‘Dammit, Lucy! If Buffy has been maligning me behind my back…’ He looked about to explode.
‘No, no no! Not maligning you, James,’ she emphatically assured him. ‘Really, I’d call it flattering.’
‘Meaning I didn’t live up to it in your view?’ he thundered.
Lucy lost it.
The words just came tumbling out in a frantic effort to put this disaster behind her.
‘Buffy said you could go on and on. But since this was just a starter for the day, I quite understand that’s all you wanted. We are supposed to be working, so it’s only right to stop and get on with what we’re really here for,’ she reasoned, frenziedly trying to save the pride she had so successfully wounded, ruining everything in the process.
‘A starter for the day?’ he bellowed at her.
She almost jumped out of her skin. ‘That’s what you said!’ she hurled back at him—the wound to her own pride. Then to mitigate all the offence, she blabbed, ‘I’m sure you’re a great lover when you don’t have to think about work.’
‘But you thought…that was it?’
He was in a towering fury.
To Lucy’s shattered mind, escape was the only answer. ‘I’ll go and get ready for work,’ she mumbled, heading for the door into the corridor, intending to bury herself in the washroom at the end of it.
‘Hold it right there!’ A blistering command.
She paused and cast him a look of desperate appeal. ‘I do need to go.’
His eyes were flashing blue murder. ‘All right!’ he tersely conceded. ‘But don’t think we’ve finished this.’
Lucy trembled all the way down the corridor.
The realisation that she’d left James thinking she’d been merely trying out his equipment for size and stamina was deeply mortifying. She wasn’t like that. She’d never been like that. In wanting Buffy out of his life, she’d done herself a damage that might very well be irretrievable.
And spoilt all the intense, amazing, ecstatic pleasure she had felt with James. An anguished moan ripped through her whole body as she closed and locked the washroom door. She rested her head against it, wishing she could die. No, wishing she had died before he had spoken his spoiling words. He’d given her a taste of heaven, and now she had completely blighted any chance of ever recapturing it.
Hell couldn’t be worse than this, she thought in wretched despair. How was she going to face James again? How? She’d wanted so much to be special to him—uniquely special. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life on her own and her heart said James Hancock was the one who could fill the lonely gaps better than anyone else ever would. But now…he probably wouldn’t even want her as his secretary.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t skulk in the washroom forever. Don’t think we’ve finished this, he’d said. If she didn’t reappear soon he might come and bang on the door. More shame!
Lucy forced herself to set about using the facilities. She felt like weeping buckets. Only the fear of losing her new contact lenses, which might swim out of her eyes on a flood of tears, held her inner misery contained. All the trouble she’d gone to in order to spark his interest and hold it…and she’d blown it all with her a self-defeating burst of pride, compounded by a bitter edge of black jealousy.
So what if he thought their intimacy had provided a great start to the day?
It was a start, wasn’t it? A start she might have turned into more and more.
Why did she have to go and bring Buffy Tanner into it?
She stared at her kiss-swollen lips in the mirror above the sink, remembering the wild passion that had erupted between her and James. Mutual. Very, very mutual.
Don’t think we’ve finished this!
Maybe there was still a chance, a feeble hope whispered. If she could straighten out the misunderstanding with James, confess her real feelings…her mind instantly shied from laying herself on such a vulnerable line. Best to assess his attitude first before diving headlong into more disaster. Which meant facing him.
Lucy took several deep, calming breaths. She brushed her hair until her hand was steady enough to re-apply lipstick without wobbling. Courage, she sternly told herself, deciding her appearance was as good as it was going to get, and there was no point in lingering in the washroom any longer. Waiting might not improve James’ temper.
The walk back down the corridor felt like a walk to the guillotine. Her heart was in a nervous flutter. Her pulse was drumming in her ears. Remembering the flash of blue murder in James’ eyes, she almost wished she had a black hood over her head. At least then she wouldn’t see him working up to chopping her out of his life.
As it turned out, he was not waiting in her office. He had left the scene of the crime. Maybe he had decided to forget it and was setting up for work, all primed to put her firmly back in her secretarial place. Lucy was riven with uncertainty as to what to do now—wait for him to call her or take the initiative of telling him she was back?
The connecting door between their offices was open, beckoning her forward. She forced her somewhat tremulous legs to cross this last daunting distance, the need to see James—to gauge where she stood with him—driving her on.
He was not sitting at his desk. He was standing by the huge picture window, his back turned to her, his attention apparently fixed on the view of Sydney Harbour. His back looked very stiff, his shoulders squared, and his arms were not hanging loose. Folded across his chest, Lucy surmised, which instantly formed a forbidding picture.
Panic seized her.
She had gone too far, tossing Buffy’s words at him.
Her wayward tongue felt so thick she couldn’t speak. She swallowed hard, desperately working some moisture into her mouth. No point in panicking. Best to confront whatever was going on in his mind. Then she’d know the worst. Open the conversation with business. That was relatively safe.
‘Did anything happen yesterday that I should know about?’ she asked, trying her utmost to project an efficient secretary voice.
He swung slowly around, a frosty glare in laser blue eyes.
Lucy’s stomach was instantly reduced to jelly. He’d had second thoughts about what he’d done with her—second, third, fourth and fifth thoughts! In fact, he hated being faced with a reminder of it. His gaze sliced down and up her as though he wished he could disembowel her on the spot.
‘We’ll deal with this morning’s e-mails first,’ he stated icily.