Hebe eyed Nick scathingly as he stood looking at her, and, even though inside was shaking, she gripped her hands tightly together to prevent Nick from seeing they were trembling.
‘I’m sorry—were you supposed to call me?’ she came back, with all the coolness she could muster.
Which was quite considerable, if the way his mouth thinned and his eyes narrowed to glittering blue slits was anything to go by!
‘Okay, Hebe, forget that for the moment,’ he dismissed briskly. ‘And tell me what you know about Andrew Southern?’
She frowned as she dredged her memory for the relevant facts about the artist, having no idea why Nick was asking the question—unless it was an effort on his part to prove that she didn’t know her job, so giving him an excuse to fire her?
She swallowed hard. ‘English. Born 1953. Started painting in his early twenties, mainly portraits, but later moved on to landscapes—more recently the Alaskan wilderness—’
‘I’m not asking for a bio on the guy, Hebe!’ Nick cut in tersely, standing up restlessly. ‘I asked what you know about him?’
‘Me?’ She blinked, stepping back slightly in the face of his leashed vitality. ‘I’ve just told you what I know about him—’
‘Don’t be so coy, Hebe,’ he cut her off again abruptly, blue eyes mocking. ‘I’m not asking for details, just a confirmation that you know him. And if you can contact him personally.’
She was totally bewildered now. This conversation didn’t appear to have anything to do with that night six weeks ago at all, nor with an effort to prove her incompetent, but everything, it seemed, to do with the artist Andrew Southern. Of whom she was an admirer, but had certainly never met him, let alone knew him personally.
She wasn’t going to acknowledge the relationship, Nick realized frustratedly. Well, the guy was old enough to be her father, so maybe that explained her reluctance to talk about him. Whatever, Nick had been trying to arrange a meeting with Andrew Southern for years. For once neither the name Nick Cavendish nor the Cavendish Galleries themselves had opened that particular door. And now it seemed that Hebe, of all people, might be the key to that meeting.
From deciding that he had to stay as far away from Hebe as possible in future, or else take her to his bed again, he had now discovered that if he wanted to get anywhere near Andrew Southern with the idea of an exhibition of his work, then Hebe was the person he had to talk to.
‘Look, Hebe, let’s start this conversation again, shall we?’ he reasoned pleasantly. ‘I accept that I overstepped the employer/employee line with you six weeks ago, but by the same token you have to accept that it wasn’t all one sided, huh?’
Hebe eyed him derisively. If that was his attempt at an apology for the night they had spent together, or for his non-existent telephone call since, then it was pretty lame. Besides which, an apology for the former was insulting, to say the least, just as an off-hand apology for the latter was totally inadequate.
She had been so miserable these last six weeks, wondering where she had gone wrong, what she had done to make Nick Cavendish not even want to call her again, let alone see her.
And now he had turned up unexpectedly, dismissing their night together as the satisfying of a brief, mutual attraction, before going on to talk about Andrew Southern—an artist of phenomenal reputation, and known as a complete recluse, who had been so for almost thirty years.
Making her realise just how little she understood Nick Cavendish.
She eyed him coolly now. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, of course—!’ He broke off to draw in a deeply controlling breath. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.
She gave a mocking lift of her eyebrows. ‘I seem to be doing that without trying!’
He relaxed slightly, an amused smile slightly curving those sculptured lips. ‘I see now why I found you so intriguing that night,’ he murmured softly.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Not here. Not now.
She had spent the first week after his departure back to New York in a frenzy of self-recrimination, with a deep-felt need for Nick to call her to nullify all those negative thoughts.
She was in love with him, totally physically enthralled with him—and this was the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake, not the Dark Ages, where a woman’s wants and needs weren’t considered as important as a man’s, she had chided herself.
She had done nothing wrong by spending the night with a man she found so attractive and who had wanted her too!
But as the days and weeks had passed those assurances hadn’t meant a whole lot.
And now standing here looking at Nick, they meant absolutely nothing.
She grimaced. ‘I think it might be better if we both just forgot about that, don’t you?’
It was a statement rather than a question, and Nick found himself deeply irritated by her easy dismissal.
Okay, so he hadn’t been able to wait to get her out of his apartment that morning six weeks ago, and he hadn’t called her as he said he would, but it was a bit of knock to his ego to realise that she was willing to dismiss the memories of him as easily as he had tried to dismiss her.
Or was she…?
He took a step towards her, lids lowered as he looked down at her with dark blue eyes, trailing one caressing finger down the smooth curve of her cheek. ‘Am I so easy to forget, Hebe?’ he murmured seductively, knowing that this was probably another mistake, but finding her coolness infuriating as hell. ‘Was our lovemaking easy to forget too? Or has it kept you awake nights, thinking of all the ways we touched and aroused each other?’
She gave him a startled look even as the colour entered her cheeks, her lips parting slightly as her body swayed towards his.
‘I thought so…’ He murmured his satisfaction with her response, his wandering fingers parting her lips slightly, caressing that softness, before trailing the length of her throat down to the deep vee of her blouse and the creamy swell of her breasts. All the time his challenging gaze continued to hold hers.
How could this be happening? Hebe inwardly protested, even as she felt herself responding to his touch. The arousal of her breasts was instant, the nipples hard and sensitive, as she reached out instinctively to cling tightly to the broad width of his shoulders, her legs seeming in danger of melting beneath her.
But as suddenly as he had touched her she found herself thrust away from him, and Nick was stepping back, that devilishly handsome face now set in scathing dismissal.
‘You really are a sexy little thing, aren’t you?’ he mused as he leant back against his desk, his blue gaze considering now, as he looked at the firm thrust of her breasts against her cream blouse.
‘Mr Cavendish—’
‘Oh, come on, Hebe,’ he drawled tauntingly, shaking his head slightly, those blue eyes alight with mocking laughter. ‘You can hardly go back to calling me that after sharing your body with me,’ he reminded her, with a challenging rise of that square, uncompromising chin.
Hebe felt the colour warm her cheeks at his deliberate taunting. Why was he doing this to her? What perverse pleasure did he get out of humiliating her in this way?
She straightened defensively, glaring at him. ‘At the same time as you shared your body with me!’ she came back, with all the fury of her humiliation, uncaring now if this was just his way of trying to get her to resign from her job at the gallery.
Fine. Let him sack her. She was quickly reaching the point where she didn’t care.