Eleanor Moorfield.
‘So what happens now?’ she finally asked.
‘Now we wait.’
‘Oh.’ There was a lengthy pause and then he felt her turn her head towards him. ‘In case you haven’t worked it out already, I’m not that good at the whole waiting thing.’
Ethan stopped at the traffic lights and turned his head, grinning from ear to ear and feeling invigorated. ‘I’m sure I can come up with a way to pass the time.’
‘I have to tell you,’ Ethan told Nora as he eased the car out of the hospital grounds an hour later and headed back into traffic to drop Nora off at her office. ‘Your definition of a debriefing and my definition of a debriefing differ considerably,’
Bad jokes and double entendres aside, Nora was still having trouble believing how deftly he’d organised someone to see her in the casualty department after insisting on waiting for her. He’d taken one look at how quiet and uncomfortable she’d become the closer they got to the hospital and, once more, assumed the knight-in-shining-armour title. A couple of those artfully aimed sexy smiles of his and she’d bypassed triage and was being ushered into a cubicle for treatment.
‘Maybe I’ll have to check out your version, one day.’ Oh, she did not just say that! If the chemicals they’d put on her hand to melt the glue had tongue-loosening properties, oughtn’t they to warn a patient about that?
Ethan flashed her a hot, private smile and Nora tried to concentrate on breathing evenly. She really had to stop this now. This flirting thing she had going with him. Now would be a good time to remember that flirting, and everything that usually came after, was off her To Do list for the foreseeable. She didn’t have the time. Couldn’t afford the distraction. Look what happened to her when she tried to multi-task.
Admittedly it had been a while since she’d indulged in more than flirting. Her eyes squeezed shut as she remembered Sephy’s comment from last night—that if she wasn’t careful, outside of a work context, she’d forget how to talk to men altogether. Coming on top of the rest of the lecture she’d received from her younger sister, the comment had stung. Nora sighed. As if Sephy hadn’t known that accusing her of being a workaholic, who’d put her grief on hold, wasn’t going to put her in the best of listening moods. She knew Sephy’s little digs were designed to sneak under her shield and penetrate, but after the disaster of her last relationship Nora knew that relationships weren’t for her. She had much clearer goals. Until she was back on an even keel at KPC, work came first, second and third for her.
‘How’s the hand?’ Ethan asked.
His question had her turning her attention to his own hands as they rested competently on the steering wheel. Any idea of work flew straight out the window as she wondered idly how those hands might feel against her skin, smoothing their way up and over her naked flesh, from hipbone to breast.
Nora blinked, squirmed against her seat and looked down at the bag, now containing the remnants of her shoe.
‘Okay,’ she said, determined to shake off the attraction she felt for him. Peering closely at the hand in question, she cleared her throat and forced some more words out. ‘No lasting damage. It was a close-run thing, but thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, well, chemicals, actually… Turns out I probably could have done it DIY with the nail varnish remover.’ She sighed dramatically as she opened the bag carrying the rest of the shoe she had embarrassingly asked to keep because it was vintage Moorfield. ‘To be honest, I think I’m experiencing a little separation anxiety.’
Ethan’s deep laugh trickled over already hyper-sensitised nerve endings and left her feeling as though someone had left a window ajar in her heart. She had a desperate need to keep busy. To be doing many things at once. Anything to stop her nerves jangling at the idea of what a kick it was to make this man laugh. Honestly, the sooner she was out of his car and breathing in some normal, heavily polluted, air, the better it would be for her sanity.
Now that she didn’t have to worry about missing out on pitching to Eleanor, Ethan’s scent was staging a staggering assault on her senses, causing her to behave completely out of character. It was time to rein herself back in, she thought, as she suddenly realised whereabouts they were. ‘Oh, this leads straight to the back entrance of KPC’s offices. It’s about a hundred yards up on the right.’
Ethan stopped the car as the lights changed and Nora’s mind raced to try and come up with something to break the crazy sense of anticipation creeping in.
‘Eleanor really said she’d be in touch within the next couple of days?’ she asked, her voice higher in pitch than she would have liked. She had a feeling her babble-rate was about to grow exponentially, and she hated the fact that a simple attraction was the explanation.
‘She really did.’
‘As soon as I get back to the office I’m going to call a couple of contacts. I have a few buildings in mind for headquarters and then I need to look through the information she gave you about where she wants to base her manufacturing. There are a couple of options that become available mid-March. And there’s something special I want to try and get for her, right in the middle of London’s fashion district. Sort of baroque-meets-boutique, but with plenty of ground-floor space. All polished floorboards, wrought-iron work everywhere and bevelled windowpanes. High-end but perfect romantic style for a flagship store. Modern office complex and concrete and glass shopping mall is not the way to go. I’m fairly sure I’m right about this.’ Finally running out of steam she glanced across at him but he was concentrating on the signals ahead. The lights changed and as Ethan drove forward, Nora’s hands moved against the bag sitting on her lap. ‘So we’re coming up to the office. There’ll never be any parking around at this time of day. You can drop me off in the middle of the—hey.’
Ethan calmly drove until he reached the next junction, turned the car around and drove back so that he could ease the car to a halt right outside the back entrance to her offices. Where, for the first time in recorded history, there was an empty parking space, complete with meter. He switched off the engine and calmly turned to look at her.
‘Do you know, I have a feeling you were about to nip out into the middle of the traffic and run off, and all without setting up a meeting to discuss Ryan.’
‘Oh. Well.’ She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. How could she have forgotten who it was that had brought him to her office this morning? Was she so obsessed with KPC at the moment that nothing else could intrude? Or was it that in the space of a hundred yards, it had become awkwardly apparent to her that breathing in his scent and getting herself all stirred up was making it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. She needed to get out of this car. She needed space to be able to clear her head. Sephy was right. She really was out of practice at talking to men. ‘So. Thank you for this morning. If I could grab my laptop and the information Eleanor left you with..?’
‘What’s the hurry?’
‘No hurry. Well, I do have a lot of work to do. Why don’t you phone me with a time for us to discuss Ryan. You must be really exhausted by now—’
‘I’m really “something” right now. Not sure “exhausted” is the word, though.’
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to come across as rude. I—’ she tailed off when she saw smouldering blue eyes track their way to her lips. I have to get out of this car before I do something properly stupid, like climb over onto your lap, grab you by the lapels of that sinfully sexy blue suit you fill out so well and give in to this insane need to touch my lips
