BTW: I Love You (Mills & Boon M&B) (One Hot Fling - Book 1) (28 page)

After a brief conversation, he slammed the phone back in its cradle. ‘I’ve got to go. I have to be in court in ten minutes. But you’re staying here. I’ll tell Terry to send up some coffee, tea, whatever you want. This’ll take fifteen minutes, twenty tops—it’s only a request for an adjournment. When I get back we’re
going
to have that talk.’

From the rigid expression on his face, she could tell arguing would be futile—and she didn’t have the strength to do it anyway. ‘I can’t wait long.’

His brow creased. ‘I mean it, Ruby. I expect you to be here when I get back.’

She nodded. ‘I know.’

He would expect it, she thought as he left the room. Because
he had spent his entire life making sure his emotions never derailed his common sense.

Unfortunately, she now knew she was nowhere near as smart.

She scribbled a quick note and placed it on the desk—the same desk where she had offered him her heart and he hadn’t even realised—and then followed him out of the door, five minutes later.

T
HE
pulsating salsa beat energised Ruby’s limbs as she let her friend Dan twirl her round in a practiced move, but couldn’t penetrate the numbness that had settled over her ever since her crying jag that afternoon. The picture of Cal the last time she’d seen him came blasting back into her mind and she took a misstep. Her hip collided with Dan’s and he stopped.

‘Damn it Rube, you’re ruining my rep as the best salsanista in Camden.’

‘Sorry, Dan. I’m a bit off tonight,’ she shouted above the clamour of dancing couples and loud music, the headache banding around her temple.

She shouldn’t have come to Sol’s. The place held too many memories. But when Dan had phoned, she’d had the stupid idea that getting out was a necessity.

Cal hadn’t called, and she hadn’t expected him to after the note she’d left. But when the phone had rung, and she’d felt the kick of anticipation, the pathetic shimmer of hope, she’d convinced herself she had to take the first step on her road to recovery. Tonight. And Dan was the perfect first step. A close friend for years, he was so outrageously camp at least she wouldn’t have to ward off any unwanted advances tonight.

She had to stop wallowing in self-pity. So she’d finally been caught out by love. And she could see now it served her right. She’d dabbled with love for years, skirting the edges secure in the knowledge that she was too smart, too self-aware to ever get caught in a trap she couldn’t get out of.

But all those times she had thought she was in love before, it had never been true. She’d kidded herself about the depth of her feelings because she’d enjoyed the romance, the drama, the companionship. But now she understood. Real love was what Rye and Maddy had. What her mother and father had once had. It involved taking risks. It involved giving yourself unselfishly without the guarantee it would be returned.

She had always been so angry with her mother for telling her father about the affair, about Nick’s parentage. Why couldn’t her mother have taken the secret to her grave with her and saved them all from the truth? But Ruby understood now how courageous her mother had been and how much she’d risked to keep the secret as long as she had. All through her marriage she’d shouldered the burden of guilt—a burden that had stopped her from being able to truly love her son—because she loved her husband so much. She hadn’t been protecting herself with her silence, she’d been protecting him. But in the end, ravaged by the cancer, the burden had been too much to bear.

You had to earn love, and Ruby never had, because she’d never risked a thing.

How ironic that Cal should have been the one to figure out the truth, when he’d questioned her commitment to creating a family of her own that day on the beach.

And wasn’t it just her tough luck that when she decided to risk everything and fall in love for real, it would be with a man who would never be willing to return the gift?

‘I’d say you’re more than a
bit
off, girlfriend,’ Dan added forcefully. Taking her hand, he led her away from the dance
floor. ‘Sit down.’ He held out the chair at their table. She slumped into it. Her body numb, her mind not much better.

‘What’s wrong anyway?’ Dan said, his eyes shadowed with concern. ‘You look like death warmed up tonight.’

‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m just a bit—’

‘Hey, isn’t he the gorgeous stud you were here with a couple of weeks back?’ Dan lifted a hand to wave at someone over her shoulder.

She grabbed his wrist, yanked his hand down. Too late. Horror and a sick kind of hope assailed her as she glanced over her shoulder and saw Cal walking through the crowd towards them.

