His Christmas Acquisition (7 page)

Galvanised, she sprinted across the room. If she had had time to think about it, she wasn’t sure whether she would have followed through, but as it was she acted purely on instinct, fired by a driving need to make sure that her sister didn’t completely blow the one chance she had in life of true happiness—because Greg was as good as it would ever get for Jessica.

She pulled Ryan around and saw his surprise mingled with relief to have been spared the embarrassment of having to gently but firmly turn Jessica away. Janie reached up
and curled her hand around his neck, and even at the height of her spontaneity she was stomach clenchingly aware of the muscularity of his body.

‘Wha …?’

‘Mistletoe!’ Jamie stated. ‘We’re under it. So we’d better do what tradition demands.’

Ryan laughed softly under his breath and curved his hand around her waist.

As far as days went, this one was turning out to be full of unexpected twists and turns; he couldn’t remember enjoying himself so much for a very long time indeed.

He didn’t know what had brought about this change in Jamie but he liked it. He especially liked the feel of her body as it softened against his. He felt her breasts push against his chest. She smelled of something clean and slightly floral and her full mouth was parted, her eyes half-closed. It was the most seductive thing he had ever experienced in his life.

Who was he to resist? He gathered her to him and kissed her, a long, deep kiss that started soft and slow and increased tempo until he was losing himself in it, not caring if they were spectator sport.

He surfaced when she twisted out of his arms and turned around. Reluctantly, Ryan followed her gaze, as did everyone else in the room, to the blond-haired man standing in the doorway with an overnight bag in one hand and a bunch of straggling flowers in the other.

R
YAN
looked at his watch and scowled. The offices were pretty bare of staff, just the skeleton lot who got more of a kick at work at their computers, creating programmes and testing games, than they did in their own homes.

Not the point.

The point was that it was now ten fifteen and Jamie should have been in one hour and fifteen minutes ago. Christmas day had come and gone. Boxing Day had come and gone. She hadn’t booked any holiday time beyond that.

He swung his jean-clad legs off his desk, sending a pile of paperwork to the ground in the process, and stalked across the floor-to-ceiling window so that he could look outside and, bad-tempered, survey the grey, bleak London streets which were eerily quiet in this part of the city.

He was still reeling from the events of Christmas day, much to his enduring annoyance. He had gone to satisfy a simple and one-hundred-percent understandable curiosity and had got the equivalent of a full round in a boxing ring—starting with that little conversation in the kitchen with Jamie, followed by her kissing him and culminating in the appearance of the man at the door.

It had been a comedy in three acts, except Ryan couldn’t be further from laughing.

He could still feel the warmth of her mouth against his.
The memory of it had eaten into his Boxing Day, turning him into an ill-tempered guest at the party given by his godchild’s parents, a party which had become a tradition of sorts over the years and which he had always enjoyed.

Glancing at his watch again, he was beginning to wonder whether Jamie had decided to jettison work altogether. A week ago such an act of rebellion bordering on mutiny would have been unthinkable, but in the space of a heartbeat all preconceived ideas about his quiet, efficient, scrupulously reserved secretary had been blown to smithereens.

He was in the process of debating whether to call her when his office door was pushed open and there she was, unbuttoning her sensible black coat and tugging at the scarf around her neck.

‘This is getting to be a habit,’ Ryan grated, striding back to his desk and resuming his position with the chair pushed back and his long legs extended to the side. ‘And don’t bother to try and tell me stories about delays on the Underground.’

‘Okay. I won’t.’

Things had irreparably changed. Over a fraught day and a half, Jamie had resigned herself to that and come to the conclusion that the only way she could continue working for Ryan was if she put every single unfortunate personal conversation they had had behind her. Lock them away in a place from where they couldn’t affect her working life. And the kiss …

The horror of that moment and the fact that it still clawed away in her mind was something that would have to be locked away as well.

All the same, she was having a hard time meeting his eyes as she relieved herself of her coat, gloves and scarf and deposited the bundle of post on his desk, along with her laptop computer, which she switched on in an increasingly tense silence.

‘Look, I’m sorry I’m late,’ she eventually said when it seemed like the silence would stretch to infinity. ‘It’s not going to be a habit, and you know that I’m more than happy to work late tonight to make up for the lost time.’

‘I can’t have unreliability in my employees—beside the point, whether you’re happy to work late or not.’

