LIBBY slipped on her trainers and popped her heels in her bag.
She had the timing down to a fine art and, as she had learnt, unforeseen delays could mean she missed her connection and got home even later.
The unforeseen delay this evening was Rafael’s tall blonde PA stroke mistress. On two occasions since she had started here Libby had caught glimpses of her outside the office. She wasn’t easy to miss; each time she had dodged her. It was not an acquaintance she felt eager to renew!
This time she did not have the option of running away. She stumbled into her and knocked the oversized designer bag the blonde was carrying out of her hands.
The contents spilled out across the corridor.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Libby mumbled, dropping to her knees to gather them up.
‘No problem,’ Gretchen said, opening her bag to allow Libby to drop the retrieved items back in. ‘No, the lipstick goes in the compartment and the tissues … great.’
The smile, all warmth and teeth, made Libby blink.
‘I’ve been hoping to get a chance to talk to you outside the office,’ the girl continued. ‘I know that the first time we met, you must have thought I was rude or barking, which as you now know I am—well, the barking bit anyhow.’ She looked at Libby’s face and laughed. ‘You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?’
Libby shook her head, struggling to reconcile her mental image of the statuesque blonde who had blanked her with this warm and effervescent woman.
‘I thought the grapevine would have filled you in, the general weirdness you witnessed at the crash scene, and I’m sorry I didn’t explain at the time. Poor you—that was my OCD kicking in, two of my worst nightmares being lateness and dirt. Most of the time I’m fairly normal.’
Libby, not quite sure how to respond to this confidence, mumbled an embarrassed. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t be, you wouldn’t believe how much better I am. That therapist that Rafael made me go to, he’s just—’ She shook her head. ‘But enough about me. I’m really glad I bumped into you. I heard about earlier.’
Libby’s stomach took a sickening lurch. Did the entire building know or had Rafael not posted the events online yet?
The tall blonde patted her hand. ‘Don’t worry, you weren’t being singled out for special attention.’
‘Good to know.’ Did this mean he propositioned all staff or just the female ones? Libby wondered, biting back a bubble of hysterical laughter.
‘He’s got this thing about not bringing personal stuff into work, and there’s a zero-tolerance policy on office romances. It was just bad luck he walked in and saw you with your boyfriend.’
‘He wasn’t my boyfriend.’
‘Really?’ She arched a brow. ‘Not like Rafael to jump to conclusions, but you wouldn’t believe the mood he was in this evening. I hope he didn’t upset you too much. Remember, it’s not just you—he’s even got cranky with me in the past when I’ve taken calls from my partner, Cara, which is taking it too far.’
‘Cara, nice name.’ The penny clicked and Libby’s eyes flew wide. ‘A girl, you’re … oh, no, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the other girl said with a serene laugh as Libby blushed. ‘I get a lot of that. Some people even think that Rafael and me are an item.’
‘Amazing!’ Libby breathed faintly.
‘I sometimes think he only gave me the job in the first place because there was no chance of me falling for him. Well, you’ve seen him, so I don’t have to tell you how many girls get crushes on him.’
‘No … yes, you do have to tell me. I don’t find him at all attractive.’ Libby closed her eyes and thought, Please let me die now!
‘You’re not …?’
Libby blushed again and thought, Could I seem more provincial. ‘No, I’m not.’ Did the women of the world really fall into two categories: those in love with Rafael and those who were gay?
‘Not that I have a problem. I like men, just not that man … he …’ Judging it was about time she stopped digging the hole she was standing in, she glanced at her watch and said she’d miss her train if she didn’t run.
As she legged it down the corridor she heard Gretchen yell after her. ‘Oh, by the way, I love muffins and brownies…’
Actually she would probably miss the train anyway.
Outside Libby hunched her shoulders inside her thin coat. The temperature had dropped ten degrees since that morning and the wind was biting. She glanced at her watch and grimaced as she broke into a trot; she didn’t hear the car until it stopped right beside her.
Rafael leaned across and opened the passenger door. Libby, her heart pounding like a sledgehammer inside her ribcage, barely noticed as the door swung against her legs.
‘I’m in a hurry. My train—’
Rafael acted as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Get in.’
To her shame Libby found herself obeying the terse direction without even putting up a token protest. Telling herself as she slid into the leather seat that it was because someone might see her.
‘How long will it take you to get home on the train?’
‘It depends if the train’s on time,’ she said, thinking, Why are we having this conversation? ‘And if I catch the first connection, not the—’
Rafael cut through her calculations. ‘I can get you home earlier,’ he announced confidently.
‘You could,’ she agreed, suddenly breathless. ‘But why should you?’
‘I am a considerate guy?’
