Off Limits Read online

  ‘How did you sleep?’

  I blink at him, my eyes wide. ‘You’ve already asked me that.’

  ‘You didn’t answer.’

  I expel a sigh that speaks of anger. ‘Like I always do. Seriously, Jack. My desk is covered in paper. I have to get to work.’

  ‘I’m your work,’ he says with a shrug.

  Insolent bastard.

  He leans forward, and while his face is casual there is an urgency in the flecks of gold that fill his eyes. ‘Did you see him last night?’

  I want to remind him of the salient fact I pointed out the night before. It’s not his damned business. But I’m not sure I can say that with such conviction now that I’ve tasted his mouth; now that I’ve been stunned by his desire.

  Can I skirt around his question?

  ‘You’re my work? Okay, the thing is I have the New York guys waiting on contracts, you have a meeting in a week that I have to prepare for and Athens wants your input—which means my input—on a lease agreement. And I need to—’

  ‘Quiet.’

  God! Don’t hate me, but when he’s bossy I love it. And he’s almost always bossy.

  I glare at him across his desk; it’s best if he doesn’t know that this is just about my favourite version of him.

  ‘You’re fucking telling me to be quiet?’ I lean forward, and we’re close now: almost touching. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You’re pissed off.’

  ‘Damn right, I am.’

  His laugh is soft. Throaty. Hot. ‘Because we didn’t finish?’

  I flick my eyes shut. My cheeks are hot. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Are you in a relationship with him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Wolf DuChamp?’

  I hide a smile. ‘So you do know his name?’

  ‘Now I do.’

  His expression is unreadable. But deep inside me something stirs. Hope. Because isn’t there an implication there that he knows about Wolf because of me? Because he wants to know about my life?

  ‘So? What’s the deal?’ he asks.

  ‘Are you jealous?’ The words are a challenge; they escape unbidden.

  His response is razor-sharp. ‘Why would I be jealous?’

  Crap. A stupid challenge, apparently.

  ‘Forget it.’ I scrape the chair back and stand, my eyes not inviting argument. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘You haven’t answered me. How can it be all?’

  I expel a breath angrily. ‘I like him.’ I shrug.

  It’s true. Not romantically, necessarily. But he’s a nice guy. Good-looking. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already ruled out a relationship.

  ‘Are you fucking him?’

  My expression is ice—even I can feel the chill that spreads through the office.

  ‘Isn’t this the question that got us into trouble last night?’

  He stands up, slamming his palms against the desk, his eyes lashing me. ‘Are you fucking him?’

  It’s loud. Not quite a roar, but close to it. I’m startled. This is outside the bounds of anything that’s happened between us and we both know it. Then again, I guess we’ve obliterated boundaries now. They—like me—are in a state of flux. Changeability that is unpredictable and not good.

  ‘Go to hell.’

  I turn around and walk out of his office, but my knees are shaking and I feel really weird, as if I could cry—which, for your information, I haven’t done in years. I literally don’t cry. Not at sad movies. Not when my cat died.

  But I’m shaking, and if he follows me I’ll be really lost.

  He doesn’t.

  I storm over to my desk. I wasn’t lying or exaggerating. Piles of paper clutter every available inch of the thing. I turn my back on them and stare over the Heath, my eyes brooding.

  This is a damned nightmare, isn’t it?

  My brain nods along smugly. Told you so.

  Chapter Three

  IT HAS BEEN a week and I’m still here. What’s more, my brain and I are almost friends again. I have been behaving. Working hard, speaking politely, keeping my sexy, kinky ‘if only’ thoughts hidden behind a mask of disinterest.

  Of course it helps that I’ve hardly seen Jack.

  He’s been in Tokyo for four days, on a trip I would usually do with him.

  Here’s how it would go: Private jet. Limousine. Luxurious hotel accommodation—his apartment there is being remodelled. Meetings. Late-night debriefing.

  You get the picture, and you no doubt see the risk.

