that her feelings for Declan were nothing more than a very potent chemical reaction to a highly attractive man? Either way she had to get a grip on herself. It would be disastrous if Declan guessed her feelings, after all he’d said at the interview about emotional women.
Shortly before three, she was just finishing sweeping the studio floor when Michael stuck his head round the door, his eyes smiling from behind his John Lennon spectacles.
‘Come and have some late lunch?’ he suggested.
Well, she had completed the work Declan had set her, and it had been a long time since the piece of toast she’d eaten on the run first thing. She smiled. ‘Thanks. That would be lovely.’
‘Come through to the office. I still have to man the phone.’
Michael had made a pot of real coffee and a plate of cheese sandwiches. Sam took one and perched on the end of his desk before biting into it hungrily.
‘Thanks. Declan gave me so much work that I didn’t think I’d get any lunch.’
Michael laughed. ‘He’s just testing you.’
‘And some!’
‘Oh, his bark’s much worse than his bite—don’t take too much notice of Declan.’
Which was a little like telling her to ignore a cyclone in full swing. She suspected that Michael, as a man, would be immune to Declan with all his charm—all she needed to do was to try and build up the same kind of immunity. She looked at Michael curiously, and, catching her expression, he shrugged good-naturedly.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Ask me.’
‘Ask you what?’
‘Why I’m working here.’
‘It is rather an unusual job for a man to have,’ she conceded.
‘I love it,’ said Michael simply. ‘Speaking as a person who can’t photograph a block of wood without messing it up, working for Declan allows me to indulge my love of photography vicariously. It’s an exciting world he moves in, you know.’
‘I can imagine. But—’ she frowned and picked up another sandwich ‘—aren’t you stuck in a—you know—rut?’
He shook his head. ‘Declan pays me handsomely, and I am that rare breed—a man without ambition.’
Sam stared at him. ‘Seriously?’
He nodded. ‘Seriously. When I go home at night, I like to do just that. Switch off completely. If I were in some corporate hierarchy, I’d have to be back-stabbing with the rest of them. Late meetings, living on my nerves. No, thanks. I like to sit sedately on the sidelines.’
He pulled a demure face and Sam giggled. She felt safe with Michael—he didn’t send her thoughts and senses into crazy turmoil. She tipped her head to one side, crossed her legs, and batted her eyelashes outrageously. ‘Forgive me for saying this, Michael, but you’d make someone a great wife!’
He adopted an America drawl. ‘Say—is that a proposal, honey?’
‘I sincerely hope not,’ came a deep, cold voice from the door, and Sam looked up to find Declan standing in the doorway, filling it with his muscular frame, his mouth a thin line of disapproval.
Sam felt like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar, frozen in a ridiculous pose on Michael’s desk like some flighty femme fatale. She uncrossed her legs and quickly stood up, her pulse again infuriating her by accelerating into its familiar dance as she stared up into that harshly handsome face and waited for the seemingly inevitable rebuke.
Michael, for one, seemed unconcerned. ‘Hello, Declan,’ he said. ‘Will you ring Fran at home before four?’
Declan was still looking at Sam acidly. ‘I thought I’d left you with enough work until I got back?’
She felt a warm glow of achievement. ‘I’ve done it, actually,’ she said sweetly.
He said nothing, but turned to Michael. ‘I’d steer clear of Sam, if I were you—socially, I suspect she’s a little wild for your taste, Mike.’ He gave a nasty smile. ‘Come through to the studio, will you, Sam?’
Still smarting from his last barb, Sam followed him, her eyes drawn unwillingly to the swing of the lean hips, and the line of the long, muscular legs covered by the clinging denim.
Once there, he cast his eye around at the immaculately tidy studio, and Sam met his gaze with triumphant challenge.
‘Everything to your satisfaction—Declan?’
‘Almost. I think we’ve established that your work is up to standard, so just let me give you a little word of warning about Michael.’
‘Michael?’ She found his steely look of disapproval inexplicable, and attempted to lighten the tension. ‘He’s a mass-murderer, right?’
There wasn’t a flicker of answering humour. ‘Let’s get one thing straight, Sam, shall we? Michael is a very pleasant, easygoing man, but he isn’t your type and, what’s more, he has a loyal fiancée who adores him waiting for him at home.’
It would be almost laughable, thought Sam, except that he wasn’t laughing. ‘Just what are you suggesting——?’
‘I’m suggesting,’ he bit out, ‘that you don’t turn that big-brown-eyed look on him as though he’s just personally delivered the Holy Grail to you. Stick to the bread-roll-throwing types you normally hang around with. Oh——’ and here his eyes became as stormy as the Atlantic Ocean ‘—do me one small favour, hmm? We know you’re tiny, but you’ve proved you certainly aren’t fragile, so do spare me that helpless-little-girl look when I speak to you. You’re twenty-six, not eighteen.’
Pride made her meet his gaze without showing one iota of the hurt which clamped at her stomach at his needlessly cruel words. And, what was more, he was so unjustly wrong—about her, and about her supposed designs on Michael.
Determined that he shouldn’t see how he had the power to wound her, she deliberately composed her face into an expression of mild concern. ‘Shall I fetch you some Alka-Seltzer, Declan?’ she asked in a honeyed voice.
He stared at her as though she’d had a brainstorm. ‘What in hell’s name are you on about?’
She raised her hands up in supplication. ‘You seem out of sorts, that’s all,’ she replied, in a tone which was undisguised saccharin. ‘I thought maybe that you might have indigestion—after your lunch.’
Their eyes met, and for a moment she thought that he was about to explode, when to her astonishment something which could almost have been humour curved one corner of his mouth into a tantalisingly crooked smile, but it was gone so quickly that she thought it was probably her own wish-fulfilment. Declan didn’t smile; he snarled.
‘Let’s light the studio,’ he snapped. ‘The model arrives in ten minutes.’
And that battle appears to be over, thought Sam, as she set about assisting him.
They
