The Rules of Engagement. Элли Блейк
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sorry—pardon?’ Caitlyn said.
‘Tonight,’ he said, more slowly this time. ‘Are you free?’
Free? But it had been a one-night stand. Sorbet sex. Hadn’t it? ‘For what purpose?’
‘You want specifics?’
Caitlyn looked around. Doug had shooed off elsewhere leaving her, and the Z9, all on their lonesome. She wriggled her toes to keep the blood from assembling in the one hot spot and said, ‘Sure. Why not?’
Through the phone she heard a shuffle and a squeak, and imagined him in a dark suit and tie, up in some lofty city tower, leaning back in a super-comfy leather office chair, looking out of his thousand-storey window, with glorious Melbourne spread out beneath him.
When his voice slid through the phone, deep and slow, the vibrations sent tingles all over her skin.
‘I was imagining we’d...’ He paused. Long enough she held her breath. Then, ‘...eat. We could enjoy a little...soft music. No doubt we would...talk. And later, much later, once I’ve loosened my tie, and you’ve kicked your shoes off under the table, and we’re both nicely pickled in some excellent wine, together we would do...dessert.’
By the time he’d finished she was leaning back hard against the Z9, the cold metal doing nothing to take the edge off her temperature. Somehow she managed to keep her voice from cracking when she said, ‘So you’re asking me on a date.’
Laughter rolled through the phone. ‘I’m asking you to eat dinner with me, but if you’d prefer to call it that—’
‘No-o-o!’ Not a date!
‘No?’ he repeated after several long beats.
Caitlyn bit her lip. Dax was a man she’d taken home from a bar. For sex. Not as some kind of Hail Mary that it might lead to something more. Her strident rejection of the word ‘date’ had given her an accidental out if that was what she wanted.
Was it what she wanted?
What she wanted was to see him again. So badly her whole body ached. The want throbbed in time with her pulse—whoomp, whoomp, whoomp—from the soles of her feet to the soft depression at the base of her throat.
Other people, people who weren’t relationship junkies, did that kind of thing all the time. Had dinner. Had sex. Didn’t get engaged to every guy they met. So long as expectations didn’t exceed reality, then nobody needed to get hurt.
‘Caitlyn?’
‘I meant no, I don’t need to call it anything.’
‘Okay.’ His voice slid deep and delicious down the phone. Her shoulders lifted in compensation for the sudden shivers running down her neck.
‘I’m working late,’ she said, ‘so how about we meet up for a drink around nine?’ There, a drink. Casual as could be. She named the bar, a fancy hole in the wall she’d glimpsed on occasion down one of Melbourne’s many cool quirky alleyways. The kind of place tourists missed, and city-workers flocked to.
‘Looking forward to it,’ Dax said, and then he was gone.
She took her phone away to find her ear hot and sore from having the phone pressed against it so hard.
‘That must have been some phone call.’
Caitlyn jumped, hand slapping against her heart. She turned to find Doug standing about three feet away.
‘I’ve never seen a woman’s ankles blush before,’ he said.
‘My ankles are doing no such thing.’
‘If you say so.’
Caitlyn couldn’t help it. She glanced at her ankles, bare between her fitted capris and her glossy high-heeled pumps, to find he wasn’t kidding. ‘Well,’ she spluttered, ‘then you clearly have a lot to learn about women.’
Doug smiled knowingly back as his eyes slid to the phone she had clasped hard in her sweaty little palm. ‘So it seems.’
‘Oh, go suck a squeegee.’
Doug’s laughter rang through the lofty room while Caitlyn spun away and headed back to the lift before she started laughing too, her high heels all but dancing on the concrete floor.
CHAPTER THREE
DAX sat in a quiet corner of Echoes, nursing a Scotch, and stretching out the rigid muscles of his shoulders. It had been a long and frustrating day. The kind of day that lived down to the very worst of his disillusions. That nobody could be trusted, that life was every man for himself.
He cricked his neck. The only reason he was upright, and not prostrate at the chiropractor, was the five-minute phone call he’d squeezed in to Caitlyn mid-morning. The knowledge that he’d be within touching distance of that soft skin, that silken hair, those warm arms at the end of that day had made the rest tolerable.
A rush of air slid through the bar bringing with it the scent of outdoors. His eyes cut to the door. A posse of twenty-something men in matching grey suits jostled noisily inside.
His fingers clenched harder on the glass, and a muscle in his cheek twitched, as he searched for will power, which was something he usually possessed in spades. His ability to remove himself emotionally from actions and decisions was necessary in the position he held. Stick a soft touch in charge and the foundation’s coffers would be empty in a week.
Another rush of air tickled his hair, and his eyes snapped to the door once more. More men, more grey suits.
Will power? What will power? With his skills at compartmentalising, the morning’s phone call ought to have been enough to put thoughts of her aside ’til this evening. But it had been something else, something more than just soft skin and silken hair, that had him so gripped with sexual tension if she was another five minutes late the glass was in danger of shattering in his grasp.
The door opened. He felt the breeze, heard the swoosh of traffic, watched the gentle lift of the napkin bedside his glass. He unpeeled his fingers from the now warm glass, one by one; then and only then did he look towards the door.
And there she was, in tight black ankle-skimming pants, a frilled white top and a matching jacket as soft and shimmering as fresh snow. Her hands clutched tight around a tiny beaded purse and her hair was up, soft strands escaping from a low twist. Shafts of silver glinted at her ears. Big eyes the colour of honey scanned the room.
He’d been fully prepared for his memory of her—or more specifically their scorching chemistry—to have been somewhat exaggerated by his euphoric hormones. He’d met her in near darkness, stumbled back to her place in much the same, burned up the bed sheets, and she’d been perfectly content for him to leave while the sun was still warming the other side of the planet. It had been great. Worth repeating. But enough to have him feeling this surge of heat just looking at her?
She licked her lips, and squirmed a little when she couldn’t see him, then jutted out a hip in defiance when it appeared to occur to her he might not be there.
Then, just as her mouth began to turn down at the edges, her eyes finally found his: feisty and wholly corrupting. As a secret smile spread to her lips the heat in her eyes softened to a subtle warmth, and it rocketed him right back to how luminous she’d been in his arms.
He hadn’t been recalling wrong. She was dazzling. As for their chemistry, she was on the other side of the room, a plethora of blustery city types between them, each trying to suck all the energy from the room, yet his skin contracted as if her fingernails were scraping down his bare chest.
As she walked towards him he felt himself rising off the stool as if some ethereal force were pulling them together.
‘Hi,’ she said breathily.
His hand moved to her waist as she leant in, the fabric of her jacket giving slightly, turning