  ‘I have too much on,’ I said when he’d decided he needed to go personally. ‘Seriously, there’s no way I can leave the office now.’

  He ground his teeth together, looked at me as though I were pulling some soppy, emotional crap and then he nodded. ‘Fine.’

  He’s due back today and my desk is no clearer—it’s just a different heap of papers that covers it now. My phone bleats and I grab it up, my nerves not welcoming the intrusion.

  Perhaps my impatience conveys itself in my brusque greeting.

  ‘You sound like shit.’

  The cackling voice brings an instant smile to my face. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

  ‘Where’ve you been, lovey?’

  ‘Oh, you know...’ I eye the paperwork dubiously. ‘Living it up.’

  ‘If only. Let me guess. You’re at work?’

  ‘You called my work number, so I suspect you know the answer to that.’

  Another cackle. ‘Are you coming to see me any time soon? I have something for you.’

  ‘Another lecture on my priorities?’

  ‘You’re a smart girl. You know your priorities are out of order.’ She sighs. ‘Take it from a woman at the end of her journey. There’s a big, beautiful world out there, and even if you devote your life entirely to travelling you’ll still never get to see everywhere and everything.’

  ‘God, that makes me feel both nauseated and claustrophobic. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental even for you, Grandma.’

  She laughs. I love her laugh. My grandma shines a light with her smile alone.

  ‘Everyone’s allowed a bit of sentimentalism at some point, aren’t they? Especially at my age.’

  ‘I travel everywhere,’ I point out, flicking my calendar onto my screen and scanning it. ‘In fact I’m off to Australia next week.’

  Crap. With Jack.

  ‘Oh, yes? That wouldn’t be a work trip, would it?’

  I grin. ‘No. And by no, I mean yes—but I imagine I’ll still get time to pet a koala.’

  ‘You know they’re not just crawling around the streets? You actually need to go bush to find one.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘“Go bush”? Grandma, you’re a Duchess. I think it’s in the manual that you’re not allowed to “go bush”—or go anywhere, really.’

  I’m not joking. Grandma really is a Duchess. She married my grandpa, who was a decade her senior and had come back from the Second World War with what we’d now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. She was a nurse, and his family hired her to care for him—to “fix” him. She quit on the first day. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, she declared. He was just different.

  They got engaged that afternoon.

  It’s the only fairytale I believe in—and only because it has a macabre degree of reality to it. Grandma did fix him. He made her a princess—of the social variety—and she made him whole in a different way, just like she said.

  We lost him years ago, and now she’s the one who’s a little bit broken. But still amazing. The most beautiful person in my life. My other constant.

  Jack and Grandma. Great. An emotionally closed-off sexy widower that I should definitely know better than to want, and a champagne-swilling octogenarian, relic of the aristocracy. These two are the anchors in my life...

  I shake my head, my smile rueful.

  ‘Pish! I’ll have you know I went bush and did a great many other things in my time.’ She sighs heavily. ‘And now it’s your time—and you�
�re spending it in some ghoulish house on the edge of the moors.’

  ‘It’s a mansion, actually, with state-of-the-art offices. And it’s Hampstead Heath—not a moor.’

  ‘Still...’ A huff of impatience. ‘You’ll come this weekend?’

  ‘I promise.’

  I click in my calendar and make a note. Without entering my plans straight into my calendar I’m running blind. My eyes are dragged of their own accord to the entry for my parents’ anniversary. Ugh.

  ‘I suppose you got your invitation?’

  ‘Mmm...’ It’s a noise of agreement that could mean a thousand things. ‘Very elegant paper.’

  I stifle a laugh. ‘Stiff and unyielding.’

  My implication hangs in the air, unspoken.

  ‘Ah, well. At least there’ll be booze.’

  ‘And lots of it.’

  I run a finger over my desk. Grandma and I got rather unceremoniously sloshed at the previous year’s anniversary affair. If we hadn’t been related by blood to the bride du jour we definitely wouldn’t have been invited back.

