Over the course of the next few weeks that was what they did.
They met in restaurants, bars and various parks. Despite having known each other for nearly twenty years, so much of that time had been clouded with animosity that they’d never really talked.
Now, though, they did nothing but.
They discovered that, while they disagreed about many things, about the big things, the important things, they were more or less on the same wavelength. They also found they had plenty in common. An interest in obscure French cinema. A deep dislike of cats. A love of chilli and being terrible patients, amongst many other things.
And, of course, the still-scorching chemistry.
That hadn’t gone away, thought Celia, blotting her lipstick and trying not to think about the evening she and Marcus had had fish and chips and he’d reached out to rub away a blob of ketchup at the corner of her mouth.
If anything it was getting worse, because mature and sensible and not at the mercy of her hormones? Who the hell had she been kidding? Her hormones were going so mental that she couldn’t believe that at one point she’d seriously thought that ignoring what was going on between her and Marcus was an option.
It had taken all her strength to walk away that night she’d gone for supper at his house. She’d been so very tempted to simply fall into his arms and yield to the need that had been clawing away at her, especially when he’d so clearly been up for it. But some sixth sense had warned her against it, and thank God she’d got out of there before she’d given in to temptation.
Their conversation that night had been unsettling. Not the subject matter—although that had revealed more about him than she ever could have imagined—but the way she’d responded to it.
When he’d asked what her family thought about the pregnancy it had occurred to her that he didn’t have anyone to tell, and her heart had wrenched. When he’d told her he had no intention of falling in love or ever marrying because of his experience, it had wrenched a little more. And when he’d been talking about his mother’s suicide and the note she’d left, well, that had just about torn her apart because it clearly affected him, making him think that somehow he wasn’t good enough when he was. He so was.
It had been disconcerting, because Marcus wasn’t supposed to tug at her heartstrings. He wasn’t supposed to have as much depth as he did, although quite why he wasn’t when he’d been through such a tough time she didn’t have a clue.
She wasn’t supposed to like him so much either, but there was another anomaly, because she did. A lot. He made her laugh. Entertained her. Challenged her and made her think and question and argue. So much so that the days they were meeting up she woke up on a high and then spent the rest of the day fizzing with excitement and counting down the hours until she could leave to go and see him. Sometimes she even left work early, which, given that she was meant to be doing everything she could to win the partnership, was madness.
She ought to be wary of seeing him, not excited. Because every time they met up the occasions were underscored with such a strong current of tension that she’d started to think that perhaps they should have gone to bed that night. Perhaps Marcus had been right and it would have got things out of their system. Maybe the fact that they hadn’t was what was making the idea of it so compelling.
Frankly, it was hard to see how sex would have made things any worse because the tension between them was sky-high. Every date that wasn’t a date was filled with fleeting touches. Laden looks. Conversation that tailed off. Sizzling, thundering silences and a hundred electrically charged moments before they said an awkward goodbye and each headed home separately.
Not that it ended there, for her at least. Marcus was in her head pretty much constantly. Her dreams were full of him, and during the day she frequently found herself storing tiny things away to tell him later.
She didn’t know how he was dealing with it all, but for all her fine words about sense and manageability her resistance was rapidly weakening. She couldn’t remember why sex with him had seemed like such a bad idea. She’d been thinking it might be a very good idea indeed for a while now. Now she was thinking that tonight, finally, she’d like to do something about it.
r /> It might be reckless and it might be rash, but she’d had enough of the excoriating frustration and the agonising tension. She’d had enough of the sleepless nights and the feverish dreams that assailed her when she did eventually manage to drop off. It wasn’t doing her nervous system any good at all and, heaven knew, she didn’t want her palpitations to reappear.
So today she had a plan. This afternoon she’d find out whether she’d got the partnership, then later she and Marcus were going out for dinner at a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. And whether they were celebrating or commiserating, one thing was for certain: they were going to end the night together, in bed and having fabulous, hot, sweaty sex.
* * *
Tonight Marcus was going to end this ‘getting to know you’ crap.
He stood at the basin in his bathroom, leaned forwards and wiped away enough condensation from the mirror to be able to see his reflection, which was actually pretty grim. No surprise there, he thought darkly as he picked up a can and squirted a ball of foam into his hand. He’d been feeling grim for days. Tense and grumpy and frustrated as hell.
With hindsight, agreeing to her plan to get to know each other had been nuts. Going along with it had been even more insane. Where the hell had the intention to make that night she’d come for supper a one-off gone? When she’d suggested they stick to meeting up in public and he’d said fine without a moment’s consideration, what on earth had he been thinking?
Shaking his head in disbelief and wondering when exactly he’d lost his mind, Marcus began lathering up his face.
As if simply meeting up in public was the way to handle the scorching attraction that sizzled between them. Hah. They might not be able to act on their feelings in public but that didn’t make them go away, did it? No. It was simply making them worse. For him, at least.
He had no idea how Celia was dealing with it but he was handling it badly, because over the past three weeks or so that they’d been seeing each other he’d been finding it increasingly hard to resist her.
At first it had been fine. Well, not exactly fine, but he’d told himself that he could keep his impulses under control, and he’d more or less succeeded knowing it was a bad idea and, more importantly, why. Lately, though, they met up and it was all he could do not to grab her arm, hail a taxi and take her home. He was in a permanent state of confusion and arousal, and it was driving him crazy.
Picking up his razor, Marcus tilted his head and cut a swathe through the white cream and winced as he nicked his jaw. Dammit, he had to put a stop to these meetings. They’d been an indulgence he could ill afford and it was time to end them.
Anyway, the whole idea behind them in the first place had been to get to know each other and by now they knew plenty. Too much, in fact. Celia had told him things he didn’t want or need to know. Things that had him wondering how on earth he could ever have thought her an uptight, judgemental pain in the arse. Things that had him thinking that, on the contrary, what with her sharp wit and her spot-on insight, her warmth and her self-deprecation, she might be rather wonderful.
In return he’d found himself telling her things he’d never told anyone. Big things. Small things. Either way, a lot of things. He’d given her so many little pieces of himself over the past three weeks, in fact, that she nearly had the whole.
As much as he might have wanted to prevent it she’d got under his skin. And he could tell himself all he liked that it was merely down to the fact that he hadn’t had the chance to build up those all-important defences, but that didn’t eradicate the feeling that even if his defences had been the height of Everest she’d simply have bulldozed them down.