Honeymoon with the Boss

‘I think that really would be uncomfortable,’ she said with a nervous smile.

‘Quite.’ Tom’s voice was very dry and, when the cool grey eyes looked into hers, Imogen was suddenly convinced that he could see right into her mind.

Clumsily, she pushed back her chair, just in case he really had developed an uncanny ability to read her thoughts.

‘Well, I think I’ll go to bed.’ Was that really her voice? Since when had she taken to squeaking?

‘It’s been a long day,’ Tom agreed, getting to his feet as well.

Imogen stood there, not knowing what to do with her hands and not quite sure how to get out of the room. She wouldn’t think twice about hugging a friend goodnight.

Tom wasn’t an ordinary friend.

But unless she could treat him as one, their conversation tonight would have been a complete waste of time.

Don’t be so silly, Imogen scolded herself. They had laughed together. They had talked perfectly easily. Everything had been fine until she’d started thinking about the bed. That had been stupid. The last thing she wanted was to start feeling tense around him again.

So she put on a bright smile and went round the table towards him.

‘Goodnight, Tom,’ she said, opening her arms.

It was obvious that he wasn’t expecting her to hug him. Taken by surprise, he stood rigidly as she pressed her cheek against his, and it was a moment before his arms closed awkwardly around her.

Anyone would think he had never hugged a woman before.

As Imogen stepped back, Tom found his voice at last. ‘Goodnight,’ he said gruffly.

‘Well…’ Her smile almost faltered but she pinned it back into place. ‘See you in the morning, then.’ She turned for the bedroom. ‘Sleep well.’

Oh, yes, sure he’d sleep well! Easy for Imogen to say, thought Tom as he tried to make himself comfortable on the long sofa. She didn’t have to lie in the dark, remembering the feel of her body pressed against him, the feel of her arms around him.

He had been shockingly aware of her softness, of the smoothness of her cheek. The smell of her shampoo and the clean, fresh scent of her skin had struck him like a blow, and when he had recovered enough to respond to her gesture, his hand had rested on the small of her back, and he had felt the soft cotton of her dress shift and slip over her body.

Tom’s mouth dried at the memory, and he turned restlessly on the cushions. He should be thinking about Julia. This should have been his wedding night, after all.

He tried to recall the sick churn of rage and humiliation when he had to tell those people Imogen hadn’t managed to warn that the wedding was off. He had loathed seeing the sympathy in their eyes, hated knowing that they saw him now as the one who had lost, the one who couldn’t make it work, the one they could all feel sorry for. But now, listening to the shrill of the insects in the tropical night and the distant boom of the ocean on the reef, none of it seemed to matter quite so much.

Tom was glad that he hadn’t loved Julia the way Imogen had thought he should. If he had, he would be lying here in the dark, longing for her, raging against Patrick, who had strolled in at the last minute and thrown all his careful plans into confusion.

Instead of which, he was remembering how Imogen had looked before she grabbed that towel. He was thinking about Imogen alone in that big bed, and wondering what it would be like to lose himself in that lush, lovely body.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing.

Imogen…Who would have thought she could look like that? So warm, so soft, so disturbingly, unexpectedly desirable?

Tom punched the cushion beneath his head a few times and tried lying down again. The friends thing had seemed a good idea at the time, but he had a nasty feeling it wasn’t going to be that easy in practice.

Especially not if she was going to keep hugging him like that.

Imogen was his PA, for God’s sake, he reminded himself savagely. He had barely noticed her before, and now was not the time to start. He didn’t want to spend the next three weeks not thinking about her skin, about the curve of her breasts, the silky tumble of her hair, the way her blue eyes reflected the sunshine…

The cushion took another pummelling.

Friends, that was all she had suggested. A friend wouldn’t be thinking about that glorious body. A friend wouldn’t be fantasising about unzipping that dress, letting it fall in a pool to the floor so that he could explore every inch of that warm, creamy skin.

A friend would remember that she was still more than half in love with her college sweetheart. He would know that she had been hurt and that the last thing she needed was her boss lusting after her body.

No, friends were just…friendly. Friendly was all he could be.

Imogen woke slowly. For a long while she just lay there without thinking, simply savouring the comfort of the bed and the delicious awareness of sunlight striping across her eyelids.

When she opened her eyes at last, the first thing she saw was a huge wooden ceiling fan, turning lazily in the turgid air. At the window, wooden blinds let in bright slivers of light and, as her ears became attuned, she could hear a bird squawking somewhere and the indistinct murmur of the ocean.

In spite of the fan, it was already hot and Imogen stretched luxuriously, filled with a sense of well-being. It wasn’t every day you woke up in paradise.

What was she doing in paradise?

Imogen sat bolt upright as she remembered, and she grabbed her watch from the bedside table. It was almost ten o’clock.

Throwing back the sheet, she wrapped a sarong around her and padded into the living area.

It was empty, except for a laptop open on the dining room table, a cursor winking reprovingly at her, but the smell of coffee drew her to the kitchen tucked away behind a room divider, where she found Tom shaking freshly ground beans into a cafetiere.

‘Good morning,’ she said, suddenly shy.

‘Morning,’ said Tom.

Imogen clearly thought nothing of hugging her friends goodnight, and he was a little nervous in case she greeted them the same way in the morning, so it was a relief to discover that she limited herself to a smile. He had been braced to resist another hug, but he didn’t fancy his chances of keeping his hands to himself, especially not when her blue eyes were clouded with sleep, her hair was tousled and she was wrapped only in a strip of cloth that would unwind at the merest brush of his hands.

Tom concentrated fiercely on the coffee. It was all very well resolving to be friendly, but much harder to remember when she stood there, smiling, looking dishevelled and unaccountably desirable.

Friends shouldn’t smile like that, he thought crossly. PAs definitely shouldn’t. If Imogen hadn’t been both, it was the kind of smile that would make him want to take her straight back to bed.

Luckily she was his PA, so Tom turned firmly away to pour boiling water into the cafetiere.

CHAPTER SIX

‘HOW did you sleep?’

Extraordinarily, his voice sounded almost normal. It would be hard to guess that his throat was tight and his heart was slamming against his ribs.

‘Like a log, thank you,’ said Imogen. ‘What about you? Was the sofa very uncomfortable?’

‘It was fine,’ said Tom, who had spent a restless night feeling edgy and hot and confused.

‘Good. I was feeling guilty about having that comfortable bed.’

She told herself that was what had kept her awake long after Tom had switched off the last light. He had lain out of sight around the corner, but she had still been desperately aware of him.