the fact that I haven’t called you for two months?’ He met her gaze challengingly.
‘Six weeks,’ she came back sharply, her cheeks flushing with colour seconds later.
‘Whatever.’ He shrugged, knowing exactly how long it was since he had last seen her, but having no intention of letting Hebe know that he did.
He had been so sure that Hebe Johnson would be just like all the other women he had known over the last two years—taken and then forgotten. But for some inexplicable reason he hadn’t quite succeeded in doing that where she was concerned. Memories of those golden eyes, that lithe silken body, came flashing into his mind at the most inconvenient of times. Irritating him intensely.
The flash of anger now in the depths of her warm eyes, and the way the fullness of those sensuous lips had tightened slightly, told him his careless attitude had only succeeded in increasing her anger. Which didn’t particularly affect him.
Not on a business level, anyway.
On a personal level, he found both things sexy as hell!
She looked good today too, dressed in a cream blouse tucked into the tiny waistband of a knee-length fitted black skirt, her legs long and silky.
So much for his absence from the London gallery these last six weeks, his deliberate lack of the promised telephone call, his self-assurances that when he came back he would have forgotten all about Hebe Johnson!
Even before he’d seen the painting he had known he hadn’t managed to do that.
His own mouth tightened as he glanced over to where he had placed the painting, on a stand to one side of his wide office, with a cover over it to protect it. But also so that Hebe Johnson shouldn’t see it until he was ready for her to do so…
Hebe eyed Nick scathingly as he stood looking at her, and, even though inside was shaking, she gripped her hands tightly together to prevent Nick from seeing they were trembling.
‘I’m sorry—were you supposed to call me?’ she came back, with all the coolness she could muster.
Which was quite considerable, if the way his mouth thinned and his eyes narrowed to glittering blue slits was anything to go by!
‘Okay, Hebe, forget that for the moment,’ he dismissed briskly. ‘And tell me what you know about Andrew Southern?’
She frowned as she dredged her memory for the relevant facts about the artist, having no idea why Nick was asking the question—unless it was an effort on his part to prove that she didn’t know her job, so giving him an excuse to fire her?
She swallowed hard. ‘English. Born 1953. Started painting in his early twenties, mainly portraits, but later moved on to landscapes—more recently the Alaskan wilderness—’
‘I’m not asking for a bio on the guy, Hebe!’ Nick cut in tersely, standing up restlessly. ‘I asked what you know about him?’
‘Me?’ She blinked, stepping back slightly in the face of his leashed vitality. ‘I’ve just told you what I know about him—’
‘Don’t be so coy, Hebe,’ he cut her off again abruptly, blue eyes mocking. ‘I’m not asking for details, just a confirmation that you know him. And if you can contact him personally.’
She was totally bewildered now. This conversation didn’t appear to have anything to do with that night six weeks ago at all, nor with an effort to prove her incompetent, but everything, it seemed, to do with the artist Andrew Southern. Of whom she was an admirer, but had certainly never met him, let alone knew him personally.
She wasn’t going to acknowledge the relationship, Nick realized frustratedly. Well, the guy was old enough to be her father, so maybe that explained her reluctance to talk about him. Whatever, Nick had been trying to arrange a meeting with Andrew Southern for years. For once neither the name Nick Cavendish nor the Cavendish Galleries themselves had opened that particular door. And now it seemed that Hebe, of all people, might be the key to that meeting.
From deciding that he had to stay as far away from Hebe as possible in future, or else take her to his bed again, he had now discovered that if he wanted to get anywhere near Andrew Southern with the idea of an exhibition of his work, then Hebe was the person he had to talk to.
‘Look, Hebe, let’s start this conversation again, shall we?’ he reasoned pleasantly. ‘I accept that I overstepped the employer/employee line with you six weeks ago, but by the same token you have to accept that it wasn’t all one sided, huh?’
Hebe eyed him derisively. If that was his attempt at an apology for the night they had spent together, or for his non-existent telephone call since, then it was pretty lame. Besides which, an apology for the former was insulting, to say the least, just as an off-hand apology for the latter was totally inadequate.
She had been so miserable these last six weeks, wondering where she had gone wrong, what she had done to make Nick Cavendish not even want to call her again, let alone see her.
And now he had turned up unexpectedly, dismissing their night together as the satisfying of a brief, mutual attraction, before going on to talk about Andrew Southern—an artist of phenomenal reputation, and known as a complete recluse, who had been so for almost thirty years.
Making her realise just how little she understood Nick Cavendish.
She eyed him coolly now. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, of course—!’ He broke off to draw in a deeply controlling breath. ‘Are you deliberately trying to annoy me?’ He looked at her with narrowed eyes.
She gave a mocking lift of her eyebrows. ‘I seem to be doing that without trying!’
He relaxed slightly, an amused smile slightly curving those sculptured lips. ‘I see now why I found you so intriguing that night,’ he murmured softly.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Not here. Not now.
She had spent the first week after his departure back to New York in a frenzy of self-recrimination, with a deep-felt need for Nick to call her to nullify all those negative thoughts.
She was in love with him, totally physically enthralled with him—and this was the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake, not the Dark Ages, where a woman’s wants and needs weren’t considered as important as a man’s, she had chided herself.
She had done nothing wrong by spending the night with a man she found so attractive and who had wanted her too!
But as the days and weeks had passed those assurances hadn’t meant a whole lot.
And now standing here looking at Nick, they meant absolutely nothing.
She grimaced. ‘I think it might be better if we both just forgot about that, don’t you?’
It was a statement rather than a question, and Nick found himself deeply irritated by her easy dismissal.
Okay, so he hadn’t been able to wait to get her out of his apartment that morning six weeks ago, and he hadn’t called her as he said he would, but it was a bit of knock to his ego to realise that she was willing to dismiss the memories of him as easily as he had tried to dismiss