  ‘We’ll do a rehearsal at the weekend,’ she says, and I hear the wink in her words.

  ‘Perfect. See you then.’

  ‘Good, darling. Ta-ta.’

  My phone rings again almost as soon as I hang up, and the smile is still playing on my lips as I lift the receiver and hook it beneath my ear. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Gemma.’

  His voice gushes through me like a tidal wave crashes over the shore. We’ve been in constant contact while he’s been travelling—but only via email or text, and only in the most businesslike sense.

  At no point has he reminded me of the way his mouth pushed me back, tasting me, robbing me of comprehension and hammering every last one of my senses. At no point have we discussed how he made me come against the wall of his office.

  Hearing his voice now is as intimate and personal as if he strode into the room and straddled me, reached down and kissed me...

  ‘I’m meeting some clients in the City. I need that presentation on the Tokyo project, as well as an up-to-date cost analysis and the report I had done. Meet me in an hour.’

  It almost sounds like a question, but we both know it isn’t. My body hums with vibrations. I’m going to see him again. It’s the most alive I’ve felt in a week. My abdomen clenches in anticipation. Of what?

  My body is getting carried away, but thankfully my brain is still lucid-ish. ‘Fine,’ I hear my brain say, cool and unconcerned. Liar.

  There’s a pause and I wonder what’s coming next. ‘Good.’

  The little tick of approval sends a thrill along my spine. I hate that. I repress my pleasure.

  ‘And, Gemma? Rose has something for you.’

  I gather the documents he needs and quickly run through the project presentation, then step out of my office, laden with files and my MacBook Air.

  Sophia and Rose are in the office they share, heads bent, and I smile crisply at them. ‘I’m meeting Jack in the City. He says you have something for me?’

  I address the question to Rose, who reaches into her desk and pulls out an envelope. It has his dark, confident writing across the front. My name, scrawled in his handwriting. I resist the urge to run my fingertip over the letters.

  ‘Thanks.’ I nod crisply and Sophia reaches for her phone before I’ve said another word.

  ‘Hughes—Miss Picton is travelling to the City.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I nod, pleased that things are working efficiently.

  I hired Sophia to replace the last of Jack’s assistants to quit. He’s run through about six since losing Lucy; my own job has been filled a dozen times at least. I think it kind of bonds Sophia and me—a similar determination not to fail runs through us both.

  ‘Will you be long? Shall I move your two o’clock?’ asks Rose.

  I can’t reach my phone and can’t remember off the top of my head what I have at two. I guess my blank stare conveys that, because Rose smiles at me kindly. How she’s managed to work for Jack for three years is beyond me. She’s a butter-wouldn’t-melt kind of woman, and yet there’s a quality to her that makes her oblivious to Jack’s demanding requests and lack of charm.

  ‘Carrie Johnson.’

  ‘Right.’ I nod distractedly, thinking only of the mysterious envelope. It’s small and there’s something inside.

  Carrie is my friend who’s looking for a new job—I have her in mind for something with the foundation, though I don’t know exactly what yet. She was made redundant in the last round of restructuring at her company, and she’s brilliant and incisive—far too clever to let go.

  ‘Yeah, shift it to tomorrow. Thanks. Please apologise for me.’

  ‘Here.’ Sophia scrapes her chair back and walks towards me with outstretched arms. ‘I’ll help you to the car.’

  I hand over some of the papers gratefully. The offices are in a separate wing of The Mansion, and we step out onto the short path that winds through a manicured garden before opening out into a gravelled courtyard. It’s really well designed to keep business away from personal life—not that Jack has much of a personal life outside his fuck-fests.

  At least, not that I know of.

  I slide into the back of the limo, distracted; I don’t think I even acknowledge Hughes, which is unusual because I like him and we usually have a nice banter going.

  You know everything there is to know about me.

  I’m startled. The words come from nowhere and I look over my shoulder, half expecting to see Jack’s cynical smile. Is that even true? Do I really know him that well?

