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www.millsandboon.co.uk
To Scott Brodie, our hero on many occasions.
Our thanks for his diplomacy, tact, understanding and caring
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER ONE
LOVING David Hartley was like dancing with the devil. There was no telling where it would lead to, there was hell to pay for it, yet the temptation to go on with the dance was well nigh irresistible.
For Caitlin Ross, there was little of her life that did not revolve around David Hartley. Yet she was no closer to the quintessential man than she had been four months ago when she had been offered the job as his personal assistant.
Her promotion from personal assistant in the office to personal assistant in the bedroom had been extraordinarily rapid by any standard. Caitlin hadn’t said no to him because he simply hadn’t given her time to say anything. He had taken her over in the same way he did any competitor, company or conglomerate. It was breathtaking stuff.
It was only after they had made love for the first time that the situation became confused. Caitlin had discovered there were two distinctive features to David’s personality. The first was that he never referred to his family or his background; the second was that he had a very strict rule against the fraternisation of management and employees in sexual liaisons. He made no exceptions to this rule, apart from breaking it himself.
Caitlin reasoned that he needed someone attuned to his business life, someone with whom he could talk about the things that were important to him, someone who understood. Caitlin could supply that in a way no other woman could. She was closest to him. She loved being closest to him. But it was nowhere near as close as she wanted to be.
In far too many ways, David had made himself an island complete and entire in himself. There were gleams of the person he could be, shining through isolated chinks in his armour, but they were few and far between.
Only in bed did his control slip. When they were finished with their lovemaking he donned it again like impenetrable armour. When he left her, it was as though she no longer existed.
Caitlin had watched him do it again this morning. She wanted to fight it but she didn’t know how. It made her feel threatened and defeated. She couldn’t understand why he wanted, desired her so much, and then shut her out of the closeness she was sure he felt with her in the intimacy of making love.
He strode back into her bedroom.
He was freshly showered and shaved and unashamedly naked. She felt her innermost muscles spasm in response simply to seeing him like this. His body was perfectly proportioned and powerful. He was the ultimate male animal in his prime, although no longer primed for the passion he had already spent some twenty minutes ago. Burn-out for him. Caitlin wanted more. Much more than this.
He looked revitalised after his shower. He always did. His straight black hair was combed back, wet and shiny; his olive skin stretched glowingly over high cheekbones, a cleanly cut jawline and strong nose; his dark, cobalt-blue eyes were lit with purpose for the day ahead of him. A man of command, who drove forward unswervingly, touching everyone within his ambit.
Caitlin fiercely wished she could exercise some influence over his thinking. That had not proved possible. Yet.
He raised a quizzical eyebrow at her as he reached for the shirt he had tossed on to her dressing-table stool last night. ‘No coffee?’
Normally it was on the dressing-table, waiting for him, freshly brewed, black with one sugar. He drank it while he dressed. He never stayed to have breakfast with her. As far as Caitlin could discern, he didn’t eat breakfast.
It was six-thirty now. He would be gone by six forty-five. That was the ritual. He never varied it. Caitlin wished he would.
‘I don’t feel like moving,’ she answered his question on the missing coffee. It was the truth. It was also an act of rebellion.
The fractional tightening of David’s lower lip indicated the message had been received and understood. Caitlin wondered if it would induce David to change his schedule. Would it drive him to making some coffee for himself, and for her? It would only delay him five or ten minutes at the most.
She waited expectantly to see his choice.
He continued dressing, shoving his arms into the sleeves of his shirt, doing up the cuff buttons. He made no move towards the kitchen. Caitlin tried to suppress the nervous flutter that descended to the pit of her stomach.
She had done everything in her power to spin out the dance as long as she could. She had been so careful not to make a false step that would contravene his rules, always fulfilling his needs as she saw them, polishing her role as the perfect partner for him, telling herself that holding David Hartley was worth any effort.
The strain was beginning to tell. The piper had to be paid for the effort she had put in, and the list of dues owed was becoming longer and longer.
Caitlin knew she risked losing him if she tried to change their relationship. After four months of going all his way, Caitlin also knew she was losing too much of herself. She could not let things remain as they were between them. Change was inevitable.
David shot her a sharp frown. ‘Are you sick?’ He was trying to find some explanation for her behaviour which fitted into his pattern of thinking.
‘I’ve never felt healthier!’ she answered, forcing him to think again, thoroughly peeved with his rigidly kept schedule.
She stretched languorously, provocatively, wondering if it was possible to tempt him back into bed with her. She watched his response through her thick dark lashes, her green eyes glimmering a sultry invitation. His firmly delineated mouth quirked into a sensual little smile as his gaze flicked over her naked breasts.
It was purely an accident of birth that her ribcage was high enough to give her a tiny waist. It had the effect of making her hips and breasts look more voluptuous than they were. Caitlin knew David found the arrangement fascinating, provocative and exciting.