‘Yes, well, I hoped that you might understand given the fact that half the country is still on holiday.’ She couldn’t prevent the edge of rebelliousness from creeping into her voice, but the past day and a half had been beyond the pale and nothing seemed to be changing. Greg had appeared on the doorstep, putting a swift end to proceedings on Christmas day. Who on earth had been willing to listen to Jessica’s histrionics—because her sister had had absolutely no qualms about letting the rest of the world into her problems. Apparently no one. There had been a half-hearted attempt on the part of some to try and clear the sitting room but within forty-five minutes they had all dispersed—including Ryan, although in his case Jamie had had to push him out of the door. In true intrusive style, he had been sharply curious and more than happy to stick around. Jamie was having none of it.

And since then her house, the bastion of her peace of mind, had become the arena for warfare.

Jamie now knew far too much about the state of her sister’s marriage for her liking.

With nowhere else to stay, and determined to put things right, Greg had now taken up residence in the sitting room, much to Jessica’s disgust. Everything was chaotic and, although Jamie had sat them both down and gently advised them that perhaps sorting out their marriage problems was something that could be better done in their own home, there seemed to be no glimmer of light on the horizon.

Jessica was standing firm about needing her space and
Greg was quietly persistent that he wasn’t going to give up on them because she was having a temporary blip.

And now Ryan was sitting stony-faced in front of her and she wasn’t sure that she could bear much more.

‘Can we get on with some work?’ she half pleaded. ‘There are a few contracts that you need to look at. I’ve emailed them to you, and I think Bob Dill has finally completed that software package he’s been working on.’

Ryan discovered that he had been waiting to see how things would play out when she showed up for work. Now, it dawned on him that she intended to bury the whole Christmas episode, pretend none of it had ever happened.

He steepled his fingers under his chin and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Yes,’ he agreed, tilting his head to one side. ‘We certainly could have a look at those contracts, but that’s not imperative. Like you said, half the country’s still recovering from Christmas.’ It was interesting to see the way she flushed at the mention of Christmas. ‘Which brings me to the subject of Christmas day.’

‘I’d rather we didn’t talk about that,’ Jamie told him quickly.

‘Why not?’

‘Because …’

‘You find it uncomfortable?’

‘Because …’ Flustered, Jamie raised her eyes to his and found herself consumed with embarrassing, graphic recall of that kiss they had shared. She had never, in the end, even shared a kiss with Greg. All through that time she had dreamed about him, the closest she had come to actually touching him was on the odd occasion when his hand had accidentally brushed hers or when he had given her a brotherly peck on the cheek.

So why had she spent her every waking hour thinking about Ryan Sheppard, when she had happily worked alongside
him for ages and always managed to keep him at a healthy distance? Was she so emotionally stunted that she had just switched infatuation? Did she have some kind of insane inclination to fancy the men she worked for?
No!
Jamie refused to concede any such thing. ‘Because we have a perfectly good working relationship and I don’t want my private life to start intruding on that.’

‘Too bad. It already has.’

He abruptly leaned forward and Jamie automatically pressed herself back into her chair.

‘And,’ he continued remorselessly, ‘it’s already affecting your working life. That guy who appeared on your doorstep …’

‘Greg,’ Jamie conceded with reluctance. ‘Jessica’s husband.’

‘Right. Greg. He’s staying with you, is he?’

Jamie flushed and nodded. She looked wistfully at her computer.

‘And you have no objections to having your house turned into a marriage counselling centre?’

‘Of course I object to it! It’s an absolute nightmare.’

‘But they’re still under your roof.’

‘I don’t see the point of discussing any of this.’

‘The point is it’s affecting your life and you can’t separate the strands of your private life from your working life. You look exhausted.’

‘Thank you very much.’

‘So what are you going to do about it?’

Jamie sighed with frustration and shot him a simmering, mutinous look from under her lashes. Ryan Sheppard had a restless, curious mind. He could see things and approach them from different angles with a tenacity that always seemed to pay dividends. Where one person might look at a failing company and walk away, he looked and then
looked a bit harder, and mentally began picking it apart until he could work out how to put it back together in a way that benefited him. Right now he was curious and, whilst she could hardly blame him, she had no intention of becoming his pet project.

But she grudgingly had to concede that he had a point when he said that the strands of her life were interwoven. She had shown up late for work because she had slept through her alarm, and she had slept through her alarm because Greg and Jessica had been engaged in one of their furious, long-winded arguments until the early hours of the morning. The muffled sound of their voices had wafted up the stairs and into her bedroom and she just hadn’t been able to get to sleep.

Something in her stirred. She had never been a person to share her problems. Deep ingrained into her psyche was the notion that her problems belonged to her and no one else. It seemed suddenly tempting to offload a little.

