‘There’s hardly been time for that when he only left this morning.’
‘I meant before that, of course,’ Joey said impatiently. ‘He’s been in LA how long now? ‘
He frowned. ‘Ten years.’
Stephanie had only been gone for two months, but Joey was still deeply aware of the void her twin had left in her own life. ‘Did you miss him when he first left?’
‘You’re still missing Stephanie?’
‘There’s no need to sound so surprised, Gideon,’ she said ruefully.
Gideon was surprised, and yet he knew he shouldn’t have been. Just because Joey appeared to enjoy mocking him at every opportunity, there was absolutely no reason for him to assume she didn’t have the same deep emotional connection to her own twin that he had with Jordan.
‘Yes, I missed Jordan very much when he first went to LA,’ he acknowledged gruffly. ‘It does get easier,’ he added.
The two of them stared across the office at each other for several long minutes. As if each recognised something in the other that they hadn’t been aware of before. A softness. A chink in their armour. A vulnerability…
Whilst Gideon found this insight into Joey’s emotions faintly disturbing, he found it even more so in himself; revealing vulnerability of any kind was not something Gideon did. Ever.
‘The dragon is very beautiful,’ he said, in a swift change of subject. ‘But personally I prefer to believe in the things I can see and touch,’ he added.
‘Maybe that’s your problem,’ Joey said as she turned away to continue unpacking the contents of the box.
Gideon’s jaw tightened. ‘I wasn’t aware that I had a problem.’
Joey raised auburn brows as she sat on the edge of the desk behind her, her pencil-slim skirt hitching up slightly as she did so, exposing more of her shapely legs. ‘You don’t see the fact that you have absolutely no imagination as being a problem?’
Gideon ignored that bare expanse of skin and kept his gaze firmly fixed on her beautiful heart-shaped face. ‘I have always found basing my opinions on cold, hard reality to be the better option.’
‘Don’t you mean the boring, unimaginative option?’ she taunted.
‘I believe I know myself well enough to know exactly what I mean, Joey.’ He glared down at her.
Joey had regretted telling him how much she still missed Stephanie almost as soon as she had started the conversation. But she had been surprised when Gideon admitted missing his own twin just as much.
He gave every impression of being self-contained. A cold and unsentimental man. To imagine him feeling the same ache of loneliness for his own twin as she felt for Stephanie suddenly made him seem all too human.
But perhaps he felt the same about her? The thought suddenly seemed much too intimate. ‘There’s no need to get your boxers in a twist, Gideon,’ she murmured, being deliberately provocative to hide her uneasiness.
‘My boxers?’ Gideon’s nostrils flared in distaste.
‘That’s always supposing you wear boxers, of course,’ Joey continued outrageously. ‘Yet I somehow can’t see you going commando—’
‘I would prefer that we not discuss my underwear, or lack of it, if you don’t mind,’ he bit out with an incredulous shake of his head. ‘You really are the most irritating woman I have ever met.’
‘Really?’ Joey smiled appreciatively.
Gideon eyed her in exasperation. ‘It wasn’t meant as a compliment!’
‘I didn’t think for one moment that it was,’ she said dryly. ‘But can I help it if I feel honoured that the coolly aloof Gideon St Claire has lowered his aristocratic brown eyes far enough to even notice my existence, let alone to actually form an opinion about me?’
Gideon realised it was this woman’s impulsiveness that made him feel so uneasy in her company. So unsure and definitely wary of what she was going to do or say next. It wasn’t a comfortable admission from a man who usually maintained a tight control over his own emotions. Not comfortable at all.
His mouth compressed into a hard line. ‘Now who’s being insulting?’
‘Was I?’ she came back airily. ‘But you do have brown eyes. And you are an aristocrat. Lord Gideon St Claire, to be exact,’ she added, as though he’d forgotten.
Neither he, nor his two brothers ever used their titles. In fact most people were completely unaware that Lucan was the current Duke of Stourbridge, or that his younger twin brothers were both lords. A fact that Joey was well aware of.
Instead of answering her, Gideon glanced down at the plain gold watch on his wrist. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have any more time to waste on this. I have an appointment at nine o’clock.’
She smiled unabashedly. ‘Does that mean the welcome speech—you know…the usual glad to have you with us, don’t hesitate to ask if you need anything, blah, blah, blah—is now over?’
Gideon drew in a harsh breath. Both of them knew there had been no welcome speech from him at all—not even a brief, unenthusiastic one. Which was obviously the whole point of her remark.
‘I’m sure you’re fully aware by now that I would be happier not to have you working here at all,’ he said honestly.
‘Life can be cruel that way, can’t it?’ she said, her smile undimmed.
Gideon gave her one last frustrated frown, before turning on his heel and going into the adjoining office and all but slamming the door closed behind him.
Joey’s breath left her lungs in a relieved whoosh once she was alone in Lexie’s office. That last conversation about Gideon’s underwear had no doubt completely restored the opinion he’d obviously held of her before her earlier lapse in admitting that she deeply missed Stephanie.
Joey was well aware of what people thought of her lawyer persona—aggressive, forceful, too outspoken. She was a shark circling her prey when she defended her client in a courtroom—and it was a reputation she had deliberately nurtured.
Not too many people were ever allowed to see past that veneer of professional toughness to the real Joey beneath, as Gideon had when she’d talked of missing her twin.
Joey had deliberately donned her professional toughness a couple of years ago, after one too many slights, because she was a woman in the male-dominated career she had chosen to enter. And after one too many men, less capable than she believed herself to be, had been given jobs because of their gender rather than their ability. The third time Joey had been passed over in that way was when she had decided that if she couldn’t beat them then she was going to join them and beat them at their own game.
Consequently, before she went for her interview at Pickard, Pickard and Wright two years ago, Joey had gone out and bought herself half a dozen of what she considered to be power suits, had had her hair styled unfemininely short, and adopted an abrasive and
