All Bets Are On by Charlotte Phillips

Author:Charlotte Phillips [Phillips, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Romance, Contemporary Romance
ISBN: 9780373207268
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

EIGHT

‘I know we agreed to keep things quiet between us at work but you didn’t have to go quite that far for a cover story,’ Harry said, running a hand through his hair.

A rinse under the tap in the men’s room hadn’t quite removed the stickiness from his hair. He’d abandoned his jacket and mopped the worst of the coffee splashes from his shirt. As a result he’d had no time to eat lunch and only managed to catch up with Alice in the lift at the end of the day.

The situation with Zoe should have been nothing more than an amusing inconvenience to him. Strangely there hadn’t been the usual temptation that might accompany such a conversation with an ex-conquest—she’d practically offered herself on a plate and he couldn’t have been less interested. Taking her out again would only make things worse. Maybe his recent brush with revenge had affected him more deeply than he thought.

‘Oh, so you think it was all about me watching your back and putting people off the scent?’

She gave a cynical laugh and pressed the button for the ground floor. The lift shuddered into life.

He held her gaze, noticing that she didn’t drop her eyes. Instead she looked at him with confidence.

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Of course not. It was about respect. That poor deluded girl.’

He opened his mouth to protest and she talked right over him.

‘Don’t kick in with all that claptrap about how you’re up front with them and you never make promises. However you dress it up, you basically sleep with these girls and then dump them. You’re kidding yourself if you think you’re treating them fairly. For most women sex isn’t something you do lightly. Don’t you understand what that might do to their self-esteem—that the moment you’ve got that from them you lose interest?’

He looked at her, all fired up and indignant, and heat sparked in his abdomen. The tiny frown-line knitting her eyebrows made her look delectable. He could have Zoe back in his bed with one simple phone call, yet he had no idea what he would need to do to get Alice there. The challenge of that was just tantalising.

She looked down at the box file in her arms for a moment.

‘I’m not sure where gunking you in iced coffee came from,’ she said, shaking her head wonderingly. ‘It just seemed like a good idea at the time.’ She glanced up at him with a little half smile that touched his heart. ‘Maybe I overreacted.’ She paused. ‘A little bit.’

‘Don’t,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Don’t backtrack. You said what you thought. Maybe part of the problem is that girls don’t do that enough. It’s all so easy to just do what you want when someone tells you what you want to hear, whether or not you think it’s right or wrong.’

‘When you put it like that it isn’t much of a step away from bullying,’ she said. ‘I’m not backtracking. You so deserved the gunking!’

Her tone of voice was jokey and she was grinning mischievously at him, but the comment hit him like a sledgehammer nonetheless.

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