A Stranger's Kiss

to meet.’ But her words had no effect. Jim Matthews was blessed with supreme selfishness, totally unconcerned with anything but his own desires and anger had no power to dent his complacency.
    And the damage had been done. Getting angry with Jim could never change that. But when he repeated his suggestion that she marry him, she finally snapped.
    ‘Don’t you ever listen?’ she demanded. ‘No! No! No!’ Something of her distress must have got through to him and he offered no further argument when she insisted that he must go. She would have demanded his promise that he never return. But she was too tired to bother and she was only too aware that it probably wouldn’t make any difference if she did.
     

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    EXHAUSTION supplied the balm of sleep but Tara had to drag herself into Adam Blackmore’s private lift the following morning, and it sped upwards far too fast in its eagerness to decant her onto the twenty-first floor the following morning.
    And yet, as she took a deep breath and lifted her chin, she knew there was no point in putting it off a moment longer. She’d given it her best shot, but some things were just never meant to work. She tapped on his door and opened it. The room was empty. Having screwed herself up to face him, Tara felt suddenly angry. She had done nothing wrong…
    She snapped the door shut and went into her own office. A pile of mail was waiting for her attention and attached to her screen a little
    Post-it note simply said “Carry on, Tara. I’ll be in later.” She pulled it off the screen and stared at it for a moment. She checked the diary but it was blank and there was no clue as to when later might be.
    ‘Carry on, Tara,’ she said, to herself. She sat down rather suddenly on her chair. ‘Just, carry on. That’s it?’ She picked up a letter opener and attacked an envelope. ‘No, Tara Lambert. I doubt that. I doubt it very much.’
    She began to open the mail and sort it for attention. Some she put to one side to deal with herself. Some would need his personal attention. One, a bill from a private London clinic for a Mrs Jane Townsend would certainly need his personal attention she thought a little grimly.
    The phone rang at intervals, each time her ragged nerves springing to attention in case it was Adam. She took messages, answered queries where she could. Where she couldn’t, she found out who had the information, gradually putting together an idea of the impressive scope of Adam Blackmore’s empire.
    She was deeply engrossed in a copy of the annual financial report when a sudden warning prickle at the back of her neck made her look up.
    How long he had been watching her was impossible to say. The relaxed manner in which he was leaning against the frame of the door, his hands in his pockets, the silver streak of hair fallen across his forehead, suggested it had been some time.
    ‘A little light lunchtime reading?’ His voice, interrupting her thoughts, made her flinch.
    ‘Is it lunchtime?’ She glanced nervously at her watch. Anywhere but at his face. ‘I hadn’t realised it was so late. The morning has gone so quickly.’
    ‘Really? I’m glad you weren’t bored. Bring in your notebook, I’ll do my best to keep you amused for the rest of the day.’
    She gave him his messages and the mail. ‘Is this all?’ he asked.
    ‘I dealt with the run of the mill stuff. I’ve put copies of my letters at the bottom of the folder.’
    ‘You take a great deal on yourself,’ he remarked as he flipped through them.
    ‘You told me to carry on. If you simply want a shorthand typist, Adam, just say. I’ll have a competent lady here within the hour.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it.’ He raised his eyes briefly from the letter he was reading. ‘But we’ll leave things the way they are for the moment. A day is hardly sufficient time to judge whether you meet the required standard. Is it?’
    She compressed her lips into a straight line. What did the man want? Blood?
    ‘Perhaps you could give me an idea of the time scale you have in mind?’ she asked. ‘I do have a business of my own to run.’
    He looked up then, giving her the benefit of his undiluted personality. It was not a comfortable experience. His scouring eyes seemed to ransack her mind, picking over the thoughts he found there and discarding them as completely without interest.
    Then his eyes dropped back to the document in his hand. ‘Until Jane gets back.’
    Tara felt the heat rising in