Off Limits Read online

His jet is the last word in space-age luxury. Cream leather armchairs on either side of the aisle, thick carpet a pale beige and lamps that would look at home in a five-star hotel make the perfect night-flight reading environment. USB docks are in every armrest to charge phones and iPads, and there are several bedrooms, a boardroom and a small cinema.

  There is also a brooding billionaire sitting at the back of the plane, his head bent over a stack of files, apparently engrossed.

  I ignore him. Or pretend to.

  We’ve hardly spoken since I left his apartment on Friday night.

  That was easy enough over the weekend. After sharing two bottles of champagne and being drilled in life’s lessons, Grandma and I shopped in the high street, selecting a new clutch purse for Grandma to take to the anniversary dinner and pretending we weren’t both dreading the damned thing.

  I didn’t hear from Jack, and it wasn’t until I got back to my own place on Sunday evening that I realised I’d been expecting to. That I’d thought he’d text or call or email or something.

  Those two days away from him, without seeing him, stretched interminably.

  The knowledge prickled down my spine so that on Monday morning I steeled myself to be as standoffish and unaffected as possible. To fight coldness with cool unconcern, with no care.

  But I didn’t see him then either. He arrived late, left early and didn’t speak to me.

  And I didn’t speak to him, despite the fact I needed his signature on some papers.

  I chickened out and actually hid from him when he walked past my office, ducking beneath my desk.

  Crazy, right?

  Not so much.

  We’ve moved into dangerous territory. I don’t know if he realises it, but there are warnings blaring in my head. I don’t want to need Jack Grant like I do. I don’t mean sexually. I mean in every way.

  Only I can’t imagine my life without him.

  We’ve been flying for the better part of a day now, and hardly spoken beyond a perfunctory, polite ‘Hiya’ as he boarded the flight, ten minutes late and looking like sex and seduction in a ten-thousand-pound suit.

  I have been telling myself I don’t care with varying measures of success. Did I expect he’d storm up to me and kiss me? Take me passionately in his arms and hold me close? Tell me he never wants to go three days without seeing me again?

  He’s made it abundantly clear what he wants.

  It should be what I want, too.

  I shut my eyes for a moment, crossing my legs in the armchair, and am surprised when I’m woken a moment later.

  ‘We’re landing.’ Jack’s hands are at my hips and I bat them away instinctively.

  He grabs the seatbelt and clips it across me—tight—his eyes flicking to mine. The hint of a smile on his face makes my heart flip-flop.

  ‘Have I ever told you that you snore?’

  Warmth invades my face. ‘I know. I have mild asthma.’

  He grins and takes the seat beside mine. My body is instantly aware of him and my brain is pretty pissed off at the rapid response.

  I shift a little, looking down at my watch. I must have slept for over an hour. I blink, opening the world clock function on my phone. It’s six o’clock in Sydney, which means I want to be tired—not refreshed after a quick nap on the flight.

  Silence stretches between us. Debbie, one of his flight attendants, clips out efficiently, ‘We’ll be touching down on schedule. Can I get you anything before we land?’

  ‘Water, thanks.’ I smile at her, turning my attention back to the papers I’d been reading.

  Well, half my attention. A quarter of it. A sliver. The tiny part that’s not completely drawn to Jack and his nearness and his hypermasculine fragrance. The part of me that isn’t all wrapped up in the way he’s sitting, legs spread, arms relaxed, body warm and large and so close I could push out of my seat and sit on his lap. Unzip his pants and take him.

  God. I want that.

  ‘Dr Pepper.’

  His response to Debbie’s question shakes the desire from my mind, but he looks at me and my toes curl. Does he guess what I’m thinking?

  I tap my pen against the side of the page I’m reading in an attempt to focus my thoughts in a more appropriate direction.

  But Jack reaches across, his hand curling over mine. My pulse goes into overdrive.

  ‘Did you have a good weekend?’ he asks.

  I laugh. I can’t help it. A short, sharp sound of weary frustration. ‘Yeah.’

  He nods, and a frown pulls at his lips. ‘I don’t know how to speak to you now.’

