SIX weeks later Hebe was still waiting for the promised telephone call from Nick Cavendish.
She had been a fool ever to expect that he would phone, of course, and several conversations with Kate over the last few weeks had confirmed that Nick Cavendish did not get seriously involved with any of the women he went out with. The number of women he had been involved with since the end of his marriage, also according to Kate, had been legion, and none of them, Kate had told her wistfully—as if she’d guessed Hebe’s interest was more than casual—had ever been employees of the Cavendish Galleries.
Or if they had they very quickly hadn’t been, Hebe had decided.
In fact, she had lived most of the last six weeks half expecting to be told her employment at the Cavendish Gallery had been terminated. Of course it wasn’t as easy as that to get rid of people nowadays, but she didn’t doubt that if he wanted her out of here, Nick Cavendish would find a way.
The fact that he was—at last!—due back at the London gallery next week, in time for the opening of an exhibition they were giving was not conducive to helping Hebe concentrate on her work.
In fact, she felt decidedly clumsy today, and had been dropping things most of the morning, not seeming to be coordinated at all. Of course she knew the reason for her steadily increasing nervousness. Nick’s arrival next week was approaching with a speed that made her head spin.
Maybe she should have called in sick for a few days. She was certainly feeling more than a little green round the edges, and hadn’t even been able to eat at all today. Her anxiety at the prospect of seeing Nick again seemed to be increasing daily.
Although why she should be the one to feel so nervously on edge was beyond her. After all, Nick Cavendish had been the one to invite her out, not the other way round. And she hadn’t invited herself back to his apartment either. In fact—
‘Hebe?’ rasped an all too familiar voice after six weeks’ silence close to her ear.
She spun round sharply, at the same time dropping the name cards she had been preparing for next week’s exhibition.
‘Sorry!’ she muttered, and she bent to pick them up with shaking fingers, taking the few seconds to bring some composure back to her demeanour.
Nick wasn’t expected until next week!
‘What are you doing here?’ she prompted slowly as she straightened, eyes deeply golden in the paleness of her face.
He returned her gaze mockingly. ‘It may have escaped your memory, Hebe, but I happen to own this gallery and have an apartment on the top floor of the building; I can come here any time I damn well please!’
Well…yes…But if she had had prior notice of his earlier than expected arrival she might not have overreacted in the way she just had. As it was, she felt completely wrong-footed.
She had made her mind up, during Nick’s six weeks of silence, that she was going to be cool and composed when he did come back and would make no reference, if he didn’t, to the fact that they had spent the night together in his apartment on the top floor of the building…
‘Let’s go up to my office,’ Nick added with barely concealed impatience. ‘I want to talk to you.’
He looked just the same, she acknowledged achingly. His olive skin was just as healthily tanned, his blue eyes as sharply intelligent, and his dark hair, though looking as if it had been trimmed slightly, was still long enough to rest silkily on broad shoulders. Dressed formally in a dark grey suit and snowy white shirt, with a silver-grey silk tie knotted neatly at his throat, he looked like a man who was firmly in control.
He looked exactly what he was, in fact—the confident multimillionaire owner of three prestigious art galleries.
Looking at him now, Hebe wondered how she could ever have thought he was seriously interested in her!
‘Hebe!’ he prompted, frowning at her continued silence.
She was behaving like an idiot, she realised, just standing here staring at him, completely tongue-tied by his unexpected appearance in the gallery.
She drew in a deep breath, willing herself to behave naturally. Well, as naturally as it was possible to be when confronted by the man who had haunted her days and filled her dreams for last six weeks!
‘What can I do for you, Mr Cavendish?’ she prompted with calm efficiency.
‘You can come upstairs to my office with me,’ he repeated firmly. ‘Now!’ he added, not even waiting for her answer this time, but turning abruptly on his heel and striding forcefully out of the room.
Kate, who was working nearby, shot Hebe a questioning look as she trailed out of the gallery behind Nick, and Hebe gave her a how-should-I-know? shrug in reply.
Because she really didn’t know what this was about. They had had dinner together, spent a night together, but she hadn’t told anyone about either of those things, let alone tried to contact Nick himself. So what was his problem?
The more she thought about it, acknowledging his brooding silence as he lithely climbed the stairs ahead of her to his office on the second floor, the angrier she became.
Had he expected, on the basis that she had spent the night with the boss, that she would have left her job here before he returned? Was that the reason he was so angry? Because he hadn’t expected to see her still here at all?
Well, that was being more than a little unfair, wasn’t it?
She loved her job here, liked the people she worked with too. Besides, none of the awkwardness of this situation was her fault, damn it!
Nick eyed her irritably as he closed his office door behind them. Unless he was mistaken, from her flushed cheeks and glowing golden eyes, he would take a guess at her being one very indignant young lady.
He perched on the edge of his cool Italian marble desk, which more than one customer at the gallery had tried to buy from him. He had always refused to sell it, though, liking the way it complemented the rest of the room, which was wood-panelled and slightly austere, although it did have a huge picture window that looked out over the river.
‘So, what are you so angry about, Hebe?’ he drawled ruefully, dark brows raised over mocking blue eyes. ‘The fact that I was less than polite just now? Or the fact that I haven’t called you for two months?’ He met her gaze challengingly.
‘Six weeks,’ she came back sharply, her cheeks flushing with colour seconds later.
‘Whatever.’ He shrugged, knowing exactly how long it was since he had last seen her, but having no intention of letting Hebe know that he did.
He had been so sure that Hebe Johnson would be just like all the other women he had known over the last two years—taken and then forgotten. But for some inexplicable reason he hadn’t quite succeeded in doing that where she was concerned. Memories of those golden eyes, that lithe silken body, came flashing into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. Irritating him intensely.
The flash of anger now in the depths of her warm eyes, and the way the fullness of those sensuous lips had tightened slightly, told him his careless attitude had only succeeded in increasing her anger. Which didn’t particularly affect him.
Not on a business level, anyway.
On a personal level, he found both things sexy as hell!
She looked good today too, dressed in a cream blouse tucked into the tiny waistband of a knee-length fitted black skirt, her legs long and silky.
So much for his absence from the London gallery these last six weeks, his deliberate lack of the promised telephone call, his self-assurances that when he came back he would have forgotten all about Hebe Johnson!
Even before he’d seen the painting he had known