He’d be good for her self-esteem too. Quite apart from obviously wanting her, when he’d told her she was brainy and beautiful her spirits had soared. If she were a betting woman, which she wasn’t given how the odds were so often stacked against the average punter, then she’d bet that Dan would help to build up her confidence beautifully. Indirectly he might even help her to find the real her that she could feel was buried beneath a whole heap of self-doubt, vulnerability and fear.
So maybe, thought Zoe, looking up the contact details of DBF Associates online and feeling adrenalin begin to surge through her, just maybe, if she asked, Dan might be up for having some fun with her.
SIX
It was now or never.
Zoe hovered at the door of the hotel ballroom she’d been lurking around for the past ten minutes, watching Dan and the party of people he was with—his staff, presumably—diverge to the bar, her heart beating like a drum and her blood pounding through her veins.
Now she was actually here she wasn’t entirely sure it was a good idea. It had seemed like one when she’d come up with the plan earlier this afternoon and plucked up enough guts to dress herself up and make her way to the central London hotel where some advertising award ceremony was being held and where she’d been told that Dan would be.
Right up until the taxi had deposited her at the front door she’d managed to maintain a sense of calm and just about hold onto her equilibrium, but the minute she’d laid eyes on him all that had vanished and now a dangerous cocktail of nerves, desire and recklessness was swilling around inside her making her feel edgy and wild.
If she’d thought he’d looked good last night it wasn’t a patch on the devastation he was wreaking on her senses with the black-dinner-jacket-white-shirt combo he was wearing tonight.
Gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover it. The suit fitted him so perfectly it must have been made for him. The snowy whiteness of his shirt made his hair and eyes look even darker, and now he was tugging his bow tie undone and undoing the top button of his shirt, which gave him a kind of rakish, dishevelled air that made her heart beat even faster.
But it wasn’t just the way he looked. There was an edge about him too this evening that she could sense even from way over here. He looked as smoulderingly dangerous as she felt, and remarkably tense for someone who’d just won a highly acclaimed award.
For a moment her confidence in her plan to accost him here, which she’d thought fairly foolproof at the time, faltered. Dan’s unexpected edginess—and her own—gave the evening a potential unpredictability that she hadn’t prepared for and the whole evening could backfire.
Plus she was belatedly realising that Dan was here in a professional capacity, among his colleagues, his peers and his competitors, and it was entirely possible that the last thing he’d want would be her bounding up to him telling him she wanted him.
So maybe she should leave and drop in on Monday morning instead, she thought, nibbling on her lip while her resolve to go through with this wavered. Maybe she’d been a complete and utter idiot to turn up here like this. Dan was busy. She was going through a period of serious mental instability. This would never work. She must have been mad to even think it might.
She took a step back and the tight band around her chest eased. It looked as if it was going to be never. Which was fine. Dan probably wouldn’t want to hook up with her anyway.
Zoe was about to take another step back, turn on her heel and leave the way she came in when she stopped.
Hang on, she thought. No. This plan had been the right one. There were reasons she’d come up with it. And she might not remember them all right now but she was pretty sure they were good ones too. So she wasn’t going to wi
mp out. Again. She was going to find her metaphorical balls and relocate the thrill that his edginess had caused to ripple through her, because this was an opportunity she really shouldn’t ignore.
So it wasn’t going to be never, thought Zoe, lifting her chin and pulling her shoulders back. It was going to be now.
* * *
Dan gritted his teeth and thought that if anyone else congratulated him on his ‘engagement’ he might very well lose what was now only a tenuous grip on his temper.
He’d thought he’d done more than enough to stem the tide of speculation. He’d fended off his sister and set his mother straight in what had to have been one of the most emotionally stressful conversations of his life. He’d contacted the newspaper and issued a denial. He’d instructed his secretary and receptionist to put any journalist who might call or pitch up right, and he’d asked one of his staff to handle the social media side of things too.
But the message didn’t seem to have spread fast enough and he was sick of having to explain the whole misunderstanding.
He was also sick of the way that it meant that he was constantly reminded of it, of Zoe, and the effect she was still having on him. Even though he hadn’t laid eyes on her in nearly twenty-four hours—and hopefully wouldn’t ever again because last night he’d totally forgotten how practically every bloody thing he did at the moment ended up in the press and it couldn’t be allowed to happen again—he couldn’t get her out of his head, and this level of distraction, of fixation, was getting beyond a joke.
Of all the nights to be feeling so edgy and out of sorts this shouldn’t have been it. It wasn’t every day his company won a major award for one of their campaigns, and it wasn’t every day that his staff had a chance to truly let their hair down as a team.
After dinner and the actual ceremony they’d been the first to migrate to the bar and had taken up a position that was probably going to see them through until morning. Dan had stuck a credit card behind the bar and then the real hair-letting-down had begun, with everyone apart from him knocking back the booze as if it were about to run out, high on adrenalin and delight.
They’d all worked bloody hard over the last year and deserved this success, he realised more belatedly than he’d have liked. They deserved his appreciation too, and he couldn’t blame them for giving him a wide berth.
So pulling himself together, he tapped his now empty glass and, once he had their attention, made a quick toast. Then to a smatter of applause, and a cheer or two, he apologised for being such a grumpy sod and ordered another bottle of champagne.
With single-minded focus he concentrated on the conversation, made himself laugh and joke with his colleagues until eventually he found the wherewithal to relax.
By and large he thought he was doing pretty well and that he’d be able to keep it up for another hour or so when he could head home and crash out. Until out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of blonde hair, a shimmer of green and the trace of a scent his brain thought it recognised. Something about the combination made his fingers tighten round the stem of his glass, the laughter die in his throat and his entire body tighten with what he didn’t know.
Surely Zoe wasn’t here? She couldn’t be. Why would she be? Closing his eyes, Dan took a deep breath and gave his head a quick shake. Then he opened his eyes and braced himself before glancing around just in case.