Panic skittered up her spine. Not here, not now. She wasn’t ready for this.

‘I have to go.’ Ignoring Dan’s stunned protest, she grabbed her bag and ran.

Refusing to look back, she dodged through the crowds. Stepping onto the secluded balcony at the back of the club, she’d got less than three paces before she realised her mistake. There was no way out.

Footsteps echoed on the decking and sounded deafening even above the hum of music and Friday-night revelry. She held her bag to her midriff. Scared to turn round.

‘You’re not going anywhere, Ruby. So we might as well have that talk now.’

The sound of his voice, rough and low, forced her to face him. He stood only feet away. Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out the note she’d left him before fleeing his office that afternoon. ‘Perhaps you’d like to start by explaining what this means?’

She shivered despite the warmth of the summer evening. She mustn’t crack. Not now. The only thing she had now was pride. ‘It means exactly what it says.’

He flicked it open, read it out loud. ‘“There’s nothing to
talk about, Cal. We had fun, but now it’s over. Don’t contact me again.”‘

She tensed, prayed he wouldn’t come any closer. To see the tremor in her hands, the bloodless knuckles as she clung to her bag. ‘I think that pretty much sums it up.’

He took a step forward. She scrambled back.

‘You call what happened in my chambers this afternoon
fun
?’

Her heart lurched. Kicked hard in her chest. She bit hard into her lip to stop the quiver. Gave him a stiff nod as tears formed in her eyes.

‘I’d say it was a lot more than that,’ he added, taking another step. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

Her back hit the balcony rail. She shook her head, choked back a sob. Why was he doing this?

But as the light reflecting off the canal hit his face she didn’t see challenge, or superiority. She saw confusion.

Reaching up, he cupped her cheek. She jerked her head back. ‘Don’t. Please don’t touch me.’

‘Why don’t you want me to touch you?’

‘I can’t,’ she murmured, staring down at her clasped hands. ‘I can’t do this any more.’

He thrust his hands into his pockets, shook his head. ‘Why not?’

She shook her head furiously, the tears falling freely now. Of course, his logical, dispassionate nature would want to solve the problem. But she couldn’t tell him. And have the last of her defences shattered.

‘For God’s sake, Ruby. You’re crying!’ He sounded horrified. ‘What is it?’ He took her chin in his fingers, lifted her face. ‘You have to tell me so we can sort it out.’

‘
We
can’t sort it out. I have to sort it out on my own.’

‘Why?’

She gulped down a sob and let go. ‘Because I’ve fallen in love with you. And I know you can’t love me back.’

The words dropped out into silence and she felt him go still. His hand dropped from her face. And her heart shattered all over again.

He swore under his breath.

She forced her chin up, brushed aside the errant tears that had escaped. ‘It’s all right, Cal. You don’t have to say anything.’

The sea-green gaze searched her face. ‘What makes you think you love me?’ he asked, sounding stunned.

Pride kicked in at last, her spine straightening as she forced herself to smile. She patted his cheek, felt the familiar rasp of stubble. She’d said too much. Far too much. She needed to get out of here now. So she could go home and lick her wounds in private with at least a little of her dignity intact.

‘Don’t look so worried, Big Guy,’ she said jauntily, giving an award-worthy performance. ‘You’re not the first. And you certainly won’t be the last.’

But as she walked past him he grasped her wrist. ‘Ruby, don’t go like this.’ He hesitated, and for the first time since she’d met him she realised he was lost for words. ‘I didn’t mean to … Can we please talk about this?’

She forced a smile to her lips, but couldn’t make herself meet his eyes. ‘Don’t be silly. It’s not that big a deal.’ She tugged her hand out of his grasp. ‘I’ll get over it. I always do.’

She heard his whispered curse above the sound of the salsa drums as she walked away, pathetically grateful that the tears cascading down her cheeks were masked by the moonlight.

C
AL
rapped his fountain pen against the desk as the tightly spaced type of the witness statement he was supposed to be reading bounced in front of his eyes. The hammer clicks of the pen sounded like machine-gun fire, and weren’t making it any easier for him to concentrate. But he couldn’t seem to keep still.

