‘That’s because I hadn’t met him before today,’ Jemma explained, and sat back in the chair, grateful to find his face had disappeared from the basket. ‘He is one Leon Stephanades. A—business colleague of Josh’s.’
‘Wow,’ Trina gasped, and sank down in the other chair.
‘You’ve already heard of him, I see,’ Jemma mocked.
Trina nodded. ‘But Jemma,’ she exclaimed, searching her friend’s face worriedly, ‘he’s way out of our league, love!’
‘I know it.’ A funny expression crossed Jemma’s face; she didn’t even recognise it herself, except that it felt as if it came somewhere close to desolation. ‘But try telling my senses that, will you?’ She grimaced self-deridingly. ‘I made an utter fool of myself today, Tri,’ she confessed. ‘He walked into Josh’s office and I felt the earth move beneath me! I couldn’t stop staring at him!’ Her expression was pained. ‘I couldn’t think! I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t even focus! There were birds flying around in my head and puffy white clouds floating across my vision! He smiled and my heart did somersaults! And—God,’ she choked, covering her face with her hands, ‘he would have had to be blind not to know what was happening to me!’
‘Well,’ Trina murmured slowly, looking down at the card still in her hand, ‘he must have experienced something similar to respond with this.’
‘Did he?’ Her expression was cynical to say the least. ‘What he saw, Tri, was a peach ripe for the plucking!’ She picked a peach from the basket and brandished it bitterly in front of her. ‘And does a man like that turn an easy meal down? Does he hell!’ she answered herself scathingly. ‘And he’s all man, Tri,’ she added helplessly. ‘Big, tough and lean. So damned attractive he knocks your eyes out, and so disgustingly sure of himself that he quite coolly propositioned me!’ The contempt was back, but aimed at Leon instead of herself this time.
‘How?’ Trina’s eyes were round like saucers and eager with interest.
‘How does a man like that proposition a potential lover?’ Jemma snapped. ‘He laid down the ground rules. If you want to play in my league then this is how it’s done—and so on. I wanted to slap his arrogant face, but all I did do was let him kiss me!’ Self-disgust rattled in her throat. ‘By the time he let me up for air again, I was so dizzy I couldn’t think, never mind hit out!’
‘So?’ Trina prompted. ‘How did it get to the point that he sends you something like this?’ she wanted to know. ‘And I don’t mean the basket—I mean this card. It reads like a fait accompli to me—except the talk about smells and acid, of course,’ she frowned, not able to work that bit out. ‘He expects to see you, Jemma, when he gets back from wherever he’s gone off to. A man doesn’t make that assumption unless you’ve let him.’
‘This one does,’ she grunted. ‘Especially when the girl in question gave him no encouragement to think otherwise.’
‘You mean—you just let him get away with kissing you and propositioning you like that?’
‘I would have let him take me on the office floor if he’d wanted to,’ Jemma said drily. ‘That was the level I’d sunk to!’
‘My God!’ Trina sat back and stared. ‘I can’t believe it! Wait till I tell Frew! He’ll go bananas! He claims the man hasn’t been born who can get through your thick shell!’
‘Well, thanks very much, Frew!’ Jemma cried. ‘And what gives him the right to think he knows anything at all about me?’
‘Come off it, Jemma!’ Trina scoffed. ‘You and me both know you’re as picky as a worm in a barrel of apples! How many twenty-four-year-old virgins do you think Frew knows?’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say!’ Jemma flared, jumping to her feet and dropping the lovely peach on to the table. The soft velvet skin split open, allowing the sweet, sensual scent of its juicy fruit to seep out. It assailed her nostrils, whetted her tastebuds, and she had to close her eyes because she was suddenly thrown into a storm of sensation that was all directed by one cleverly manipulative man.
‘Your parents are entirely to blame for that!’ Trina went on, unaware of the torment going on inside Jemma. ‘If it wasn’t your father having some torrid affair with another woman it was your mother paying him back by putting it about with some other man! What an example they set you! And now look at you!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re standing there, trembling with indignation over Frew’s impression of you when you know damned well it’s only the truth! You’re afraid of starting your sexual ball rolling, Jemma,’ she stated bluntly, ‘just in case you discover that you’ve got more of your parents in you than you can deal with!’
‘Do you want me to bed the very next man who walks in that door just to prove you wrong?’ she flared, her eyes snapping open to glare at her so-called best friend.
Trina’s mouth twitched. ‘Not if it’s my Frew, you’d better not,’ she warned. ‘Or it will be your first and last experience.’
‘Oh, go to hell, Tri,’ Jemma sighed, deflated by her flatmate’s unfailing sense of humour.
‘Don’t you see what’s happened to you today, Jemma?’ Trina appealed on a more serious note. ‘You’ve been so determined to keep your emotions under a tight lid that when a man like Leon Stephanades came along your senses boiled up and the lid flew off so they all came shooting out like steam under pressure! That’s why you made such a damned fool of yourself with him!’
‘Thanks for the analysis,’ Jemma grunted, and sat down again. ‘You’ve made me feel so much better!’
‘I was not attempting to make you feel better,’ Trina sighed. ‘Only understand why you responded to him as you did! The man is a god among men. You’ve ambled along quite nicely while only confronted with mere mortals, but when it came to a godlike being you blew your emotional top!’
‘Josh would not take kindly to being classed as mere mortal,’ Jemma pointed out.
‘Josh Tanner,’ Trina stated deridingly, ‘does not even get a look-in compared to your Leon.’
‘Tell that to Cassie,’ Jemma grimaced. And she told Trina the rest of what had happened today.
‘Oh, my,’ her friend drawled when she finished. ‘Now I see what your Leon means when he writes about nasty tastes and smells. The whole thing stinks and tastes bad.’
‘He is not my Leon!’ Jemma angrily pointed out.
‘No?’ Trina quizzed. ‘Then what are you going to do about him?’