‘Excuse me if I leave you to discuss me while I go to bed,’ Jemma put in sarcastically. ‘But please do continue none the less.’
‘He’s back in London!’ Trina called as Jemma turned to leave the room. Her spine began to tingle, as though just knowing he was in the same city was enough to make her flesh respond to him. ‘And he was not happy when I told him you were out on a date!’
‘When I answered the phone on his last call,’ Frew tagged on, ‘he mistook me for your date and actually threatened to come around here and eject me!’
‘I do hope you put him right,’ Jemma drawled, turning to send Frew a deriding look. ‘Only I would hate him to have the wrong impression about my taste!’
‘Whoa there, tiger!’ Trina warned. ‘That’s the love of my life you’re insulting!’
‘Well, tell the love of your damned life to keep his nose out of my business!’ Jemma snapped, wondering helplessly where all that lovely relaxed contentment she had rediscovered tonight had gone.
The phone began to ring. She stiffened up like a board. So did the other two, watching her with curious eyes.
‘Want me to answer it?’ Trina offered gently.
Oh, yes! Jemma thought frantically. Please yes! Anyone but me! I just can’t let myself be— ‘No,’ she heard herself mumble gruffly. ‘I’ll do it.’
She walked into the kitchen and stared at the wall set for all of ten seconds before slowly lifting off the receiver.
‘Jemma?’
She closed her eyes, swallowing thickly because just the sound of her name on his lips sent her mouth dry. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
There was a short, very telling silence, and it didn’t take much to sense the anger simmering within it. ‘I want to see you,’ he said tightly.
‘Well, I don’t—’
‘Now.’ Arrogantly, he cut right through her attempted refusal. ‘I shall be around to collect you in half an hour.’
‘But it’s eleven-thirty!’ she protested. ‘I don’t—!’
‘I will sound my car horn when I arrive,’ he interrupted yet again. ‘You have three minutes from that moment to get in the car or I shall come up—do you understand me, Jemma?’ he persisted. ‘I am a man who does not play games—any kind of game.’
The line went dead. Jemma stared at it. He had just threatened her. He had actually had the gall to threaten her!
CHAPTER THREE
LEON didn’t need to sound his car horn. Jemma was already waiting outside, huddled in her pale blue wool duffel-coat and simmering with resentment when the sleek silver-grey Mercedes drew up beside her.
She had a brief glimpse of his dark, chiselled features when the lamplight caught his face as he leaned across the luxurious interior to open the door for her.
He was angry, tight with it.
Well, she thought indignantly, so am I! And refused to so much as look at him as she climbed into the car and stared coldly at the windscreen.
‘Seatbelt,’ he snapped.
She opened her mouth to tell him to get lost, then shut it again on an inward gasp as the car shot forward on an angry burst of power. Fumbling, she fastened the belt around her, having to drop her purse and the small plastic carrier bag she had brought with her on to the car floor to do it.
Pausing at the next junction, he turned his dark head to slash her with an icy look; she gave it back defiantly, but just allowing her eyes to clash with his was enough to set her trembling, and it was he who broke the hostile contact. She had not been able to, he affected her so badly.
This is crazy, she told herself as they joined the late rush of traffic crowding the London streets. How could she be so acutely aware of a man she barely knew?
Perhaps Trina was right after all, and she had been heading for this kind of emotional fall-out for years, bottling it all up, refusing to acknowledge that she had the ability to feel this way.
Trying to smother a helpless sigh, she obviously wasn’t very successful, because the black eyes raked her again. She felt their touch all the way down to her toes. Don’t, she wanted to say. Don’t look at me—don’t do this to me! But she pressed her trembling lips together and stared fixedly ahead, and after a moment he returned his attention to the road while the tension surrounding them grew so tight she could barely breathe.
He turned into a quiet, salubrious square that she recognised instantly, and a wry smile touched her mouth. Big-league wasn’t in it; this man existed on a higher plane altogether than she could ever aspire to.
Good, she thought. It only helped to shore up her resolve to get out of this situation before it became impossible. She didn’t want this—it—him. She did not need it, nor could she cope with it.
The car stopped, the engine dying. Leon unclipped both seatbelts then opened his car door. She watched balefully as he climbed out and came around to open her door. When she hesitated, he said coolly, ‘Don’t make the mistake of challenging me, Jemma. I am tired and my temper is worn thin. I could get nasty.’
Could? If he thought he was making this a pleasure then she did not want to be around when he did get ‘nasty’! Bending, she scooped up her purse and the small plastic carrier bag, then slid out of the car, scorning the outstretched hand he offered her in assistance.
He closed the car door, pressed a sensor pad on his keyring which activated the car central-locking system and the alarm at the same time, then turned without sparing her another glance to climb the steps to a black-painted front door.
By the time she had joined him, he was standing inside an elegant hallway. The plain grey-carpeted floor and pale peach-painted walls blended superbly with the rich mahogany woodwork.
He glanced at a silver tray on the hall table where a stack of envelopes lay unopened. Long fingers flicked idly at them then dismissed them as unimportant. It was only then that it hit her that he must not have been here since his return to London.
So, where had he been? Working in his office? Eating dinner at some exclusive restaurant? With another woman?
Jealousy swirled up from the pit of her stomach and burned its way into her brain. Shocked and appalled by her own reaction, she stumbled as she tried to turn and walk out of the house again before he saw what was happening to her.
But Leon was too quick, and in one stride was at her side, his hand like a clamp around her arm as he turned her back again.
‘Going somewhere?’ he enquired silkily.
‘I don’t want to come in here with you,’ she objected, having now to fight her response to his heated touch as well the crazy jealousy.
For an answer, he reached over her shoulder and gave the door a shove. Jemma quivered as she heard it click shut behind her. Without a single word, he took her purse and the silly plastic carrier bag from her, unbuttoned her coat and drew it off her shoulders while she just stood there in front of him, cheeks hot, eyes lowered, trembling from head to toe at his domineering closeness.
Then he just turned and walked off down the hall, arrogantly taking her possessions with him.
It’s getting worse, she noted tremulously as she meekly followed. Ten minutes in his company last time and her senses had been so responsive to him that she could barely breathe or think. Another ten minutes and she was now so acutely conscious of him that she was actually afraid.
She paused on the threshold of a beautiful pale lemon and white sitting-room, seeing her coat casually discarded on the back of a chair. Leon was standing across the room, pouring a drink into a fine crystal glass, his dark business