left her handbag, along with the papers she’d been looking at when Nicki had pounced on her, downstairs in the alcove. She muttered something very rude before leaning back in the seat and shutting her eyes for a moment. Great, just great. She’d have to go and retrieve everything, which would totally ruin the decorous exit she’d just made.
Footsteps brought her eyes snapping open and her back straightening, but it was Nicki who emerged in the doorway, and she was clutching the Baxter file and Marsha’s handbag. ‘You forgot these,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Sort of.’ Marsha managed a weak smile. ‘Thanks for these.’
‘All in a day’s work.’
Marsha had expected a barrage of questions the next time she saw Nicki, but when the other girl sat down at her own desk and began packing her things away, all she said was, ‘They’ve gone, by the way, Penelope and your—and him.’
‘Right.’ She’d explain a little tomorrow, but tonight she couldn’t face it. ‘I’m off too. We’ll talk in the morning, Nicki,’ she said, rising to her feet and reaching for her jacket. It was her brisk boss tone, something Marsha used rarely, but when she did Nicki knew enough to take the hint.
Once she was in the lift again, a thousand butterflies began to do an Irish jig in Marsha’s stomach. What if Nicki was wrong and he was waiting for her in Reception? She wouldn’t put it past Taylor. She wouldn’t put anything past Taylor Kane.
Reception was the usual madhouse at this time of night, but it was Taylorless and that was all Marsha asked. She responded to a couple of goodnights, raising a hand in farewell to Bob, the security guard, with whom she often had a chat when she was working late and it was quieter. He regaled her with tales of his six children, who had all gone off the rails in some way or other and who drove Bob and his long-suffering wife mad, but tonight Marsha felt she would swap places with them like a shot.
Once outside, in the warm June evening, Marsha looked about her, only relaxing and breathing more easily after a few moments of scanning the bustling crowd. Everyone was walking fast and every other person was talking into a mobile phone. Irate drivers were honking car horns, there was the occasional screech of tyres and the odd person or so was dicing with death by ignoring pedestrian crossings and throwing themselves in front of the rush hour traffic. A normal evening, in fact.
It was too warm for the jacket she’d worn that morning, and now she tucked it over her arm as she began to walk past Notting Hill towards Kensington. Somehow she couldn’t face the jam-packed anonymity of the tube or a bus tonight. It would take a while to get to her tiny bedsit deep in West Kensington, but the walk through Holland Park was pleasant on an evening like this, and she needed some time to collect her whirling thoughts and sort out her emotions. And then she wrinkled her small straight nose at the thought. Since when had she ever been able to get her head round her feelings for Taylor?
‘I had a feeling you’d walk.’
Her pulse leapt as the deep voice at her elbow registered, and in that moment she knew she had been expecting him to make an appearance. She didn’t turn her head, and she was pleased her voice was so cool—considering her racing heartbeat—when she said, ‘Clever you.’
‘How are you, Fuzz?’
His pet name for her caused her traitorous heart to lurch before she quelled the weakness. Fuzz had come into being on their second date, when he had said he thought goslings were supposed to be all fluff and down, his eyes on her sleek shiny hair. She’d smiled, answering that fuzz and feathers weren’t compulsory, and from that moment—whenever they were alone—he’d whispered the name in a smoky tone which had caused her knees to buckle. But that was then and this was now. Her voice tight, she said, ‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Why? You used to like it.’
His arrogance provoked her into raising angry eyes to meet his gaze, and she knew immediately it was a mistake. He was too close, for one thing. She could see the furrows in the tanned skin of his face, the laughter lines which crinkled the corners of his eyes. She caught her breath, steadying herself before she said, ‘I’m glad you used the past tense.’
He shrugged, a casual easy movement she envied. ‘Past, present, future—it’s all the same. You’re mine, Fuzz. You’ve been mine from the first moment we met.’
For a moment the urge to strike out in action as well as words was so strong it shocked her, but it acted like a bucket of cold water on her hot fury. Men like him never changed, she knew that, so why had she expected any different? Everything about Taylor whispered wealth and power and limitless control. She had married him knowing he was dangerous, but she had hoped she’d captured his heart. She had been wrong. ‘I don’t think so, Taylor. We’ll be divorced soon, and that is the end of the road.’
‘You think a piece of paper makes any difference one way or the other?’ He took her arm, pulling her to a stop as he encircled her with his arms. ‘This nonsense has to stop. Do you understand? I’ve been patient long enough.’
His height and breadth dwarfed her slender shape, and the familiar smell of him—a subtle mixture of deliciously sexy aftershave, clean male skin and something that was peculiarly Taylor—sent her senses reeling. Control, control, control. He was a past master of it—she had learnt it day by painful day in the months they had been separated. She couldn’t let all that agony be for nothing. She ignored the longing which made her want to melt against the hard wall of his chest, saying instead, her voice clipped, ‘Let go of me or I’ll scream my head off. I mean it.’
‘Scream away,’ he offered lazily, but she had seen the narrowing of his eyes and the tightening of his mouth and she knew she had scored a hit.
She remained absolutely rigid and still in his arms, her eyes blazing, and after another long moment he let her go. ‘You’re still not prepared to listen to reason?’
‘Reason?’ She forced a scornful laugh, taking a step backwards and treading on some poor man’s toe with her wafer-thin heels. His muffled yelp went unheeded.
‘Yes, reason. Reason, logic, common sense—all those worthy attributes which seem to be so sadly lacking within that beautiful frame of yours,’ he drawled, deliberately provocative.
Marsha gritted her teeth for a moment. He was the one person in all the world who could make her madder than hell in two seconds flat. ‘Your definition of reason and logic is different from mine,’ she said scathingly. ‘I go by the Oxford Dictionary.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning I don’t hold with your clarification that reason means a promiscuous lifestyle where anything goes, and logic says you only begin to worry if you are caught out.’
He surveyed her defiant face expressionlessly, the magnificent tawny eyes glittering in the tanned darkness of his face. After an eternity, and very softly, he said, ‘I see.’
Marsha stared back at him, determined not to let him see the quiet response had taken the wind out of her sails. She had been married to this man for three years, eighteen months of which she had been separated from him, but she’d had no idea how he would react to what she had said. Which summed up their relationship, really, she thought wretchedly. And was one of the reasons why she had left him and would never go back. That and the other women.
Her small chin rose a fraction, and now her voice had lost its heat and was icy when she said, ‘Good.
