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Chapter Nine

"So are you going to carry on sulking at work, as well?" Blake murmured, leaning over the reception desk only to be punished by the mesmerizing vision of her breasts gloriously outlined in pure cashmere.

Josephine looked up and frowned, and wished he would stop wearing that gorgeous aftershave, or stand farther away. Or something. "I am not sulking."

"Wrong. You've been off with me ever since you asked me about Giuseppi." In fact, she had subjected him to a polite freeze whenever he spoke to her, and infuriatingly, it was having the effect of making him want her to talk to him. He wasn't used to women giving him the cold shoulder, he was used to them eating out of his hand. "Are you still mad about that?"

She gave him a chilly stare. Of course she was! "It wasn't so much that you failed to look at his proposal in full, it was the fact that you obviously credit me with no intelligence or imagination at all."

The jury on the intelligence part was still out—an intelligent woman wouldn't have rushed headlong into marriage with a man like Luke, surely? But of her imagination, he was in no doubt—she had certainly been as imaginative as a man could want the night he'd made love to her.

"Let's just say I'm giving it some thought," he said placatingly.

And she was supposed to fall to her knees and thank him, was she? Her chilly look didn't waver. Josephine had been working her socks off at Devlin Associates—and while he might not have noticed it, the others certainly had. Why, just this morning, his second-in-command had told her that if her people skills could be marketed, then none of them need ever work again!

"And I'm supposed to be grateful for that, am I, Blake?"

"You could try," he answered flippantly and thoughtfully fingered a bright petal of one of the flowers that stood on the desk. He hadn't really noticed flowers there before. "Did you put these here?" he questioned suspiciously.

She nodded. She had jettisoned the rather ugly and very dusty rubber plant. "I thought it added something to the atmosphere of the room. Do you have a problem with that?"

He shook his head. "Just make sure that you use money from petty cash, that's all."

"I did." She smiled, steeling herself against the sheer potency of his appeal. "Was there something else you wanted, Blake?"

"Have you eaten lunch yet?"

"No," she answered repressively.

"Want to grab a sandwich with me?"

It wasn't the most alluring invitation she had ever received, but her curiosity was aroused. He had never asked her to lunch before, so why start now?

"Why not?" she shrugged.

His irritation at her noncommittal response was only increased when the proprietor of the Italian deli around the corner danced besotted attention on her request for beef on rye. He narrowed his eyes as he watched her accept the sandwich. Was she flirting with him? He had to say that she wasn't. Maybe it was just some unconscious message she sent out that had most red-blooded men fawning all over her.

They sat down. "This is very sweet of you, Blake," she murmured.

"Not really. I've got some news for you, and I thought it best if I broke it away from the office."

There was something darkly ominous about the way he spoke, and the hand that held the sandwich froze halfway to her mouth. "What news?" she whispered.

"Just that I've managed to trace your husband," he said. "I've found Luke."