Bittersweet Love - Cathy Williams [34]
He was hitting below the belt. What, Natalie wondered, could she do? Stand up and accuse him of what? Turning his sense of humour on her? It made her anger impotent, and she knew that that amused him even more.
She linked her arm through Eric’s, relieved that his gaze was no longer plastered all over Anna, and preceded Kane and Anna up the staircase.
Upstairs, in the bedroom, Eric turned to her and said drily, ‘There’s an awful lot of innuendo behind your conversations with your boss. Or am I imagining it?’
‘You’re imagining it,’ Natalie assured him flatly. She headed to the bathroom and quickly changed into her nightie, short, lacy and thoroughly inappropriate for sharing a bed with a platonic male friend.
Eric’s pyjamas, striped and very sensible, were much more suited to the occasion. They eyed each other and Natalie said without preamble, ‘I’ll take the ground.’
The thought of actually sharing a bed with him, however safe he was, was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. She had no option but to share the bedroom with him, but beds were for lovers. There was something way too intimate about that casual brushing of sleeping bodies, the feel of warm limbs against each other.
She grabbed the bedspread and began rigging some-thing up on the ground. It wasn’t that cold, so at least she would not have to contend with that particular problem.
‘Oh, take the bed,’ Eric grumbled good-naturedly.
‘I got you into this,’ Natalie said firmly. ‘The least I can do is ensure that you’re the one who has a good night’s sleep.’
‘And risk my reputation as being a man of honour?’
He began spreading the bedspread into what looked a bit like a makeshift sleeping-bag. Their fingers touched and Natalie pulled away instinctively.
‘You’re very attractive,’ he murmured, looking at her seriously, and she felt a twinge of alarm.
‘Eric, no,’ she whispered. ‘Don’t make this difficult. We’ve been through all this.’
‘We could go through it all again, but this time with a different conclusion,’ he said hopefully, and she folded her arms across her breasts.
‘Absolutely not!’ Oh, God, she thought, please don’t make him become difficult. She was not adept at handling difficult situations with men. She lacked the experience.
Eric grinned at her. ‘Well, it was worth a try. Don’t worry,’ he continued, waving his white handkerchief when her expression didn’t thaw, ‘I’ll be as good as gold on the ground.’
She relaxed a little, enough to flash him a watery smile. Good old Eric. If reason and fairness played any part in life, she and he would have found themselves besotted with each other. If reason and fairness played any part in life, she would have listened to her head a long time ago and left the Marshall Corporation. She would have found a job working for a Mr Average, in an average company, and she would have eventually settled down with an averagely pleasant person. Like herself.
She slipped into bed, letting the darkness wrap itself around her while the thoughts played around in her mind, swooping and teasing until she finally fell asleep.
Eric was already up by the time she next opened her eyes. She could hear him singing away in the bathroom. He had neatly refolded the bedspread and not quite so neatly dumped the pillows back on the bed. She closed her eyes and relaxed on the bed, feeling pleasantly lazy.
She didn’t hear the door open at all. In fact, the first she knew of Kane’s presence in her bedroom was when he spoke, then her eyes flew open and she stared at him in alarm.
‘What are you doing here? Why didn’t you knock?’
‘I did knock.’ He was looking around the room, his eyes taking in everything, until they resettled on her face. ‘Slept well?’ There was a hardness around his mouth, even though his tone was bantering. Was he annoyed about something? she wondered. It was only slightly after eight o’clock, so he could hardly make a song and dance about not getting up early