Free In the Market for Love by Nina Blake

pressed her lips against his.
    “ I didn’t make any promises,” she said, her mouth still close to his.
    Then she left.
    A bolt of excitement burned inside him. That woman knew exactly how to play with him. Tease him.
    What was he doing? He hadn’t told her about his marriage yet he’d found the chan ce to tell her about his mother and grandmother.
    Rachel certainly had a lot in common with the women in his fami ly. She’d had more than her fair share of trials with the death of her husband and the debts he’d left her. There was more to that story than she was letting on. Yet she didn’t dwell on it morbidly or wallow in self-pity. Instead she was filled with a radiant vitality.
    Jake shook his head. He’d wanted her to show some interest in his son. He’d mentioned Connor’s name several times, waiting for her to respond but she didn’t. Was it possible she wasn’t interested in children? Or in a man with a child?
    H e didn’t care. He seethed in a blaze of longing he’d never before experienced. He would have her.
    And now, what could possibly stand in his way?

Chapter seven
     
    Rachel had never known a man who made her feel the way Jake did.
    A tingle shot up her spine as she remembered the way he’d kissed her in the boardroom, the way he’d pushed her to the edge.
    It had been dangerous.
    And she wanted to go there again.
    It was only natural that kiss should come to mind since the agency offices were only a few floors above her. Rachel’s boss had asked her to hand deliver some important documents to their company lawyers who were in the same building as Agency 66.
    The agency had revised one of their concepts for the campaign and it was waiting to be collected. She was already in the building. It made sense for her to collect it now.
    She handed over the legal documents, closed the door behind her and ambled towards the landing with two banks of elevator doors on either side. Reaching for the lift button, her fingers trembled as they hovered over it.
    It was as though the hand wasn’t hers. It belonged to someone else.
    Up or down? Up to the agency? Or down to exit the building?
    Jake had stopped by her office unannounced. He hadn’t cared if she were busy or unavailable. He hadn’t thought it brash or rude. And it wasn’t. They were colleagues. And now they were something more. Surely she could be equally assertive.
    “Up or down?” she asked herself softly, surprised to hear the words come out loud.
    “Down please.” A deep male voice came from behind her.
    Rachel spun her head around to see a tall man in a business suit. Lost in her thoughts, she hadn’t even heard the shuffle of his footsteps on the marble floor.
    “Certainly,” she said.
    This time there was no hesitation, no tentativeness. She hit the button.
    “I’m going up,” she added.
    She arched her neck upwards and the recollection of the dizzying height to which Jake had taken her came flooding back to her again. She was going all the way to the top.
    *          *          *
    “Why did you come here today?” Jake asked, incensed that Bianca dared visit him at the agency over some petty matter.
    She flung her pale hair behind her shoulders. She was the mother of his child. That was the only reason she was still part of his life.
    “I had some time after I finished at the hairdresser,” she said.
    When she and Jake first met, her hair had been light brown, streaked a gentle honey blonde by the sun. Now it was chemically bleached and straightened. Stripped of all colour, it hung brittle and lifeless down her back.
    It struck Jake that their relationship was equally d rained of its lustre. There wasn’t much left between them and the little which remained was increasingly hard work. And extremely fragile.
    No wonder he’d never given her his grandmother’s engagement ring. Perhaps he’d known even then that things wouldn’t work out between them, though he hadn’t wanted to face it at the