settled back into enduring the time he was forced to spend in her company. He had simply been her lover, and she knew that she would eventually meet someone else—someone she could entrust with her heart.
She forced herself to read a few pages of her book and was totally unaware of anyone approaching her until a shadow fell over her. When she looked down she saw a pair of very expensive loafers and didn’t bother to look any higher, because if she didn’t then whoever it was wouldn’t ask her if she’d mind if he sat next to her.
‘Alexa.’
For a few seconds Alexa was convinced that she’d misheard her name being said—and had definitely misconstrued that rich, mellow voice she had come to love.
She hunkered down and ignored whoever it was—because he hadn’t spoken, and it was just her feverish imagination playing tricks on her.
‘Are you going to acknowledge me or are you going to carry on reading...? What are you reading?’
The book was whipped out of her hands and there he was, standing right in front of her, as cool as a cucumber and as devastatingly sexy as every single memory she had of him.
In a pair of cream trousers and a black T-shirt, with a cream linen jacket hooked over one shoulder, he was drop-dead gorgeous.
‘Still on the crime novels, I see. Would you like me to predict the end?’
‘What are you doing here?’
Her voice was a hoarse whisper and she cleared her throat, then fidgeted as he took the empty chair next to her and pulled it in, so that there was no way she could avoid looking at him.
Theo wished there was an easy answer to that question—something glib that he could pull out from up his sleeve—but there wasn’t. He had spent the past three weeks unable to focus, unable to concentrate—unable to do anything but think about her, even though he had told himself that it was great that he had been released from the obligation of a marriage he hadn’t wanted...great that he could resume his life as he had always wanted it...great that his routine would be returned to him.
His address book was bulging with names and phone numbers of women, and all of them without exception would have welcomed a call from him. He had known that.
He hadn’t called any of them because he’d had too much catching up to do on the work front. That was what he had told himself. Until he’d been forced to face the fact that he missed her. Not just her warm, welcoming body, which he had known for such a brief period of time, but he missed the whole package. He missed the way she bristled and glared at him...the way she never obeyed any of his ‘No Trespassing’ signs but got stuck in and told him just what she thought of him anyway. He missed her shy, hesitant smiles and the ready way her eyes filled up with tears. He missed the softness underneath the feisty scrapper. Most of all he just missed the woman who had been born to have it all and had chosen to do her own thing and ignore the life she had been conditioned to lead.
Except he had no idea how to put any of that into words, and he could feel her blazing eyes on him—could feel her willing him to just go away.
‘How have you been?’ he asked, in a lame attempt to kick-start the conversation.
‘Fine,’ Alexa said coldly. ‘Are you travelling to London? I had no idea.’
‘And if you had you would have checked on to a different flight...?’
Alexa shrugged. ‘Probably,’ she told him truthfully. ‘You can’t deny that this situation is a little uncomfortable at the moment. I do realise we’ll probably bump into one another in the years to come, but right now...’
‘I get it. From being lovers and engaged to...nothing...’
Resting his forearms on his thighs as he leaned forward, Theo raked his fingers through his hair and took some small comfort from the delicate blush that bloomed in her cheeks at the mention of their having been lovers.
‘I don’t want to talk about that,’ Alexa said stiffly. ‘In fact I’d rather you left me alone,’ she continued, barely able to look at him. ‘I have lots of planning to do for my new job in London and I really would like to do that in peace and quiet.’
‘No.’
Alexa’s mouth dropped open and she stared at him. ‘What do you mean, no?’ she demanded furiously.
‘I haven’t come here so that I can disappear without telling you what I’ve come to say.’
‘Which is what?’
‘I liked being engaged to you.’ He looked around him at the crowded lounge. ‘I have my driver outside.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Alexa was frantically trying to analyse what he had just said about liking being engaged to her. What did that mean? She didn’t want to dwell on it, because it meant nothing coming from a man who had spent the past three weeks avoiding her and who didn’t have a committed bone in his body—a man who had a block of ice for a heart.
‘I want to talk to you and I can’t do it here.’
‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’ Alexa’s body was ramrod-straight and as stiff as a board. She dreaded that one of those hands loosely dangling between his thighs might accidentally brush against her, because if it did then she knew the already uphill task of projecting indifference would be even harder.
‘Please.’
That single word was wrenched out of him and for a second she hesitated, because please was not a word that passed his lips very often.
‘What do you want to talk about?’ she asked, relenting a little.
Theo glanced at her and kept his gaze on her face.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he said roughly, and Alexa tried to hold on to some of her gritty determination not to melt.
You’ve missed having sex with me.
‘Are you travelling to London as well?’
‘I will if I have to. I’m booked on the same flight as you, although I’d rather we didn’t have this conversation on a plane or in an airport lounge...’
‘Look, I can’t think that there’s anything to talk about, Theo. I mean, you’ve got your freedom, and I know that was all you wanted when you thought you’d lost it for a year. So maybe you miss having sex with me? You said that you wanted to carry on sleeping with me until... Well, until you got bored and dispatched me to wherever it is you dispatch women you no longer want hanging around. Some locked cupboard in your head, I expect. Of course, physically I’d have still been around, until the year ran out, but as far as sleeping with me went I guess it would have been separate rooms and you discreetly returning to your diet of leggy blonde supermodels...’
Her voice was brittle and she looked away and stared straight ahead.
‘So I’m not going to jump into bed with you again just because you’re not bored with me yet, Theo.’
Theo heard what she was saying and knew that she was describing the man he had