  And I feel sorry for him. Sorry for me. Because we’re both in the middle of a patch of uncertainty too wide to navigate.

  ‘I’m still me.’

  ‘But it’s different.’

  ‘Yeah... I don’t know if you ever asked me about my weekend before we had sex together.’

  I lower my voice as Debbie walks back into the cabin. She places a glass of water on my side table and a can of soda on Jack’s.

  As Debbie disappears once more he winks at me. ‘It’s cherry flavour.’

  Damn him. He knows what he’s doing to me.

  My pulse fires and I give him a tight half-smile before returning my attention to the document I’m partway through reading.

  ‘You’ve got a breakfast meeting at seven o’clock with the mayor. While you’re with him I’m going to be going over the premises. Then I’ll meet with your Australian CEO, Clint Sheridan, to touch base on recruitment matters. The broker for the New Zealand deal is meeting us for lunch at Aria, and Clint’s asked you to his place for dinner, with a few of the other executives.’

  ‘Asked us, you mean,’ he corrects, his eyes hooked to mine.

  I frown. ‘It’s just social. You don’t need me—’

  ‘I want you there,’ he says firmly, and I remember that he is actually my boss.

  Plus, if it weren’t for the fact that we’ve had sex I wouldn’t have ever thought of not going. It’s my own way of not blurring the lines, but he sees right through it.

  ‘You’ve done most of this deal. You should be there.’

  I pull my lips to the side thoughtfully. ‘Sure.’

  It’s not worth arguing about. We’ve gone to hundreds of this kind of thing in our time. I’m sure this won’t be any different.

  He nods, but he’s distracted. ‘Do we need to talk?’

  His suggestion sets off a kaleidoscope of possibilities. Talk? About what? About us? What would I say? And him?

  I swallow to hide my confusion and return his question with one of my own. ‘Do we?’

  He reaches across and wipes his thumb over my lip. Butterflies bounce around my gut.

  ‘I guess not. It doesn’t matter.’

  I stare straight ahead, moving out of his reach. Because maybe this doesn’t matter. Maybe this is just one of those things and in a few weeks I’ll wonder what the heck I got so worked up about. Why I let him get under my skin like this.

  I hope it’s true even as I know how unlikely that is.

  Chapter Eight

  I LOVE AUSTRALIA. We don’t get here often—though with Jack opening this office that will probably change.

  The heat and humidity hit me as soon as the doors open. Even in the air-conditioned airport there’s a sultry oppressiveness that makes me ache to find the nearest swimming pool and dive straight in.

  A limo is waiting for us, and a couple of reporters from the broadsheet newspapers. I forget sometimes that Jack is a ‘Person of Interest’, especially in the business world. Working with him for over two years has made him just ‘Jack’ to me, but to the world he’s an enigmatic tycoon and philanthropist.

  I remember feeling awestruck before I knew him. The prospect of working for him was one I pinned all my hopes to.

  Now it’s just my life.

  Jack and I have been pretty much inseparable this whole time. I’m his right hand. Despite having been hired as his in-house counsel, my job has morphed an
d varied and now incorporates a wide variety of duties. I’m across his workload and can step in at any point, finishing negotiations, speaking on his behalf. When we travel together we either stay in adjoining rooms or in one of his apartments. It depends on how long we’re in town and what’s required of us.

  This unfettered access has been helpful when we needed to proof things late at night or discuss early morning meetings. It’s never been an issue. But the thought of sharing his penthouse at Woolloomooloo is filling me with a sense of apprehension. Not because I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of what I want from him—what I need. Of what living in close confines, even temporarily, will force us to confront.

  My sense of foreboding doesn’t improve once we arrive and I remember how stunning the place is. How glamorous and romantic.

  The thought is errant and I quash it immediately. Romance be damned. We’re colleagues who happen to be sleeping together. That’s all.

  The penthouse is in a big converted wharf building. He bought the whole top floor from some Hollywood celebrity about five years ago, converting several luxurious flats into one enormous sky home. It has panoramic views of Sydney Harbour. From where I’m standing I can see the bridge and a beautiful little island. There’s a balcony that wraps all the way around and a lap pool in a glass room to one side.

