Free Taming the Last St Claire by Carole Mortimer Page B

better off not thinking about just now.
    ‘Okay.’ She gave a stiff nod of her head. ‘But I’ll expect a full report from you first thing in the morning,’ she warned.
    ‘Yes, ma’am!’ Gideon echoed her mocking salute of two days ago.
    It was somehow an intimately shared gesture that made Joey feel uneasy as she turned away quickly to collect her coat from the back of her chair, keeping her back turnedfirmly towards Gideon as she thrust her arms into the sleeves of her jacket before straightening her blouse over the collar.
    She had accused him of lacking in emotion, but at the same time she knew she had never felt this seesawing of her own emotions until she’d met him. Aroused one minute. Amused the next. With both those emotions usually followed by anger. This uneasiness was new, though…
    Her expression was deliberately bland when she turned back to face him. ‘I’ll wish you goodnight, then.’
    ‘Night.’
    Joey gave him one last frowning glance, before picking up her bag and turning to leave, anxious to get away now. Away from the memories of being in his arms.
    ‘And, Joey …?’
    She tensed warily, schooling her features into mild curiosity as she looked back over her shoulder at him. ‘Yes?’
    His face was harsh: eyes glacial, cheekbones defined, jaw clenched. ‘I apologise for what happened earlier.’
    This wasn’t happening. It really
wasn’t
happening!
    Wasn’t it humiliating enough that they both still had the memories of those shared intimacies without Gideon actually apologising for them? That she had to try and work in the office where it had happened for the next three and a half weeks? With the added knowledge that Gideon was in the office next door?
    He shook his head. ‘It was ridiculous of me to accuse you of vandalising my car.’
    Joey’s breath left her in a controlled—relieved!—sigh; he wasn’t apologising for kissing and caressing her, after all.
    ‘Forget it, Gideon,’ she said pertly. ‘After all, you can’t help being a bigoted idiot!’
    Gideon found himself chuckling in spite of himself. Noone—absolutely no one—spoke to him with the same irreverence Joey did. ‘You know, one day you might actually say something nice about me,’ he said wryly.
    ‘You think?’
    ‘I can dream, can’t I?’
    ‘I shouldn’t hold your breath if I were you!’
    Those green eyes openly laughed at him for several seconds, beguiling him into sharing her amusement, before she turned and left the office, flashing him one last triumphant smile on the way out.
    Gideon moved to sit on the side of the desk, an amused smile still curving his lips. Joey McKinley was every bit as impossible as he had always thought her to be.
    She was also every bit as desirable as he had imagined she might be.
    Gideon’s smiled faded as he thought of those few intensely pleasurable minutes of making love to Joey. It had been like holding a living flame in his arms. Sensuously seductive. Fiercely hot. With the real possibility of that flame bursting dangerously out of control and consuming him.
    Joey herself was every bit as unpredictable, as volatile, as that flame. In fact, he thought uncomfortably, she was every uncertain, unpredictable emotion that he had been at such pains to banish from his own well-ordered life for the past twenty-five years.

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘G IDEON? ’ To say that Joey was surprised to answer the door of her apartment at almost nine o’clock that evening and find Gideon standing outside had to be an understatement!
    It was a less formal Gideon than she was used to seeing, in a thin black cashmere sweater that moulded to his muscled chest and the flatness of his stomach, over a pair of tailored black trousers. The gold of his hair contrasted dramatically with the black clothing, giving him the appearance of a devastatingly handsome fallen angel, and his appearance rendered Joey completely speechless for several seconds.
    He shouldn’t have come here, Gideon realised when