Jessie sighed. Any secret hope she’d been harbouring that Kane Marshall might change his mind about what kind of woman he was looking to have that real relationship with just went out the window. He was a workaholic!
‘You sound tired,’ Michele said. ‘Late night?’
‘No. Just not enough sleep.’
‘Aah. Man trouble.’
‘What?’
‘When a mother can’t sleep it has to be man trouble. And it doesn’t take much to guess which man. Although I’m not sure what the problem is. Do you already have a boyfriend? Is that it?’
‘Goodness, no, I haven’t had a boyfriend since Emily’s father.’ She and Michele had chatted a bit about their backgrounds over coffee yesterday, so Michele knew about Lyall.
‘Aah…’ Michele nodded. ‘The once-bitten, twice-shy syndrome.’
‘Can you blame me? After Lyall died, I found out he wasn’t just two-timing me. He was triple-timing me.’
‘Not nice,’ Michele agreed. ‘But that was Lyall, not Kane.’
‘Maybe, but in some ways they’re alike. Both tall, dark and handsome, with great smiles and the gift of the gab. Those sort of guys are hard to trust.’
‘So you didn’t say yes when he asked you out?’ Michele ventured.
Jessie sighed. ‘Yes. I did. We’re on for Friday night,’ she confessed.
‘Playing hard to get, I see. Smart girl.’
‘You call that playing hard to get?’ Jessie put Kane’s book down on her part of the work station and pulled out her chair.
‘Sure. That’s five whole days since you met him.’
Jessie sank down into her chair. ‘Actually, it will be a week since I met him.’
Michele’s eyes widened. ‘Really? You’d met him before the interview on Monday?’
‘Yes. In a bar in town last Friday night. But we didn’t exchange names. I—er—drank with him and danced with him, but I did a flit when he wanted more than dancing. He was as shocked as I was when I showed up here yesterday.’
‘Shocked, but still pleased. He’s obviously very taken with you, Jessie.’
‘You think so? It’s hard to tell with men. It could just be sex, you know.’
‘Nothing wrong with that. Lots of relationships start with sex. Don’t fall into the trap of being too cynical about men, Jessie. There are some genuinely good ones out there. I don’t know Kane all that well, but what I know I like. Everyone here thinks he’s great. So give him a chance. Oh, and don’t forget to go thank him for the book. He’ll be dying to know what you think, I’ll bet. Lunch-time would be a good time, when Karen’s out. She and Margaret have lunch together at a café up the road every day at one. Kane has his lunch delivered, Margaret tells me. He’s an obsessive reader and usually stays at his desk. You could pop along any time after one and he’d be all alone.’
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Why not? What do you think he’s going to do? Ravish you on his desk?’
Jessie didn’t like to admit that that was exactly what she thought he might do. Worse was the reality that she wouldn’t mind one bit.
She’d already come into work wearing a skirt, instead of jeans. And no stockings.
The clear blue sky this morning had promised a hot summer’s day, so her selection of a pink and white floral wrap-around skirt, a simple pink T-shirt and slip-on white sandals was really quite an appropriate outfit for work. No one could have guessed by just looking at her that whilst she’d dressed she’d secretly thrilled to the thought of how accessible she was, if by some chance Kane found the time and the place to seduce her at work.
Stupid fantasy, really. But darned exciting to think about.
By lunch-time, every nerve-ending in Jessie’s body was tap-dancing. She was grateful when Michele left to do some shopping. A trip to the ladies’ room assured her that her make-up was still in place. She wouldn’t have been surprised if it had melted all over her face. But she looked OK. Her hair was up, secured by a long pink clip. She toyed with taking it down, then decided that would be on the obvious side. The last thing she wanted was to be obvious.
Thankfully she had a good excuse for going to his office. She didn’t want to show up looking like a desperate. Even if she was fast becoming one.
Another attack of nerves sent her bolting into a toilet cubicle. Five minutes later, she was back at her desk, where she skip-read a few chapters of the book to get the gist of it whilst she stuffed down one of the two sandwiches she’d brought from home. That done, she made her way to Kane’s office. It was one-twenty.
Karen’s desk was blessedly empty. Fate hadn’t made her stay back for some reason. Jessie’s heart sank, however, when she saw the door to the inner office was half open and a woman’s voice was emerging.
Don’t tell me Karen is in there with him, she thought.
Jessie took a couple of steps towards the door, grinding to a halt when the woman—who didn’t sound like Karen—said something about being pregnant.
‘Pregnant!’ Kane exclaimed in a shocked voice. ‘Good God, Natalie.’
Jessie sucked in sharply. Natalie. That was his ex-wife’s name.
‘Don’t worry, darling,’ the woman said in a droll tone. ‘It’s not yours. I’m only a month gone and it’s at least a couple of months since we were together. Besides, if I recall rightly, you used a condom.’
Jessie’s heart squeezed tight. A couple of months ago Kane had still been sleeping with his ex. Yet he’d made her think he’d been celibate since they split up over a year ago. She’d thought at the time that was unlikely. What other women had he lied to her about?
‘Who’s the father?’ she heard Kane ask.
‘Some guy I met at a party. A lawyer. I didn’t even find out his last name, would you believe? But I could find it out if I want to.’
‘What are you going to do about the baby?’
‘I know you’ll think I’m mad, but I’m going to have it.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘No. No, Kane, I’m not.’
Jessie couldn’t bear to stand there, listening to any more of this conversation. She turned and fled back down the corridor as quietly as her pounding heart would permit. Tears threatened, but she made it back to the toilet cubicle, dry-eyed. Even then, strangely, she didn’t cry. She wanted to, but something inside her was damming back the tears, a big, cold, angry lump.
One part of her wanted to go back and confront him, throw his lies in his face. But another part of her argued that to do that was to finish it between them.
Could she bear that? To walk away without going to bed with him, at least once?
Jessie supposed she could. She could do just about anything once she put her mind to it.
But it would be hard, especially with his being here at work every day. She would keep running into him. And wanting him.
So, no, she wouldn’t be confronting him, Jessie decided as she made her way back to her desk. Or accusing him. She would use him as he was using her. For sex.
At