Rags To Riches: At Home With The Boss. Elizabeth Lane

saying, in a cool voice, ‘I’ve found that life has a funny way of not playing fair in the great scheme of things.’

      ‘Is that all you have to say?’ Sarah cried in frustration. ‘Honestly, Raoul, sometimes I could … hit you!’

      Her eyes were blazing and her hair was a tumbling riot of gold—and he felt a charge race through his system like an uncontrolled dose of adrenaline.

      ‘I’m flattered that I still get you so worked up,’ he murmured with husky amusement.

      He couldn’t help himself as he reached out and tangled his fingers in that hair. The contact was electric. He felt her response slam into him like a physical force and he revelled in the dark sexual hunger snaking through his body. That was something no amount of hard-headed logic or cool, calm reason could control.

      Her lips had parted and her eyes were unfocused and half closed. Kissing her would halt all those crazy accusations in mid-flow. And he was hungry for her—hungry to remind himself of what her lips felt like.

      ‘Don’t you dare, Raoul …’

      He pulled her towards him and noted, with a blaze of satisfaction, the unspoken invitation in her darkened eyes.

      That first heady taste of him was intoxicating. Sarah moaned and pressed her hands against his chest. He had always been able to make her forget everything with a single touch, and her mind duly went blank. She forgot everything as her body curved sensuously against his, every bit of her melting at the feel of his swollen masculinity pushing against her, straining against the zipper of his trousers. Her breasts ached and she moved them against him, almost fainting at the pleasurable sensation of the abrasive motion on her sensitised nipples.

      Raoul was the first to pull away.

      ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’

      It took a few seconds for the daze in Sarah’s head to clear, and then she snapped back to the horrified realisation that after everything she had been through, and hot on the heels of her really, really wanting to hit him, she had just caved in—like an addict who couldn’t control herself. He had kissed her and all the hurt, anger and disappointment had disappeared. She had become a mindless puppet and five years had vanished in the blink of an eye.

      ‘Neither of us should have …’

      ‘Maybe it was inevitable.’

      ‘What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

      ‘You know what I’m talking about. This thing between us …’

      ‘There’s nothing between us!’ Sarah cried, stepping back and hugging herself in an automatic gesture of self-defence.

      ‘Are you trying to convince me or yourself?’

      ‘Okay, maybe we just … just gave in to something for the sake of old times.’ She took a deep breath. ‘And now we’ve got that out of the way we can move on and … and …’

      ‘Pretend it never happened?’

      ‘Exactly! Pretend it never happened!’ She took a few more steps back, but she thought that even if she took a million steps back and fled the country the after-effects of that devastating kiss would still be with her. ‘This isn’t about us. This is about Oliver and your part in his life, so … so …’

      Raoul looked at her with a brooding intensity that made her tremble. She didn’t have a clue what was going on in his head. He had always been very good at shielding his thoughts when it suited him. She worked herself up into a self-righteous anger, remembering how terrific he had been at keeping stuff from her—like their lack of future—until she had fallen for him hook, line and sinker. Never again would she let him have that level of control!

      ‘So just come here tomorrow. You can meet Oliver, and we can work out some kind of schedule, and … then we can both just get on with our own lives …’

CHAPTER THREE

      BY THE time the doorbell went the following afternoon Sarah hoped that she had risen above her physical weakness of the day before and reached a more balanced place. In other words sorted her priorities. Priority number one was Oliver, and she bracingly repeated to herself how wonderful it was that his father would now be there for him, willing to take on a parental role, whatever that might be. A full and frank discussion of that was high on her agenda. Priority number two, on a more personal level, was to make sure that she kept a clear head and didn’t get lost in old feelings and memories.

      She opened the door to a casually dressed Raoul.

      ‘Oliver’s in the sitting room, watching cartoons,’ she said, getting down to business straight away.

      Raoul looked at her carefully, and noted the way her eyes skittered away from his, the way she kept one hand on the doorknob, as though leaving her options open just in case she decided to shut the door in his face. In fact she had only half opened the door, and he peered behind her pointedly.

      ‘Are you actually going to let me in, or do you want me to forge a path past you?’

      ‘I just want to say that we’ll really need to discuss … um … the practicalities of this whole situation …’

      ‘As opposed to what?’

      ‘I’ve been thinking, Raoul …’

      ‘Dangerous,’ Raoul said softly. She was in a pair of jeans and a tight tee shirt that reminded him a little too forcibly of the mysterious physical hold she still seemed to have over him. He had spent the night vainly trying to clear his head of images of her.

      ‘I’ve been thinking that we should have as little to do with one another as possible. I don’t want anything to happen between us. Been there, done that and have the tee shirt. The important thing is that you get to know Oliver, and that should be the extent of our relationship with one another.’

      ‘And have you told him who I am?’

      Sarah was startled and a little taken aback at the speed with which he had concluded a conversation she had spent hours rehearsing in her head. Had she hoped that he would at least try and knock down some of her defences? Had she erected her Keep Off sign in the expectation that he might just try and steamroller through it? Had she secretly wanted him to steamroller through it?

      ‘Not yet,’ she said crisply. ‘I thought it best that you two get to know one another first.’

      ‘Okay. Well, there’s some stuff I’d like to bring in.’

      ‘Stuff? What kind of stuff?’

      He nodded to his car, which was parked a few spaces along. ‘Why don’t you go inside? I’ll be a few minutes.’

      ‘You haven’t bought him presents, have you?’ she asked suspiciously, but when she tried to step outside to get a closer look, he gently but firmly prevented her.

      ‘Now, how did I know that you would disapprove?’

      ‘It’s not appropriate to show up with an armful of gifts the very first time you meet him!’

      ‘I’m making up for lost time.’

      Sarah gave up. You couldn’t buy affection, she conceded, but perhaps a small token might help break the ice. Oliver had had no male input in his short life so far aside from her own father, whom he adored. She had been too busy just trying to make ends meet to dip her toes in the dating pool, and anyway she had not been interested in trying to replace Raoul. To her way of thinking she had developed a very healthy cynicism of the opposite sex. So Oliver’s sole experience of the adult world, to a large extent, had been her.

      He was in the process of trying to construct a tower of bricks, with one eye on the manic adventures of his favourite cartoon character, when Raoul appeared in