LITMIR.BIZ

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left alone, pointing to the front door, feeling certain the emphasis on hot was not accidental.

      When she caught up with Simon he was wandering through the open-plan room, the eyes of every woman in the place overtly following him. He received a few inviting smiles, a couple of assertive hellos, and even a wolf-whistle from the graphics department.

      He turned to Kelly. ‘Which one’s yours?’

      She pointed to her tiny desk and suddenly wished she had not made herself so at home so soon. Simon took a seat and pored over the photos stuck to her monitor.

      Photos of her last birthday party, with her sitting at the old wooden table in her apartment, surrounded by Cara, Gracie, and other tenants, with sponge cake and cream all over her face. Photos of her cuddling Minky on her single bed. And a more staid photo of her last Christmas, sitting on her parents’ huge leather couch by a ridiculously large tree decorated in elegant silver ornaments. Kelly nibbled on her thumbnail and watched as Simon caught up on her life over the past five years.

      Simon looked beyond the family shot and grabbed the one of Minky. ‘Is she…how is she?’

      ‘Scruffy and spoilt as ever.’

      ‘Missing me?’

      ‘Not any more.’

      He did not glance her way though she was sure he had got her message loud and clear.

      ‘And your parents?’

      ‘Painful and…painful as ever.’

      ‘Missing me?’ He looked up with this question, his expression playful.

      This brought a curious smile to Kelly’s face. ‘More than life itself.’

      The smile stayed. Five years before, any mention of her parents would have started a fight. They had warned her from the start that he would be like his mother and flee at the first sign of hard work in a relationship and he had never forgiven them for it. And when he had left they had lived for months on ‘I told you so’.

      But now here was a Simon who could ask after her parents with a smile on his face, in self-deprecation. Wonder of wonders.

      As he put the picture back he bumped the mouse and stared as Kelly’s monitor changed from a star field screensaver to the shot of a crystal-clear ocean with a beautiful white sailing boat bobbing imperiously atop it.

      It was the brochure shot of their boat. The one they had spent their brief passionate wedding night aboard. She rushed to her desk and clicked open a Word file, the blank white page obliterating the offending picture.

      ‘So, where do you want to start?’ Kelly asked.

      Simon dragged his eyes from the computer screen, his look filled with questions Kelly did not dare answer, even to herself.

      ‘You said you were here to be interviewed so we may as well go through with it.’ Kelly made herself busy fluffing about in her filing cabinet until she found the letter. It was crumpled from a moment of wrath when she had rolled it into the smallest ball she could, stomped on it until flat, then shoved it at the very bottom of her rubbish bin. Eventually reason had made her iron it out with her hands but it still looked worse for wear. She could feel Simon’s smile as he saw the paper.

      ‘I was picturing your face as I did it,’ Kelly said quietly, knowing there were a dozen pairs of ears trained onto their cubicle.

      ‘I figured as much. So what would you like to ask me?’

      Kelly leaned against the cubicle wall, arms folded, as Simon twisted and bounced on her chair. There was no way out of it now. Maya had seen him. She would have to grab a couple of lines for the column to take the edge off Maya’s curiosity.

      ‘Okay, then. Why do you think you know any more than I do about…?’

      ‘Love?’ he finished for her in a voice so low and reminiscent of the nights he would whisper such words in her ear by bonfires on the beach.

      ‘Mmm.’ She could not bring herself to say the word.

      ‘I don’t claim to know any more than you do. I think I know about exactly the same amount.’

      ‘Ha!’ She scoffed so loud a couple of female heads turned her way, their eyes alight with interest.

      ‘You disagree?’ he asked.

      ‘I’m the one asking the questions here,’ she said through clenched teeth, her glance darting about the room.

      ‘I have a question for you,’ he said, happily ignoring her protest. ‘Where’s your ring?’

      He reached out and took her left hand, toying with her bare ring finger, encircling, stroking, caressing from the tip to her sensitive palm.

      Kelly’s gaze rocked back to him, startled. She knew which ring he meant. She yanked her hand away and rubbed at the spot that tingled with the memory of wearing the ring Simon had given her. Such a short time. Such a long time ago.

      She shrugged. ‘I haven’t worn it in years. And I’ve moved so many times since then…who knows? Gone for all eternity, I suppose.’

      He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. His gaze had lowered to her squirming hands so she had no idea how her answer affected him. But it had affected her to her very core. It had dredged up memories and feelings and associations with another time when he had held her left hand with such intimacy.

      ‘So if you’re the one asking the questions,’ he finally said, ‘come on, then. Ask away.’

      Her mind froze. The only other question she could summon at that moment was: Do you feel the same overwhelming and downright frightening sense of sense slipping away that I feel every time we are within touching distance of one another?

      So, knowing that was the last thing she wanted to share with Simon, she stood and grabbed him by the hand, dragging him through the room, past a dozen interested onlookers, and into the tearoom, which thankfully was empty.

      ‘I don’t think this is going to work. I have your letter. That’s enough for me to come up with a perfectly good retort.’

      ‘Surely I deserve a heads up. I said in my letter that I believe love is alive and well out there. What do you have to say about that?’

      She still held his hand. She made to pull away and his free hand put a stop to that, closing over hers so that it was entirely encased in the strong warmth of his grasp.

      Kelly was sure she had plenty to say but at that moment her throat had closed over and her pulse had quickened to a rate of knots. She shook her head to clear the indefinable fog that was dampening her perfectly good rage.

      ‘Simon, just go, please.’ Her voice sounded far away.

      ‘No.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘No. I did not come here to be interviewed, Kelly, you know that.’

      ‘So why are you here?’

      Please tell me. Whatever the answer, I have to know.

      He closed the gap between them so quickly Kelly did not see it coming. His warm, strong hands pulled her to him before reaching up, framing her shocked face as he leaned in to touch his lips to hers.

      For a moment Kelly was able to resist. Stunned as she was. But only a moment. Then, with a shuddering groan, her open mouth yielded under his warm, persuasive skill.

      Simon’s beautiful lips tempted her own apart and a hundred distant memories burst to the surface with the unexpectedness of a lightning flash. She could all but feel the hot sun of five years before burn upon her neck as his kiss deepened and enticed and sent melting hot flushes the length of her body.

      She stole her hands around his shoulders to bury her fingers deep into his soft hair, the silky sensation so familiar and so missed all these years. One of Simon’s hands followed suit, sliding around to

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