Nicola Marsh - Out of Hours...Office Affairs - Can't Get Enough / Wild Nights with her Wicked Boss / Bound to the Greek

Because it was impossible to remember Claire’s spectacular body without remembering her spectacular temper. The spark of remembered lust faded as he recalled her insulting insinuation—that he’d told Beck she wanted him off the magazine. Man, he’d busted his ass being diplomatic with Beck that morning, explaining how he was loathe to work on something he wasn’t truly contributing to, pointing out his work schedule was already very hectic, stressing that Claire was very good and very likely to be able to soothe savage-beast-Hillcrest all on her own.

And she reads that as him setting her up! Which was the problem with her, when he got right down to it. She was always ready and willing to read an ulterior motive into everything he did. More trouble than she was worth.

Insidious and undeniable, the memory of her simple but sincere sympathy for him snuck into his mind. She’d said exactly the right thing, and she’d even anted up with a confession of her own so he wouldn’t feel like a complete dick when the doors opened. So she wasn’t an absolute lost cause….

And then there was the sex. He kept coming back to that. Had he ever been that hot for a woman? Surely in his teens he’d had encounters that were that hot…but he couldn’t quite remember with whom or when. In fact, all past encounters paled into insignificance beside what had happened yesterday. It was even beginning to worry him a little, the way his mind would automatically drift to those few precious memories of the smell of her skin, and the sound of her excited breath in his ear, whenever he let his guard down. He’d nearly embarrassed himself several times in meetings today. One moment he was discussing deadlines and feature stores, and the next he was fighting off sense memories of tanned skin and the wet, voluptuous slide of his body in hers. And as for how his body had reacted when her shirt had popped open…It had been a close-run thing, and he’d been forced to seek refuge behind his desk to hide his desire. The last thing he needed was for little Miss Uptight to know the potential hold she had over him….

He started as Linda stuck her head into his office doorway.

“I’m going now. See you tomorrow,” she said.

He grunted a goodbye, deliberately pulling his attention back to his pile of mail.

Stop thinking about Claire , he ordered himself. He’d already laid her ghost to rest last night, when he’d decided not to call her. So why did she keep rising to the surface of his mind?

Here he was again, reverting to thinking about her as soon as all other distractions were gone! He’d already walked down this road, and it was a dead end. Time to move on. With a real force of will, he focused on his mail, sorting through more than half of it until he came to an internal mail envelope. Like most internal mail envelopes, the previous recipient had crossed their name out before reusing the envelope for another message. He stared at Claire’s crossed-out name for a second, then squeezed the bag, frowning. It felt bulky, not like paperwork. Mystified, he broke the sticky-tape seal and pulled out a small shopping bag. The cool slither of silk on his hands clued him into the bag’s contents before he’d pulled the tie out. It was striped, with some sort of lion and crown etched into it. The sort of tie his grandfather had always been fond of. He stared at it, genuinely dumbstruck for a moment.

She was a real piece of work. Not content to have the last word, she’d gone out and bought him the perfect response to his claim not to own a tie.

Well, she could whistle Dixie as far as he was concerned—there was no way he was wearing a stupid tie. Especially not this particular stupid tie.

Thank God he hadn’t called her last night. He’d regretted it earlier today, even after their fight he’d found it in himself to regret it, because there was something about her that drew him…But after this? No way. He and she were chalk and cheese. She’d drive him crazy. He tossed the tie negligently to one side.

He actually snorted his exasperation and disbelief out loud as he reached for the folder Linda had filled with his personal mail from his post office box. There were a handful of bills, but one envelope caught his attention. That was his Mom’s handwriting scrawled across the front of the pale lavender rectangle. A dead, dull weight settled on his chest as he lifted the flap on the envelope, knowing full well what was inside: a birthday card.

Just like his Mom. She never forgot birthdays, even though he’d made his feelings clear on the subject. He almost laughed out loud. He’d been mostly successful in ignoring the march of time this year. He’d figured that if he was very careful and skimmed along through November, he could skip over his and Robbie’s birthday.

But he’d still known that it was coming up, just the same—otherwise he wouldn’t have felt that instant weight upon seeing his mother’s card. Otherwise he wouldn’t have this well of grief opening up inside him so readily and easily.

Liquid heat threatened at the back of his eyes, and he pushed himself to his feet, dropping the card onto his desk, ignoring all that needed to be signed for tomorrow. He had to get out of there, right now.

THERE WAS A CALL waiting on her answering machine when Claire got home from work that evening, and she despised herself for the little thrill of anticipation she felt as she noted the flashing message light. Maybe Jack had called after all. Maybe he’d felt as angry and frustrated and disappointed as she had after their argument.

Then she gave herself a mental slap. There was no way Jack would have called after the fight they’d had in his office. Or, if he called her at all, it would only be to give her hell for having foisted a tie on him, despite his insistence that he wouldn’t wear one.

But it was her father’s voice on the answering machine. She stared at the small black appliance as he told her that he was in town unexpectedly. Would she like to catch up for dinner?

She hadn’t spoken to her father in months. She sent him e-mails on a regular basis, mostly because she was determined to do all that she could to have some kind of relationship with him. Occasionally he replied, but he rarely commented on her news. Instead he concentrated on his latest expedition or project, his letters reading more like press releases than missives from a father to his only child.

Warily pleased, she called the hotel number Harry had left. His voice sounded unfamiliar and distant when he answered the phone.

“Dad, it’s me, Claire,” she said.

“Oh, hello, Claire. I take it you got my message?”

As usual, the cool matter-of-factness of his manner stopped her from saying any of the things she instinctively wanted to say—that it had been a long time, that she’d been thinking about him. That she was hoping he could make it to her triathlon final.

They quickly arranged for her to meet him at his hotel for dinner—he was disinclined to let her take him out to any of her favorite Melbourne restaurants. In a city that was well-known for its food and wine culture, Harry preferred to chance the hotel dining room, and she felt unequal to the task of convincing him otherwise.

She settled for a scaled-down version of her training session for the evening, and it was only as she was discarding the third top she’d tried on in ten minutes that she acknowledged she was nervous.

Ridiculous, really—but he was her father, and their relationship was uneasy at best. Still, he’d made the effort to get in contact while he was in town. That was something, a change. She allowed herself to hope that maybe all her hard work in maintaining contact had perhaps gotten through to him on some level.

She was surprised at how old he looked when they met up in the foyer of his hotel. At sixty, he was very active and still organized expeditions, even if he didn’t lead them himself anymore. But his hair had thinned, and was now completely white, and his eyes seemed faded somehow. She had to fight a surge of emotion as she realized that time was running out for them to reconcile.