Buch lesen: «Passion Becomes You»

CHAPTER ONE

JOSH was late in the office on Monday morning—a sure sign that his weekend had been a heavy one.

Jemma’s smile was wry as she dealt efficiently with the morning’s mail. She had to give it to Cassie Drake—the gorgeous brunette had certainly succeeded where countless before had failed, and managed to keep the equally gorgeous Josh Tanner on a nice rolling boil for three whole months!

A record for him. His women usually lasted only as long as it took him to bed them thoroughly. A low boredom threshold, Josh called it—and the added fact that he couldn’t resist trying it on with just about any presentable woman who happened to catch his wandering eye.

Jemma should know—he had tried it on her once or twice. Not that it had worked. She wasn’t into men—not men like Josh anyway. He looked at a woman and saw sex with a capital S, and nothing else. He was a rake. A handsome, conceited, feckless rake, and the last type of man she would ever let herself become mixed up with.

She’d already been there—via her father, witnessed what his overactive libido had done to her mother. And no way—no way would she ever let herself fall into that thankless trap.

Josh hadn’t given up on her that easily, though, she recalled with a smile. It had taken him two months to accept defeat. Another month to stop sulking about it. And since then—nearly two years ago now—he had made her his best friend and confidante instead.

Which was why she knew all about Cassie, and what she did to him. How just one look at her softly rounded, sensually luxurious figure and his temperature shot off the gauge.

‘Why her?’ he’d once demanded in sheer exasperated confusion. ‘She isn’t even my type! I like them tall and slender with legs that go up to their armpits like yours do. And long blonde hair like yours I can strangle myself with!’

‘My hair is not blonde, it’s sandy.’

‘Blonde,’ he’d insisted. ‘Golden-blonde like honey—hot honey.’ His eyes had begun to smoke. ‘Makes me want to—’

‘Lay one finger on me and I’ll tell Cassie!’

It was enough to cool his ardour. ‘What is that black-haired witch doing to me?’ he’d muttered and slammed away to his own office to brood.

Jemma thought she had the answer to that question, but refused to offer it to him. It would be bad enough working with him once he discovered it for himself without her bringing forward the dreadful day. But, in her opinion, Josh Tanner, the sexy blond rake of London town, had met his Waterloo—and at the hands of a woman who made no secret of what she wanted from Josh.

‘Marriage, children—the full works,’ she’d told Jemma recently while sitting on the corner of her desk waiting for Josh to take her to lunch. ‘I’m sick of playing the field. And anyway, I’m getting on.’ It seemed that in this day and age twenty-seven was really getting on by the expression on Cassie’s face when she said it. ‘So I started looking around me for a suitable candidate.’

Which happened to be Josh, something Jemma found rather strange since she considered her boss the last man on earth a woman would actually want to settle down with. After all, a rake was a rake in her book. Good fun to be with, great in bed, so the tale went, but not—definitely not—husband material.

‘I happened to meet Josh at a party I’d gone to with an old friend of mine,’ she’d gone on. ‘Fell for the self-obsessed jerk on the spot and would have had to be blind not to understand the lecherous look in Josh’s eyes. The air fairly sizzled between us, highly amusing Leon, I can tell you—you know Leon Stephanades?’ she’d asked, and at Jemma’s blank look had added, ‘Darling, you do not know what you’re missing. If I’d dared to set my sights so high, I would have gone all out to catch him instead of Josh. But Leon is—special. Very Greek. Very wealthy. And very, very possessive of his freedom. His father has tried all ways—threats, bribes, you name it—to get his son to marry the nice Greek girl with the hefty dowry he has picked out for him, but Leon refuses to so much as consider it. Caused quite a family rift, so I gather.’ Her beautifully sculptured brows had arched ruefully, the reason why coming in the next sentence. ‘So what chance does a not-so-nice English girl with nothing to offer him but a great body have against all of that? None,’ she’d answered her own question. ‘So I decided to go all out to catch Josh instead. Leon and I are still good friends, though—which Josh hates,’ she’d added with a grin that was all feminine guile. ‘He’s as jealous as sin of Leon because he thinks we had something going between us once, which is not true,’ she had insisted, though her expression had implied that she maybe would have liked it to be true. ‘But his jealousy is probably the only ray of hope he allows me in this crazy relationship we’re having—that and the fact he can’t get enough of me,’ she’d tagged on ruefully. ‘Leon says if I land Josh Tanner he’ll buy us a twelve-inch solid gold flying pig for a wedding present, because that’s how much of a chance he thinks I’ve got of pulling it off! But I’m working on it,’ she had concluded determinedly.

