The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance 2016. Кейт Хьюит

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      ‘I can work perfectly well with you around,’ he had drawled, in the sort of dark, persuasive voice that had made her almost but not quite revise her determination not to submerge herself entirely in him. ‘In fact I find I work better, because I can touch you whenever I need a break...’

      This was just the sort of heady flattery that she knew could so easily go to her head. It was the stuff she loved hearing—just as she loved hearing him tell her how desirable she was, how irresistible, how he couldn’t see the bed without wanting her in it, naked and pressed up close to him.

      But flattery was all it was, and Alexa knew that she had to steer clear of reading anything else behind it. Because she was getting seriously hooked on touching him, on hearing all those softly murmured words that did wonders for her self-confidence, making her feel utterly desirable...the most desirable woman on the planet.

      He’d swept into her life, bringing with him all his worldly experience, and he had used that worldly experience and his unimaginable charm to captivate her.

      He had found fertile ground in her, because nothing in her past had prepared her for the impact of their involvement. Had she had some experience with the opposite sex she might have had sufficient ammunition to see his charm for what it was...practised, well-used...the same charm that had turned all those other women’s heads...

      But she’d lacked the necessary experience. And now...

      He was completely oblivious to the fact that she was staring at him. It was still only six fifteen in the morning, but she would have bet that he’d been up for at least an hour—maybe more. He seemed to need very little sleep to function.

      She gazed at the way his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck, at the muscled width of his shoulders and the tiny mole on his right shoulder, which she could just about make out in the pool of light from the desk lamp he had switched on. He hadn’t yet shaved and there was a definite shadow along his jawline. He was frowning, and she knew that in a second he would gently tap his fountain pen on the desk—a habit he had when he was utterly focused on something.

      She had asked him why he had a fountain pen when all his work was done on the computer, and he had twirled it in his fingers and told her that it had been a present from his mother when he was eleven. It was his talisman.

      There were so many things she felt she now knew about him, and there were so many physical details she had absorbed too, lodging them in her brain the way information was stored on a computer, lying there, ready to be accessed at the flick of a button.

      She could recognise the sound of his soft breathing when he was in deep sleep...could tell from the clipped tone of his voice on the phone when he was talking to someone he wanted to get rid of as fast as possible. She had watched him shave in front of the mirror and had come to realise that, although he must surely know just how good-looking he was, he did very little to enhance his looks. No manly moisturisers. He barely looked in a mirror at all.

      Her heart began a steady, anxious thud in her chest.

      When exactly had she stopped seeing him as the enemy she was shackled to and started seeing him as someone who was witty, beyond intelligent, wickedly charming...?

      She knew when she had owned up to her guilty fascination—when she had acknowledged the chemistry between them. But when, exactly, had that undeniable chemistry turned into something deeper for her?

      They had strolled through Manhattan, gone to the famous Museum of Modern Art, walked along the High Line and visited the gallery district. She had forgotten that this wasn’t a real-life courtship. She had forgotten that those piercing, lazy eyes that roved over her body with rampant appreciation had no intention of lingering there indefinitely.

      What had started out for both of them as a perfectly reasonable way of dealing with the inconvenient attraction between them had morphed into something else—for her.

      She had...

      The steady, nervous thud of her heart picked up pace as the enormity and horror of her realisation hit her with the force of a runaway train.

      When had she fallen in love with him?

      ‘You’re up. Why are you up?’

      His dark drawl made her jump, because she had been so busy being dismayed and horrified at her thoughts that she had blanked him out of her line of vision. Now she sat up and feigned a yawn.

      ‘The light must have woken me...’ She burrowed back down into the duvet, so that she could take up where she had left off and carry on chewing over her plight—which couldn’t have been worse as far as she was concerned.

      ‘In that case I’ll switch it off...’

      Theo stood up and stretched, and then headed back to the bed—which was just where, for once, Alexa didn’t want him. Because she still had so much thinking to do, still had to work out how she had managed to give her heart to a guy who had no intention of looking after it—not in the long term and not, if she were to be honest with herself, in the short term either.

      ‘No—don’t!’ She tempered the sharpness of her reply with a little laugh. ‘I know you’ve had a pretty distracted time when it comes to work, and that you get a lot done early in the morning. I’m still very sleepy anyway.’ She yawned on cue. ‘So I shall try and grab a couple more hours...’

      ‘Sex is very good for guaranteeing restful sleep...’ He slid into the bed alongside her and eased her to face him, so that they were both on their sides, looking at one another, perfectly level.

      ‘In which case you should get back to work,’ Alexa told him crisply, although her firmness was somewhat undermined by the hand that was now lying between her legs, cupping her down there and moving ever so gently. ‘You don’t want to fall asleep on the job, do you?’

      Theo sighed and reluctantly removed his hand. ‘Unfortunately that’s the last thing I can afford to do,’ he conceded. ‘Several million pounds rests on my making sure I stay awake on the job—at least for the next couple of hours...’

      He swung his legs over the side of the bed and strolled back towards the desk and the blinking of his computer. When he glanced over his shoulder it was to see that she was on her side, turned away from him, her long hair hiding her face, doubtless on her way back to sleep.

      It seemed peculiar that he was going to be marrying a woman who, in the normal scheme of things, would not have excited his interest—and even more peculiar that she had not only excited his interest, but that his interest was showing no signs of petering out just yet.

      He wondered what the chances were of a continuing sexual relationship for the duration of their imposed marriage, but dismissed the idea before it had taken root.

      He just didn’t have it in him to ride the crest of physical attraction for longer than a couple of months, and he knew without the shadow of a doubt, that to sleep with her for any continued period of time would be a big mistake.

      He had always been able to deal with broken hearts, but this was a special case. When he and Alexa parted company they would still see one another, because he would have shares in her family company and would, on occasion, be working alongside her father. Her father was a sociable man. There would be instances when he would be invited over for a meal—special occasions, some family do—and there would be instances when she would be there too.

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