his impeccably clothed figure with mutinous eyes, she had the strongest desire to hit him as he moved back to his desk.
Restraining the urge, she dragged her wayward appreciation from the silver-grey jacket spanning his broad shoulders to answer bitingly, ‘I’d had less than three hours’ sleep the previous night. What did you expect?’
He sat down, picked up a gold pen and began writing with it. ‘Does that mean you’re in better shape to deal with more pressing matters today?’
‘What’s come up?’ She swallowed, despairing at the way her voice faltered. Did this mean that he hadn’t summoned her here to fire her?
‘The Poulson account. I believe you were dealing with it.’ He looked up at her now, and she could have kicked herself from the way the smouldering intensity of his eyes made her stomach flip. ‘It seems they’re quibbling over assignment dates. It appears from previous correspondence that they can be very difficult to deal with. It also appears that they will only listen to you.’
Grace tried to steady her voice, even though her whole body seemed to be trembling. ‘I’ve built up a rapport with them.’ It seemed wrong, talking to him like this, discussing business like formal colleagues, as though those impassioned moments in her flat a little over twelve hours ago had never happened. ‘They can be rather awkward at first, but I’ve found that with a little bit of diplomacy and persuasion they come around.’
From his position of authority his eyes made a cursory survey of her dark-blue slimline skirt, the rather prim little green and navy blouse and her neatly swept-up hair. ‘Most people do.’
He applied just the right amount of sexual undertone in the way he said that to bring the colour flooding into her cheeks. There had certainly been nothing diplomatic or persuasive about the way he had urged her into responding to him!
Trying not to look at him, she moved around the desk to pick up the letter he had laid aside for her to look at, at the same time as he reached for his memo pad. His sleeve brushed her bare forearm, a touch so light and yet so sensual that she recoiled from the contact, feeling as though an electrical current was suddenly zinging through her.
Breath held, she urged her feet to carry her over to the filing cabinet, her head swimming. She couldn’t concentrate, or even think straight, when he was near her.
‘What’s wrong, Grace?’ He was there, his tanned, very masculine hand rammed flat against the drawer, preventing her from opening it. ‘Unwilling to acknowledge what I can still do to you? What we still do to each other?’
Every muscle locking rigid, Grace could scarcely breathe from the alluring, masculine scent of him, from that lethal sexual magnetism that seemed to be pulling her into its dangerous sphere.
‘If you’re referring to last night, I scarcely knew what I was doing.’
‘No?’ He looked sceptical.
As well he might! she thought despairingly.
‘Why would I want that?’ she croaked, clutching the letter she was holding to her breast like it was a lifeline. ‘Why, when I despise you? When there aren’t words strong enough to describe what you’re doing?’ A jerk of her head indicated what had been her grandfather’s desk and the power it gave the man who sat behind it.
‘Because you can’t help yourself, Grace, any more than I can.’ He was leaning on the cabinet now, his indolent manner unable to conceal that underlying restless vitality about him as he stood supported by his bent arm, one long finger resting against his tough, implacable jaw. ‘Oh, don’t get me wrong—you aren’t my idea of the perfect partner, either. But we aren’t talking about a loving, trusting relationship, are we?’
As that finger moved to touch her cheek, Grace twisted her head away in angry rejection.
‘I wouldn’t have a relationship with you, Seth Mason, if you were the last man left on earth!’
‘Such a cliché!’ He laughed, a flash of perfect white teeth. ‘But I’m not the only man left on earth, am I?’ he drawled, that steely gaze dropping to the soft pink bow of her trembling mouth. ‘Just the only one you want. And, if that response last night was anything to go by, in as intimate a relationship as it’s possible to get.’
As if she needed reminding!
Her throat tight with tension, she flung back at him, ‘I had no resistance. I was exhausted—jet-lagged, for heaven’s sake!’ She brought her chin up to face him squarely, trying to convince him, if not herself, that that was all it had been.
‘And have you recovered from your jet lag?’
‘Just about. But I…’ The pale curve of her forehead puckered, and a guarded look sprang into her cool, clear eyes as she realised where his question was leading. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she warned, backing away from him.
‘I told you not to present me with a challenge, Grace,’ he reminded her, his arm shooting out as she almost tripped over the waste-paper basket. ‘And you seem to make a habit of not looking where you’re going.’ He laughed softly as that arm snaked around her, but it was the laughter of a victor, of the conqueror claiming his prize.
‘Let me go!’
As he swivelled her round, he was still laughing, ignoring the pummelling of her fists against his shoulders as he took her mouth with his in a brutal kiss.
‘Why must you always put up a show of fighting me when you know you’ll only respond to me eventually?’ he mocked softly, lifting his head when her hands gave up trying to make an impression on his hard shoulders. They were now clenched against them in a vain effort not to show him how much they wanted to slide over the smooth cloth spanning his broad back. ‘You couldn’t help yourself then, last night, and you can’t help yourself now, can you?’ She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t say anything, because right at that moment she was too affected by him to speak. ‘Perhaps you’re one of these women who get their kicks out of being subdued by a man? Is that what it is? Because I’ll play that game with you if you want me to—only we’ll both know that that’s all it is, won’t we, Grace? A game.’
Despising herself, Grace wondered how her body could still continue to react to him in the way it did in the light of what was only his need to avenge himself for what she—her family—had done to him in the past. She dragged herself up out of a cauldron of traitorous sensations to toss up at him, ‘Go to hell!’
‘Oh, I’ve been there, my love. And I can promise you, it isn’t very pleasant.’ His features were chiselled into uncompromising lines. ‘But, if making love to me is hell to your pride, then you’re going to have to get used to it being scorched raw. Because we’re going to burn this thing out between us until there’s nothing left but cinders. So don’t worry—what we want from each other is so fierce it can’t fail to consume itself in the end.’
‘And then what?’ she asked, shuddering from his determination and the furore of sensations his words were producing in her. ‘We both walk away?’
His heavy lids drooped so that she couldn’t see the expression in his eyes. ‘Naturally.’
Only she wouldn’t be able to do that; she was jolted into realizing it. But why? Why, when he meant nothing to her, nothing beyond someone she had had the briefest fling with once? Yet someone whose child she
