His After-Hours Mistress

Ginny kept her cool and raised her eyebrows at him mockingly. ‘You don’t really expect me to answer that, just because you’re in a foul mood?’

‘No, I expected you to up and slap my face. Why didn’t you?’

She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘Probably because it was what you wanted,’ she responded dryly and he laughed.

‘You’re learning, sweetheart. There’s hope for you yet,’ he taunted as he sauntered over to the window and looked out at the city below them.

‘I’m not your sweetheart, Roarke. It isn’t a situation I would ever aspire to occupy,’ Ginny countered, though she didn’t expect it to have any more effect than her previous attempts to have him stop calling her by the affectionate term.

He glanced over his shoulder at her. ‘A man could get frostbite trying to warm you up. Daniel has all my sympathy.’

Ginny silently ground her teeth at his insolence. ‘Fortunately, Daniel doesn’t need it,’ she said, which caused him to smile.

‘No, he’s pretty much a cold fish himself.’

She looked at him steadily. ‘I don’t find him in the least bit cold. There’s a lot to the old adage that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.’

‘Which could equally apply to me, sweetheart,’ Roarke pointed out, but Ginny immediately shook her head.

‘Oh, no, you’re an open book, Roarke. Everyone knows the plot where you’re concerned. The wise ones put you back on the shelf,’ she retorted mockingly, whereupon his eyes gleamed with mischief.

‘Maybe, but the ones who don’t have a much better time.’

Ginny shook her head sadly. ‘You’re incorrigible, and I have more important things to do with my time than waste it bandying words with you,’ she told him bluntly, and made to leave, but Roarke held up a hand to forestall her.

‘That can wait. Shut the door and sit down. I need to talk to you,’ he commanded. His words were without a trace of his earlier mockery, and yet carried an edge of unease. Sensing something intriguing in the air, Ginny dutifully closed the door.

‘I thought you didn’t consider me qualified to be an agony aunt,’ she remarked as she stepped over various objects which had borne the brunt of his temper.

‘One of these days you’re going to cut yourself on that tongue of yours!’ Roarke warned her. ‘Doesn’t anything blunt it?’

‘If you’re after sympathy, you’ve come to the wrong woman,’ she told him matter-of-factly. ‘Just because you didn’t get your own way for once, there’s no need to destroy the place. So you met a woman with a brain cell or two. It was bound to happen some time.’

Roarke tutted reprovingly. ‘You know something, Ginny? You’re fixated with my love life. Who said this has anything to do with a woman?’

Now that did surprise her. Roarke was like a magnet for women. He didn’t look dressed without one on his arm. That didn’t mean to say he didn’t work hard at the business. It wouldn’t be among the top in its line if he didn’t. But he played hard, too. She had listened to his tales of woe before, and a woman generally entered the picture at some point. But apparently not this time, if he was to be believed.

‘It doesn’t?’ she queried, brows rising. If she had done him an injustice, then she was prepared to apologise, however much it went against the grain. She was about to open her mouth to do just that when his eyes fell away from hers and he rubbed an irritated hand around his neck.

‘Actually, it is about a woman, but not the way you imagine,’ he admitted reluctantly.

Intrigued by the palpable signs of his discomfort, Ginny slipped into the nearest chair and crossed her legs, decorously smoothing down the skirt of her violet-coloured suit. She had discarded the jacket earlier, and wore a simple cream silk sleeveless blouse for comfort in the oppressive summer heat.

‘What do you imagine I’m imagining?’ she challenged, her eyes following him as he walked to his leather chair and sank into it with a heavy sigh.

‘The worst. You usually do,’ Roarke shot back dryly, and Ginny laughed softly.

She spread her hands deprecatingly. ‘Well, you’ve only yourself to blame for that. You’ve never had to console one of your exes. The tales I’ve heard make me shudder to think of them.’ She gave a delicate shudder by way of example.

‘Don’t believe everything you hear. It isn’t my fault if they got their hopes up. I never promised them for ever,’ Roarke pointed out in his own defence.

‘That’s what I told them. He isn’t a one-woman kind of man. You’d be better off cutting your losses and looking around for someone with more staying power,’ Ginny agreed.

His brows rose at that, and then he laughed. ‘You’re referring, I take it, to that part of my life which I, clearly mistakenly, consider private. Hasn’t anyone ever told you you aren’t supposed to interfere in your employer’s love life?’

‘Your love life ceases to be private when you live it so publicly. Why, scarcely a day goes by when you aren’t photographed with one woman or another hanging on your arm! Your little black book must be bursting at the seams by now,’ she protested scornfully.

Roarke steepled his fingers and looked at her over them. ‘If I had one, which I don’t.’

‘No little black book? I don’t believe it. Your sort of man always has one!’

‘And just what sort of man is that?’

Ginny waved a hand airily. ‘The sort who changes his woman as often as he changes his clothes.’

He tapped his thumbs together broodingly. ‘I suppose a denial is out of the question?’

She shook her head. ‘Hard to accept when I’ve seen the results of your handiwork.’

Roarke rubbed a finger down the bridge of his nose, then glanced at her sardonically. ‘You disapprove of everything about me, don’t you?’

‘Not everything, just your treatment of women.’

‘You make me sound like some sort of playboy.’

‘Your affairs are well catalogued in print,’ she reminded him.

He clucked his tongue at her. ‘The women you see me photographed with are, for the most part, old friends. I’m often invited to events where I require a partner, and I’d rather take a woman I know than find myself seated next to a stranger. We spend an enjoyable evening together, and then I take her home. End of story.’

Ginny looked sceptical. ‘You can’t mean to tell me all your dates end so tamely,’ she scoffed, and he grinned wolfishly.

‘Not at all, but that’s my business, not yours.’

She couldn’t argue with him there. She was walking a fine line as it was. However, there was one thing she was curious about. ‘Haven’t you ever considered finding one woman and sticking to her? Haven’t you ever been in love?’

That brought a mocking laugh from him. ‘No, and I don’t ever expect to be. In my experience, happy ever after is just a fairy tale, sweetheart,’ he pronounced and she blinked, genuinely surprised.

‘You don’t believe in love?’

‘What most people fall into is lust, though they prefer to give it the name love because it sounds better.’ Seeing her frown, Roarke leant forward across the desk. ‘I respect women for who and what they are. I enjoy them, but I don’t make promises I can’t keep, and I refuse to dress up the relationship as anything more than what it is.’

Ginny supposed she had to think well of him for that, but it was strange to her to hear him speak that way about love. Despite her own experiences, she still believed in love. She had just made the wrong choice, that was all. This time she wasn’t about to let herself be blinded by passion into thinking love existed. Daniel was everything she wanted in a man, and she was sure that her liking for him would grow into love in the fullness of time.

‘Don’t you intend to get married and have children?’ she couldn’t help but ask curiously.

Sitting back again, Roarke shrugged. ‘Sure, one day, but love will have nothing to do with it.’

‘Your wife might disagree.’