There was a gleam of appreciation in his eyes. No desire. His hands moved down his shirt, buttoning it at a steady pace. No hesitation. No wavering. No change of mind, or heart, or inclination. He had had his fulfilment for the moment. He had no need for more. She doubted he ever gave consideration to the possibility that some of her needs were different from his.
Caitlin was deeply wounded by his ability to love her and leave her. The urge to jolt him into reappraisal mode was overwhelming. She realigned her body across the bed for full visual impact, levered herself up on one elbow, rummaged the long, layered mane of her tawny hair with her other hand, and eyed him with smouldering challenge.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ she said quietly but firmly.
David rolled his eyes and threw a beseeching look towards the heavens. As his gaze was interrupted by the ceiling, there was no result to this supplicating action except to pique Caitlin somewhat more than she was already piqued.
He glanced pointedly at his watch and bent to pick up his underpants from the floor. ‘I have a busy schedule to keep, Caitlin. You know that. You entered it in the diary.’
She watched him draw on the black silk briefs. They formed a tantalising pouch for his virility and emphasised the powerful muscularity of his thighs. He looked sexy. He was sexy. But Caitlin wanted more than sexiness from him. She wanted to know how important she was in his life.
‘Please, David...couldn’t you give me today? I’ll make you happy.’
‘I am happy. I’m delirious with happiness. Thank you for already making me so happy.’
To Caitlin’s mind he didn’t look the least bit happy. His words sounded sarcastic. She was quite certain he wasn’t at all happy with the way things were developing between them.
‘I want you to stay with me.’
Caitlin knew she was on very dangerous grounds with that plea. She was also probably wrong to put such a demand on him, but her need was acute. In a desperate attempt to interest him she pulled a long tress of her hair forward to dangle between her breasts, reminding him of the foreplay he enjoyed.
He gave her a sharp, penetrating look. ‘Are you saying I didn’t satisfy you?’
She flushed, unable to deny that he had brought her to a tumultuous climax. He was well aware of it, too. But, in a far more important sense than the purely physical, he didn’t satisfy her. Caitlin wanted—needed—intimate contact with his innermost feelings.
‘I want us to spend more time together,’ she said, willing him to respond with some suggestion that would help make things better for her.
‘We spent the night together,’ he said drily. ‘How many nights do you want?’ He reached for his trousers.
Caitlin fought against a sense of worthlessness and failure. She knew that in David’s mind nights were associated with sex. He wasn’t getting the message at all.
‘I want to talk to you. About something serious.’
‘In another two hours we’ll be in the office together. Isn’t that serious enough?’
‘It’s not the same,’ she retorted, hurt by his lack of understanding, knowing she was losing but too frustrated by his intransigent attitude to back off from the disagreement.
‘You want more?’
‘Yes.’
‘What?’
‘I’d very much like, just for once, for our pleasure and togetherness to come before your business.’
The act of rebellion was complete. Words had been spoken which could never be retrieved. The Rubicon was crossed. Caitlin waited to see what stormy waves she had stirred. The cobalt-blue eyes took on a wary, calculating look.
David never mixed business with pleasure. It was one of his rules. In the office, he was the boss, she was his assistant and amanuensis, and he never did or said anything to lead anyone to suspect they were lovers. That was private. It was personal. It was never to be revealed.
The two separate phases of his existence were divorced from one another. Caitlin couldn’t help thinking the arrangement suited his convenience. She worked his hours. She was free when he was free. But business was business and nothing else was allowed to interfere with running that part of his life as he saw fit. Nothing!
‘It wouldn’t hurt to take one day off and spend it together,’ she pressed.
‘What would it achieve that we haven’t already achieved?’
‘It would be something spontaneous, unplanned.’ She made one last attempt to get through to him. ‘It would make me feel good.’
‘I left my schooldays behind me a long time ago, Caitlin.’
He was downgrading her to ‘petulant schoolgirl’ status.
‘You could cancel your appointments today. I’ll make the excuses for you,’ she pleaded.
‘No.’
‘You could come back to bed and hug and cuddle and kiss me.’
His look of disdain downgraded her from schoolgirl to child.
He tucked in his shirt, zipped up his trousers, then sat on the stool, stony-faced as he began to pull on his socks.
‘Those are yesterday’s socks,’ said Caitlin with an uncharacteristic spurt of bitterness. ‘You’ll have to go home and change.’
‘I know that,’ he replied with some asperity.
She had invited him to leave a fresh set of clothes in her apartment for the times he stayed overnight. It would have saved him the trouble of going home to change. He would not have to rise so early. He could stay and have breakfast with her.
His reply had been succinct and dismissive. He wouldn’t burden her with his dirty laundry.
