.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said indignantly. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘I’m never ridiculous, and just try me.’
It was arrogant and cold and so very Conrad that it made her smile in spite of the circumstances, but she managed to keep all trace of amusement out of her voice as she said tersely, ‘Fifteen minutes, and don’t you dare so much as touch that door.’
She put the phone down on his warm throaty chuckle, but the ache of longing it caused was harder to control.
They lunched at a small old-fashioned inn in Stratford-upon-Avon, where the steak pie cooked in Guinness was wonderful and the raspberry pavlova was homemade and melted in the mouth.
The drive out had been leisurely, and Conrad appeared perfectly relaxed, but from the moment she had caught sight of him as she had stepped on to the pavement Sephy had felt her nerves pull as tight as piano wire.
She had never seen him dressed casually before, he had always worn any one of a number of beautifully cut designer suits for the office, but today his black denim jeans and waist-length bulky charcoal-grey leather jacket emphasised his dark, virile masculinity a hundredfold and it made her—quite literally—weak at the knees. He was intimidatingly sexy and flagrantly male from the top of his ebony head to the soles of his shoes, and she felt she had caught a tiger by the tail. Although she hadn’t caught him, she reminded herself silently, she hadn’t remotely caught him, and therein lay the root of all her problems. He was a law unto himself and answerable to no one.
‘What would you like to do for the rest of the day?’ he asked lazily as they finished their coffee, his vivid blue eyes moving over her silky dark hair which she had left loose to fall in soft waves about her shoulders. ‘We don’t need to be back in London until sevenish, but I’ve booked a table at the Calypso Club for eight-thirty and no doubt you’ll want time to put on your glad rags.’
She stared at him uncertainly. Rarely a week or two went by when some glossy magazine or other didn’t have pictures of a host of celebrities enjoying themselves at the Calypso. It was the place to be seen, the haunt of the jet-set and the beautiful people, and you had to be worth a mint just to step inside its exclusive doors. This was so far outside her league as to be laughable. She had to make him understand.
‘Conrad, this isn’t going to work,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘You do see that, don’t you? All I said…I still mean it.’
‘You mean about prostituting yourself or my seeing you just as a challenge?’ he queried with shocking impassivity. ‘Or perhaps you’re referring to your accusation that I don’t care about you as a person?’ he added, his eyes watching her closely.
Oh, hell! She suddenly realised her words had cut deep. ‘I…I shouldn’t have said some of that,’ she admitted awkwardly.