LITMIR.BIZ

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French. Why the hell couldn’t they have held the thing somewhere cold, like Switzerland or Helsinki? Investment bankers could discuss the casino industry quite as well in those places as on the Côte d’Azur.

      The very thought of the place sent a wave of distaste through him. He gave himself a mental shake. This was so unlike Joe Sinclair, mover and shaker in high finance, he had to wonder if he was coming down with flu.

      Sighing, he flicked open his phone and dialled the office number. No use fighting it. He was a prisoner of his own success and there was no escape.

      ‘Get me Tonia in HR.’ He waited. ‘Ah, Tonia—Joe. Look, Tonia, take a look through the lists and see if you can find someone who can be spared to fill in for Stella on the trip, will you?’ She chatted for a moment, then he slid the phone into his jacket pocket.

      Someone pleasant, he should have added. Someone interesting who could keep his mind off the dark places. With a fatalistic shrug he tossed off his Scotch and set down his glass, then, ignoring the lovelies at the bar, walked out into the street.

      He reminded himself he was a lucky guy. Someone would turn up.

      Mirandi began to relax a little on her prowl around Joe Sinclair’s apartment, though she restricted herself to merely glancing into most of the rooms for fear of shedding DNA.

      Curiously, there were no other photos. Not a sign of attachment to a single living soul, though she knew he’d never keep any pictures of his family. Joe had always been tight-lipped about them, but Auntie Mim knew the story. His mother had walked out when Joe was a boy of nine or ten, and his father, who’d been a talented architect, had spiralled into an addiction and gambled away all his assets, including the house, over his son’s head. The very home he’d designed and built with his own hands.

      Joe had never liked being reminded of those times even when she knew him, so what had she expected to see here in his new life? That late-afternoon shot of him and her at the beach, grinning into the camera as though their hearts beat as one? Or any one of that string of girls she’d seen clinging to the back of the old Ducati?

      Afterwards. When he was grinding her into the dust with his indifference. Lucky the violence of her youthful passions had been burned out of her.

      Through a partly open doorway she glimpsed what must be a bedroom, and hesitated. She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t. Though maybe it would help her develop some deeper understanding of how her old love was travelling now.

      Her old love. Listen to herself. The truth about that had come out, plain for all to see, so why waste her time peering down that shady lane? She doubted she’d have taken this job at all if she’d realised at the interview that the Joseph Sinclair, CEO of Martin Place Investments, was in fact her old boyfriend, Joe. That final parting had been—so cruel.

      Still, she had to be fair and remind herself Joe never knew what it was she’d come to tell him that day. Remembering the moment no longer had the power to make her flinch with anguish, but it was burned into her bone marrow.

      His blue eyes, bright with that strangely fierce intensity. ‘It’s over,’ he’d said, his voice hoarse. ‘We’re over.’ And when in her total shock and devastation she’d whimpered a question, his savage, ‘Go home, little girl. Run back to your daddy.’

      As break-ups went, it had topped the memorable list and left track marks on her soul. And while time might have cauterised the wound, running into him her first morning in the coffee room had done more than just shake her up. At first glimpse of him, even after ten years the things he’d said had come hissing back and aroused echoes of the old emotions.

      The instant she’d caught sight of him a violent upheaval had rearranged her insides, though he hadn’t seemed similarly affected. His long, lithe stride had checked for less than a heartbeat, and he’d strolled across to her with all the cool, confident composure of the boss man.

      She had to remind herself she was no one special. Just someone he’d met along the way. A chick from the past.

      His blue gaze flicked over her, veiled, appraising. ‘Well, well. Mirandi. Hi.’

      So cool. While she was all at sea. His eyes, his deep voice, and her lungs paralysed. No oxygen, no floor under her feet. And straight away, the scent of him. Some woodsy cologne evoking cleanliness and masculinity in the old familiar rush.

      As she took in the immediacy of his dark, lean sexiness her gap year came spinning back and she was that giddy girl again, thrilled and half-terrified to be singled out by the bad boy with the wild reputation. Held breathless once again in his heart-stopping blue gaze, she had to restrain an impulse to touch him.

      A thousand impressions assaulted her. He was just as devastating in his city suit as he’d been in denim and leather, though at thirty-five his handsomeness had settled into harsher lines.

      Sterner. More defined. Every inch the high-powered executive. She wondered how many people here besides herself knew that underneath his designer and beautifully laundered fine white cotton shirt a heavy-duty tattoo rippled down his arm. Even thinking about those arms could still bring her out in a sweat.

      Was it so surprising then that her heart, her flesh, her emotions all surged in joyful remembrance? When she saw him her heart was thundering so loudly she could barely hear herself speak.

      ‘Joe. Hello.’ Straight up, that husky little catch in her voice. ‘How are you? I—got such a surprise when I found out you were the CEO here.’

      His expressive black brows twitched as if he didn’t quite believe her. ‘You didn’t know?’

      ‘Oh, well, I mean, I knew it was a Joseph Sinclair, but I didn’t know it was m—the Joe Sinclair I once knew.’

      His eyes veiled and their last goodbye opened between them like a wound. But he shrugged and gave that faintly mocking smile she knew so well. Used to know.

      ‘Hard to believe?’

      ‘Gosh no, of course not. But—with no photo of you on the website, for some reason—I visualised a much older person. You know the type. Bald, plump…’ She made a roundish outline with her hands. ‘Toadish. Cigar in breast pocket.’ She gave a nervous laugh, aware she was talking too much, and her desperate phrases grew jerky. ‘Not the…person I used to know. It was only that I—knew the name it seemed like a—a sign, you know. An omen. Fate, or something.’

      Heaven help her, finally she managed to draw breath.

      ‘Well, that explains it,’ he said smoothly.

      She flushed, realising with chagrin how deeply she’d exposed her insecurity. Surely after ten years the past should have lost its sting. But she couldn’t help herself, because all the while things she’d once known so well about him were striking her afresh, sucking her in in the same old way.

      He didn’t often make direct eye contact, and just like before she found herself waiting, breathless, for every glance he flashed her from beneath his black brows. And like before, those blue glances had the power to sear through her entrails and leave a powerful impression, like some rare piercing glimpse of a kingfisher’s wing.

      He’d pierced her with one of them right then. But it was an ironic glance, one that revealed nothing of the warmth he’d once shown her. Before the break-up, that was. Before she’d wrecked things by offering her eternal love.

      ‘Would you have started here if you’d known?’ he said.

      ‘I—of course I would,’ she lied. ‘Why not?’ She’d managed an artificial smile then to conceal her pulse. But though she’d kept her voice steady, she knew her redhead’s skin was betraying her as always, lighting her up like the Macquarie beacon with every minuscule fluctuation in her emotions.

      ‘Why not indeed?’ There was a faintly sardonic inflection in his tone that recalled the rejection as if it were yesterday.

      She retreated from that horror, hurrying into a safer direction. ‘Oh,

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