‘Fighting talk,’ Curtis murmured. ‘What makes you think that I would be the perpetrator of any further mistakes?’
It took a few seconds for the meaning of what he had said to sink in, and then she uttered a little dismayed grunt. He was nothing if not direct. He was reminding her that she hadn’t exactly been an innocent angel, passively having to endure his advances. She thought of her enthusiastic responses and a tidal wave of pure shame washed over her.
‘Because I never make the same mistake twice,’ she said forcefully. She had never even been in a situation like this before but even so she knew that she couldn’t afford to let her emotions overtake her sanity as she had just done.
‘I’ll be taking next week off,’ Curtis said, moving towards the kitchen door and opening it. ‘Having some quality time with Anna as I haven’t seen as much of her this week as I wanted to.’
Tessa breathed a sigh of profound relief. She managed to unglue her feet and follow him out of the kitchen, and even managed a smile when they were standing at the front door.
‘It’s been brilliant working for you,’ Anna enthused, making it difficult for Tessa not to be moved by the sincerity. ‘Guess I’ll see you next time I’m home? Which would be Christmas?’
‘I hope so,’ Tessa said, directing her attention to Anna but reserving the significance of her words for Curtis.
‘I’m sure Tessa will have no reason to leave the company before then,’ Curtis murmured to his daughter, conversing with Tessa just below the surface, as she had done with him.
Because, Tessa thought, closing the door on them and then leaning heavily against it to stop herself from subsiding to the floor, he certainly would give her no reason to go. Those twenty ruinous minutes would be history for him because they had meant nothing, hence he could assure her, truthfully, that they would not be repeated.
For her, however…
She let her legs do what they wanted to do and sat down, back to the front door.
Thank goodness he wouldn’t be around for a week. She could put everything in perspective and, really, she was not a silly, emotional girl. It was a calming thought. She simply wouldn’t allow Curtis Diaz to get under her skin and the fact that he had played her for a fool was mortifying…but helpful.
After all, who, in the end, could be attracted to a man who had had no qualms in making a pass at a woman out of pity?
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU’RE not still here!’ Curtis stopped in the middle of the office and frowned. He, himself, wouldn’t be here but for the fact that he had forgotten his mother’s Christmas present in his desk drawer.
Tessa looked up guiltily and flushed.
Yes, here she was. Still. At four-thirty in the afternoon when the office was deserted because everyone had either gone home already or else had joined the group who had chosen to have a last lunch and drink at the pub down the road before the company closed for the Christmas break.
‘I was just about to leave,’ she said, switching off her computer and shoving things into her drawers, tidying up her desk. ‘I wanted to finish all my work before the break.’
‘How industrious,’ Curtis said dryly, strolling over to where she was doing her best to ignore him by concentrating hard on flicking through the remnants of her filing tray. ‘I think what’s left can wait, don’t you?’ He reached out and circled her wrist with his fingers, stopping her in mid-tidy.
Tessa’s heart did that familiar, lurching thing and she could feel every nerve in her body tense as she stilled and looked at him, at the lazy, perceptive eyes boring into her.
The past seven weeks had been a trial by ordeal. Her ordeal. After that incident in the kitchen, he had stuck rigidly to her request that they forget about what had happened. She had not seen him for the week after, when he had been out of the office, taking his daughter on various excursions, although they had spoken on the telephone regularly, at least twice a day, purely on work matters. When he had come back, things had returned to normal, the only difference between them that she could see was that he was slightly more aloof than he had been.
They settled back into a familiar routine, although he no longer pried into her private life. She was left to assume that the ease with which he had forgotten what had taken place told its own telling story about how much the misplaced episode had affected him. Not much.
‘Why didn’t you come to the pub with us?’ he was asking her now. ‘Don’t tell me you preferred to stay here and make sure all your pencils were neatly arranged in your drawer before you left? I thought your excuse was that you had to go and do some last-minute Christmas shopping?’