Cassie must have told Josh more or less the same thing, because it was only a few days after that conversation with Cassie that Josh had come striding into the office, growling, ‘I’m not marrying any woman! Not even for a solid gold pig!’

The phone began to ring now. Jemma picked up the receiver to have the familiar impatient bark of Josh Tanner hit her eardrums. ‘I’m late,’ he stated the obvious. ‘I’ve had one hell of a weekend. Only just woken up. You’re going to have to hold the fort until I can get there.’

‘What about your ten o’clock appointment with that big cheese from the Leonadis Corporation?’ she reminded him, glancing at her watch only to confirm that it was already twenty to ten. There was no way Josh could make it here in time.

Some very unsavoury vocabulary came slashing down the line. He had obviously forgotten all about the appointment. Not like Josh, she acknowledged. It had to have been a hell of a weekend. ‘Him of all people,’ he muttered. ‘That’s all I need today. Look, you’re going to have to try and put him off,’ he added impatiently. ‘See if you can catch him before he leaves his office. Make my excuses. And if that conniving bitch I’ve been seeing turns up—tell her I’ve died and gone to hell! And not to bother following me!’

‘Who?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Cassie?’

But Jemma was already talking to fresh air. Josh had slammed down the phone. She sat staring at the contraption for the space of ten seconds while trying to make head or tail of that final scathing remark, then shrugged, replacing her own receiver. It seemed that when Josh had said he’d had a hell of a weekend he’d meant it.

The lovers’ bed must have had thorns in it, she mused, and smiled to herself as she hunted out the number of the Leonadis Corporation.

It was only as she waited for someone to answer that she realised she had no idea what the managing director’s name was. Josh had made the appointment himself on Friday. And all he had said was, ‘I hate the damned man, but he’s hunting for new outlets to get his design components from and I need the business. So I suppose I’ll have to fanny round him.’

She grimaced, wondering what the man could have done to Josh to make him dislike him so much; her boss was not normally drawn to taking personal exception to potential clients. In fact, he was usually quite happy to ‘fanny round’ anyone so long as it brought him business.

‘The Leonadis Corporation?’

Jemma blinked. ‘Ah,’ she began, wondering how to get around this one without sounding like a fool. She explained who she was and why she was ringing, then added, ‘So I hoped to catch your managing director before he leaves the building,’ she concluded, mentally crossing her fingers that the receptionist on the other end would provide the name and save her having to ask.

‘Oh, I’m afraid you may be too late,’ she was informed. ‘But I’ll put you through to his secretary.’

‘Thank you.’ Jemma held the line while she waited to be transferred, but a single glance at her watch told her she was running out of time. ‘Damn you, Josh,’ she muttered to herself.

‘Mr Stephanades’s secretary speaking. Can I help you?’

Stephanades—now where had she heard that name before? ‘I do hope so,’ she said, then quickly went into her explanation again. ‘Mr Stephanades had an appointment with Mr Tanner for ten o’clock this morning, but I am afraid Mr Tanner has been delayed. Am I too late to save him a wasted journey?’

‘When I am already standing right here, I would say yes, you are much too late,’ a deep, smooth, beautifully accented and drily amused voice drawled at her from across the room.

Startled, Jemma glanced up—then felt everything vital inside her grind to a shuddering halt when she found herself staring at the most disturbingly attractive man she had ever seen in her life!

He was leaning in the open doorway, hands shoved into the pockets of his dark silk business suit trousers so that the side panels of his jacket had been shoved out of the way to expose the solid breadth of his chest beneath the crisp clean whiteness of his shirt. He was tall and dark, his black hair cut in a short, neat style which kept the hint of a wave contained to the silken top of his head. His bone-structure was square and strong, the skin stretched across it smooth and tanned. Black eyes were teasing her from between jet-black, sleepily curling lashes. And he was smiling at her with the most startlingly sensual mouth she had ever encountered.

Faultless, she decided hazily. He is absolutely faultless. He set her blood pumping in a way which left her in no doubt whatsoever as to what was happening to her. And the dark, coiling warmth she was experiencing in the pit of her stomach confirmed it.

This, she accepted, as she continued to stare breathlessly at him, was what it was all about.

Attraction. Dark and hot and rousing.

Her continued silence sent his sleek brows arching. Jemma heaved in a deep breath of air in an effort to pull herself together. The action lifted her breasts in a slow quivering motion beneath her white silky blouse then dropped them again in the same tremulous way, making those gorgeous lashes of his fall in two luxurious curves over his eyes as he followed the revealing motion. Her nipples stung painfully in response, and she blushed hotly with embarrassment, wishing for the first time ever that she possessed such a thing as a bra, because she didn’t have to look down at herself to know what he was witnessing happening to her.