Libby didn’t respond to the dry humour in his voice, or register that it was not echoed in the driven expression glowing in his deep-set eyes, she was too busy with basic stuff like breathing. Her imagination was running riot. Was he about to repeat his earlier proposition?
The possibility made her throat grow dry. Was this a chance to change her mind, to make a total fool of herself?
Both maybe?
He arched a brow and studied her tense face. The inner fire he always sensed tantalisingly beneath that cool façade seemed closer to the surface as his glance connected with her wide blue eyes.
‘No?’ Then, impatience creeping into his manner, he added, ‘Does it matter why? The fact is I am willing to deliver you safely home, guarantee you get there when you should.’
‘I’m hearing a but.’ She was also hearing bells, which she was studiously ignoring.
‘Fasten your seat belt.’ He fastened his own and flashed an irritated look her way. ‘If I stay here much longer I’ll get a ticket. There is no but.’ He scanned her face, reading the scepticism and seeing the dark shadows under her eyes, the lines of strain etched in the skin around her mouth.
While he was not directly responsible for putting them there, he had to struggle to keep his protective instincts in check.
Something about this woman seemed to exaggerate all his emotional responses. One second he wanted to protect her from a light wind, the next he wanted to throttle her. The desire to fling her down and slide deep into her warm body was pretty much a constant.
He was basing his present actions on the assumption that once he had satisfied the latter of these impulses his emotional equilibrium would return to normal.
‘There will even be time for you to have some supper with me.’ She looked as if she needed feeding.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘How many meals have you been skipping? You are working hard enough for two people.’
‘You said—’
‘Forget what I said,’ Rafael instructed, waving aside his previous comments with a regal wave of his hand. ‘You are obviously not eating enough to keep a sparrow alive,’ he condemned harshly.
‘I eat!’ she protested.
‘I will believe that when I see it,’ he returned smoothly.
Libby shook her head and reached for her belt. ‘I’ll catch the train.’ She cursed softly under her breath when her trembling fingers fumbled the clip. ‘I shouldn’t have got in anyway. Certifiable idiot that I am I thought that … How was I to know I was your good deed for the day—?’
‘Be still.’
Libby obeyed the stern caution, not out of choice, but because she couldn’t not obey. She couldn’t have moved if her life had depended on it, for no better reason than he was touching her. He was touching her and she had forgotten how to move.
She stared at his big hand on her lap where it imprisoned both her own hands; the slight movement of his thumb over the inner aspect of her wrist was sending hot flurries.
‘Dios, you are shaking!’
Libby, made dizzy by his closeness, overwhelmingly aware of the clean male scent that rose from his warm body, closed her eyes.
A thoughtful expression drifted across his face. ‘What did you think, Libby? Why did you think I asked you to get in the car?’
‘Ask?’ she echoed bitterly. ‘You didn’t ask, you ordered.’
‘Do not try and deflect—it will not work with me. Answer me, Libby. I am not getting any younger sitting here.’
‘Fine!’ Libby shook her head, unable to withstand either the pressure of his questions or the pressure inside her skull. ‘If you must know I thought you were going to renew your proposition.’ She buried her face in her hands. ‘I thought you were going to ask me to go to bed with you,’ she mumbled miserably.
‘And if I had what would your reply have been?’
Libby lifted her head, her expression cautious as she scanned his face. The fierce hunger she saw in his eyes drew the air from her lungs in one gasp.
The mixture of excitement and exhilaration coursing through her veins made it difficult for Libby to force the words out. ‘I would have said yes,’ she admitted.
‘Then I am asking.’
Libby swallowed and levelled her clear blue gaze on his face. She was shaking feverishly but her voice was steady as she whispered, ‘Yes!’
At that point the voice of caution in her head threw in the towel; the only thing that Libby was listening to was the hunger roaring like an out-of-control forest fire through her veins. She didn’t know if this decision was wrong but, more to the point, she didn’t care—it felt right.
The look of carnal promise in Rafael’s half-closed eyes sent a fresh rush of heat through her body. Libby felt weak with lust when she looked at him.
‘Do not look at me like that or we might not make it to my apartment,’ he growled wincing and sliding seamlessly into his own language as he crunched the gears in his eagerness to move off into the traffic.
‘You make me act like a teenager.’ Rafael was unaware that he voiced this rueful opinion in his native tongue. ‘But I will not be clumsy in bed, querida, I promise you,’ He added in the same tongue.
They exchanged not a word during the fifteen-minute journey to the apartment building that housed Rafael’s penthouse flat. It had seemed to a frustrated Rafael that every light was against them.
To Libby, sitting silently beside him, the journey went by in a blur. She abandoned any attempt to try and rationalise what she was doing and concentrated instead on a more practical aspect of the situation.
She had just been invited into the bed of a man who was experienced and highly sexed. The subject had not come