‘I really don’t think that’s any of your business,’ she finally managed to stutter, red-faced. She turned and began walking towards the door, head held high. He might be a millionaire many times over, but that didn’t give him the right to say whatever he wanted to say and ask whatever he wanted to ask, without reserve.
She was aware of him behind her before she had even reached the door and when he stood in front of her, blocking her exit, she had to clench her hands at her sides to steady her nerves.
‘I like things that aren’t my business,’ Nick murmured lazily. ‘So tell me what you do in your spare time. When you go out until the early hours of the morning.’
He towered over her and she felt as if she were suffocating. Was he laughing at her? She rather imagined that he was because he certainly wasn’t interested in anything she had to say. He was bored with his own party and had decided to have a little fun at her expense. She was sure of it.
Having worked all that out, it still left her with the little problem of how to get out of the room when he was standing in front of the door like a prison warden with a taste for sadism.
The man was loathsome. Yes, he was sinfully good-looking and, yes, she could see those flashes of charm that turned women into mindless robots ready to do whatever he asked them to do, but to her he was someone who was happy to play with other people, in much the same way as a cat played with a mouse. No serious harm intended, just a spot of good fun.
‘I don’t have to do anything,’ Rose told him coolly. ‘Lily’s always been the clubber.’
‘And you’ve always been…what?’ Hand it to her, he thought, she wasn’t going to let herself be daunted by him, even though her mounting colour signalled her discomfort. Nor was she flattered by his interest. In fact, he would have been hard-pressed to think of any woman less flattered by his undivided attention. That in itself was an interesting concept.
‘I talk when I go out with my friends,’ Rose said quietly. ‘And I don’t need to drink to excess or have loud music blaring in the background to feel as though I’m having a good time.’
Nick could hear the implicit sarcasm in her voice and was amused by it.
‘Sounds like fun.’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘And what do you do afterwards?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you’ve had fun setting the world to rights?’
‘I don’t set the world to rights.’ Rose gritted her teeth together and reminded herself that he was just goading her and that the last thing she should do was play into his hands by reacting. ‘And even if we did sit around setting the world to rights, it would still be a heck of a lot more fun than slowly getting drunk and bitching about everyone and everything.’
‘Referring to anyone in particular?’
‘Several in general,’ she said waspishly, ‘and they’re all out there. I believe they’re called your friends.’
If she had hoped to insult him, then she had been mistaken, because instead of being suitably offended he just burst out laughing.
When he laughed, really laughed…
Rose’s skin prickled and she felt jumpy and weak at the same time, as if her bones were turning into hot liquid, no longer able to support her body.
‘I’m glad you find that funny,’ she said, and wondered if he, too, could detect the high-pitched panic in her voice. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she badly needed to leave the room.
‘Oh, I do…but you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘I didn’t realise you’d asked one.’ She gave a deep, exaggerated sigh, which she hoped would convey to him just how fed up she was with their conversation.
‘About what you do after you finish discussing deep and meaningful things with your friends. In quiet rooms. Over some invigorating glasses of mineral water.’ Nick grinned. In actual fact, he had headed to the office to have a break from the noise of the party, which was an event he had arranged solely for Lily’s benefit. What an altruist he was turning out to be.
Work was always an absorbing diversion, but right now he couldn’t care less about work because he was thoroughly enjoying himself. He was also more curious than ever to find out just a little bit more about the woman in front of him who was, right at this moment, barely managing to restrain herself from hitting him as hard as she could. He imagined that she could probably throw a pretty good punch. None of the usual female face-slapping before bursting into tears. More a sock to the jaw and then, when he was rubbing his face, another for good measure.
‘I don’t know what you’re going on about and I think you should head back before they send out a search party.’
‘Hardly likely considering most of them are far too inebriated to have even missed me, and what I’m going on about is whether, when your crazy late nights are over, you head back to your place for wild sex…do you?’
‘I told you—that’s none of your business.’ Now she really needed to get out because something was happening and, while she didn’t quite know what, she did know that it was…dangerous for her. And thankfully he stepped aside. He even opened the door for her, but before she could make a break to the safety of the crowded club he was leaning down to her; she could feel the warmth of his breath against her ear and it made her shiver.
‘I take it that means no?’
She wanted to run but she didn’t. She walked away, head held high, without bothering to dignify his smirking remark with an answer.
WHEN Rose looked at the screen of her computer terminal she had the strangest sensation. Instead of seeing her programme run, she saw a face. His face. It was infuriating. Not only had the man got under her skin at the party nearly a week ago, but he was continuing to get under her skin when she should be concentrating on her work. She couldn’t figure it out because she had pointedly avoided mentioning him to Lily and out of sight should have meant out of mind.
Just as well her office wasn’t the sort of cosy little place where people might notice that she had been staring at the same code for the past fifteen minutes. In fact, the big pull about Fedco, when she had joined it five years previously, had been its size. Squatting like a giant patriarch on a retail site just outside London, it had been easily accessible by car, thereby enabling Rose to avoid the vagaries of the London transport system, and, once inside, she had been able to lose herself in the enormity of the building. Her friends all joked about leaving it behind, moving on to somewhere small, chic, designer and innovative where they could really exploit their talents, but in truth the thought of being at the cutting edge of technology in some small, upwardly mobile company terrified her. Small and cutting edge, in her head, spelt insecurity, whereas Fedco was as secure as they came, never mind that you were more a number than a face.
And where else could she sit scowling without someone telling her to get on with her work?
In between her scowls, she kept a sharp eye on the clock. She had never been one to clock-watch but she couldn’t wait to leave the building and get back home, where she could put her feet up and drag her thoughts away from her sister’s high-handed, arrogant boyfriend by watching a couple of hours of mindless television.
With fifteen minutes to go and just as she was finally beginning to get into her stride, an excited Maggie flew to her desk and announced, sotto voce, that there was a man waiting in Reception for her.
‘What man?’ Rose asked suspiciously, using the interruption as an excuse to switch off