tonight of all nights…’
Liar! He meant to do whatever it took to wreck the romantic mood of their evening. But his plan had backfired as far as Kalera was concerned, because she knew that Harry would have wanted her to be happy.
So she smiled serenely and murmured that of course she wasn’t upset, only to have Duncan give her another lesson in the subtle art of brinkmanship.
‘As usual you shame me with your graciousness. But I won’t accept that I’m forgiven until you honour me with at least one dance before I go.’ He indicated the small, intimate dance-floor occupied by several couples barely moving to the smoochy blues of a small jazz band. ‘I doubt that I’ll be invited to your wedding so this might be my only chance to dance with the blushing bride. You don’t mind, do you, old boy?’
Stephen patently did mind, but Duncan was already stooping to cup Kalera’s elbow, applying a secret pressure of his fingertips that made her jump to her feet with apparent alacrity, the nerves in her paralysed arm going crazy and tiny pinpoints of white light dancing dizzily in front of her eyes.
Before she could recover from the momentary disorientation, Duncan’s cunning grip shifted and she found herself propelled into irresistible motion with every appearance of eagerness, leaving Stephen floundering in startled disapproval.
As they moved away from the table Duncan turned his head and asked conversationally, ‘Have you told him yet?’
Aware that they weren’t fully out of earshot, Kalera stiffened her spine and voluntarily quickened her pace, missing the smirk that Duncan threw over his shoulder.
‘Told him what?’
‘About us.’
She could feel Stephen’s suspicious gaze boring into her back.
‘There’s nothing to tell!’ she denied vehemently.
‘No?’
‘No!’
They reached the edge of the dance-floor and Duncan swung her lightly into his arms.
‘You must lead an astonishingly eventful life if you think that crawling naked into a man’s bed and begging him to make love to you is “nothing”. Somehow I don’t think that Stephen would take the same liberal view. Don’t you think he has a right to know that, far from being unappreciative, I’m fully aware of each and every intimate facet of his quiet little gem?’
CHAPTER THREE
THE strength in Kalera’s legs melted away and if Duncan hadn’t had his arm anchored around her waist she would have sunk ignominiously to the ground. Her long fingernails dug into the soft velvet of his jacket, scrabbling for purchase as she stumbled along, knocking her slender knees against his long legs.
Anyone watching would think that she had never learned to dance, she thought feverishly. But she and Stephen had often danced together and if he was still watching them he would be wondering what on earth was going on. When she went back to the table he would ask what they had been talking about and if she didn’t want to create a terrible turmoil in their relationship she would have to lie…
‘Oh, God!’ She moaned, her head wilting towards a gold-embroidered lapel, her temples tightening at the mere thought of the complications that could ensue. An exotic scent teased her nostrils and she dimly recognised the cologne that the staff had given their boss the previous Christmas, and which she had been despatched to select and buy. She had thought the sharp, spicy fragrance with its lingering, sensual undertones might have been designed with Duncan in mind, and now it seemed even more potent, uniquely personalised by the natural musk of his skin.
Duncan’s hard palm pressed against her back, bracing the centre of her limp body against his hips as he guided her around the floor in a semblance of grace. His thighs pushed insistently against hers, nudging them into sluggish action, his leading hand tucked close to his shoulder, keeping her torso nestled against his chest. At six feet four he towered over her, but he was nevertheless surprisingly light on his feet.
‘Keep moving. You’re doing fine,’ he murmured encouragingly, his breath stirring the hair above her ear. ‘I won’t let you go…’
That was what she was afraid of!
‘Why are you doing this?’ Her whispery groan trickled out from between pale lips.
‘What—dancing?’ said Duncan, deliberately misunderstanding her as he deftly side-stepped them past an elderly couple. ‘We danced together once before…three years ago, at that party you and Harry gave that first Christmas you worked for me, remember? You and Harry had just moved into a new flat and you invited all your new colleagues from Labyrinth to a housewarming. You didn’t expect the boss to turn up too, but I did, and when Harry was dancing with someone else I danced with you—out on the tiny balcony, under the stars, because it was so crowded inside…’
She recognised his technique, having witnessed it often enough in the office. Her head jerked up, away from the illusory comfort of his broad shoulder. ‘You’re trying to distract me,’ she accused, before she realised that perhaps she should be thanking him.
He grinned unrepentantly. ‘Is it working?’
‘No.’ But her feet were beginning to glide more smoothly as she reluctantly recalled the party in question.
She had felt flustered when Duncan had suddenly appeared at the party, alone, when everyone else had brought partners or dates, and she had felt even more uncomfortable during their dance when he had resisted her polite efforts at normal conversation. Having only worked for him for a few weeks, she had attributed his silent abstraction to boredom but now that she knew him well she recognised that he had probably been brooding over a bug in one of his programs, shutting down the rest of his faculties to concentrate his higher-brain function on the problem.
He had held her close that night, too, but so lightly that she hadn’t felt trapped or overly aware of the intense masculinity that nowadays she found almost impossible to ignore…
At the time she had also been astonished that Duncan and Harry had hit it off so instantly and so well. They were so radically different from each other…Harry placid and content—some people called him dull—grounded in his strong family values and blessedly ordinary in his dreams and ambitions; and Duncan, the emotional whirlwind, eternally restless and unsatisfied, living life with a greedy enthusiasm that verged on defiance and seemingly incapable of committing himself to any lasting relationship with a woman.
Although Harry had been eight years younger than Duncan, to Kalera he had seemed decades ahead of her boss in maturity. Yet the two men had seemed to connect in some way that she had never quite understood and even though they hadn’t seen each other very often they had maintained an easy friendship from which she was excluded, since it largely consisted of Harry trying to teach Duncan how to play golf, a game to which Kalera privately considered her boss was temperamentally unsuited, although as usual he had refused to admit defeat and the intermittent lessons had continued right up until Harry’s death.
‘That party was the first time I held you in my arms,’ Duncan continued, and Kalera suddenly became ultra-conscious of the physical intimacy of their conversation, the way his thigh was sliding between hers as he pivoted their swaying bodies, his solid hips rocking rhythmically against her pelvis. ‘And it was all very chaste and innocent, thanks to the fact you were a very
