‘That’s something I like about you, Evelyn.’ He moved at last, but not to go past her. He moved closer, touching the pad of one finger to her brow, shifted back a stray tendril of hair, a touch so gentle and light but so heated and powerful that she shivered under its impact. ‘That honest streak you have. That desire not to deceive. I have to admire that.’
Warning bells rang out in her mind. There was a calm, controlled anger rippling through the underbelly of his words that she was sure hadn’t been there before, an iron fist beneath the velvet-gloved voice, and she wasn’t sure what he thought he was celebrating but she did know she didn’t want to be any part of it.
‘I should be going,’ she said, searching for the nearest horizontal surface on which to deposit her nearly untouched drink, finding it in the credenza at her side. ‘It’s late. Don’t bother your driver. I’ll get myself a cab.’
He smiled then, as lazily and smugly as a crocodile who knew that all the efforts of its prey were futile for there was no escape. a smile that made her shiver, all the way down.
‘If you’ll just move out the way,’ she suggested, ‘I’ll go.’
‘Let you go?’ he questioned, retrieving her glass and holding it out to her. When she was so clearly leaving. ‘When I thought you might like to share a drink with me.’
She ignored it. ‘I had one, thanks.’
‘No, that drink was a celebration. This one will be for old times’ sake. What do you say, Evelyn? Or maybe you’d prefer if I called you Eve.’
And a tidal wave of fear crashed over her, cold and drenching and leaving her shuddering against the wall, thankful for its solidity in a world where the ground kept shifting. He knew! He knew and he was angry and there was no way he was going to move away from that door and let her calmly walk out of here. Her tongue found her lips, trying valiantly to moisten them, but her mouth was dry, her throat constricted. ‘I’m good with either,’ she said, trying for calm and serene and hearing her voice come out thready and desperate. ‘And I really should be going.’
‘Because I met an Eve once,’ he continued, his voice rich and smooth by comparison, apparently oblivious to her discomfiture, or simply enjoying it too much to put an end to it, ‘in an office overlooking Sydney Harbour. She had the most amazing blue eyes, a body built for sinful pleasures, and she was practically gagging for it. Come to think of it, she was gagging for it.’
‘I was not!’ she blurted, immediately regretting her outburst, wishing the shifting ground would crack open and swallow her whole, or that her pounding heart would break the door down so she could escape. Because she was kidding herself. Even if it hadn’t been how she usually acted, even if it had been an aberration, he was right. Because if that person hadn’t interrupted them in the midst of that frantic, heated encounter, she would have spread her legs for him right there and then, and what was that, if not gagging for it?
And afterwards she’d been taking minutes, writing notes, even if she’d found it nearly impossible to transcribe them or remember what had actually been said when she’d returned to her office because of thoughts of what had almost happened in that filing room and what would happen during the night ahead.
He curled his fingers under her chin, forced her to look at him, triumph glinting menacingly in his eyes. ‘You’ve been working with me for more than two years, sweet little Miss Evelyn don’t-like-to-deceive-anyone Carmichael. When exactly were you planning on telling me?’
She looked up at him, hoping to reason with him, hoping that reason made sense. ‘There was nothing to tell.’
‘Nothing? When you were so hot for me you were practically molten. And you didn’t think I might be interested to know we’d more than just met before?’
‘But nothing happened! Not really. It was purely a coincidence that I came to work for you. You wanted a virtual PA. You sent a query on my webpage. You agreed the terms and I did the work you wanted and what did or didn’t happen between us one night in Sydney was irrelevant. It didn’t matter.’ She was babbling and she knew it, but she couldn’t stop herself, tripping over the words in the rush to get them out. ‘It wasn’t like we ever had to meet. If you hadn’t needed a pretend fiancée tonight, you would never have known.’
‘Oh, I get it. So it’s my fault, is it, that all this time you lied to me.’
‘I never lied.’
‘You lied by omission. You knew who I was, you knew what had so very nearly happened, and you failed to tell me that I knew you. You walked in here and hoped and prayed I wouldn’t recognise you and you almost got away with it.’
‘I didn’t ask to come tonight!’
‘No. And now I know why. Because you knew your dishonesty would come unstuck. All that talk about not deceiving people and you’ve happily been deceiving me for two years.’
‘I do my job and I do it well!’
‘Nobody said you didn’t. What is an issue is that you should have told me.’
‘And would you have contracted me if I had?’
‘Who knows? Maybe if you had, we might be having great sex right now instead of arguing.’
Unfair, she thought as she sucked in air, finding it irritatingly laden with his testosterone-rich scent. So unfair to bring up sex right now, to remind her of what might have been, when she was right here in his suite and about to lose the backbone of her income because she’d neglected to tell him about a night when nothing had happened.
‘Let me tell you something, Evelyn Carmichael,’ he said, as he trailed lazy fingertips down the side of her face. ‘Let me share something I might have shared with you, if you’d ever bothered to share the truth with me. Three years ago, I was aboard a flight to Santiago. I had a fifty-page report to read and digest and a strategy to close a deal to work out and I knew what I needed to be doing, but hour after hour into the flight I couldn’t concentrate. And why couldn’t I concentrate? Because my head was filled with thoughts of a blonde, long-limbed PA with the sexiest eyes I had ever seen and thinking about what we both should have been doing right then if I hadn’t had to leave Sydney.’
‘Oh.’ It had never occurred to her that he might have regretted his sudden departure. It had never occurred to her that she hadn’t been the only one unable to sleep that night, the only one who remembered.
‘I felt cheated,’ he said, his fingers skimming the line of her collarbone, ‘because I had to leave before we got a chance to…get to know each other.’ His fingers played at her shoulder, his thumbs stroking close to the place on her throat where she could feel her pulse beat at a frantic pace. ‘Did you feel cheated, Evelyn?’
‘Perhaps. Maybe just a little.’
‘I was hoping maybe more than just a little.’
‘Maybe,’ she agreed, earning herself a smile in return.
‘And now I find that I have been cheated in those years since. I never had a chance to revisit what we had lost that night, because you chose not to tell me.’
She blinked up at him, still reeling from the impact of his words. ‘How could I tell you?’
‘How could you not tell me, when you must know how good we will be together. We knew it that day. We recognised it. And we knew it earlier when I kissed you and you turned near incendiary in my arms. Do you know how hard that kiss was to break, Evelyn? Do you know what it took to let you go and take you to dinner and not take you straight to my bed?’
She shuddered at his words, knowing them to be true, knowing that if he’d taken her to bed that night, she would have gone and