At the top of the stairs he gripped her wrist and she stilled, but he could feel her pulse racing beneath his fingers, which he didn’t think was hammering just from the exertion of climbing the stairs. ‘What’s going on, Celia?’
‘Nothing’s going on,’ she said flatly, tugging her hand away and rubbing her wrist. ‘I just have to get back, that’s all. I really do.’
He believed her because her dedication to her work was something only an hour or so ago he’d been admiring. Now, though, it just pissed him off because basically she was letting him know in no uncertain terms that, regardless of the attraction that still existed between them, continuing where they’d left off was at the bottom of her list of priorities. While it was at the top of his.
‘You know, you really need to address that work-life balance of yours,’ he drawled, oddly hurt by the idea she attached so little importance to it.
‘To make it more like yours, you mean?’ she said, marching across the landing towards a bedroom.
He followed her through the door and leaned back against a wall as he watched her pick up a suitcase, drop it on the bed and fling the top back. ‘Working on a Sunday isn’t normal.’
‘It is if you have a tricky deal that needs to be pushed through in record time. Not to mention a document that’s gone missing and of which I have the only copy.’ She scooped up a handful of clothes, dumped them beside the suitcase and began folding and packing, folding and packing, still looking everywhere but at him. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, what with you now being a man of leisure.’
The mocking judgemental tone that he’d assumed had gone was back, and it annoyed him even more. ‘I’ve put in my fair share of weekends at work.’
‘At the moment I work every weekend,’ she said pointedly, and he found himself frowning and wondering, what the hell was this? Some kind of competition? ‘Taking today off was a luxury,’ she added, ‘and I need to make it up.’
‘What about what happened this afternoon?’
‘What about it?’ She paused in the folding/packing thing she had going on and stared at him as if she didn’t have a clue what he was getting at. Which wasn’t entirely surprising since he wasn’t sure he had a clue what he was getting at. So she didn’t want to spend the night with him. What was the big deal? Why was he pursuing it? And, actually, wasn’t he beginning to sound a bit pathetic? A bit needy? A bit desperate?
He was, so he bit back the urge to ask her if the afternoon had meant anything to her, because it clearly hadn’t, and stamped out the disappointment swirling around inside him.
‘Forget it,’ he said, fixing a cool smile to his face and reminding himself that it hadn’t meant anything to him either. It had been good sex, nothing more, and it wasn’t as if he’d never had good sex before.
She sighed and stopped folding. ‘Look, Marcus, this afternoon was fun but we both know it wouldn’t have gone anywhere.’
Did they? He’d thought that they’d been about to go back to his hotel room, and had hoped that things might carry on when they got back to London, but clearly he’d been picking up the wrong signals. No matter. ‘I know it wouldn’t have gone anywhere,’ he said, and she was right. Ultimately it wouldn’t.
‘Yet you’re sounding like you thought this was more than it was.’
He had. Maybe. A bit. For a moment. ‘Evidently my mistake.’
‘It’s unlike you to make a mistake about something like this.’
It was. Which was undoubtedly why he was feeling so wrong-footed. The thing making his stomach churn was confusion at the unexpected turn of events, that was all. ‘I blame the champagne.’
‘Did I ever agree to leave with you?’
No, dammit, she hadn’t, he realised belatedly. He’d jumped to that conclusion all by himself and he’d been an idiot to do so. ‘No.’
‘So that’s it, then,’ she said as if there was nothing more to be said. ‘Just think of me as another of your conquests.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘But it was fun.’
‘It was.’
‘And so what I needed,’ she said with a smile, looking at him finally, ‘so thank you for letting me use you.’
Her words sank in and for a moment Marcus didn’t know what to say. For the first time in years, he was speechless, because of all the things that he’d thought about since they’d had sex it had never once occurred to him that she’d used him.
If he’d contemplated her motives he’d have com
e up with something pretty much along the same lines as his. Overwhelming desire. Years of pent-up build-up. Irresistibility. An interest in seeing where things might go. He’d never have guessed that all she was after was a one-night stand. And didn’t that make him a fool because he’d told her that he and the women he slept with were always on the same page, yet here he was, not just on another page but in a different book entirely.
So much for the idea that Celia was vulnerable, he thought, feeling something inside him that had momentarily thawed ice over again. So much for the thought she needed protecting. She was made of steel. She had no soft centre. And he’d been a complete and utter idiot to imagine otherwise, because he might be many things but he didn’t use people, whereas she had absolutely no qualms about doing such a thing.