Of course it wouldn’t, he told himself, contemplating with a faint grimace the ice-cold shower he was going to have to take in Abby’s absence. He might want her more than any other woman he’d taken to bed recently, but even so, because he was no longer susceptible to any member of the opposite sex, she posed absolutely no threat to his peace of mind. No woman would ever again, so the niggling suspicion that she somehow could was simply jet lag messing with his head.
And anyway, just because he’d like to see her again it didn’t mean he was embarking on anything, did it? It wasn’t as if he’d have to actually talk to her much, was it? No. Judging by the way things had gone last night, Abby seemed to be the ‘less talking more action’ type, which was, happily, exactly his type.
So he’d call her up and suggest they get together. Tonight, if she was free after whatever work she had to do. Or tomorrow. Whenever. But soon.
Spying his clothes, which from memory he’d left in a heap on the floor beside the bed but were now draped neatly over the back of the armchair that sat in the corner of the room, Leo got up and headed over in search of his phone. His shoes were positioned together at the foot of the chair, and as he rummaged around his trouser pocket for his phone he smiled slightly and wondered whether he’d find his socks and shorts in the laundry basket in the bathroom.
Thinking that after her abandon on the dance floor and last night’s subsequent private performance he’d never have had her down as a neat freak, he pulled out his phone and saw that he had had three missed calls and two new voicemail messages from his brother and a text from his mother.
Well, they could wait, he thought, bringing up a search engine with a couple of quick taps. He had a phone number to find and an entirely different call to make.
CHAPTER SIX
‘OH, MY GOD, you slept with a client?’
At the astonishment in her best friend’s voice Abby consulted her clipboard needlessly and wondered if she’d done the right thing in telling Gemma everything that had gone on last night.
It had seemed like an excellent idea when they’d sat down with a cup of tea in the huge kitchen/diner of the posh Kensington house five minutes ago—firstly because she and Gemma had met years back at the catering company they’d both once worked for, were closer than sisters and knew practically everything there was to know about each other, and secondly because after spending the entire day thinking about it she’d had to tell someone before she burst—but now she sort of regretted it.
While the memory remained hers alone she could label it a fantasy, revisit it whenever she fancied and in the meantime continue to deny to herself that she’d ever behaved so wantonly. Had ever lost control quite so spectacularly and, even worse, enjoyed it all quite so much.
Putting it out there made her behaviour and her loss of control irrefutable. It made the whole encounter real, available for dissection and analysis and she wasn’t sure she wanted either. Which was unfortunate because Gemma relished both.
‘Strictly speaking there wasn’t a lot of sleeping involved,’ said Abby, abandoning her clipboard because she knew perfectly well from the checks she’d carried out ten minutes ago that the catwalk was complete and secure and the make-up artist, the costumier, the DJ and the photographer were all good to go. ‘And technically he wasn’t a client at that point, but essentially, yes.’
‘After meeting him what, six hours earlier?’
She took a quick sip of strong but not nearly fortifying enough tea. ‘Thereabouts.’
Gemma shook her head in disbelief, her eyes wide with shock. ‘Wow. I think I need something considerably stronger than tea.’
‘Tell me about it.’ No amount of coffee and tea could make up for the fact that she’d had little more than two hours’ sleep last night. Tequila, on the other hand, would work nicely. Shame it was only half past five in the afternoon and she was working.
‘That’s something I normally do,’ said Gemma. ‘Not you.’
‘I know.’
‘And even I draw the line at clients.’
‘I know.’
‘So come on, then, what happened?’
‘I don’t really know,’ said Abby, still a bit bemused by it all even though she’d thought about little else in the intervening hours. ‘One minute we were talking, then we were kissing and five minutes later we were in bed.’
Although it hadn’t been quite that simple, had it? The talking had been laden with subtext, the kissing had been mind-blowing and as for the bed bit, well, that had been explosive. So actually, factoring in the misunderstandings earlier in the evening and the subsequent questioning of her integrity, it had all been rather complicated.
‘And how was it?’
‘Fine.’
‘Fine?’ Gemma said, a smile slowly spreading across her face. ‘That’s all? If it was just “fine”, then why did you stick around to do it six times?’
‘OK, then, it was great.’ Which was still a total understatement for how it had been, because she couldn’t remember a night like it. When she’d finally managed to drag herself out of his bed this morning she’d barely been able to walk. A hot shower in Leo’s en-suite had helped but, even now, pretty much every time she moved she could feel muscles she didn’t even know she had pinging and lingering traces of heat and pleasure shimmering through her.
‘Then it was probably just what you needed,’ said Gemma, dragging her back to the present. ‘Especially after Martin.’
Abby shuddered at the thought of her ex, who’d accused her of being undateable by way of being intimidating, overly self-reliant and, of all things, too capable. ‘Definitely.’