Tempestuous Affair. Carole Mortimer

do.

      He was sitting at her desk when she got back, watching her warily as she woodenly hung up her jacket and smoothed her hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally spoke, his voice husky. ‘I didn’t mean that remark about Reader.’ His eyes were a stormy tawny gold as he looked at her searchingly. ‘Do you believe me?’ he prompted at her continued silence.

      ‘Of course,’ she acknowledged flatly.

      He stood up, coming round to the front of her desk, the warmth of his body reaching out to her in the confines of the room. ‘He did ask you out, though, didn’t he?’ his eyes narrowed.

      She looked at him unflinchingly. ‘And if he did?’

      Joel’s hands clenched into fists at his sides. ‘I could tell he was attracted to you,’ he ground out.

      ‘If I didn’t know you better, Joel,’ she taunted, ‘and luckily I do,’ she added hardly, ‘I would think you cared.’

      His mouth tightened. ‘I care that because of the way we’ve parted you might find yourself involved when you don’t really want to be.’

      Lindsay looked at him with dislike. ‘And since when did you become an expert on what I want?’ She knew it was the wrong thing to say even as she said it, the soft colour flooding her cheeks. Joel knew exactly what she wanted, what she needed, when it came to making love! His eyes mocked her with that knowledge now. ‘I meant emotionally,’ she snapped.

      He ignored the jibe. ‘Are you going out with Reader?’ he persisted in the subject of the other man.

      Lindsay shrugged. ‘I might. But I doubt it,’ she added as his eyes darkened stormily. ‘I’ve learnt the hard way that mixing business and pleasure just doesn’t work out.’

      His mouth tightened. ‘Which part of that applies to your relationship with me the last six months?’

      She swallowed hard. ‘I’m beginning to think neither!’

      Joel gave a deep sigh, closing his eyes momentarily. ‘God, I can’t seem to stop hitting out at you. Maybe you’re right to want to leave, after all,’ he shook his head. ‘I’m only hurting you.’

      ‘You have to care to be hurt,’ she sat down behind her desk, paler than ever, ‘and we’ve agreed that neither of us does that.’

      ‘Yes,’ he bit out. ‘I think I’ll go to lunch now,’ he added suddenly, leaving abruptly.

      Lindsay’s shattered nerves relaxed slowly once he had left. This was so much more traumatic than even she had imagined, Joel reacting much more strongly than she had thought he would. She had seen the women come and go in his life for so long, and he had never been so bitter about it before. But then it had never been the woman’s decision to end things before. Joel seemed to have an inborn radar that warned him when a woman was becoming too emotionally involved with him, and at the first sign of that he would end things between them, usually with a bouquet of flowers and a carefully worded note. Maybe if she didn’t love him so much she would have sent him flowers and a carefully worded note!

      The uneasy truce that existed between them over the next few days made the studio hell to go to, but Lindsay was determined not to show any sign of weakness by not going in. Joel had shown her all too clearly when she had almost admitted her love for him how much he deplored such human frailties.

      But the strain showed on her as the week progressed, her days fraught with tension as Joel remained likely to explode at the slightest provocation, her nights no easier as she ached for his arms about her, his body filling her as they cried out their enjoyment of each other.

      The tension between them wasn’t helped by the fact that Malcolm Reader was likely to call in or telephone her without warning. As promised, he hadn’t given up asking her to go out with him, and he was proving to be as persistent as Joel had once been. Malcolm’s frequent presence in his secretary’s office was viewed with anger by Joel, and she felt sure it was only that he was working for Malcolm that kept him from asking the other man to leave.

      Joel returned the file of the models he had used during the last five years on Thursday lunchtime, his sigh one of dissatisfaction.

      ‘No luck?’ She looked up at him with a frown, knowing there were some really beautiful women in there.

      ‘No,’ he rasped.

      ‘But surely one of them is suitable?’

      ‘Suitable, yes,’ he bit out. ‘But I happen to want someone who’s perfect.’

      If the strain of the last four days showed on her then Joel hadn’t escaped unscathed either. Of course he was going out every night, usually with a different woman, and apparently not getting in until the early hours of the morning, when undoubtedly he didn’t sleep alone. He certainly looked tired, with lines beside his eyes, the sharp sense of humour he had once possessed no longer in evidence. Even if he were now making up for lost time with an abundance of different women he certainly didn’t look happy about it.

      But Lindsay felt no satisfaction from knowing that, knew such deep unhappiness herself that if Joel felt even one tenth of the misery she did then she pitied him.

      ‘Perhaps you’re being too critical, Joel,’ she reasoned. ‘After all, the make-up is surely meant for a number of different women, not just one type.’

      He shook his head. ‘It’s an exclusive line, meant only for brunettes.’