me a chance to explain.”
“Perhaps you should look at this from my point of view. I leave an important meeting to find out whether or not my PA’s done the things I asked her to do, only to hear her blabbering unintelligible monosyllables.”
“I was getting to the point when you cut me off!”
“I didn’t have time to wait for you to get to the point!” he dismissed her hotly.
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t jump to conclusions!”
At that point JP rolled his eyes to the heavens and dragged a hand through his hair in exasperation. He appeared to be trying to compose himself before he lowered his gaze to her again and began to speak. “Alex, do you have any idea how much I’ve got on my plate?”
She nodded. “Of course.”
“Can you understand how I feel when I find myself dragged out of a meeting to deal with a demarcation dispute between my two PAs? Can you understand I might have trouble finding the patience to allow you ten minutes to give me your side of the story?”
Alex stared at him. Although she still felt annoyed she couldn’t dismiss his point of view. She opened her mouth to make this concession when she was suddenly given an unintentional shove from someone in the crowd behind her and was hurled straight into JP’s arms.
Instinctively she threw her own arms around his neck for support but he was already bearing her weight. His hands were at her waist, warm and strong underneath her suit jacket. She lifted her face to his and was bathed in a white heat radiating from his cobalt blue eyes. They were gleaming very brightly with a need she’d never seen in a man before, a predatory gleam that was at once exciting and terrifying.
He could have let her go then. She was steady enough to stand on her own two feet. But he didn’t. For three long seconds that felt like hours he held her against him, his body heat mingling with her own, the subtle aromas of his musky aftershave filling her senses.
How Alex wished she could explain it away. How she wished she could dismiss it as a meaningless hesitation to act on his part. But JP’s eyes were locked with hers the whole time, confirming the treacherous swing bridge of possibilities that had been thrown up over the canyon dividing them—a canyon more vast than he could ever begin to imagine.
“Are you hurt?” he whispered huskily, urgently.
“No, I’m okay, thank you,” she murmured back and then with a sickening lurch of her stomach she remembered who she was and the promises she’d made to another—Simon.
Somewhere in New Zealand Simon was working hard for their future, unaware that his fiancée was lolling about in the arms of her new boss, her body moving into nothing short of primeval overdrive at his touch.
A deep, all pervading rush of shame swept through her as she extracted herself from JP’s supporting hands to put distance between them.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered quietly.
JP watched her intently, his expression taut with self-restraint. “Don’t be. You liked that as much as I did.”
“I didn’t.”
“Well if that’s what it’s like to hold you when you don’t want me, I’d love to have you in my arms when you do.”
“Don’t JP … please. You’re my boss,” Alex implored, mortified by the all-consuming physical urges that still held her in their grip.
She was at a loss as to how to ward off the effect he was having upon her, ignorant until that moment that men and women could feel for each other what she was feeling for JP. She’d always been sceptical of those chick flicks where couples were almost out of their minds with desire for one another. She’d always assumed they were so far removed from reality it was almost laughable. Yet there she was, in touching distance of a man who she could hardly think straight around, who seemed to reach for a woman inside her no one had ever known before—a woman she hadn’t even dreamed existed until that moment.
“You’re right,” he said after a seemingly interminable silence. “Those comments were unforgivable. I apologise.”
“Let’s just forget it happened,” Alex suggested quickly.
JP nodded in response and his eyebrows drew together. “We need to talk about how we’re going to manage the work allocation from now on.” He straightened and shrugged his shoulders as though that would put the required formality back into their exchange. “I can’t have a situation arise again where I don’t