Carole Mortimer - After The Loving

And from the moment she looked at him Court Stevens ceased to be anything but an attractively pleasant client.

‘Mr Gallagher,’ she greeted him coolly.

‘Please call me Raff,’ he invited gruffly. ‘I have every intention of calling you Bryna.’

Whether she liked it or not! she acknowledged ruefully. Of course she realised who he was now; anyone who was in business and hadn’t heard of Raff Gallagher was either a fool or doomed to fail. And she hoped she was neither of those things. This man was Midas, anything he touched, from property to industry, turning to gold.

‘Raff, why don’t you get lost?’ Court invited irritably. ‘Bryna and I have some business to discuss. Not that sort of business, you fool,’ he admonished as the other man raised disbelieving brows in Bryna’s direction. ‘Bryna runs the Fairchild Agency.’

The dark brow cleared. ‘I’ve heard of it,’ Raff drawled, turning to Bryna. ‘I apologise for the assumption I made just now.’

Being a model, Bryna had received her fair share of insults over erroneous assumptions of what her profession actually entailed, but never before had a man presumed that about her without knowing a thing about her!

She turned to Court Stevens with frosty eyes. ‘I really do have to go,’ she snapped. ‘Perhaps you could give me a call and we could get together to discuss this another time.’ She was probably walking away from a contract that could mean even bigger things for her agency if Court Stevens was pleased with the work they did for him this time, but she wasn’t going to stay around and be insulted by a man who acted as if he owned half of London—and probably did!

‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Court turned accusing eyes on the other man. ‘Will you just get out of here?’

It was testament to how deep the friendship was between the two men that Raff Gallagher didn’t take exception to the way Court had been trying to get rid of him ever since he had interrupted them. But at that moment Bryna was too angry to care how close the two men were, as she stood up to leave.

‘Please stay, Miss Fairchild,’ Raff Gallagher drawled as he stood up, the formality deliberate, she was sure. ‘And please accept my apology for interrupting the two of you. Game of golf tomorrow, Court?’

‘OK,’ Court sighed unenthusiastically. ‘But you’re starting with a handicap.’

‘Don’t I always,’ the other man mocked. ‘Miss Fairchild,’ he nodded dismissively before strolling across the restaurant to join two men at a table who had obviously been waiting for him.

‘He always wins, too,’ muttered Court. ‘Sit down, Bryna. Please,’ he persuaded.

She did so slowly, pointedly turning her chair so that she didn’t have to look at Raff Gallagher.

‘We became friends in our first week of boarding school after he bowled me out at cricket and I hit him with my cricket bat in the changing room,’ Court sighed. ‘I broke his nose.’

Bryna had noticed that slight bump on the hawklike nose, laughing softly now as she envisaged the two little boys glaring at each other across a cricket bat, both taking their aggression at being away from home out on the other. ‘Stranger meetings have formed just as strong a friendship, I’m sure,’ she teased.

Court smiled, his eyes brimming with laughter. ‘It wasn’t the fight that caused the friendship,’ he assured her. ‘What did that was the fact that Raff told everyone he’d fallen over and hit his nose. If he hadn’t I would have been expelled in my first week of school!’

Two little boys who had bonded a lifetime friendship through resentment and pain. Maybe Raff Gallagher did have some redeeming qualities after all. One just had to dig deep to find them!

She made a point of not looking his way as she and Court got down to the serious business of discussing the models. Nevertheless, she was aware of the exact moment Raff Gallagher stood up to approach their table before leaving.

Grey eyes delved into her soul a second time. ‘We’ll meet again, Miss Fairchild,’ he murmured as he bent over the hand he had lifted to his mouth, his lips cool and yet moist.

‘Give me a chance, Raff!’ Court complained.

His friend chuckled huskily. ‘The choice will be Bryna’s,’ he said softly, meeting her gaze once again with compelling intensity before taking his leave.

‘It’s a no contest,’ groaned Court resignedly. ‘It always is.’

‘I can assure you Mr Gallagher holds no interest for me,’ Bryna dismissed primly.

When she got back to her office a box containing a single red rose lay on her desk. There was no card with it, but she guessed that it wasn’t from Court; he was the type of man who would sign his name with a flourish to the accompanying card if he found a woman attractive enough to send her flowers.

Half an hour later two more roses arrived, half an hour after that another three, then another three, and another three, until by four-thirty she had the round dozen.

Her secretary/receptionist, Gilly, was agog to know who had sent them. When the man himself arrived at five o’clock neither woman was in any doubt as to who the sender had been. When Raff courteously invited Bryna out to dinner she had breathlessly accepted, her earlier antagonism forgotten; she had never met anyone quite like this man before.

She still hadn’t met anyone like him, and even when he was long gone from her life, she knew she would never meet anyone like him again.

‘KATE tells me the two of you had lunch together today,’ Raff said enquiringly as he sat down opposite her.

Bryna met his gaze guardedly, her heart skipping its usual beat as she looked at him, still affected, even after six months of knowing him intimately, by that compelling power that surrounded him. Tonight, dressed in black evening suit and snowy white shirt, he appeared even more devastating than usual.

‘That’s right, we did,’ she confirmed coolly, wondering where the conversation was leading to.

Raff gave an inclination of his head, his mouth twisted into a rueful smile. ‘She seems slightly annoyed with you.’

She and Kate had parted a little stiffly outside the restaurant, the younger girl seeming to blame Bryna for the fact that her father hadn’t fallen in love with her!

Bryna shrugged. ‘She hoped I would talk to you about her moving in with Brenda next term,’ she told him truthfully.

His eyes became suddenly flinty. ‘And what did you tell her?’

She maintained her calm poise in the face of his obvious displeasure. ‘What do you think I told her?’ she drawled.

Raff relaxed slightly, his long length stretched out comfortably in the armchair. ‘I think you agree with me, that young lady is not the choice of flatmate I want for Kate.’

And what Raff wanted he invariably got, Bryna had found these last months. She was a prime example of that, in the past having been able to freeze off even the most ardent of men, and yet she and Raff had been lovers within days of their meeting. And far from feeling inadequate as she had always imagined she would, she had felt complete for the first time in her life! It had been the same every time they made love.

‘Perhaps not Brenda,’ she agreed. ‘But I think Kate is determined to get a place of her own, and she is over eighteen——’

‘I think I know what’s best for my children, Bryna,’ he bit out cuttingly, standing up abruptly. ‘We should be going now,’ he added curtly. ‘At the moment we’re politely late, any later and we may as well not bother!’

Despite the fact that the dig about their lateness was aimed at her she wanted to say ‘then let’s not bother!’ She wanted to be in his arms tonight, close to him in the only way he allowed any woman to be close to him. She had long ago ceased to be upset by the way he cut her out of showing any interest in his children’s activities; it was far from the first time he had done so. To her it only served to emphasise the transient role she played in his life.