‘Would you like me to contact Brady about the Carvelli witness?’

He glanced up at his clerk Terry’s careful question. ‘What?’

‘The Carvelli witness.’ Terry nodded towards the document in his hand. ‘The one whose statement you’ve been reading for the last twenty minutes,’ he prompted.

Cal stared blankly for several seconds, trying to will his mind to engage. ‘No,’ he said at last, when it resolutely refused to obey his command.

He put the papers down on his desk, caught his reflection in the varnished mahogany surface and sucked in a breath.

Sights, sounds and sensations flooded through his system—as they’d been doing far too frequently in the past week.

Ruby’s full breasts heaving against the confining apron,
her soft sobs echoing in his ear, her body clasped tight around his as he came—all wrapped in the scent of vanilla sponge cake, icing sugar and sex. Ruby’s eyes meeting his, rising to any challenge.

‘Let’s do this tomorrow, Terry.’ He pulled at the collar of his shirt, which felt as if it were strangling him.

Terry looked at him a moment, clearly torn. ‘But the trial starts tomorrow and we haven’t—’

‘I know, I’ll handle it.’

Terry nodded slowly, as if he were trying to placate a wild beast, then gathered up his papers and left. As soon as the door clicked shut behind him Cal hurled the pen across the room and watched it ricochet against the oak panelling.

‘Fun!’
The single word echoed off walls lined with leather-bound books. ‘What the hell was fun about it, Ruby?’

Fantastic.
Now he was talking to himself too.

Having spent a week, make that three weeks, ever since he’d returned from Cornwall in fact, thinking about one woman and one woman only, he’d discovered that he no longer had the ability to think about anything else. His focus, his concentration, his neat, tidy, well-ordered life had been blown to smithereens by a nuclear warhead known as Ruby Delisantro. And she’d had the audacity to call it
fun.

What they had shared had never been fun. Not really. Not for him. And certainly not for her if how she’d looked at him the last time he’d seen her was anything to go by—the sheen of tears turning the chocolate brown of her eyes a rich caramel.

So why had she put it in her note? He winced. Maybe because he’d said the same thing in his.

Pushing back from the desk, he stood up and loosened his tie. Undoing the top two buttons of his shirt, he walked over to the chambers window and stared out at the lawn below where a couple of clerks were eating their lunch.

Those idiotic notes were just a couple of the many mysteries about their relationship that he had been unable to solve. Nothing about their time together made any sense at all. He thrust his hand into his hair, furrowed it into rows.

Why had the sexual chemistry between them been so electric, for example, even though she’d never been his type? Why had she been able to get to him in ways no other woman ever had before? How had she been able to undermine his stability, his sense of certainty and make him question every single thing he’d ever taken for granted in his life in the space of a weekend? And why hadn’t her declaration of love panicked him nearly as much as her assurance straight afterwards that she would get over it and him, with no trouble at all?

He cursed, flattened his forearm on the warm glass and rested his forehead against it.

He’d spent a whole week determined not to go after her again. Not to succumb to the bone-deep desire to promise her anything she wanted to get her back.

He didn’t make promises, because he had always been terrified he wouldn’t be able to keep them. But it was becoming blatantly obvious that staying away wasn’t an option any more. Because the need to see her again was driving him completely nuts. And not just because he wanted to hold her again, to touch her, to explore her body and exploit the sexual attraction between them. No, he thought wryly. Wanting to see her for sex would have been far too simple, too straightforward.

And nothing about Ruby had ever been simple.

He didn’t just want to see her for sex, even though he’d tried to make himself believe it when he’d written that ridiculous note, and then thrust inside her with about as much finesse as a battering ram when she’d come to his chambers.

He straightened, blew out a breath.