‘Miss Davis?’ a slightly puzzled voice prompted in her ear.

‘I...’ She ran the tip of her tongue around her suddenly parched lips. ‘It—it doesn’t matter,’ she whispered breathlessly and replaced the receiver without really knowing she had done it, her eyes not leaving the man leaning in the doorway.

The smile widened on his lips, giving them a sensually knowing quality that annoyed her even as she accepted his right to display it. She knew who he was, of course. He had made that clear when he let her know he was there. But she could not for the life of her respond with anything like the light brisk, ‘Good morning, Mr Stephanades!’ Josh would expect of her. She wanted to know his first name, to feel it curl off her tongue like a caress. Her heart was bursting, her breasts tingling, her calves and thighs trembling with the full fermenting blast of his attraction.

‘Shall we leave now, or do you need a few moments longer to compose yourself?’

‘W-what?’ She blinked, blue eyes filling with bewildered confusion. ‘L-leave for where?’

‘My apartment,’ he explained, levering himself away from the door-frame to come further into the room, closing the door behind him. ‘I must say,’ he went on lightly before Jemma had a chance to digest the full import of his first remark, ‘I have in my life been propositioned in many ways, but never with such open and—dare I say it?—helpless invitation before. I find it rather—enchanting.’

Stung, Jemma closed her eyes, feeling the heat of embarrassed colour grow hotter in her cheeks.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she murmured, pulling herself together with an effort that cost her her dignity as she stumbled shakily to her feet. ‘You took me by surprise, Mr...’ She’d forgotten his name. His secretary had only just informed her of it, and already in her stupidity she had forgotten it!

‘Stephanades,’ he supplied it for her, the mockery spiked and cruel. ‘Leon Stephanades, at your service, Miss...?’

Leon, his first name was Leon. Jemma actually had to count to ten to stop herself repeating the name in the breathless little way she knew was hanging on the very end of her dry, quivering tongue.

On a jerky movement she straightened her body, ‘Davis,’ she supplied, lifting her chin to face him as coolly as she could, but she knew the hectic flush still colouring her cheeks said it all. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey, sir.’ That’s better, Jemma, she told herself encouragingly, refusing to look anywhere but at the left tip of his well shaped ear in case the look in his eyes sent her crazy again. ‘But Mr Tanner has been delayed and cannot make your appointment. I was hoping to catch you before you left your office, but as we both see—’ she tried a wry smile and it just about worked ‘—I was too late.’

‘How fortunate.’

Oh, good grief! She almost choked in appalled horror when his reply made her breasts tingle again. She closed her eyes, only opening them again when she was sure she was looking down at her desk and not at him. ‘If you will just give me a moment,’ she murmured a trifle hoarsely, feeling a fool—a damned fool, ‘I’ll find Mr Tanner’s appointment book and we can arrange another—’

‘I have a better idea,’ he cut in. ‘Meet me for lunch and we will discuss...arrangements over a light meal and a bottle of wine.’

Jemma almost died inside with shame, not in any way missing the double meaning. ‘I’m sorry.’ She stuck to the official meaning in his words with all the secretarial cool she could muster, but it wasn’t easy when her body was responding wildly to the other. ‘S-someone has to m-man the office when Mr Tanner isn’t here.’

‘Shame,’ he murmured, so softly that her eyes flickered up to clash with his, and her cheeks went even hotter at the expression on his face. This was not all one-sided. He was attracted to her also. ‘For I am flying to New York this afternoon and will not be back for at least a week. A long time to leave something like this—pending...’

Suddenly, the office door flew open again, and Jemma looked towards it in wild hope that it was Josh come to rescue her.

But it wasn’t Josh. It was Cassie, looking as mad as hell. ‘Where is that low-down, no-good son of a—?’ She stopped mid-flow, her unusually pale face lighting up when she saw the man standing in the centre of Jemma’s office. ‘Leon!’ she cried, and threw herself into his arms.

It was at that moment, and only that moment, that Jemma’s addled brain made the connection it should have made long, humiliating minutes ago. Leon. Cassie’s good friend, Leon.

And their mutual affection showed in the way he gathered Cassie into his arms then kissed her warmly on both cheeks before smiling indulgently down at her.

Jealousy whipped through Jemma like a flash fire, contracting her nerve-ends until she could barely breathe across the acid taste of it filling her mouth. If Josh had ever seen them together like this, it was no wonder he was so jealous.

