Boss Meets Baby(130)

On her feet before he could answer, Georgia walked straight over to his desk, despite his expression— being less than welcoming and even seemed to be warning her off. A wave of deep unhappiness descended. She didn’t want them to continue on for the rest of the day like this…like sworn enemies either side of a high wall. They had shared something wonderful— yesterday…something Georgia would always remember. She hoped that Keir would too, after she’d left Glenteign.

‘It’s fine.’ He held up his hand to indicate that she stay where she was, his firm jaw clenched ominously tight. ‘Why don’t you just get back to work? I really don’t need you to fuss over me!’

‘Why are you being like this? I thought that—’

‘You thought that because you let me seduce you, you— should now be receiving some kind of special treatment?’

Georgia could hardly believe what she was hearing. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment and hurt. ‘I thought nothing of the kind! And I didn’t “let” you seduce me! It was entirely mutual…you know it was.’

Holding her gaze for long seconds, Keir finally turned his face away with a muttered expletive under his breath. ‘Then why did you push me away earlier? As if my very touch burned you?’ he demanded.

In the deep recesses of his mind Keir despised himself for allowing his acute sense of rejection to get the better of him. But when Georgia had not responded— with the affection he’d desired, and had instead deliberately moved away, it had catapulted him right back to the centre of his childhood pain. Both his parents had been past masters at rejection.

Elise Strachan had been affectionate one minute and cold as ice the next, and when drunk had often pushed him and Robbie away. And if either of the boys had hurt themselves in any way, instead of comforting— them, his father would admonish them with, ‘You need to learn how to take a few hard knocks…stop snivelling and toughen up!’This from the age of three…

‘Your touch did burn me, Keir…But not in the way you think.’ Georgia’s hand came down on his arm, and he sensed her heat radiate right through the linen sleeve of his shirt so that his whole body became instantly inflamed with desire.

‘Then come here and kiss me!’

Suddenly Georgia found herself in Keir’s lap, and he was holding her face captive as his mouth plundered hers. The wildly addictive taste of him made her writhe and yearn for him to touch her the way he had touched her in bed yesterday.

Just as his hand found her breast beneath her silky top and hungrily cupped it, the loud ringing tones of the telephone made them both spring apart.

‘Stay right where you are.’ Breathing hard, Keir scrubbed a rueful hand round his jaw before reaching for the receiver.

All the while he spoke to whoever was at the other end of the line his gaze cleaved to Georgia’s with such riveting intent that her heartbeat refused to slow down, even though he was no longer kissing her or touching her. When he’d finished the call, his smile seemed to melt the very marrow in her bones as he lifted her hand to his lips to plant a kiss there.

‘Now, where were we?’ he teased. Glancing away, her— mouth still tingling where he had ravished it only moments ago, Georgia suddenly turned ridiculously shy. Here she was, sitting in her boss’s lap, letting him do the most delicious, delectable things to her with his eyes, his mouth and his touch, and she felt like the most gauche, inexperienced teenager. She might be a highly professional and competent secretary, a woman who had taken successful charge of her own and her brother’s life from a very young age, but right now none of those attributes readily came to her aid…

Nobody had ever told her that falling in love could scramble your brain so much that when faced with the object of your desire it was impossible to even string two lucid thoughts together! Her glance fell almost with relief on the small metal figure of a soldier lying at the side of the blotter on the desk. She picked it up and examined it.

‘Does he belong to you?’ she asked lightly.

Georgia sensed Keir’s body grow briefly rigid. When he didn’t answer straight away, she wondered if she’d done something wrong.

‘It belonged to my brother Robbie.’ He took the miniature figure from between her fingers and sighed. ‘It was one of a dozen. Robbie painted them all with painstaking care when he was about seven or eight…he spent hours and hours on them.’

‘What happened to the others?’

‘My father flung them into the fire in a temper, because— Robbie hadn’t been quick enough in bringing him his morning newspaper.’

‘Oh, how cruel!’

Georgia’s eyes had actually filled with tears, and Keir’s lips twisted sardonically. ‘You think that was cruel, do you? Well, James Strachan surpassed that particular act of spite many times, let me tell you! You wouldn’t believe just what despicable depths the man could sink to when it came to the treatment of his family.’

Reaching across Georgia to get to his desk, Keir opened a drawer and dropped the figure of the soldier inside. Closing it again, he quickly fielded the pain and rage the memory inevitably engendered, and studied the ravishing girl in his lap with a blend of sorrow and regret. Even talking to her about the smallest part of his past he somehow felt that he was sullying her. This beautiful, innocent woman who had single-handedly raised her fourteen-year-old brother and sacrificed her own plans and dreams for love of her family…