‘Okay. I think I’ve had enough of this.’ He looked around, searching for one of the members of staff.
Ellie stepped in to say quietly, ‘That’s insulting to James and it’s insulting to me, what you’re inferring.’
‘Well, it’s obvious that you two are an item,’ Naomi bit back without hesitating. ‘It’s obvious you’reall loved up. Do you honestly think you’re going to get anywhere with him whenIcouldn’t?’
Out of the corner of her eye, Ellie could see the worried face of the hotel manager as he scuttled at pace across the marble foyer.
‘You won’t!’ Naomi leaned in to Ellie.
‘You don’t understand...’ Ellie began, distraught at what was happening, and keen to eliminate herself from a scenario in which she didn’t feel she truly belonged.
How dared this perfect stranger think that she, Ellie, was so lacking in principles that she would have hopped into bed with her boss while he was seeing another woman?
Yet, shehadhopped into bed with him, hadn’t she? And the time lag between Ellie doing that and him breaking up with the stupendously beautiful blonde looking at her with ice-cold eyeshadbeen shamelessly brief, hadn’t it?
So Naomi had flown over here, desperate to effect a reconciliation...
And Ellie? Was clinging to these last few days just as desperate—even if her desperation was hidden behind a veneer of self-control and nonchalant acceptance of the ground rules laid down?
When she thought of their relationship coming to an end, to returning to London where she would plaster a bright, beaming smile on her face and pretend nothing had happened, there was a feeling of terrifyingemptinessunderneath all the bracing assumptions that this was something that would fade in no time at all.
How different was she really from the woman who had crossed the Atlantic to reconnect with a guy who no longer wanted her? How vulnerable wouldshefind herself when things resumed between them professionally, with this brief interlude relegated to the history books?
Had anything in her life prepared her for this? No. Too many years living a sheltered life had allowed James, with his larger-than-life personality, to roar through her with the force of an all-consuming tidal wave, battering down the door she had spent so many years keeping firmly shut between them.
Suddenly exposed to thoughts she had managed to wilfully avoid, Ellie felt her heart begin to race.
Low, urgent words were being exchanged between James and Naomi, but it was all just background noise, eclipsed by a weird thundering in her ears and a sickening realisation that she had managed to lose all control over what was happening in her life.
Having been immersed in her thoughts, she resurfaced to Naomi hissing under her breath that she would be sorry.
Sorry for what?
She looked at James in confusion, feeling as though she’d fallen asleep during the middle of a play only to wake up to an ending that made no sense.
‘James may have told you that he’s serious about you, but he’s not. Word to the wise:don’t get your hopes up.There won’t be a wedding ring on that finger any time soon!’
She spun on her heels, sweeping past the hotel manager who had halted in his tracks at some point, no doubt having been given an invisible signal by James. Eyes followed her, avidly curious. One or two phones were recording the whole episode but Ellie had too much on her mind to pay a blind bit of notice to any of that.
Instead, she scrambled behind James as he summoned the lift with a thunderous expression which he couldn’t quite manage to conceal.
As with the snapping smartphones, Ellie ignored the thunderous expression and said bluntly, just as soon as the doors had snapped shut behind them, ‘What did she mean by that?’
‘By what?’
‘Fingers and wedding rings! Did you tell her that we were some kind ofitem?’
‘It would have been difficult for her to have escaped that conclusion.’
‘No, it would have been very easy to have set her straight!’
The lift doors pinged open and she hurried after him, eager to have the privacy of a room with no chance of wagging ears or eyes on stalks.
‘We were holding hands when we entered the lobby,’ he reminded her with a level of calm that got on her nerves. ‘You were flushed with wanting me. We couldn’t wait to get back to the bedroom. A fool with poor eyesight would have been able to put two and two together.’
He was stripping off as he spoke, prowling the elegant sitting area that adjoined the massive bedroom.
All that startling masculine beauty. It had got right to her, demolished her defences, but she refused to allow it to leave her helpless. She wasn’t going todrift alonguntil things fizzled out between them in a few days’ time.
