A Dream Christmas. Кэрол Мортимер

to discuss it; you’re the one who is harping on about it!’ Riley retorted, scuttling past him to head for her kitchen. ‘I’m going to make coffee; do you want one?’

      ‘I’ll have some of that whisky you keep on hand for Noah,’ James replied, following her across the room. Leaning a shoulder into the wall, he took the glass of whisky Riley handed him. She could feel his eyes on her back while she fiddled with the coffee machine.

      ‘What did you tell my parents, Riley?’

      ‘That I needed a change, to do something different.’

      ‘Is that the truth?’

      ‘It’s as good as any,’ Riley retorted. She hadn’t told them that she missed Morgan’s companionship now that she was engaged and in love. That without her, and without having any contact with him, her life was duller, lonelier, that she felt distant and separated from this family who she no longer felt a part of.

      That she felt compelled to move the heck on.

      ‘So, not the full truth. Riley, we’ve always been honest with each other; you’re the one person in my life who has always been unflinchingly truthful.’

      ‘Stop badgering me, James. I’m just trying to … redesign my life.’

      ‘What are you talking about? You don’t need a new life!’

      Did he actually hear the words that came out of his mouth? Riley wondered. And how dare he say that when all he could give her was a one-night stand three times?

      ‘I won’t understand if you don’t explain your crazy impulse to me!’ James snapped and she heard the frustration in his voice. Riley opened her mouth to speak and abruptly closed it again. What could she say to him? Would he even understand any of what she wanted to say?

       Will you listen, James—really listen? If I say that I have always adored you but I can’t be in the same city as you and not talk to you? That I am so damn scared I’ll fall in love with you, even though I know that a part of me loves you anyway? That walking away from this half-life is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life? That I am terrified to go but even more scared to stay?

      Riley sighed, pushed the coffee cup away and took the easy option, swallowing the words she’d been thinking. ‘Just let me go, James.’

      James shook his stubborn head. ‘No. You’re staying until the end of the year and I’d keep you longer but you’ll probably have me arrested on kidnapping charges.’

      ‘Damn right I will.’

      James ignored her. ‘I expect you to be at work every day until then.’

      ‘What am I going to do?’ Riley wailed. ‘My staff are all on holiday and it’s a deadly quiet time—’ James tossed back his whisky and smiled his bad-ass CEO smile. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll find something to keep you occupied and out of trouble.’

      ‘Yeah, right.’ Riley narrowed her eyes at him. ‘I suppose that if I don’t agree you’ll set those sharks in Legal on me for breaching my contract?’

      ‘Damn right I will,’ James repeated her earlier phrase.

      Riley looked from her kitchen window, where the occasional drop of icy drizzle hit the windowpane, as she tried to ignore the whoosh in her stomach, the thump of her accelerated heartbeat. They were old companions—something she was so accustomed to feeling whenever James was in the same room as her. How could she be so annoyed with him yet still want to rip his clothes off? Her glance flicked over him—dark grey suit trousers, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up past his wrists, red tie pulled down from his open collar. His warm blond hair held furrows that suggested that he had spent the day shoving his fingers through it and there were blue shadows under his eyes, suggesting stress and no sleep.

      Situation normal, then.

      James returned her stare and Riley watched as his green eyes turned hard and cold. ‘Are you leaving because of a man?’

       Yes, you, you jerk-nugget!

      ‘What?’

      ‘Have you met someone new—are you following him somewhere, acting impulsively again?’

      Riley tipped her head and she couldn’t help her self-satisfied smile. ‘Are you jealous?’

      James slowly stood up, walked around the counter and placed his hands on either side of her hips, effectively caging her in. ‘Answer the question, Riley.’

      To hell with that. ‘Maybe.’

      James dropped his mouth to hers, his lips brushing hers in a kiss that immediately dissolved her body and sent a wet warmth straight to that pulsing spot between her legs.

      ‘Wrong answer,’ he said against her lips before sucking her lower lip between his. He knew she loved it when he did that, the sod! She kept her arms folded across her chest in an effort to keep them from looping around his neck and climbing up and over him. With James she went from irritated to turned-on in ten seconds flat.

      ‘Get rid of him,’ James ordered, his lips touching her jaw, moving up to feather kisses along the high arch of her cheekbone, her temple.

      That’s what I’m trying to do, she mentally wailed. But when you kiss me like this it’s impossible!

      ‘This is crazy, Ri. We can work this out,’ James quietly said, resting his chin on top of her head.

      No, they couldn’t. History had taught them that. She wasn’t enough—exciting enough, novel enough, pretty enough—to pull him out of playboy mode and she wasn’t prepared to risk handing her heart over, knowing that he could stomp on it. Like she had on his.

      No, he could continue to play with his bunnies and maybe in time, and halfway across the continent, she could find a man who she could love and who could love her.

      ‘We can renegotiate your contract, talk about your hours, find out how to make this work for both of us—’

      And didn’t that say it all? He was talking about work and she was thinking about them, their relationship. They weren’t on the same page—hell, they weren’t even reading the same book!

      ‘I have to go,’ she quietly replied. ‘It’s time.’

      James immediately pulled away from her and when his eyes slammed into her grey ones Riley had to fight the urge to take a step back. He had his don’t-mess-with-me CEO look on, his expression inscrutable, his eyes stony and deliberately veiled.

      ‘If that’s the way you want to do this. Tomorrow is Saturday so I’m working from my apartment. Be there at eight and I’ll give you a rundown of what I expect from you over the next couple of weeks before and after Christmas.’

      And, on that cryptic statement, he headed towards her door, snatching up his jacket as he walked into her tiny hall. Then her front door slammed and Riley sank to her haunches and rested her arms on her bent knees.

      Well, okay, then. James was obviously not going to make this easy for her.

      Then again, nothing between them had ever been easy so why had she thought this would be?

      HEADING HOME FROM the gym the next morning, James jogged up the flights of stairs to his penthouse home. He wished he had time for a swim in his lap pool, which was in his conservatory on the top floor of his very exclusive apartment block overlooking Central Park. The pool had been his pet project and he loved the idea that it formed the ceiling of his apartment’s hallway. He had a recurring daydream about watching his lover swim naked in the pool from below, but since he never brought a woman back to his place it remained only a fantasy. And since there was only one woman he fantasised about lately, he could easily imagine Riley, who was a strong swimmer, naked above him, her shapely body easing through the water, her breasts swaying and her perfectly waxed pubic strip …

      James scrubbed a hand over his