Taming the Last St Claire. Carole Mortimer

you for passing on the message that Jordan and Stephanie arrived back in LA safely.’ His voice was now huskily soft.

      ‘A superfluous message, as it happens,’ she commented, very much aware of how close Gideon was now standing to her.

      ‘But you didn’t know that,’ he said. ‘And, despite my earlier comments, I appreciate you coming to tell me as soon as I returned from lunch.’

      Joey smiled. ‘Even if I did come barging into your office?’

      ‘Even so,’ Gideon allowed ruefully, realising how tiny she was as he stood only inches away from her; her manner was always so mocking, so forcefully independent, that she had somehow always seemed…more fiercely substantial to him.

      Her admission earlier of missing Stephanie had given Gideon a different insight into her—had hinted at that forceful independence being a defensive veneer rather than an intrinsic part of her nature. Perhaps a defence mechanism that came into play to hide the vulnerability that lay beneath her surface bravado—the same vulnerability that had enabled Joey to sing with such beauty and depth of emotion at Jordan and Stephanie’s wedding, maybe?

      Joey was shorter than Gideon had thought too. The top of her head only reached up to his chin—no, that couldn’t be right. This morning, in the underground car park, he distinctly remembered that her eyes had been level with his mouth as they’d talked.

      Gideon stood back slightly to look down at her feet. ‘You aren’t wearing any shoes …’

      Even Joey’s feet were beautiful—her ankles shapely, her toes gracefully slender, with pearly pink nails at their tips.

      ‘I have a habit of taking them off whenever I sit down,’ Joey admitted.

      ‘It’s a little…unorthodox when you’re at work.’ It also, Gideon realised with a frown, gave an intimacy to this situation that he would rather didn’t exist.

      She tossed her head. ‘Haven’t you noticed? I am unorthodox!’

      Gideon had noticed far too many things about this woman today! Such as the softness of her hair. The creaminess of her skin. The fullness of her breasts beneath the silk of her blouse. The delicious curves of her hips and bottom. The slight vulnerability to those sensuously full lips when she wasn’t being smart-mouthed…

      Joey was very aware of the sudden tension that surrounded herself and Gideon. She was also aware, so close to him like this, that his chest appeared as hard and muscled as she had imagined it would be, and her senses were being bombarded equally with the heat of his body and his smell: an elusive spicy aftershave mixed with hot and heady male.

      She was almost afraid to breathe, and she resisted the impulse she had to step closer to him, to put her arms about his waist and feel the ripple of muscles beneath his shirt as her palms rested against his back. She was certain that he would feel good to touch. Hot and hard. Like steel encased in velvet.

      It was a dangerous impulse—especially after the erotic thoughts Joey had had about him earlier on today. And yet she couldn’t move away. Could feel the mesmerising pull of his seductive heat. Couldn’t take her gaze from those hard and chiselled features. Except they didn’t look quite so hard any more. Gideon’s mouth was more relaxed than Joey had ever seen it—lips slightly parted, his breath a warm caress against her brow—and his eyes…oh, God, his eyes.

      They were no longer just that dark and brooding bitter chocolate brown, but now had shards of gold fanning out from the pupil. That gold deepened, increased as his gaze shifted from her eyes to her parted lips. As if he too were imagining what it would feel like if they were to kiss—