Michelle Reid - Passion Becomes You

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

JOSH was late in the office on Monday morning—a sure sign that his weekend had been a heavy one.

Jemma’s smile was wry as she dealt efficiently with the morning’s mail. She had to give it to Cassie Drake—the gorgeous brunette had certainly succeeded where countless before had failed, and managed to keep the equally gorgeous Josh Tanner on a nice rolling boil for three whole months!

A record for him. His women usually lasted only as long as it took him to bed them thoroughly. A low boredom threshold, Josh called it—and the added fact that he couldn’t resist trying it on with just about any presentable woman who happened to catch his wandering eye.

Jemma should know—he had tried it on her once or twice. Not that it had worked. She wasn’t into men—not men like Josh anyway. He looked at a woman and saw sex with a capital S, and nothing else. He was a rake. A handsome, conceited, feckless rake, and the last type of man she would ever let herself become mixed up with.

She’d already been there—via her father, witnessed what his overactive libido had done to her mother. And no way—no way would she ever let herself fall into that thankless trap.

Josh hadn’t given up on her that easily, though, she recalled with a smile. It had taken him two months to accept defeat. Another month to stop sulking about it. And since then—nearly two years ago now—he had made her his best friend and confidante instead.

Which was why she knew all about Cassie, and what she did to him. How just one look at her softly rounded, sensually luxurious figure and his temperature shot off the gauge.

‘Why her?’ he’d once demanded in sheer exasperated confusion. ‘She isn’t even my type! I like them tall and slender with legs that go up to their armpits like yours do. And long blonde hair like yours I can strangle myself with!’

‘My hair is not blonde, it’s sandy.’

‘Blonde,’ he’d insisted. ‘Golden-blonde like honey—hot honey.’ His eyes had begun to smoke. ‘Makes me want to—’

‘Lay one finger on me and I’ll tell Cassie!’

It was enough to cool his ardour. ‘What is that black-haired witch doing to me?’ he’d muttered and slammed away to his own office to brood.

Jemma thought she had the answer to that question, but refused to offer it to him. It would be bad enough working with him once he discovered it for himself without her bringing forward the dreadful day. But, in her opinion, Josh Tanner, the sexy blond rake of London town, had met his Waterloo—and at the hands of a woman who made no secret of what she wanted from Josh.

‘Marriage, children—the full works,’ she’d told Jemma recently while sitting on the corner of her desk waiting for Josh to take her to lunch. ‘I’m sick of playing the field. And anyway, I’m getting on.’ It seemed that in this day and age twenty-seven was really getting on by the expression on Cassie’s face when she said it. ‘So I started looking around me for a suitable candidate.’

Which happened to be Josh, something Jemma found rather strange since she considered her boss the last man on earth a woman would actually want to settle down with. After all, a rake was a rake in her book. Good fun to be with, great in bed, so the tale went, but not—definitely not—husband material.

‘I happened to meet Josh at a party I’d gone to with an old friend of mine,’ she’d gone on. ‘Fell for the self-obsessed jerk on the spot and would have had to be blind not to understand the lecherous look in Josh’s eyes. The air fairly sizzled between us, highly amusing Leon, I can tell you—you know Leon Stephanades?’ she’d asked, and at Jemma’s blank look had added, ‘Darling, you do not know what you’re missing. If I’d dared to set my sights so high, I would have gone all out to catch him instead of Josh. But Leon is—special. Very Greek. Very wealthy. And very, very possessive of his freedom. His father has tried all ways—threats, bribes, you name it—to get his son to marry the nice Greek girl with the hefty dowry he has picked out for him, but Leon refuses to so much as consider it. Caused quite a family rift, so I gather.’ Her beautifully sculptured brows had arched ruefully, the reason why coming in the next sentence. ‘So what chance does a not-so-nice English girl with nothing to offer him but a great body have against all of that? None,’ she’d answered her own question. ‘So I decided to go all out to catch Josh instead. Leon and I are still good friends, though—which Josh hates,’ she’d added with a grin that was all feminine guile. ‘He’s as jealous as sin of Leon because he thinks we had something going between us once, which is not true,’ she had insisted, though her expression had implied that she maybe would have liked it to be true. ‘But his jealousy is probably the only ray of hope he allows me in this crazy relationship we’re having—that and the fact he can’t get enough of me,’ she’d tagged on ruefully. ‘Leon says if I land Josh Tanner he’ll buy us a twelve-inch solid gold flying pig for a wedding present, because that’s how much of a chance he thinks I’ve got of pulling it off! But I’m working on it,’ she had concluded determinedly.

Cassie must have told Josh more or less the same thing, because it was only a few days after that conversation with Cassie that Josh had come striding into the office, growling, ‘I’m not marrying any woman! Not even for a solid gold pig!’

The phone began to ring now. Jemma picked up the receiver to have the familiar impatient bark of Josh Tanner hit her eardrums. ‘I’m late,’ he stated the obvious. ‘I’ve had one hell of a weekend. Only just woken up. You’re going to have to hold the fort until I can get there.’

‘What about your ten o’clock appointment with that big cheese from the Leonadis Corporation?’ she reminded him, glancing at her watch only to confirm that it was already twenty to ten. There was no way Josh could make it here in time.

Some very unsavoury vocabulary came slashing down the line. He had obviously forgotten all about the appointment. Not like Josh, she acknowledged. It had to have been a hell of a weekend. ‘Him of all people,’ he muttered. ‘That’s all I need today. Look, you’re going to have to try and put him off,’ he added impatiently. ‘See if you can catch him before he leaves his office. Make my excuses. And if that conniving bitch I’ve been seeing turns up—tell her I’ve died and gone to hell! And not to bother following me!’

‘Who?’ she asked, frowning. ‘Cassie?’

But Jemma was already talking to fresh air. Josh had slammed down the phone. She sat staring at the contraption for the space of ten seconds while trying to make head or tail of that final scathing remark, then shrugged, replacing her own receiver. It seemed that when Josh had said he’d had a hell of a weekend he’d meant it.

The lovers’ bed must have had thorns in it, she mused, and smiled to herself as she hunted out the number of the Leonadis Corporation.

It was only as she waited for someone to answer that she realised she had no idea what the managing director’s name was. Josh had made the appointment himself on Friday. And all he had said was, ‘I hate the damned man, but he’s hunting for new outlets to get his design components from and I need the business. So I suppose I’ll have to fanny round him.’