Passion Becomes You. Michelle Reid
rescue her.
But it wasn’t Josh. It was Cassie, looking as mad as hell. ‘Where is that low-down, no-good son of a—?’ She stopped mid-flow, her unusually pale face lighting up when she saw the man standing in the centre of Jemma’s office. ‘Leon!’ she cried, and threw herself into his arms.
It was at that moment, and only that moment, that Jemma’s addled brain made the connection it should have made long, humiliating minutes ago. Leon. Cassie’s good friend, Leon.
And their mutual affection showed in the way he gathered Cassie into his arms then kissed her warmly on both cheeks before smiling indulgently down at her.
Jealousy whipped through Jemma like a flash fire, contracting her nerve-ends until she could barely breathe across the acid taste of it filling her mouth. If Josh had ever seen them together like this, it was no wonder he was so jealous.
At least Josh has the right to be jealous, a little voice taunted inside her burning head. You don’t.
You don’t even know the man!
God in heaven! She sat down heavily in her chair, trying desperately to throw off what was happening to her. She wanted to scratch Cassie’s eyes out. She wanted to drag her away from him. Scratch his eyes out!
‘How’s your love-life?’ he was saying teasingly to Cassie.
She pulled a wry face and wound her arms more tightly around his neck. ‘Not so good that this isn’t welcome,’ she said very drily. ‘More than welcome...’
‘Tanner not treating you well?’ The mocking brow lifted questioningly.
Cassie’s beautiful mouth took a downward turn. ‘He’s a rat of the first order,’ she scowled, her dark eyes flashing bitterly. ‘And I hate him!’
Jemma started at the other woman’s virulence. Leon Stephanades frowned. ‘Trouble?’ he asked.
‘Big trouble,’ Cassie said ominously, and pulled out of his arms to turn on Jemma. ‘Where is he?’ she demanded. ‘Skulking in some dark hole somewhere, waiting for the bogy-man to go away?’
Jemma opened her mouth to answer, wondering curiously just what had happened this weekend to make both Josh and Cassie this mad.
‘He’s...’ She was about to trot out the same excuse for Josh she had given to Leon Stephanades when the phone began to ring. Absently she picked up the receiver and chanted out the usual.
‘Did you catch him before he left?’ Josh’s impatient bark made her jump, and she pressed the earpiece tighter to her ear in an attempt to block Josh’s voice off.
‘Er—no,’ she answered carefully. ‘Can—can I call you back?’
Josh had never been slow on the uptake, and he wasn’t now. ‘He’s already there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Damn...’ There was a pause, then Josh muttered something and grunted. ‘You’d better put him on so I can apologise personally.’
‘I—er don’t think that would be a very good idea at the moment,’ she said, lowering her eyes and her voice from the two watchful people listening to her to add, ‘We’re not alone.’
She didn’t hear Josh’s answer to that, because Cassie had leapt at her desk, eyes flashing green fire—and something else that Jemma could not interpret but hinted oddly at terror. ‘Is that Josh? Give me that!’ she demanded, trying to snatch the phone from Jemma. ‘I have a few things I want to—’
‘I don’t want to speak to her!’ Josh grated into Jemma’s ear.
‘Give, Jemma!’ Cassie insisted, her eyes fire-bright with anger. ‘It’s time that rat learned a few home truths!’
‘Get her out of my office—now!’ Josh barked.
‘I can’t!’ she answered both of them, jumping to her feet in an effort to stop Cassie from wrenching the phone from her, and Josh hurled out a string of abuse aimed entirely at Cassie while Leon Stephanades viewed the whole scene with a look of lazy amusement sparking his eyes.
Jemma hated him at that moment. The whole thing was utterly ridiculous. She felt stupid being a part of it, and he thought it was funny!
He glanced up at her then, caught the look burning in her eyes, and suddenly the amusement left him to allow something so elemental to take its place that she gasped as everything inside her went haywire in answer to it, heart, lungs, pulses, even her skin—as if every minute hair follicle she possessed had been delivered an electric shock which set her whole body tingling.
Josh was growling, Cassie was shouting, but suddenly they might as well not have been there for all Jemma knew. She was lost in a seething hot raid on her senses, and what really threw her into hectic confusion was the fact that he was feeling the exact same way—and doing nothing whatsoever to hide it!
Then it all came crashing in. With the help of a sudden pained cry from Cassie, Jemma refocused her attention on the other woman just in time to hear her choke, ‘Whatever I am, you bastard, I am still pregnant with your child!’ Then she crumpled on to the floor.
In a state of stunned shock, Jemma watched the lightning-quick reactions of Leon Stephanades as he caught Cassie’s weight before she hit the floor, listened to Josh cursing and swearing on the other end of the line, his voice so thick that it was obvious he was feeling the pressure of his emotions as much as Cassie was.
‘The bitch trapped me, Jemma,’ he was saying hoarsely. ‘She deliberately laid a trap for me.’
Jemma did not know what to say. In the end, she just murmured, ‘I’ll call you back, Josh. I’ll call you back,’ and slowly replaced the receiver.
By the time she had collected a cool cloth and a glass of water, Cassie was beginning to show signs of life. Leon Stephanades had carried her into Josh’s office and placed her on the leather sofa in there and was now squatting beside her, gently chafing at one of her hands.
Jemma knelt down beside him and offered him the cloth. He took it without speaking, his expression grim to say the least as he applied the cloth to Cassie’s brow.
It was him Cassie saw when she eventually opened her eyes. ‘Oh, God, Leon,’ she whispered tragically. ‘What am I going to do?’
‘Nothing, until you feel well enough,’ he answered calmingly. ‘Then I will take you home.’
Tears blurred the wretched green of her eyes. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ she claimed fretfully.
‘Didn’t you?’ he said. That was all, but even as Jemma stiffened in violent protest at what his tone was implying Cassie’s eyes were going dark with guilt, and on a pained choke she hid her face in her hands and began to sob wretchedly.
Shocked, Jemma sat back on her heels, the fact that any woman would set out deliberately to trap a man that way just too awful for her to take in.
Leon Stephanades turned his head to look at her, then grimaced. ‘Don’t look so appalled, Miss Davis,’ he drawled. ‘Your sex use this ploy all the time. To them, it is the next best thing to a genuine proposal—especially when it is a man like your Mr Tanner who is involved. Or me,’ he then tagged on cynically.
Feeling sick, Jemma got up and walked back into her own office. She felt ashamed of her sex, if what Leon Stephanades had said was true. Ashamed for Cassie whom she had liked and even admired for what she’d seen as her candid honesty about her intentions.
And Josh? She sat down behind her desk and wondered what she felt for Josh.
She felt sorry for him, she realised. For the first time in two years of witnessing the way he used women for his own purposes, she actually felt sorry for him.
Because, no matter how much he deserved his come-uppance in one way or another, he did not deserve this.
The