Off Limits / Ruled. Anne Marsh

my knees are shaking and I feel really weird, as if I could cry—which, for your information, I haven’t done in years. I literally don’t cry. Not at sad movies. Not when my cat died.

      But I’m shaking, and if he follows me I’ll be really lost.

      He doesn’t.

      I storm over to my desk. I wasn’t lying or exaggerating. Piles of paper clutter every available inch of the thing. I turn my back on them and stare over the Heath, my eyes brooding.

      This is a damned nightmare, isn’t it?

      My brain nods along smugly. Told you so.

       Chapter Three

      IT HAS BEEN a week and I’m still here. What’s more, my brain and I are almost friends again. I have been behaving. Working hard, speaking politely, keeping my sexy, kinky ‘if only’ thoughts hidden behind a mask of disinterest.

      Of course it helps that I’ve hardly seen Jack.

      He’s been in Tokyo for four days, on a trip I would usually do with him.

      Here’s how it would go: Private jet. Limousine. Luxurious hotel accommodation—his apartment there is being remodelled. Meetings. Late-night debriefing.

      You get the picture, and you no doubt see the risk.

      ‘I have too much on,’ I said when he’d decided he needed to go personally. ‘Seriously, there’s no way I can leave the office now.’

      He ground his teeth together, looked at me as though I were pulling some soppy, emotional crap and then he nodded. ‘Fine.’

      He’s due back today and my desk is no clearer—it’s just a different heap of papers that covers it now. My phone bleats and I grab it up, my nerves not welcoming the intrusion.

      Perhaps my impatience conveys itself in my brusque greeting.

      ‘You sound like shit.’

      The cackling voice brings an instant smile to my face. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

      ‘Where’ve you been, lovey?’

      ‘Oh, you know...’ I eye the paperwork dubiously. ‘Living it up.’

      ‘If only. Let me guess. You’re at work?’

      ‘You called my work number, so I suspect you know the answer to that.’

      Another cackle. ‘Are you coming to see me any time soon? I have something for you.’

      ‘Another lecture on my priorities?’

      ‘You’re a smart girl. You know your priorities are out of order.’ She sighs. ‘Take it from a woman at the end of her journey. There’s a big, beautiful world out there, and even if you devote your life entirely to travelling you’ll still never get to see everywhere and everything.’

      ‘God, that makes me feel both nauseated and claustrophobic. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental even for you, Grandma.’

      She laughs. I love her laugh. My grandma shines a light with her smile alone.

      ‘Everyone’s allowed a bit of sentimentalism at some point, aren’t they? Especially at my age.’

      ‘I travel everywhere,’ I point out, flicking my calendar onto my screen and scanning it. ‘In fact I’m off to Australia next week.’

      Crap. With Jack.

      ‘Oh, yes? That wouldn’t be a work trip, would it?’

      I grin. ‘No. And by no, I mean yes—but I imagine I’ll still get time to pet a koala.’

      ‘You know they’re not just crawling around the streets? You actually need to go bush to find one.’

      I burst out laughing. ‘“Go bush”? Grandma, you’re a Duchess. I think it’s in the manual that you’re not allowed to “go bush”—or go anywhere, really.’

      I’m not joking. Grandma really is a Duchess. She married my grandpa, who was a decade her senior and had come back from the Second World War with what we’d now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. She was a nurse, and his family hired her to care for him—to “fix” him. She quit on the first day. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, she declared. He was just different.

      They got engaged that afternoon.

      It’s the only fairytale I believe in—and only because it has a macabre degree of reality to it. Grandma did fix him. He made her a princess—of the social variety—and she made him whole in a different way, just like she said.

      We lost him years ago, and now she’s the one who’s a little bit broken. But still amazing. The most beautiful person in my life. My other constant.

      Jack and Grandma. Great. An emotionally closed-off sexy widower that I should definitely know better than to want, and a champagne-swilling octogenarian, relic of the aristocracy. These two are the anchors in my life...

      I shake my head, my smile rueful.

      ‘Pish! I’ll have you know I went bush and did a great many other things in my time.’ She sighs heavily. ‘And now it’s your time—and you’re spending it in some ghoulish house on the edge of the moors.’

      ‘It’s a mansion, actually, with state-of-the-art offices. And it’s Hampstead Heath—not a moor.’

      ‘Still...’ A huff of impatience. ‘You’ll come this weekend?’

      ‘I promise.’

      I click in my calendar and make a note. Without entering my plans straight into my calendar I’m running blind. My eyes are dragged of their own accord to the entry for my parents’ anniversary. Ugh.

      ‘I suppose you got your invitation?’

      ‘Mmm...’ It’s a noise of agreement that could mean a thousand things. ‘Very elegant paper.’

      I stifle a laugh. ‘Stiff and unyielding.’

      My implication hangs in the air, unspoken.

      ‘Ah, well. At least there’ll be booze.’

      ‘And lots of it.’

      I run a finger over my desk. Grandma and I got rather unceremoniously sloshed at the previous year’s anniversary affair. If we hadn’t been related by blood to the bride du jour we definitely wouldn’t have been invited back.

      ‘We’ll do a rehearsal at the weekend,’ she says, and I hear the wink in her words.

      ‘Perfect. See you then.’

      ‘Good, darling. Ta-ta.’

      My phone rings again almost as soon as I hang up, and the smile is still playing on my lips as I lift the receiver and hook it beneath my ear. ‘Yeah?’

      ‘Gemma.’

      His voice gushes through me like a tidal wave crashes over the shore. We’ve been in constant contact while he’s been travelling—but only via email or text, and only in the most businesslike sense.

      At no point has he reminded me of the way his mouth pushed me back, tasting me, robbing me of comprehension and hammering every last one of my senses. At no point have we discussed how he made me come against the wall of his office.

      Hearing his voice now is as intimate and personal as if he strode into the room and straddled me, reached down and kissed me...

      ‘I’m meeting some clients in the City. I need that presentation on the Tokyo project, as well as an up-to-date cost analysis and the report I had done. Meet me in an hour.’

      It almost sounds like a question, but we both know it isn’t. My body hums with vibrations. I’m going to see him again. It’s