emotional train wreck for most of the day.”
Meanwhile Alex was screaming silently at herself to move: sideways, backwards—anywhere to put space between them so that she could collect her resolve and get inside to make that phone call to Simon. But she was frozen in time and space as JP filled her vision, her hearing, her sense of smell. All that was missing was taste and touch and that seductive notion made her bite her bottom lip in uneasy response.
“The only person turning me into an emotional train wreck is you,” she replied but immediately regretted her words. JP would not let them go without comment and his mouth was already shifting into a satisfied smirk.
“An interesting admission,” he purred finally, the edges of his eyes crinkling in that heart-stopping way of his.
“Not one you need to take any credit for,” she argued, her chin rising so that she could look him clear in the eye.
“Oh really?”
“For some reason you’ve decided turning my life upside down should be taken on as a personal crusade,” she began, seriously unnerved by his closeness. She was also trying to ignore the fact that his eyes were shamelessly resting on her lips, already full and sensitive. “You seem to have a problem with not trying to rescue me and I seem to have a problem with … well, I have too many problems to list. But whatever is happening between us …”
“Falling in love?” JP’s cobalt blue eyes were suddenly looking about as warm and inviting as the North Sea in winter.
“Don’t,” Alex snapped and with fingers chilled from her recent swim she fumbled uselessly to get her key into the door before the whole bunch fell with a clatter at JP’s feet. He scooped them up immediately.
“Please can I have my keys,” Alex demanded hotly.
JP turned to push the key into the door but instead of standing back and letting her in he pushed it open and stepped inside, holding it back for her to pass through into the hallway.
Alex gaped at him. “I’m not going in there with you,” she objected, her heart racing at the prospect of being alone with him in her apartment. It was one thing to revolve around him in the confines of their busy office, quite another to spend time with him in her quiet, warm home with its soft lighting and romantic ambience.
“Yes, you are coming in,” he demanded. “We have to talk and if we stay out here we’ll have neighbours on our backs.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
“You mean you don’t trust yourself.”
He raised questioning eyebrows at her when she didn’t respond. And he was right. She didn’t trust herself around him at all.
“There’s been a significant development at work, Alex. I need you to know about it before you go back tomorrow.” There was no teasing spark in his eyes now. His mouth was a straight, hard line.
“What is it?”
“Come inside. I’m not going to discuss it out here.” He cocked his head in that way he did when he wanted her to follow him somewhere and then her legs were obeying and carrying her inside without reference to any direction from her head.
“What on earth is so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow?” Alex asked when she’d moved into the dim hallway. She didn’t like the fact that the two of them were sharing such a quiet, confined space but it was preferable to taking him any further into the intimate privacy of her small home.
“There’ll be a new partner in the litigation section tomorrow.”
“That’s the news that couldn’t wait?”
“Her name’s Caroline Cartwright,” he continued in a flat voice as though she hadn’t spoken, as though he was willing himself to continue despite anything she might say.
Caroline, Alex thought to herself. Why was that name ringing a bell? Then it came back to her. Of course, the woman in the boutique and Marie from the legal centre had both asked after a ‘Caroline’ in his life.
“Until recently Caroline and I were in a serious two year relationship.”
Alex searched his face for some indication of what he was feeling but it was a still mask in the grey light, the picture of control and neutrality. She just wished she could say the same about herself but she couldn’t, for at that moment she was feeling very strange indeed.
The problem was she’d never, ever thought about JP in terms of anything but what he was to her. From day one he’d made