He didn’t burden her with anything. His only concession to practicality about their relationship was to keep a toothbrush, a shaving kit and a comb in her bathroom. To Caitlin it smacked of a clinical detachment from getting involved in any way except the obvious. She didn’t like it.
It hurt.
It made her feel temporary.
She desperately wanted to feel special to him, more special than any woman he had been with before.
‘Why don’t you ever invite me to your home, David?’ she asked, driven to wring some sign from him that she meant more than a pleasurable convenience and receptacle.
‘It’s easier for you if we stay here. You can do as you please and be answerable to no one,’ he replied, not bothering to look up from tying the laces on his shoes.
Her convenience. That was a nice twist. In effect, she was kept excluded from his home life. Caitlin knew he lived at Lane Cove, not far from his business headquarters at Chatswood. Within the ambit of the northern suburbs of Sydney, it was no further away than her place at Wollstonecraft, but their intimacy was contained to her apartment.
Caitlin was chillingly conscious of how expedient this situation was if David chose to end their affair. No bothersome complications. He could simply walk out and never come back.
Her sense of insecurity with him deepened.
He rose from the stool, fully dressed apart from his tie and suitcoat. They had been discarded in her living-room. He would pick them up on his way out. His gaze skated over the long sprawl of her slender legs, paused at the deep indentation of her waist, skipped to the wild disarray of hair framing her face and shoulders, then fastened directly on her eyes. There was a dark, ruthless glint in his.
‘I hope you find the energy to move yourself in good time to get to the office at nine, Caitlin. I wouldn’t like to think you were taking advantage of your situation.’
It was a warning. Softly spoken, perfectly controlled, no direct threat involved, yet Caitlin’s spine crawled with the sense of having stretched beyond what was acceptable to him. The protective urge to quickly backtrack was shrivelled by a flare of burning resentment.
Did she have no importance in his life apart from being an efficient secretary and a ready source of sexual satisfaction? It was the final insult. She had worked herself to boneless exhaustion for David Hartley.
‘You have the sensitivity of a rhinoceros,’ she muttered darkly, more to herself than to him.
‘I’ll let that remark pass and pretend you never said it,’ he said testily.
‘Big of you,’ she complimented him.
The need to find out what she really meant to him surged through her with passionate intensity. Even if his heart was cold to her, his body wasn’t. She must mean something more than just being a body.
She swung her legs off the bed with a lithe, feline grace that captured his attention. She lifted her arms and flicked back her hair as she stood up and turned to face him, knowing the action tilted the firm fullness of her breasts into greater prominence. Her nipples hardened as the desire to seduce raged with white-hot heat. She rolled her hips, sliding her thighs against each other as she walked towards him, a sensual smile curving her generous mouth.
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.
His chest expanded. His shoulders squared with tension. His hands clenched. He was definitely unhappy. He was tempted. His mind warred against the stirring of his desire. He had a schedule to keep. He didn’t allow anything to interfere with that. His face set with resolution but the glitter in his eyes had more to do with lust than determination. His feet stayed rooted to the floor. He didn’t move forward.
‘Is this the last time you want to see me like this?’ Caitlin taunted.
‘No,’ he cried hoarsely.
‘Stay with me. Hold me and cuddle me.’
‘I’ll be damned if I will.’
‘You’ll be damned if you don’t.’
‘I have the overseas delegation today.’
Caitlin knew she was being unreasonable but her need was great. ‘Defer it until tomorrow.’
His mouth thinned in frustration.
Caitlin moved in on him, playing the age-old role of seductive temptress. She had never done anything like this before, had never felt the need to, but the stakes were high.
All was fair in love and war.
Until now, David had always been one step ahead of her, taking the initiative with a boldness that could still leave her breathless. He had the primitive streak of a hunter who didn’t accept being thwarted. If one approach didn’t work, he used another, and another, until he had what he wanted.
Why shouldn’t she be the same? If this was the game he played, she would play it, too.
She slid her fingers out of her hair and dropped her hands on to his shoulders, kneading the tight muscles with varying pressures. ‘You need to relax, David,’ she said in a low throaty purr.
‘I need to go,’ he bit out.
She moved her hands to the back of his neck, caressing the sensitive nape as she lifted simmering green eyes to his. ‘Not before you kiss me.’ She moved up on tiptoe, brushing her breasts against the fine fabric of his shirt.
‘What are you trying to do to me?’
‘Find reassurance.’
His chin unbent enough for her mouth to reach his. She ran the tip of her tongue lightly between his lips as she pressed closer, arching her back, pushing her stomach into provocative union with his.
She heard his sharp intake of breath, felt the tingling touch of his tongue as it moved in response to hers. His hands closed possessively over the soft mounds of her buttocks, lifting her higher to meet the burgeoning thrust of desire she had stirred.
