“I don’t need any help,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.
Which meant that, even though she’d pretty much spelled it out, he still didn’t entirely trust her not to fling herself at him even now.
“Fine. Suit yourself.” Natalie shrugged and carried the suitcase into the bedroom, only sagging down onto the bed and letting out a shuddering breath once she got there.
She could, of course, just leave the suitcase on the bed and deal with the contents later. But rushing back into a room where she clearly wasn’t wanted—and didn’t want to be—was not the best idea.
And there was a whole lot to recommend staying right where she was. She could use the time to put her clothes away—and regain her equilibrium in the process.
She hadn’t wanted to run into Christo at all. She’d done her best to avoid him for the past three years because she still writhed in mortification every time she thought about that night in his apartment.
That night she’d waited for him in his bed.
Even now her cheeks burned at the memory.
That he’d been shocked to find her there when he got home from a business dinner that night went without saying. She’d expected that.
But she’d also expected he’d be pleased. Delighted, in fact. And happy to join her.
Wrong. A hundred thousand times wrong. And if the circumstances had been mortifying, it was how badly she’d misread the situation that she still had trouble facing. She wasn’t used to being a fool.
Well, he needn’t worry, she thought as she got up and began taking her clothes out of the suitcase, hanging them in the closet, trying not to hear every sound he made as he moved in the living room.
She certainly wouldn’t be jumping into his bed again.
But it would be a whole lot easier if her earlier humiliation and subsequent hard-won maturity were complemented now by total indifference to the man in the other room.
Sadly, they weren’t.
Something about Christo Savas still had the ability to make her heart quicken in her chest. His thick dark hair perhaps? His chiseled jaw and sculpted cheekbones? His sharp straight nose and fathomless green eyes? His rangy but muscular body that looked as appealing today in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt as it had in tropical-weight wool suits, starched long-sleeved shirts and ties?
All of the above?
Unfortunately, yes.
But it was even more than that. Always had been.
If Christo’s arresting good looks had first attracted Natalie’s attention the summer she’d been a clerk in the firm where her father was a partner, it had very quickly become more than his hard body and handsome face that held her interest.
His quiet intensity, determined hard work and steel-trap mind were equally appealing. So were his incisive arguments and his way with words. She’d been dazzled by the young litigator and it hadn’t taken long to become smitten.
She’d been raised on the story of her own parents’ courtship and marriage—He was a young lawyer and I was working in the office. It was love at first sight, Laura used to tell her children. So Natalie hadn’t found it hard to believe in a variation on the same theme for herself and Christo.
Bolstered by her own family history, and aware of a certain electricity in the air every time she and Christo Savas looked at one another, Natalie had seen their relationship as fate.
And she’d done her best to make history repeat itself.
It hadn’t been easy. Christo had been consumed with work, not with the summer clerk in the securities department. They had rarely been in the same room as each other, though she did help out with extensive legal research in a securities case he was trying.
She might never have fallen into the trap of her own illusion if she hadn’t found him in the law library late one afternoon flipping through books, and scowling as he made furious notes and muttered under his breath.
“Something wrong?” she’d ventured.
“Not something,” he’d said grimly. “Everything.”
He’d just been appointed guardian ad litem for a seven-year-old boy named Jonas in the middle of a nasty billion-dollar divorce and custody case. “I don’t know anything about family law! I don’t know anything about kids! I don’t even know where to start.”
That wasn’t true, of course. He knew plenty, and certainly enough to figure out where to start. He was just frustrated, overwhelmed. Momentarily vulnerable.
And Natalie, heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings, had offered, “I could do some research if you’d like. On my own time. It would be good practice,” she added, smiling hopefully at him. And then she’d felt it again, that current of electricity arcing between them, when he met her gaze and nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he’d said. “If you wouldn’t mind. I’ll tell you what I need.”
For the next three weeks, she had worked her tail off for him. Lunch hours, evenings, weekends. She’d spent every waking moment that she wasn’t being a clerk with her nose in a book or scowling at a computer screen scribbling furiously, then reporting her findings to Christo who was almost always in his office just as late.
“You’re a star,” he’d told her when she found some particularly helpful cases. And he’d been almost as grateful for the pastrami sandwiches she brought in because he never took time to eat.
He’d been willing to stop and explain things to her when she dared to ask questions. And sometimes when she found something and let out a little yelp of joy, he’d come over and bend over her shoulder so close that she could feel his breath stir the tendrils of her hair.
“Great. I can use this.” And she’d looked up to see a grin on his face and a determined light in his eye. Once more their gazes had caught and held.
And Natalie had dared to believe.
But she wouldn’t have believed without the kiss.
It came without warning the day he’d got Jonas’s formerly intractable parents to finally see the light and realize it was a child they were dealing with, not a silver service or an Oriental rug. She’d been in the parking garage, heading for her car late that afternoon when he’d got out of his, coming from a meeting about Jonas. She’d paused, waiting for him to get out, expecting yet more bad news. But the look of sheer joy on his face when he shut the door and came toward her was one she’d never forget.
Her heart kicked over. “Did they—?” she began.
The grin nearly split his face. “They did. At last.” And suddenly he was there in front of her, and what had begun as a grin and a high-five turned into a fierce exultant hug.
Instinctively she had lifted her face to smile into his—and they had kissed.
Natalie might have been only twenty-two and not the world’s most experienced woman, but she knew there were kisses and there were kisses.
This kiss might have started out as pure exultation, the shared joy of something going right. But in a second it was something very different indeed. Just as a single simple spark could become a conflagration, so it was the moment their lips touched.
She’d never felt it before.
The kiss didn’t last. Barely a second or two later he let her go and stepped back abruptly, looking around as if expecting to be shot. If anyone had seen them, she knew he could have been—not shot—but facing the wrath of the senior partners and the possible loss of his job.
“You’d better go on home,” he said hoarsely, and without a backward glance he strode off across the garage toward the elevator.
Natalie