Joey had regretted telling him how much she still missed Stephanie almost as soon as she had started the conversation. But she had been surprised when Gideon admitted missing his own twin just as much.
He gave every impression of being self-contained. A cold and unsentimental man. To imagine him feeling the same ache of loneliness for his own twin as she felt for Stephanie suddenly made him seem all too human.
But perhaps he felt the same about her? The thought suddenly seemed much too intimate. ‘There’s no need to get your boxers in a twist, Gideon,’ she murmured, being deliberately provocative to hide her uneasiness.
‘My boxers?’ Gideon’s nostrils flared in distaste.
‘That’s always supposing you wear boxers, of course,’ Joey continued outrageously. ‘Yet I somehow can’t see you going commando—’
‘I would prefer that we not discuss my underwear, or lack of it, if you don’t mind,’ he bit out with an incredulous shake of his head. ‘You really are the most irritating woman I have ever met.’
‘Really?’ Joey smiled appreciatively.
Gideon eyed her in exasperation. ‘It wasn’t meant as a compliment!’
‘I didn’t think for one moment that it was,’ she said dryly. ‘But can I help it if I feel honoured that the coolly aloof Gideon St Claire has lowered his aristocratic brown eyes far enough to even notice my existence, let alone to actually form an opinion about me?’
Gideon realised it was this woman’s impulsiveness that made him feel so uneasy in her company. So unsure and definitely wary of what she was going to do or say next. It wasn’t a comfortable admission from a man who usually maintained a tight control over his own emotions. Not comfortable at all.
His mouth compressed into a hard line. ‘Now who’s being insulting?’
‘Was I?’ she came back airily. ‘But you do have brown eyes. And you are an aristocrat. Lord Gideon St Claire, to be exact,’ she added, as though he’d forgotten.
Neither he, nor his two brothers ever used their titles. In fact most people were completely unaware that Lucan was the current Duke of Stourbridge, or that his younger twin brothers were both lords. A fact that Joey was well aware of.
Instead of answering her, Gideon glanced down at the plain gold watch on his wrist. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to waste on this. I have an appointment at nine o’clock.’
She smiled unabashedly. ‘Does that mean the welcome speech—you know…the usual glad to have you with us, don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything, blah, blah, blah—is now over?’
Gideon drew in a harsh breath. Both of them knew there had been no welcome speech from him at all—not even a brief, unenthusiastic one. Which was obviously the whole point of her remark.
‘I’m sure you’re fully aware by now that I would be happier not to have you working here at all,’ he said honestly.
‘Life can be cruel that way, can’t it?’ she said, her smile undimmed.
Gideon gave her one last frustrated frown, before turning on his heel and going into the adjoining office and all but slamming the door closed behind him.
Joey’s breath left her lungs in a relieved whoosh once she was alone in Lexie’s office. That last conversation about Gideon’s underwear had no doubt completely restored the opinion he’d obviously held of her before her earlier lapse in admitting that she deeply missed Stephanie.
Joey was well aware of what people thought of her lawyer persona—aggressive, forceful, too outspoken. She was a shark circling her prey when she defended her client in a courtroom—and it was a reputation she had deliberately nurtured.
Not too many people were ever allowed to see past that veneer of professional toughness to the real Joey beneath, as Gideon had when she’d talked of missing her twin.
Joey had deliberately donned her professional toughness a couple of years ago, after one too many slights, because she was a woman in the male-dominated career she had chosen to enter. And after one too many men, less capable than she believed herself to be, had been given jobs because of their gender rather than their ability. The third time Joey had been passed over in that way was when she had decided that if she couldn’t beat them then she was going to join them and beat them at their own game.
Consequently, before she went for her interview at Pickard, Pickard and Wright two years ago, Joey had gone out and bought herself half a dozen of what she considered to be power suits, had had her hair styled unfemininely short, and adopted an abrasive and aggressive personality to match. The changes had proved to be successful, and she had managed to land the job with that prestigious firm of lawyers.
Once she had been given the job Joey had softened her attitude and appearance slightly, recognising that in some circumstances femininity—showing a little cleavage and wearing stiletto-heeled shoes for example—could be just as effective as abrasive aggression.
But she couldn’t say she was altogether comfortable with the fact that her highly professional persona had slipped slightly when she had been talking with Gideon St Claire.
‘I’m taking a break now, and going to the coffee shop down the street to get a hot chocolate. Do you want anything while I’m there?’
Gideon scowled his irritation as he looked up from the figures he had been studying on his computer screen to where Joey stood in the now open doorway between their two offices. A door she had opened without even the courtesy of knocking first.
‘Surely there’s a coffee-making machine in Lexie’s office?’
‘I don’t drink coffee.’
‘There are drinks machines on each floor, and a company restaurant on the eighth floor.’ Gideon should have known that the past hour and a half of relative peace and quiet wasn’t going to last with Joey McKinley in the building! ‘I’m sure you can get hot chocolate there.’
‘But not with whipped cream on top, or served by a buff twenty-year-old male with shoulder-length blond hair, I bet.’
Gideon’s frown deepened as he thought of the three slightly plump, kindly middle-aged women who usually worked in the restaurant two floors below. ‘Well…no.’
‘There you go, then.’
‘I take it this “buff” vision of manhood does work in the coffee shop down the road?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She smiled at him. ‘So, do you want anything? Something to drink? Muffin? Pastry?’
‘No, thank you,’ he answered, with a barely repressed shudder.
‘No to just the drink, or no to all of it?’
Gideon gritted his teeth at her persistence. ‘All of it.’
‘They do a really great lemon muffin—’
‘I said no and I meant no!’ Gideon was growing more and more irritated. If he wanted coffee he had his own pot, already made on the percolator, and if he wanted something to eat then he would send his secretary—Lucan’s secretary, now that Joey McKinley had commandeered his own—down to the restaurant to get it for him.
Joey lingered in the doorway, seemingly unperturbed by his irritability. ‘Tell me, Gideon, have you ever been into a coffee shop? ‘
‘No,’ he bit out tersely.
‘How about a burger place?’
‘If by that you are referring to a fast food restaurant, then the answer is no. Neither have I ever been roller skating, hang-gliding or scuba-diving—and I feel no more inclination to do any of them than I do to go to the coffee shop down the street!’
‘Nix to the scuba-diving—I’ve never