‘And don’t worry about pay.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘I’ll make sure you remain paid in full until you find another job, whenever that may be.’
They stared at one another in heated silence for a few electrifying seconds, and he was the first to spin round on his heels, his body rigid with furious tension.
She could barely watch as he got dressed, his back to her. What else was left to say when he was at the bedroom door, bag in hand, ready to go?
Nothing.
She lay down and rolled onto her side, turning away, waiting until she heard the soft click of the bedroom door being shut behind him.
CHAPTER TEN
NOCOMMENT!
Sprawled in his expensive leather chair in front of his wood and steel desk, James glared at the computer screen winking at him, demanding a level of attention he was incapable of giving.
No commenthad been his catchphrase ever since he had returned to London a day and a half ago.
No commentto the reporters eager to get a scoop.No commentto his employees, who had backed away as soon as they had recognised the warning intent in his eyes should they choose to pursue their curiosity.
Thus far, he had fielded three phone calls from an excitable Izzy, demanding to know what was going on and asking when the big day was going to be, because she would have to start shopping for a hat. He had done his best to quell her ridiculous enthusiasm but for once he was discovering that there were situations in life he could not readily cope with.
He impatiently pushed himself back from the desk and swivelled the chair to stare out of the window. For once, his door was closed. No one dared knock on it. He had been like a bear with a sore head and they all knew better than to disturb him.
Ellie.
He’d texted her. Obviously, that had been perfectly reasonable, because he had to know when ‘no comment’could morph into ‘things didn’t work out as expected’.Today’s hot-off-the press news would, he knew, be history within days, but still, he needed to know how to play things out, and he had given his word to her that he would wait until she was comfortable telling her mother the truth.
She’d replied to his embarrassingly long-winded text quite simply.
All’s fine here, thanks. Will keep you in the loop. I will tell Mum it’s off by the end of next week.
He’d be in Hawaii by then.
He would be facing curious family members and he would not be able to shut himself inside an office, having pinned a metaphoricalEnter at your own risksign on the door.
He would...
What would he do? Say?Think?
For a few seconds he was swamped by a suffocating sensation of powerlessness. It was like a blanket over him, stifling his ability to think straight. All he could see in his mind’s eye was Ellie, with her smooth, calm face, her intelligent grey eyes and, behind that calm intelligence, all that fiery, sexy passion that had energised him a way he would never have imagined possible.
Walking away had made sense, but for once doing whatmade sensehad not worked in his favour. Because, if anything, she was in his head more than she had ever been.
Why?He was conditioned to run the minute things started getting heavy with a woman. So why was he dragging his heels now? Especially when Ellie had been the one to fire the starting gun. Was it because, for all his illusion of control, the simple truth was that he had always ambushed all chance of getting serious with anyone by choosing women he’d subconsciously known would end up boring him? Until Ellie had entered his life, leaving him here, not knowing what to do...
He frowned, absently reached for his phone, recognising that initial one-second flare of anticipation that there might be a missed call or a text waiting to be read from her, then opening up the photos he had taken in Barbados.
Yet again, he was surprised at just how many he had taken. There were pictures of her laughing, looking at him over her shoulder, sitting on the beach, making funny faces because she didn’t want him pointing the lens at her, even though the provocative flare in her eyes told another story.
Suddenly suffused with restless energy, thoughts previously sluggish accelerating with astonishing speed towards conclusions that now poured out from behind carefully sealed doors, he vaulted to his feet and strode to grab the trench coat draped over the back of a chair.
Ellie heard the sound of the doorbell with a grunt of displeasure.
It was a little after nine-thirty in the evening. Her mother was asleep and she was staring at a book on her lap, masochistically enjoying the pain of replaying images of James in her head and speculating on a future that held no joy at all.
At this very moment in time, she was staring down the barrel of no job, no desire to return to London, a deadline within which the stories she had started spinning to her mother about her break-up would have to accelerate and a bottomless pit of memories that promised sleepless nights wracked with misery.
The last thing she needed was one of her mother’s friends popping by to drop something off. From experience, she knew that many of her mother’s friends, all of them dog owners, thought nothing of having that last dog-walk late at night, using it as an excuse to deliver something or other, or nip in for a cup of coffee and a quick chat.