  We’ve spent a heap of time together, that’s true. But I don’t know if I would say I consider us well acquainted. Out of nowhere the memory of his lips on mine sears me, pressing me back into the leather seat with a groan.

  I reach for the envelope, and now I give in to temptation, running my finger over his scrawled writing before tearing the top off.

  My emotions are mixed as the object inside falls into my palm.

  The distinctive dark red foil denoting a Cherry Ripe confectionery bar is instantly recognisable. I check the envelope for a note; there isn’t one. But his meaning is clear.

  I can’t help it. I tear the paper off the bar and inhale.

  Cherries will remind me of Jack forever. I don’t think I can say I hate them anymore.

  My gut clenches as I recall the intimate way his finger circled me, teasing every nerve ending, finding where to press to make me moan.

  Fuck.

  A shiver dances along my spine and it is still pulsing even as the car pulls into the underground car park of the City high-rise that houses Jack’s offices. I gather he used to be based here a lot more. It was only after Lucy died that he set up shop, so to speak, at his home.

  I make a point of smiling brightly at Hughes as I step out of the limo, laden with documents.

  ‘Need a hand, ma’am?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I demur.

  I can’t help but wonder if my cheeks are burning after the delicious thoughts that have travelled along with me.

  Why did he stop? What happened to push him away from me?

  I wanted everything. I wanted him. That technically makes me a complete idiot, right? Because I know he’s a total man-whore, and I know it would make my job pretty untenable to be fucking Jack, but in that moment none of it had mattered.

  Which only goes to show that I need to be even more on my guard with him.

  I am not going to let this get out of hand. There are plenty of hot guys out there. Plenty of men who can kiss you like you’re their dying breath.

  Except I don’t think that’s necessarily true...

  I’ve dated a fair few guys—most of them smart, handsome, powerful. I have a thing for that sort of man, I suppose. But none of them has done this to me. My mind is still mushy. I only have to close my eyes and remember the way it felt to have his body pressed hard to mine, almost holding me up with the weight of his strength, and I’
m having palpitations and flushing to the roots of my hair.

  The lift whooshes up and reminds me of the glass elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It seems to be building up speed as we get nearer the top, and my tummy lurches as I imagine it bursting through the ceiling and flying into outer space.

  It doesn’t.

  Is it wrong that I’m just a teeny bit disappointed? I always thought that looked to be so much fun—the way that elevator flew all over London’s skyline.

  The offices are buzzing, and it’s so strange to be back in this kind of environment that I freeze for a moment, simply soaking in the noises. Anywhere else I’ve worked, it’s been like this. I was like a headless chicken most days, surrounded by people who were every bit as harried and exhausted as I was. Exhaustion used to bleed into energy, so that I fed off a state of perpetual tiredness.

  Someone rushes past, arms full of papers, and that reminds me that I need to do something with the files I’m carrying. I begin moving quickly down the carpeted corridor, eyes straight ahead lest I be called upon to answer a query. The problem with being Jack’s right-hand woman is that people see me as a substitute for him. I cannot visit this office without being waylaid with a dozen queries at least. Only I don’t feel like talking to anyone at this point in time.

  The conference room is at the end of the corridor. Two enormous timber doors provide entry to it. I shoulder my way in, making straight for the table, and I’ve just dropped the files down onto its glass top when I realise I’m not alone.

  There’s a movement to my right. No, a shadow more than a movement. But it captures my eye and I turn around slowly, careful to keep my expression neutral, because deep down I know who it is.

  ‘You’re here already,’ I murmur, pleased with how unaffected I sound.

  Especially when he’s wearing his charcoal Armani suit with a crisp white shirt. And a dark grey tie. Oh, God, help me. I turn around, on the pretext of straightening the documents, but I feel the moment he starts to walk towards me and sweep my eyes shut.

  My heart is pounding and my blood is gushing. What happened to pretending not to be affected by him? To keeping him at a distance?