The truth was, he wanted so much more than sex from Ruby. He wanted to spend time with her. He wanted to talk to
her. He wanted to inhale that spicy vanilla scent while discovering everything about her. Her favourite colour, her favourite book, her favourite film. What sort of music she listened to, even who she voted for—although he expected that discussion to cause more than a few arguments. He wanted to know what her best subjects were at school. The first thing she’d learned to bake. What her dreams were for her business. How she’d got the tiny crescent-shaped scar he’d noticed on her right hip. He even wanted to see her damn baby pictures. He was curious about her past, her present and every tiny thing in her life that had made her the strong, defiant, capable and yet caring woman she had become.

He frowned, squinting into the sunshine. It was madness, romantic in a way he’d always despised, but he couldn’t shake the conviction that had been forming ever since he’d watched her walk away while he’d stood frozen in shock on the terrace of her friend’s bar.

The conviction that they were connected. That they had so much more to learn, to discover about each other. That they weren’t finished, but had only just begun. And that for the first time in his life he wanted to make a promise. To Ruby. And only Ruby.

‘Damn it! What the hell are you waiting for, West-more?’

A sudden sense of urgency propelled him across the room in four long strides. He grabbed up his wallet and his car keys and shoved them into the back pocket of his trousers. He’d wasted a whole damn week already, he thought as he dashed out of the door and strode down the corridor. He didn’t care what Ruby said, or even what she wanted. She loved him. She’d said it herself. Which meant she was going to have to face the consequences.

No way in hell was she getting over him. Because he wasn’t going to let her.

‘Why don’t we double the number of Chocolate Indulgence then and drop the Coffee Crumb altogether?’ Ruby propped the specs back on her nose and marked the changes on her order sheet. ‘Not a problem, Jamie. We aim to please.’ She gave a forced laugh at the young executive’s offer of a date, and turned him down, as she always did. But Jamie’s relaxed flirting brought with it none of the pleasure it once had. Saying her goodbyes, she dropped the phone back in its cradle and flung her specs on the countertop.

‘I can’t believe how persistent that guy is,’ Ella said from across the kitchen where she was busy cutting out cookie dough. ‘You’d think he’d have taken the hint by now.’

Maybe he would have, Ruby thought, as she rubbed her neck where the muscles ached, if she hadn’t once egged him on, enjoying their weekly flirting session as much as he did. Now all she wanted to do was curl up in a ball and never speak to another man again in her entire life. Because she didn’t want any other man but Callum Westmore, and, unfortunately, he didn’t want her. She sighed and grabbed her apron off the hook by the cooker.

‘Time to snap out of it, Tess,’ she muttered wearily.

‘Who’s Tess?’ asked Ella.

Ruby glanced over her shoulder to encounter Ella’s worried frown. ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles. My current role model. But luckily for you and everyone I know, I’ve just decreed that maudlin self-pity is far too unattractive.’

‘It’s only been a week, Rube. Give it time. You’ll get over him.’

She sent Ella a weak smile. ‘Good point.’ Unfortunately she knew she would never get over Cal, because she had always been her mother’s daughter, however much she had tried to deny it.

Once she fell in love for real, that was it for her.

‘How about I make extras?’ she said, rifling the cupboard
for her ingredients. ‘And we can have a Chocolate Indulgence Fest later with Prosecco and strawberries and watch that new crime series with the ultra hot tottie in.’

‘That would be brilliant,’ Ella said, perking up considerably and plastering on her usual cheery smile. Although that cheeriness had been a little forced of late.

The doorbell dinged.

‘I’ll get it,’ Ella said, and left the kitchen.

Ruby crossed to the cold room to fetch six bars of luxury chocolate. She’d unburdened herself to Ella enough. Crying on her friend’s shoulder was getting old. Maybe she would only be going through the motions for a while, but if she trained herself to look happy and carefree again, she might convince herself eventually.

‘You can’t come in! Haven’t you upset her enough?’

Hearing Ella’s pained shout, Ruby ducked out of the cold room.

And dropped the chocolate.

‘What are you doing here?’ she said, her voice soft as her heart rammed full pelt into her ribcage, so shocked at the sight of him, her knees began to shake.

‘I told him he couldn’t come in,’ Ella said indignantly.

‘I’m here to have that talk, whether you like it or not,’ Cal said firmly as he strode across the kitchen, his brows drawn down and his gorgeous face set in a determined frown.