‘What
can
I do about it?’ she muttered, fiddling with her pen.

‘I can immediately think of one solution—kick them both out.’

‘That’s not an option. I’m not about to kick my sister out when she’s come to me for help and support. Believe me, I know all of Jessica’s failings. She can be childish and badly behaved and irresponsible, but in times of crisis she needs to know that she can turn to me.’

‘She’s a grown adult. She’s fully capable of helping and supporting herself.’ He was beating his head against a brick wall; he could see that. Lazily, he allowed his eyes to rove over her body, finally coming to rest of that full, downturned mouth. Out of the blue, he felt himself begin to harden and he abruptly looked away. Good God. It was as though his body was suddenly possessed of a mind of its own.

‘You’ve met my sister. You can’t really believe that.’ Jamie smiled to lighten the mood, but Ryan’s eyes remained grimly serious on her.

‘Because you took her on as your responsibility at a young age doesn’t mean that you’re condemned to stick to the program till the day you die, Jamie.’

‘My mother made me promise that I’d be there for her. I … You don’t understand. I think of my mother asking me to make sure that I looked after Jessica, and my hands are tied. I couldn’t let her down. And I couldn’t let Greg down.’

Ryan stared at her and noticed the way she glanced away from him, offering him her delicate profile, noticed the way her skin coloured.

He thought back to that kiss, the way she had pulled him towards her and curved her small, supple body against his, offering her lips to him. And then Greg’s appearance at the door, like an apparition stepping out of the wintry depths. His brain was mentally doing the maths.

‘Why would that be?’ he asked casually. Her eyes weren’t on him as he strolled towards the coffee machine, which was just one of the many appliances he kept in his vast office to make life a bit easier when he was working through the night. He handed her a mug of coffee and Jamie absent-mindedly took it. It was her first cup of coffee of the morning and it tasted delicious.

‘It’s pretty hard on him,’ she confessed, watching as Ryan rolled his chair towards her and took up position uncomfortably close. In fact, their knees were almost touching.

‘Explain.’

‘He’s doing his best with my sister. She isn’t the easiest person in the world. He’s very calm and gentle but she more than makes up for it.’

‘Calm and gentle,’ Ryan mused thoughtfully.

‘He’s a vet. He has to be.’

‘You worked for him, didn’t you?’

Jamie shrugged and said defensively, ‘I did, a million years ago. The point is, he likes talking to me. I think it helps.’

‘He likes talking to you because you’re a trained marriage counsellor?’ Ryan found himself stiffening with instant dislike for the man. He had known types like him—the kind, caring, calm, gentle types who thought nothing of taking advantage of any poor sap with a tendency to mother.

‘No, Ryan. I’m not a
trained marriage counsellor
, but I listen to what he says and I try to be constructive.’

‘And yet you haven’t constructively told the pair of them to clear off because they’re wrecking your life. My guess is that your mother wouldn’t like to think that you’re sacrificing the quality of your life for the sake of your sister.’

‘Not all of us are selfish!’

‘I’d call it practical. Why did you leave?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Why did you leave your job working for the gentle vet?’

‘Oh.’ Jamie could feel herself going bright red as she fished around for a suitable reply.

‘Was it the weather?’ Ryan asked helpfully as he drew his own conclusions.

‘I … Um, I guess the weather did have something to do with my decision. And also …’ Coherent thought returned to her at long last. ‘Jessica was old enough to stand on her own two feet and I thought it was a good time to start exploring pastures new, so to speak …’

‘And, I guess, with your sister marrying the caring, sharing vet.’

‘Yes. There was someone to look after her.’

‘But I suppose you must have built up some sort of empathetic relationship with our knight in shining armour who rescued you from your sister,’ Ryan encouraged speculatively.
His eyes were sharp and focused, noting every change of expression on her face. She had a remarkably expressive face. He wondered how he could ever have missed that, but then again this was new territory for both of them.

‘Could you please stop being derogatory about Greg?’

Ryan glanced down. There was no need for him to ask her why. He already knew. Had she actually been in love with the guy? Of course she had. It was written all over her face. And that, naturally, would have been why she had fled the scene of the crime, so to speak. Had they slept together?

Ryan found that that was a thought he didn’t like, not at all. Nor did he care for the fact that his conclusions were leading him inexorably in one direction.

That kiss she had given him, the kiss that had been playing on his mind for the past two days, had had its roots in something a lot more unsavoury than just a woman with a little too much wine in her system behaving out of character for the first time in her life.