sign anything put before me. I’m going to go in now.’
Nora glanced at the valet patiently waiting to take the car. ‘Where shall I wait for you?’
‘How about the Starbucks across the street? When you see the car being brought around, you’ll know I’ve finished.’
‘Okay. Good. That’s good.’
Ethan released his seatbelt and was about to open the car door when he felt Nora’s hand, or rather, her shoe, on his forearm. ‘Ethan, thanks. I realise it may not look like it, but I really do take KPC incredibly seriously.’
‘No problem.’ He opened the car door and scooped up the laptop. He nodded towards a hotel doorman to open the passenger door for Nora and walked confidently towards the hotel’s entrance.
Forty minutes later he was getting into the car, impressed with the speed with which Nora had managed to sprint across the road in the shoes she was wearing, to be at his side.
‘Well?’ she queried.
‘How about we get in first,’ he said.
‘So get in already,’ Nora answered, jogging around to her side of the car to pull open the car door and slide in gracefully, which amazed him all over again, considering she still had a large bag covering her arm.
She waited a nanosecond for him to pull out into the traffic. ‘Well?’
‘It was interesting. I think it went well.’
‘You only think? Damn it. I knew it. Cancelling would have been better. What was I thinking, letting some complete stranger take over? I mean just because I’ve heard of Love Leisure, it’s not remotely the same industry as property services.’
‘Little joke.’ He smiled as he heard her inhale. Turning his head to briefly look at her, he said, ‘Relax, it went well.’
‘Oh.’ The confidence in his voice seemed to appease her a little. ‘What’s in the goodie-bag?’ she asked, craning her head to the back seat, where he had placed the large glossy, burgundy, signature Moorfield bag.
‘Something that tells me I know the meeting went well.’
She remained silent, but against the hum of the car’s motor he could practically hear her brain chugging away, trying to decide between staying polite and demanding to know what went on with Eleanor Moorfield.
‘So what happens now?’ she finally asked.
‘Now we wait.’
‘Oh.’ There was a lengthy pause and then he felt her turn her head towards him. ‘In case you haven’t worked it out already, I’m not that good at the whole waiting thing.’
Ethan stopped at the traffic lights and turned his head, grinning from ear to ear and feeling invigorated. ‘I’m sure I can come up with a way to pass the time.’
‘I have to tell you,’ Ethan told Nora as he eased the car out of the hospital grounds an hour later and headed back into traffic to drop Nora off at her office. ‘Your definition of a debriefing and my definition of a debriefing differ considerably,’
Bad jokes and double entendres aside, Nora was still having trouble believing how deftly he’d organised someone to see her in the casualty department after insisting on waiting for her. He’d taken one look at how quiet and uncomfortable she’d become the closer they got to the hospital and, once more, assumed the knight-in-shining-armour title. A couple of those artfully aimed sexy smiles of his and she’d bypassed triage and was being ushered into a cubicle for treatment.
‘Maybe I’ll have to check out your version, one day.’ Oh, she did not just say that! If the chemicals they’d put on her hand to melt the glue had tongue-loosening properties, oughtn’t they to warn a patient about that?
Ethan flashed her a hot, private smile and Nora tried to concentrate on breathing evenly. She really had to stop this now. This flirting thing she had going with him. Now would be a good time to remember that flirting, and everything that usually came after, was off her To Do list for the foreseeable. She didn’t have the time. Couldn’t afford the distraction. Look what happened to her when she tried to multi-task.
Admittedly it had been a while since she’d indulged in more than flirting. Her eyes squeezed shut as she remembered Sephy’s comment from last night—that if she wasn’t careful, outside of a work context, she’d forget how to talk to men altogether. Coming on top of the rest of the lecture she’d received from her younger sister, the comment had stung. Nora sighed. As if Sephy hadn’t known that accusing her of being a workaholic, who’d put her grief on hold, wasn’t going to put her in the best of listening moods. She knew Sephy’s little digs were designed to sneak under her shield and penetrate, but after the disaster of her last relationship Nora knew that relationships weren’t for her. She had much clearer goals. Until she was back on an even keel at KPC, work came first, second and third for her.
‘How’s the hand?’ Ethan asked.
His question had her turning her attention to his own hands as they rested competently on the steering wheel. Any idea of work flew straight out the window as she wondered idly how those hands might feel against her skin, smoothing their way up and over her naked flesh, from hipbone to breast.
Nora blinked, squirmed against her seat and looked down at the bag, now containing the remnants of her shoe.
‘Okay,’ she said, determined to shake off the attraction she felt for him. Peering closely at the hand in question, she cleared her throat and forced some more words out. ‘No lasting damage. It was a close-run thing, but thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, well, chemicals, actually… Turns out I probably could have done it DIY with the nail varnish remover.’ She sighed dramatically as she opened the bag carrying the rest of the shoe she had embarrassingly asked to keep because it was vintage Moorfield. ‘To be honest, I think I’m experiencing a little separation anxiety.’
Ethan’s deep laugh trickled over already hyper-sensitised nerve endings and left her feeling as though someone had left a window ajar in her heart. She had a desperate need to keep busy. To be doing many things at once. Anything to stop her nerves jangling at the idea of what a kick it was to make this man laugh. Honestly, the sooner she was out of his car and breathing in some normal, heavily polluted, air, the better it would be for her sanity.
Now that she didn’t have to worry about missing out on pitching to Eleanor, Ethan’s scent was staging a staggering assault on her senses, causing her to behave completely out of character. It was time to rein herself back in, she thought, as she suddenly realised whereabouts they were. ‘Oh, this leads straight to the back entrance of KPC’s offices. It’s about a hundred yards up on the right.’
Ethan stopped the car as the lights changed and Nora’s mind raced to try and come up with something to break the crazy sense of anticipation creeping in.
‘Eleanor really said she’d be in touch within the next couple of days?’ she asked, her voice higher in pitch than she would have liked. She had a feeling her babble-rate was about to grow exponentially, and she hated the fact that a simple attraction was the explanation.
‘She really did.’
‘As soon as I get back to the office I’m going to call a couple of contacts. I have a few buildings in mind for headquarters and then I need to look through the information she gave you about where she wants to base her manufacturing. There are a couple of options that become available mid-March. And there’s something special I want to try and get for her, right in the middle of London’s fashion district. Sort of baroque-meets-boutique, but with plenty of ground-floor space. All polished floorboards, wrought-iron work everywhere and bevelled windowpanes. High-end but perfect romantic style for a flagship store. Modern office complex and concrete and glass shopping mall is not the way to go. I’m fairly sure I’m right about this.’ Finally running out of steam she glanced across at him but he was concentrating on the signals ahead. The lights changed and as Ethan drove forward, Nora’s hands moved