He grasped her arm just as her knees buckled.

‘You can’t talk to her like—’

‘It’s okay, Ella,’ she interrupted her friend’s panicked plea, a little surprised by the steel in her voice as she locked her knees. ‘Do you think you could leave us alone?’

‘If you say so.’ Ella slanted a furious look at Cal. ‘But I’ll be in the reception. If you need me,’ she added, then left.

‘You can let go of my arm now,’ she said, oddly detached from the hysteria that was clutching at her chest.

His fingers released.

She’d let him say whatever he had to say, and then she’d let him go. ‘So what was it you wanted to talk about?’

She probably deserved this. It was no doubt some sort of karmic revenge, for all those guys she’d played at being in love with and hadn’t been.

‘As if you don’t already know.’ He towered over her, the low fury in his voice matched by the swirl of temper in his eyes. ‘You don’t get to drop into my life, explode like an atomic bomb, and then just walk off and leave me to deal with the wreckage.’

Her back butted against the counter. She flattened her hands against his chest, but, instead of pushing him away, her fingers curled into the crisp cotton of his shirt.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, panic and hope dog-fighting in her belly like dive bombers.

‘Let me spell it out, then,’ he snarled, furious now, his once-rigid control history. Gripping her waist, he lifted her onto the counter, then jerked her back towards him until her thighs were hugging his hips. ‘You don’t get to get over me, Ruby. Because I’m not going to get over you.’

‘What are you trying to say?’ she whispered. Hope winning, but only just.

He gave a deep sigh, dropped his head back and cursed at the ceiling.

She raised a hand to his cheek, brought his gaze back to hers. ‘Don’t you dare stop now, Cal. Or I may have to murder you.’

What she saw wasn’t anger any more but soul-deep longing.

‘I’m saying that this falling in love thing seems to be contagious,’ he said, his lips tilting in a wry smile. ‘And that perhaps we should give it a go together. See where it takes us.’

She stared at him, the hope swelling to impossible proportions
as tears stung the backs of her eyes. ‘Do not joke with me. Because it’s not funny.’

He gave his head a rueful shake, wrapped his arms around her hips, drew her even closer, until her eyes were level with his.

‘Ruby, how many women do you think I’ve said that to?’ He touched his lips to hers, and she could have sworn she felt their hearts beating in unison. ‘This is not the sort of thing I joke about. Ever.’

He cupped her cheek in his palm, the tenderness in his gaze as tangible as the heat. ‘You drive me nuts.’

‘I’m hoping that’s a good thing,’ she quipped, her flirt gene flickering to life as love bloomed inside her.

‘And you’ve totally messed up my life. So much so that I don’t ever want it to be that tidy again,’ he said, his voice so rich with appreciation she felt her insides melt. His hand fell to her neck, caressed her collarbone. ‘And you finally made me see the truth.’

‘What truth?’

He huffed, looked away. ‘I figured I was like
him.
That I had the same weakness. The same inability to remain faithful. And that the best way to avoid breaking a promise would be never to make one.’

‘But that’s mad. You’re nothing like your father,’ she said forcefully, astonished that he could be quite that clueless about himself. ‘How could you be? You’re the most honourable man I know.’

He chuckled. ‘If you say so.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘But that’s not the point. It was never about him, it was about me. Being too much of a coward to trust anyone. To put myself out there and risk being hurt.’

She grinned, leaned into his palm. ‘So all those things you said? About love being just a word?’

‘Obviously complete rubbish. Thanks so much for pointing that out.’

She laughed, the bright happy sound underlaid by his rough chuckle.

‘Are you sure you want to admit to that, Counsellor?’ she purred, draping her arms over broad shoulders as the last of the anguish and confusion washed away on a tide of love and longing.

‘I’ll admit it under oath if you like,’ he said, sounding serious again as his hands ran down her back.

‘That’s very tempting.’ She stretched, pressing the swollen tips of her breasts into his chest as she threaded her fingers into his silky hair. ‘But I should warn you, I may use it against you at a later date.’