connected with her reflection in the mirror opposite. But not her, she reassured herself firmly. Not her.
She went across and turned the shower on, then took some cleansers and a body wash from her bag. She was about to slip out of her dressing gown and under the steamy hot water when she suddenly felt queasy. The feeling just hit her out of nowhere.
What on earth was wrong with her? she wondered as she clung to the side of the basin and waited for the feeling to pass. She’d had a few hours’ sleep so it couldn’t be tiredness. She hadn’t eaten anything that would make her ill. And she couldn’t be pregnant because she had done that test and it had come back negative.
A curl of apprehension stirred inside her suddenly.
But she still hadn’t had her period, and it was over two months late now!
The realisation sent apprehension spinning into full-blown panic. It would be OK, she reassured herself. The test had definitely been negative, and her periods were irregular sometimes.
Even so, they were never this late!
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her skin was so ashen it looked almost opaque. But she couldn’t be pregnant, she told herself again. However, just to reassure herself, maybe she should buy another pregnancy-testing kit.
The boardroom was hot and stuffy, and there were so many people around the long polished table that there was hardly room to breathe.
Katie had found herself wedged between Alexi, who was presiding at the head of the meeting, and a hefty man who seemed determined to encroach into her space. One of his elbows was almost in her ribs. She tried to lean away from him, but that brought her too close to Alexi. And she would rather have been prodded to death than get too close to him.
The confines of his apartment were too much for her, never mind the space at this table! This morning had been hell. It was totally weird to be in such a close situation with a man who had once known every curve of her body intimately. How did you move on and forget that? How did you go from being lovers to sharing an apartment platonically?
And what was she going to do if she found out she was expecting his baby?
Her fingers tightened on the pen she was holding as she tried to focus on the conversation and jot down the relevant information she needed.
‘So, gentlemen, if you would turn to page two you will see the chart for the projected expansion into the market,’ Alexi instructed.
Katie watched as everyone dutifully turned over the pages.
She wouldn’t be pregnant, she told herself calmly. She’d probably just got a stomach bug. And she did feel a lot better now.
And as for sharing the apartment it wouldn’t be for long. They’d be home tomorrow, and anyway perhaps she would just get used to being around Alexi again, and after a while all these feelings inside her would just go away of their own accord.
Their eyes met as she glanced up and immediately the theory seemed ludicrous. How could she get used to being around someone who made her whole system melt into emotional chaos?
‘Katie, do you want to run through the schedules you are setting up for us?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Yes, of course.’ She tried to inject the right amount of professionalism into her tone and squeezed back from her place to dutifully do as he had asked.
She was very conscious of his eyes following her as she stood up and went to turn on the projector so that she could make her points with the visual aid of the screen.
‘As you can see, the sales are up in that sector, but we need to concentrate on our main targets.’
Alexi tried to concentrate solely on the graphs that Katie was pointing to. But she kept sidetracking him. She looked fantastic in the tight-fitting little grey suit; he could see every curve of her figure as she stretched.
‘I’ve taken the accountants’ provisional estimates and, as you see, the results are very exciting.’ She flicked a switch so that the next graph came up on screen.
Not as exciting as the way she had kissed him in the early hours of the morning, or the way she had looked in that short robe … The thought crept into Alexi’s mind, along with the image she had presented with her long hair tumbling around her shoulders, and her curvaceous body tantalisingly hidden by silk.
She was too damn sexy.
His eyes followed her around the table as she placed printed copies of the graphs in front of everyone. She looked very different now from the vision she had presented earlier; her hair was tied back in a severe style that showed the delicate shape of her face and her exquisite high-cheekbones. She looked sophisticated and efficient. He found it just as sexy as her earlier tousled look. He imagined kicking everyone out of the boardroom and taking her right here on the polished table. He wanted her now.
As if sensing his gaze, she glanced in his direction and for just a second he glimpsed distraction in her blue eyes, and the world of high finance suddenly ceased to exist.
Then she looked hastily back to the notes she was referring to.
She could pretend all she wanted, but the chemistry was still alive and kicking between them. They both knew that.
OK, it was just a sexual chemistry, but hell it was strong—stronger than anything Alexi had ever known.
He thought back to those moments in his office this morning when he’d kissed her. He had never felt so shaken up by need before! It had taken every ounce of control he possessed to pull back. And, for all Katie’s pretence at coldness after that, Alexi knew if he’d touched her again he could have melted her; if he had pulled her back into his arms and kissed her he could have had her.
OK, she was suddenly professing that she wanted a serious relationship, and he certainly didn’t want that. He didn’t believe in love, he didn’t want love. But he did want her. And the fact was she still wanted him, for all her moral high-ground. The truth of that had been there in her kiss, in her body language. It was there in the way she had just darted a look at him now.
They needed to finish what they had started and then they could both move on.
Alexi returned his attention to the paperwork on his desk.
The really bizarre thing was that she seemed to have cast some kind of weird spell over him; he just hadn’t been able to move on since she’d walked out a month ago.
Every time he’d decide to take someone else to bed and forget her, a picture of her sensuous, perfectly proportioned body drifted into his mind, stopping him. He’d remember the way she could look at him with those playful, challenging blue eyes, the way her lips could curve in that secret smile that promised so much … and it had sent him crazy.
He needed her. Needed to feel her sensuous body writhing against his. It was a macho pride thing, he told himself furiously. She’d dumped him so he wanted her back—nothing more than that. Once he’d had his fill of her, these feelings would go.
Alexi frowned as he realised he was losing track of the meeting. She was still adversely affecting his work.
Later today, after business was
