Starting Over Read Online Free PDF Page B

was saying. 'He's not been very well.'
    'You mean like a bear with a sore head not well,'
    Sara responded pseudo sweetly.
    Frances's eyebrows rose.
    'Oh, dear, he really has upset you, hasn't he?' she sympathised before continuing briskly, 'No, actually he was involved in a very unpleasant incident. Like nearly all the Crightons he's a qualified solicitor but the work he does is extremely specialised and often rather dangerous. Although in this case...' Quickly she explained just how Nick had come to be hurt, but stubbornly Sara refused to be impressed.
    'Perhaps it might help if he carried a sign warning people not to get too close to him,' she suggested through gritted teeth.
    Frances forbore to comment. Sara was a gorgeous-looking girl and Nick was a singularly handsome man.
    Therefore, it seemed logical to Frances that the two of them should be attracted to one another. As the mother of young adults she was also well aware that sometimes such attraction presented itself disguised as hostility.
    'It's nine o'clock. You've been working all evening,' she told Sara with a smile. 'Why don't you call it a day.'
    'Not yet,' Sara refused determinedly. Armed with the information Frances had given her she was sure she could solve her problem with the recalcitrant computer.
    Frances smiled ruefully as she watched Sara walk away, this time giving the Crighton table a wide berth.
    She had liked Sara on sight, sensing within her a gutsy determination allied to a warm sense of humour.
    Her stunning good looks would cause havoc, of course!
    'NICK,' Tullah expostulated as she saw the grim way her brother-in-law was watching the woman's determined circumnavigation of their table.
    'Little madam,' Nick seethed without taking his eyes off her departing back. 'Did you see the look she gave me?'
    'Well, I certainly saw the one you gave her,' Tullah told him dryly.
    'Yes,' Saul corroborated. 'You were hardly your normal charming smooth self with her, Nick,' he pointed out. 'Pretty girl,' he added appreciatively, laughing when Tullah gave him a mock glare whilst saying with wifely warning, 'Saul...'
    'Very pretty,' Nick agreed sourly. He wasn't even sure himself just why he had reacted so badly to her.
    Common sense told him that the painful jolt she had given his still aching wound had been completely accidental and he knew that normally he would not only have accepted her embarrassed apology gracefully but that he would probably have done everything he could to create a good impression and set her at her ease.
    So why hadn't he?
    Not surely because of that sharp little jolt of male sensual electricity, that more than a mere frisson of sensation that had seized him at their accidental bodily contact. After all, he had experienced physical desire for plenty of other women before her.
    Physical desire, yes, but not that swift pang of dangerous knowledge, that unwanted awareness, that instinct that...that what?
    That nothing, he told himself firmly.
    'You're right,' he announced, even though neither Saul nor Tullah had said anything. 'I behaved very boorishly...and by rights I should apologise. I wonder where she's gone.'
    'Frances will probably know,' Tullah informed him.
    'She was talking to her.'
    Ruefully Nick pushed back his chair and got up.

    'Sara?' Frances responded in answer to his question.
    'Oh, she'll be in the office. She's standing in for our office manager....'
    Thoughtfully she watched as Nick made his way through the tables.
    SARA GAVE a small crow of satisfaction as she finally got the computer to do as she wished. Nick heard it as he pushed open the door of the office. Sara was standing looking at the computer screen, her eyes alight with triumph and pleasure. She was more than just pretty Nick acknowledged as he felt his heart jolt fiercely against his ribs.
    Sensing someone's presence Sara turned her head away from the screen, the breath rushing out of her lungs on a shocked whoosh as she realised who the intruder