  I look at the water, my temptation obvious.

  ‘Plans for tonight?’

  Jack’s right behind me. I don’t turn around but I can feel his nearness. My body quivers; I want to jump him.

  ‘None. Getting into the time zone.’

  ‘I’m in the time zone, baby.’ He grins, and strolls towards the enormous glass windows that overlook the harbour. ‘I’m also hungry enough to eat a horse.’ He turns to face me, his eyes dragging from my head to my toes and then back up, slowing down over my cleavage. ‘Shall we go out?’

  My body is sticky from the humidity and I am weary. Wary, too. Instinctively I understand that we need to keep some boundaries in place. Going out, just the two of us, is an unacceptable boundary erosion.

  I smile—hopefully politely. ‘I’m going to have a swim before I do another thing. Don’t feel you have to wait for me to eat.’

  I walk back towards the door, to where our suitcases are, and wheel mine along beside me down the corridor.

  I find the room I used last time I was here and step into it, shutting the door behind me with an emphatic click. I lean against it and suck in a deep breath, then open the case and pull out my swimsuit. A simple black one-piece. I slip it on, pausing to check my reflection before wrapping a towel around my middle and walking back into the apartment.

  I hear him before I see him and my stomach twists. His powerful arms are pulling him through the water, and if you told me he had trained as an Olympic swimmer I would believe you. His tan glistens like gold beneath the Australian sun.

  Trying valiantly to ignore the heat between my legs, I drop my towel onto a lounger and dive in, long and low, holding my breath for as long as I can before kicking to the surface and swimming all the way to the end. I rest my arms on the sun-warmed coping and stare out at the harbour beneath us.

  It looks like someone has shattered a thousand diamonds and thrown them over the water’s top. The way it glistens is almost impossible to believe.

  He swims up beside me. ‘You’re angry at me.’

  He doesn’t touch me, but the words feel like fingerprints on my chest.

  I turn to him slowly, my hair wet, my eyes surrounded by clumps of black lashes. ‘No.’

  His expression is one of impatience. ‘I’m no good at this. Tell me what I’ve done so I know.’

  ‘What you’ve done?’ It’s so ludicrous that I almost laugh, but an equal urge to cry rises in my chest. ‘You haven’t “done” anything, Jack. I thought we’d agreed that this is our deal? Sex—fine. Work—fine. Nothing in between.’

  But out of nowhere I remember the way my grandma talks about meeting Grandpa. I look at Jack and my heart hammers. Damn it.

  He stares back at me. I can practically see the cogs turning. ‘You’re in your late twenties?’

  ‘Twenty-six,’ I clarify, and the distinction is a small but important one, for some absurd reason I can’t comprehend. Am I vain about my age? Really?

  ‘And you’ve never been in a relationship?’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I ask, though he’s right.

  ‘I just don’t see you as someone’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Gee, thanks,’ I mutter, turning my attention back to the view.

  His fingertip on my shoulder is so light that I almost wonder if I’ve imagined his touch. But then he runs it down my wet arm, all the way to my elbow, and cups me there, squeezing gently. I turn towards him once more and he pushes out from the wall of the pool, bringing me with him, deeper into the water.

  I’m a good swimmer, and I tread water without his help. But he stays close, his handsome face mesmerising me with ocean-green eyes and darkly tanned skin.

  ‘Am I wrong?’

  I shake my head. ‘Not necessarily.’ A smile flicks across my lips without my permission. ‘I’ve dated. And been with men when it’s suited me. But I’ve always had demanding jobs, and not a lot of time to do the whole dinner-and-a-movie thing.’

  He laughs. ‘That sounds boring as shit.’

  My thoughts exactly. ‘How did you meet her?’

  I don’t need to say his wife’s name. We both know who I mean. He expels a breath and looks away, his jaw clenched.

  ‘It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it,’ I say, making to swim away, but he grabs my wrist and pulls me towards him. And I’m glad. I need him to need me, and it’s a sign that he does. My heart smiles.

  ‘You keep running away from me when you don’t get your own way—did you know that?’

