she’d been shocked to see him, but she’d met his gaze steadily, without the slightest hint of remorse. A man with less experience than him might have thought she was as innocent as the day she was born, but he knew better.
Katy’s innocence was only on the surface.
He opened the door to his office, anger erupting inside him at the memories her presence had reawakened. Until he’d met Katy, he’d always prided himself in his lack of vulnerability when it had come to the female sex. He’d been streetwise and sharp and able to recognise every one of their tricks.
He shouldered the door shut behind him and swore softly in Spanish. Katy was the only woman in his life who’d managed to sneak under his defences. Her fragile innocence and femininity had appealed to everything male in him and he had been totally unprepared for the strength of his reaction to her. She had been so far removed from the type of woman he’d usually spent time with that to begin with he’d avoided her, but her blatant fascination in him had proved impossible to resist.
He tried to ignore her lush curves and told himself that his taste didn’t run to innocent schoolgirls, however beautiful. And Katy was astonishingly beautiful. An incredible heart-shaped face surrounded by a cloud of silken blonde hair that could make a man lose his mind. At eighteen she possessed a sweetness that had stifled his usually measured reaction to the opposite sex.
There was something about those huge blue eyes, about the way she watched him with a mixture of excitement and longing, that gradually eroded his already severely tested self-control. Given the temptation, maybe it wasn’t so surprising that he behaved like a hormonal teenager, allowing the power of sexual attraction to overwhelm common sense.
It amused him to take her out and watch the havoc that her presence caused. She was so dazzling that wherever they went she attracted the maximum amount of male attention, attention that went completely unnoticed by Katy herself because she was never able to drag her eyes away from him.
And her blatant and naïve adoration of him was both a source of amusement and smug male satisfaction.
She was his and only his.
Knowing her to be sexually inexperienced, for the first time in his life he was forced to curb his own physical needs until he judged that she was ready. And when that moment came, he derived an astonishing measure of gratification from peeling away the layers of shyness and reserve to reveal the hot, sexual nature that he’d detected from the first time he’d seen her.
He gritted his teeth as he remembered just how passionate a nature his patience had revealed.
Too passionate.
When her father took him to one side and told him the truth about her, he was stunned by the depth of his own disappointment and distaste.
Stunned by the emptiness he felt, he walked away in a state of shock and never contacted her again, grimly aware that he’d let her touch him in ways that weren’t exclusively physical.
I love you, Jago.
He tensed, reminding himself of the truth. That her declarations had proved as shallow and fragile as her promises of commitment.
And now she was engaged to be married.
Freddie was so obviously the suitable man.
And Katy would make an excellent businessman’s wife.
Jago stared fixedly out of the window, wondering why he wanted to put a fist through it.
‘Did you slap his face?’ Libby curled up on Katy’s bed in the flat that they shared and broke a piece off a bar of chocolate. Her blonde hair showed only the merest hint of strawberry after several washes and was now held in a ponytail with a brightly coloured ribbon covered in cartoon characters. Libby worked on the paediatric ward and instead of uniform they wore practical, colourful tracksuits.
‘Hardly.’ Katy pulled a face, still hating herself for being so completely tongue-tied when she’d found herself confronted by Jago. ‘Lying injured in a hospital bed in a nightie which only has a front to it hardly gives you the confidence to confront your past.’
‘Mmm. I see your point.’ Libby shook her head. ‘I can’t believe he’s a doctor. I bet none of the female staff get any work done. Is he still fabulous-looking?’
Katy remembered the nurse who’d dropped the chart when he’d walked into the room.
‘Spectacular.’
Libby grinned and sucked chocolate from her fingers. ‘Oh, boy. What are you going to do?’
Katy lifted a hand and touched the dressing pad on her head. She’d asked herself the same question repeatedly.
‘I’m going to start my job and try and ignore the fact that he works there,’ she said finally. ‘It’s a big department and very busy. He’s not going to have time to worry about me. It’s time I put that episode of my life behind me.’
No more dreams.
‘You think you can do that?’ Libby chewed slowly, her expression doubtful. ‘You were crazy about him, Katy.’
‘But he wasn’t crazy about me. I was just a conquest. When it came to it, Jago walked away without a backward glance.’
Libby sighed. ‘He was a rat, that’s true, but, Katy, to be fair to him he never knew about—’
‘I don’t ever want to talk about that,’ Katy interrupted her quickly, and Libby sighed.
‘I know, but I think if you told him—’
‘It’s history.’ Katy lifted her chin. ‘He left. I’m over it. End of story.’
‘Right.’ Libby looked at her. ‘So you didn’t feel a single thing when you looked at him?’
Katy reminded herself of all the reasons she was marrying Freddie.
‘No. Not a thing.’ She looked at her sister and inhaled deeply. ‘I’m not eighteen any more, Lib. Do you really think I’d be mad enough to get involved with him again?’
After all the pain she’d suffered …
‘You couldn’t help yourself last time,’ Libby pointed out gently. ‘I saw the way you were with him. He was the one, Katy.’
‘I wish you’d stop saying that!’ Katy leapt of the bed, her breathing rapid. ‘He wasn’t the one. He wasn’t! I was too young and inexperienced to know what I was doing.’
‘Not that young.’
Katy shook her head. ‘It can’t be love if it’s one-sided, and Jago never loved me.’
I don’t do commitment, Katy.
‘OK, calm down.’ Libby looked at her warily and stuck out her hand. ‘Have some chocolate. It’s good for the nerves.’
Katy sighed. ‘I’m beyond chocolate.’