At least Josh has the right to be jealous, a little voice taunted inside her burning head. You don’t.

You don’t even know the man!

God in heaven! She sat down heavily in her chair, trying desperately to throw off what was happening to her. She wanted to scratch Cassie’s eyes out. She wanted to drag her away from him. Scratch his eyes out!

‘How’s your love-life?’ he was saying teasingly to Cassie.

She pulled a wry face and wound her arms more tightly around his neck. ‘Not so good that this isn’t welcome,’ she said very drily. ‘More than welcome...’

‘Tanner not treating you well?’ The mocking brow lifted questioningly.

Cassie’s beautiful mouth took a downward turn. ‘He’s a rat of the first order,’ she scowled, her dark eyes flashing bitterly. ‘And I hate him!’

Jemma started at the other woman’s virulence. Leon Stephanades frowned. ‘Trouble?’ he asked.

‘Big trouble,’ Cassie said ominously, and pulled out of his arms to turn on Jemma. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded. ‘Skulking in some dark hole somewhere, waiting for the bogy-man to go away?’

Jemma opened her mouth to answer, wondering curiously just what had happened this weekend to make both Josh and Cassie this mad.

‘He’s...’ She was about to trot out the same excuse for Josh she had given to Leon Stephanades when the phone began to ring. Absently she picked up the receiver and chanted out the usual.

‘Did you catch him before he left?’ Josh’s impatient bark made her jump, and she pressed the earpiece tighter to her ear in an attempt to block Josh’s voice off.

‘Er—no,’ she answered carefully. ‘Can—can I call you back?’

Josh had never been slow on the uptake, and he wasn’t now. ‘He’s already there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Damn...’ There was a pause, then Josh muttered something and grunted. ‘You’d better put him on so I can apologise personally.’

‘I—er don’t think that would be a very good idea at the moment,’ she said, lowering her eyes and her voice from the two watchful people listening to her to add, ‘We’re not alone.’

She didn’t hear Josh’s answer to that, because Cassie had leapt at her desk, eyes flashing green fire—and something else that Jemma could not interpret but hinted oddly at terror. ‘Is that Josh? Give me that!’ she demanded, trying to snatch the phone from Jemma. ‘I have a few things I want to—’

‘I don’t want to speak to her!’ Josh grated into Jemma’s ear.

‘Give, Jemma!’ Cassie insisted, her eyes fire-bright with anger. ‘It’s time that rat learned a few home truths!’

‘Get her out of my office—now!’ Josh barked.

‘I can’t!’ she answered both of them, jumping to her feet in an effort to stop Cassie from wrenching the phone from her, and Josh hurled out a string of abuse aimed entirely at Cassie while Leon Stephanades viewed the whole scene with a look of lazy amusement sparking his eyes.

Jemma hated him at that moment. The whole thing was utterly ridiculous. She felt stupid being a part of it, and he thought it was funny!

He glanced up at her then, caught the look burning in her eyes, and suddenly the amusement left him to allow something so elemental to take its place that she gasped as everything inside her went haywire in answer to it, heart, lungs, pulses, even her skin—as if every minute hair follicle she possessed had been delivered an electric shock which set her whole body tingling.

Josh was growling, Cassie was shouting, but suddenly they might as well not have been there for all Jemma knew. She was lost in a seething hot raid on her senses, and what really threw her into hectic confusion was the fact that he was feeling the exact same way—and doing nothing whatsoever to hide it!

Then it all came crashing in. With the help of a sudden pained cry from Cassie, Jemma refocused her attention on the other woman just in time to hear her choke, ‘Whatever I am, you bastard, I am still pregnant with your child!’ Then she crumpled on to the floor.

In a state of stunned shock, Jemma watched the lightning-quick reactions of Leon Stephanades as he caught Cassie’s weight before she hit the floor, listened to Josh cursing and swearing on the other end of the line, his voice so thick that it was obvious he was feeling the pressure of his emotions as much as Cassie was.

‘The bitch trapped me, Jemma,’ he was saying hoarsely. ‘She deliberately laid a trap for me.’

Jemma did not know what to say. In the end, she just murmured, ‘I’ll call you back, Josh. I’ll call you back,’ and slowly replaced the receiver.

By the time she had collected a cool cloth and a glass of water, Cassie was beginning to show signs of life. Leon Stephanades had carried her into Josh’s office and placed her on the leather sofa in there and was now squatting beside her, gently chafing at one of her hands.