She invaded his mouth, sweeping his palate with the feverish purpose of increasing his arousal. She rubbed her stomach and thighs against his in wanton incitement, determined on making him burn for her. There was a fire in her belly that demanded total commitment.
An animal growl came from his throat. One hand splayed across her lower back, crushing her softness around the rigid bulge in his trousers. His other hand thrust through her hair, gripped the back of her head, holding it still as he forcefully invaded her mouth, plundering its sweetness with a passion as feverish as her own.
A feeling of triumph tingled through Caitlin’s veins. At long last he had forgotten his schedule. ‘Take me,’ she whispered huskily as his chest heaved for breath. ‘Take me, David.’
She dropped a hand to his shirt, her fingers tearing at the buttons. His stomach contracted as he muttered some fierce imprecation. Then suddenly, brutally, his hands were encircling her upper arms, pushing her away from him. It startled her into a cry of protest. Her gaze flew up, wild and accusing and mournful, meeting a blaze of furious blue.
‘You take away a man’s brain and leave him witless.’
‘You want me,’ she cried. As she wanted him.
‘You tempt me beyond endurance.’
‘Isn’t that what men want from the women they never marry!’ she flung back at him.
‘I’ve never referred to or alluded to you in any way to imply that you were my mistress.’
‘You just have,’ she said with infinite regret and a deadness of soul.
‘You goaded me into this, Caitlin,’ he responded. ‘I don’t know what the hell you think you’re playing at, but this isn’t the time for it.’
‘When will there be time for it?’ she fired at him, seething with frustration, crushed by his remorselessness.
A shutter came down on the blue blaze. ‘Maybe never.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said heavily. It justified everything she had said and done. Her voice shook with the vehemence of her feeling of rejection. ‘I won’t be here tonight.’
If he had ever liked her he would have known that already. He would have found out. The truth was that he wasn’t interested in what made her tick, what made her the person she was.
His eyes narrowed. He plucked his hands away from her. ‘Neither will I,’ he snapped, not understanding what was happening but not bending a millimetre.
‘Just as you have a life I don’t share, I have a life you don’t share,’ Caitlin threw at him. Her chin tilted defiantly. ‘You can take me now or leave me now. If you leave, I don’t know when I’ll be free again.’
His mouth took on a cynical twist. ‘Barter-time, is it?’
Her eyes flashed contempt. ‘Sorting out priorities.’
That gave him pause for thought. She could almost see his mind clicking over with calculations. ‘We’ll talk about this later,’ he said, and turned to go.
‘Don’t worry about turning on the percolator in the kitchen for me. I’ll do it myself.’
His eyes turned back to her with a dark, turbulent glare. His trousers still bulged. It had to be causing him some physical distress to leave her like this. His head jerked away.
Caitlin didn’t follow him out of the bedroom. She stood precisely where she was until she heard the door to her apartment click shut behind him. He still hadn’t asked her what she was doing tonight, why she wouldn’t be free for him. He didn’t care what she did when she wasn’t with him.
She shivered.
It spurred her to a burst of activity. She grabbed a robe from her cupboard and marched out to the kitchen, wrapping herself tightly in the all-enveloping garment. She filled the coffee-maker and switched it on, feeling furiously justified in not having done it for David this morning. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve anything from her.
Her eye caught the calendar hanging below the kitchen clock. Today’s date was ringed. It was important. February the fourteenth. St Valentine’s Day. The day her mother and father were married thirty years ago. The day she was given Dobbin as her very own pony. The day for lovers to declare themselves. A day to concentrate on romance. A day which would be as bleak as Hades because she had danced with the devil.
A wave of nausea cramped Caitlin’s stomach and pushed a choking lump into her throat. She tore off the offending page of February and crushed it in her hand. She didn’t need the reminder of her parents’ wedding anniversary any more, and she certainly didn’t need a reminder of what she didn’t have with David Hartley.
She opened the lid of the kitchen tidy and threw the crumpled wad of paper into the bin. She wished she could get rid of her unrequited love for David Hartley just as easily.
She looked up at the clock. She had an hour and forty-two minutes to don her role as his personal assistant and wear the label ‘For Office Use Only’. That was what David was going to get from her from now on until he decided differently about sex, sensuality and sharing.
CHAPTER TWO
CAITLIN stepped off the bus at Chatswood at five minutes to nine. Normally she would take that amount of time to arrive at the Hartley building. Today she was not eager to get to work.
The morning was fine and sparkling. A continuation of last night’s violent thunderstorm with its torrential rain would have been more in keeping with Caitlin’s dark misery. The intense blueness of a cloudless sky appeared to mock the bleak prospect of her future.
She had made the effort to present a meticulous appearance. David paid her a large salary. He expected her to perform well and look stylish and sophisticated.