Desperately trying to regulate her breathing, Phoebe smoothed her dress and pressed the backs of her hands to her cheeks. As she suspected. Burning. She touched her still tingling mouth, which felt ravaged and bruised, and wondered exactly how bad the damage was.
‘Hey, Phoebs, here you are.’ Jo came to a halt at the entrance to the pergola and beamed. ‘What are you doing out here all on your own?’
Phoebe resisted the urge to glance around to see where Alex had vanished to and cleared her throat. ‘Oh, you know,’ she said, smiling weakly while searching her imagination for something more sensible to say than an awes-truck ‘wow, did I just imagine that?’. ‘Getting some air.’
Pathetic. She made her living out of manipulating words and spinning situations. Surely she could come up with something better than that?
‘Hmm. It is a bit stuffy inside.’ Jo frowned. ‘What’s happened to your hair?’
Oops, she’d forgotten all about that. Her hands shot to her head and she carefully pulled out her makeshift hairpin. She combed her fingers through her hair and thanked God that it appeared to have come through recent events unscathed.
Jo glanced down. ‘What on earth is that?’
‘A twig.’
‘What was it doing in your hair?’
Phoebe tossed it into a flowerbed and waved a vague hand. ‘Oh, I was simply experimenting with an idea.’
‘Thinking of branching out?’
‘Ha ha,’ she muttered, and then clamped her lips together to stop a sudden bubble of hysterical laughter escaping.
Jo peered at her closer. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit flushed. And flustered.’ She paused and tilted her head. ‘I’ve never seen you flustered.’
That was because she took great care never to appear flustered, even when inside she was a mess. Regardless of the situation, triumph or disaster, she was always the epitome of cool, unflappable collectedness. She never let anything get in the way of her commitment to her job. And she never ever lost control.
Well, except for just now…
But that was totally understandable, she assured herself. After all, she’d been flung around like a sack of potatoes and then kissed senseless without any say in the matter whatsoever. Who wouldn’t feel a tiny bit on the flustered side?
Phoebe took a deep breath and channelled her inner calm. ‘I’m absolutely fine,’ she said.
Jo shot her a knowing smile. ‘If you weren’t out here alone, and if I didn’t know that you never mix business with pleasure, I’d have sworn I’d interrupted you in the middle of a clinch.’
Phoebe felt colour hit her cheeks and edged away from the light. It was high time to deflect this line of conversation. ‘Hmm. So. You were looking for me?’
‘Yes. I came to tell you…’ But what Jo had come to tell her never made it out of her mouth.
Phoebe didn’t need to look round to know that Alex was standing behind her. The hairs at the nape of her neck had leapt up like an early-warning system and her whole body quivered with awareness.
As Jo’s gaze slid over Phoebe’s shoulder her smile disappeared, the blood drained from her face and her eyes widened in horror.
‘Hello, Jo.’ Alex’s voice was as cold as ice and Jo seemed to deflate right in front of Phoebe’s eyes.
‘Oh, no,’ Jo said with a deep sigh. ‘What are you doing here?’
Well, that was a relief, thought Alex darkly, thrusting his hands in his pockets and keeping his eyes fixed on his sister. Jo’s reaction to his presence at the party was the only thing so far this evening that had turned out as he’d expected.
Ever since he’d learned that she’d gone behind his back and hired her own PR representative without his approval, he’d planned to pitch up, demand to know what she thought she was up to and replace whoever she’d hired with his own team.
He’d intended to swoop in and be done within a matter of minutes, and if things had gone according to plan, he’d now be passed out in his penthouse, battling jet lag.
Instead, over the course of the last half an hour he’d fought a drunken idiot in a pond, been thwacked by a deluge of painful memories he’d really rather forget and been forced to face the uncomfortable realisation that for the first time in years he’d been wrong. As if all that weren’t enough, it appeared he’d also caught a severe case of lust.
Alex flicked a quick glance at Phoebe, standing there with her dark hair tumbling over her shoulders and looking like a fallen angel, and felt desire whip through him all over again.
Kissing the life out of one of the guests had definitely not been part of the plan. But the moment he’d held her against him he’d been able to think about little else. He could still feel the imprint of her hand on his chest while she’d been ranting about dealing with