Jemma knelt down beside him and offered him the cloth. He took it without speaking, his expression grim to say the least as he applied the cloth to Cassie’s brow.

It was him Cassie saw when she eventually opened her eyes. ‘Oh, God, Leon,’ she whispered tragically. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Nothing, until you feel well enough,’ he answered calmingly. ‘Then I will take you home.’

Tears blurred the wretched green of her eyes. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ she claimed fretfully.

‘Didn’t you?’ he said. That was all, but even as Jemma stiffened in violent protest at what his tone was implying Cassie’s eyes were going dark with guilt, and on a pained choke she hid her face in her hands and began to sob wretchedly.

Shocked, Jemma sat back on her heels, the fact that any woman would set out deliberately to trap a man that way just too awful for her to take in.

Leon Stephanades turned his head to look at her, then grimaced. ‘Don’t look so appalled, Miss Davis,’ he drawled. ‘Your sex use this ploy all the time. To them, it is the next best thing to a genuine proposal—especially when it is a man like your Mr Tanner who is involved. Or me,’ he then tagged on cynically.

Feeling sick, Jemma got up and walked back into her own office. She felt ashamed of her sex, if what Leon Stephanades had said was true. Ashamed for Cassie whom she had liked and even admired for what she’d seen as her candid honesty about her intentions.

And Josh? She sat down behind her desk and wondered what she felt for Josh.

She felt sorry for him, she realised. For the first time in two years of witnessing the way he used women for his own purposes, she actually felt sorry for him.

Because, no matter how much he deserved his come-uppance in one way or another, he did not deserve this.

The phone rang. And for the next few minutes she had to turn her attention strictly to business as a spate of calls followed one on top of the other.

She was just replacing the receiver for the final time when Leon Stephanades came through to her office. ‘She is calmer now,’ he said. ‘When she has tidied herself, I will take her home.’

Jemma nodded dumbly, refusing to look at him, shock and distaste at what Cassie had done still evident on her face. He studied her for a moment, then closed the connecting door between the two offices and walked over to her desk.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I just find it hard to believe she actually did it deliberately,’ she confessed.

‘Women are devious creatures, Miss Davis,’ he said heavily. ‘They will go to any lengths to achieve their own ends.’

‘Thank you.’ She smiled tightly. ‘Generalisations like that keep the world turning, I suppose.’

‘They do in my sphere,’ he said cynically.

His sphere—who the hell did he think he was? Were all women supposed to be as unscrupulous as Cassie? ‘Well,’ she said, coming stiffly to her feet and making a play of gathering her telephone notes together, ‘I shall try to remember that when I decide to go hunting, and make a wide berth of your—sphere.’

‘Now that,’ he murmured, ‘would be a great pity.’

She glanced up, drawn by the husky message in his voice. Their eyes clashed, and she stopped breathing, drowning instead in the dark, deep promise burning in his eyes.

No, she told herself from some hazy distance in the back of her foggy mind. Don’t let this happen. Think of Cassie weeping in the next room. Think of Josh, just another version from the same mould as this man. Ruthless, selfish women-eaters.

He reached across the desk and touched a thumb to her mouth, drawing it downwards to part her lips a little. The softly padded flesh beneath his touch grew hot as blood began pumping into it, swelling it, assailing her with the most erotically sensual experience of her life.

‘No strings,’ he murmured so softly that she barely caught the words above the sudden roaring inside her head. ‘No commitments other than that while we are together we neither of us turn to anyone else. When it is over, we part honestly, as friends. I will be your only lover. And I will give myself exclusively to you.’

The hand moved, sliding beneath her hair to curve her nape, then he was leaning towards her, drawing her towards him across the width of the desk, and he replaced the caressing finger with his mouth. It was cool and firm, her own hot and excruciatingly sensitised flesh contracting in reaction so that she jumped, startled as if stung.

‘Think about it,’ he murmured as he drew away again. ‘And I will call you soon. Now.’ While she blinked, still lost in the sensual daze he had so easily wrapped around her, Leon Stephanades straightened up and became the cool businessman. ‘I will take Cassandra home. Tell Tanner I will be out of the country for a about a week. If he wishes to deal with me then he had better be available when I get back.’ He turned to go back to Josh’s office, then spun back again, his expression darkening when he saw how thoroughly he had incapacitated her, but that was all; he gave no other indication that he had just made the most audacious proposition Jemma had ever heard. ‘You can also tell him that, no matter what his decision will be about Cassandra’s condition, as her good friend, I expect her to be treated with respect. She is only human, after all, and humans are by nature fallible.’