  Do I? ‘I’m not running away. I’m swimming away,’ I say, in a very lame attempt at humour. ‘And it’s not because I don’t get my own way—it’s because talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. It’s easy to...to run away when you’re being pushed.’

  His eyes widen in non-verbal acknowledgement of the point I’ve made. ‘She was working at a restaurant in Edinburgh.’ His eyes flash with remembered pain. ‘I’d just wrapped up a meeting and was heading to the hotel. Thought I’d stop for a late dinner.’ He clears his throat, but his voice is still gravelly. ‘And I saw her.’

  Jealousy fires inside me at the look of total wonderment that briefly crosses his eyes.

  ‘She was finishing up and I made her nervous as hell.’

  ‘Nervous? Why?’

  Though, I remember belatedly my first meeting with Jack and the trepidation that lived in me. I hid it beneath a layer of finely honed bravado but, yes, I was nervous, too. He has a machismo and dynamism that is at once overpowering. I have truly never met anyone like him.

  ‘She hadn’t had a lot of good experience with men,’ he says tightly, a muscle jerking in his square jaw.

  ‘I’m sorry for that,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Yeah. I was, too.’ His smile was haunted. ‘The guy she’d left just before meeting me seemed to have thought of her as his own personal punch bag.’

  I nod slowly, imagining what that must be like. I have nothing to reference it to. It’s beyond my remit even to comprehend that kind of fear and pain.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say again.

  ‘Yeah.’ He nods, too. ‘Anyway...’

  ‘So you guys started seeing each other?’

  He winced. ‘I proposed to her a week after we met. I’m not good at the whole dating thing. I don’t have the patience for it.’ His smile is shaded with self-deprecation. ‘I steamrollered her rather than dated her.’

  I can’t help the soft laugh that escapes me. ‘Why does that not surprise me?’

  It’s further proof that when Jack wants something he goes after it—immediately and unequivocally. But it’s taken him two years to realise he wants my body, and there’s no sign he wa
nts more than that. He felt the same love for Lucy that my grandma describes having for Grandpa. So perhaps it is normal and common and I just don’t realise that because I’ve never felt anything like it.

  It’s pretty obvious Jack doesn’t feel it for me. Jealousy bubbles in my gut.

  ‘I wanted to make her life better. I wanted to fix it all. To take away her pain and make her smile and laugh.’

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ I say, with truth.

  I’ve only seen a few photos of Lucy around the mansion and, yes, on the internet, when I’ve allowed myself the morbid indulgence of looking her up. And in all of these pictures she is smiling.

  ‘I killed her, Gemma.’ His eyes meet mine for a second and then he looks away. ‘If she’d never met me she’d probably still be alive.’

  I freeze, ill-equipped to deal with this kind of confession. Nothing about it makes sense. And yet the way he drinks after he’s slept with someone... Is it possible there’s a darker truth at play? No. I know Jack. I know him through and through. He’s being dramatic, not literal.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  He swallows, then closes his eyes. ‘She was pregnant. We’d just found out and then the tests showed that she had cancer. I wanted her to start treatment immediately, but it would have meant her having an abortion.’

  Sadness for Jack, for Lucy and for the baby they would have had fills me all the way to the top of my soul. I don’t consider myself maternal, but I know instantly what decision she made and why.

  ‘She didn’t want to do that.’

  ‘No.’ His face is grim. ‘Even with treatment she had pretty much no hope.’ He clears his throat. ‘But still... There would have been a chance. If she hadn’t fallen pregnant.’ He shakes his head angrily.

  ‘Then she wouldn’t have found out about the cancer until it was too late,’ I say softly.

  Sympathy makes me crumble. How can I be strong in the face of his loss? I cup his face and draw him to me, kissing him gently, tenderly, hoping to reassure him and wipe away this baseless and yet unending guilt.

  He is still. Not kissing me back. His guilt is still cloaked about us, but then something clicks into gear and he groans into my mouth, cupping my butt and lifting my legs to wrap them around his waist, holding me against his arousal and letting me obliterate his sadness. For one more moment. One more night.