to pack!’ she called after him, the bottleneck of words in her throat finally bursting.
But it was too late. He’d gone.
Staring after him, Nola felt a trickle of fury run down her spine. Any other woman in your position. How dared he lump her in with all his other wannabe conquests? He was impossible, overbearing and conceited.
But as a hot, swift shiver ran through her body she swore under her breath, for if that was true then why did he still affect her in this way?
Well, it was going to stop now.
Standing up, she stormed across her office and slammed the door.
Breathing out hard, she stared at her shaking hands. It felt good to give way to frustration and anger. But closing a door was easy. She had a horrible feeling that keeping Ram Walker out of her head, even when she was back in Scotland, was going to be a whole lot harder.
FROM HIS OFFICE on the twenty-second floor, Ram stared steadily out of the window at the Pacific Ocean. The calm expression on his face in no way reflected the turmoil inside his head.
Something was wrong. He looked down at the file he was supposed to be reading and frowned. For starters, he was sleeping badly, and he had a near permanent headache. But worst of all he was suffering from a frustrating and completely uncharacteristic inability to focus on what was important to him. His business.
Or it had been important to him right up until the moment he’d walked into that backstreet café and met Nola Mason.
A prickling tension slid down his spine and his chest squeezed tighter.
Down in the bay, a yacht cut smoothly through the waves. But for once his eyes didn’t follow its progress. Instead it was the clear, sparkling blue of the water that drew his gaze.
His jaw tightened, pulling the skin across the high curves of his cheekbones.
Two months ago his life had been perfect. But one particular woman, whose eyes were the exact shade as the ocean, had turned that life upside down.
Nola.
He ran the syllables slowly over his tongue. Before he’d met her the name had simply been an acronym for New Orleans—or the Big Easy, as it was also known. His eyes narrowed. But any connection between Nola Mason and the city straddling the Mississippi ended there. Nola might be many things—sexy, smart and seriously good at her job. But she wasn’t easy. In fact she was unique among women in that she seemed utterly impervious to his charms.
Thinking back to their conversation in the boardroom, remembering the way she had stood up to him in front of the directors, he felt the same mix of frustration, admiration and desire that seemed to define every single contact he had with her.
It was a mix of feelings that was entirely new to him.
Normally women tripped over themselves to please him. They certainly never kept him at arm’s length, or spouted ‘workplace considerations’ as a reason for turning him down.
Turning him down! Even just thinking the words inside his head made him see every shade of red. Nobody had ever turned him down—in the boardroom or the bedroom.
He glanced down at the unread report, but there was no place to hide from the truth: despite the fact that his instincts were screaming at him to keep his distance, he couldn’t stop thinking about Nola and her refusal to sleep with him. Her stupid, logical, perfectly justified refusal to break the rules. Her rules.
He closed the file with a snap. His rules too.
And that was what was really driving him crazy. The fact that up until a couple of months ago he would have agreed with her. Workplace relationships were a poisoned chalice. They caused tension and upset. And not once had he ever been tempted to break those rules and sleep with an employee.
Only Nola Mason was not just a temptation.
She was a virus in his blood.
No. His mouth twisted. She was more like malware in his system, stealthily undermining his strength, his stability, his sanity.
But there was a cure.
His groin hardened.
He knew what it was, and so did she.
He’d seen it in the antagonism flickering in those blue eyes, heard it in the huskiness of her voice. And her resistance, her refusal to acknowledge it was merely fuelling his desire. His anticipation of the moment when finally she surrendered to him.
He tossed the file onto his desk, feeling a pulsing, breathless excitement scrabbling up inside him.
Of course, being Nola, she would offer a truce, not a surrender. Those eyes, that mouth, might suggest an uninhibited sensuality, but he sensed that the determined slant of her chin was not just a pose adopted for business but a reflection of how she behaved out of work and in bed.
Picturing Nola, her blue eyes narrowing into fierce slits as she straddled his naked body, he felt his spine melt into his chair. But truces could only happen if both parties came to the table—which was why he’d invited her to dinner. Not an intimate, candlelit tryst. He knew Nola, and she would have instantly rejected anything so blatant. But now she knew it was to be a business dinner at a crowded restaurant, she would relax—hell, they might even end up sharing a dessert.
His mouth curved up into a satisfied smile. Or, better still, they could save dessert until they got back to his penthouse.
* * *
So this was what it felt like to be famous, Nola thought as she walked self-consciously between the tables in the exclusive restaurant Ram had chosen. It was certainly an experience, although she wasn’t sure it was one she’d ever want to repeat.
The Wool Shed was the hottest dining ticket in town, but even though it was midweek, and the award-winning restaurant was packed, to her astonishment Ram hadn’t bothered to book. For any normal person that would have meant looking for somewhere else to eat. Clearly those rules didn’t apply to Ram Walker, for now, within seconds of his arrival, the maître d’ was leading them to a table with a view across the bay to the Opera House.
‘I think I may have told our guests that dinner was at eight, so it’s going to be just the two of us for a bit. Sorry about that.’
Nola stared at him warily. He didn’t sound sorry; he sounded completely unrepentant. Meeting his gaze, she saw that he didn’t look sorry either. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying the uneasiness that was clearly written all over her face.
Sliding into the seat he’d pulled out, Nola breathed out carefully. ‘That’s fine. It’ll give you a chance to brief me on our mystery guests.’
She felt him smile behind her. ‘Of course—and don’t worry, your chaperones will arrive very soon. I promise.’
Gritting her teeth, she watched him drop gracefully into the chair beside her. At work it had been easy to tell herself that the tension between them was just some kind of personality clash or a battle
