Unexpected Pleasures Read Online Free PDF Page A

presently using adopted a policy which she herself refused to consider, and that was an agreement to let some claims go through unhindered in return for the brokers advising other clients not to proceed with theirs, or suggesting to them they should accept lower compensations.
    It was her view that her primary loyalty was to her clients and, if that meant a less easy passage with some of the insurance companies, well, so be it.
    ‘I’ve brought some comparison quotes with me,’ she told him as she stood up. ‘If I may, I’ll leave them with you.’
    A little to her surprise, he accompanied her out into the foyer, but after she had thanked him crisply for his time and turned round to leave she realised why.
    Jake Lucas was seated in the foyer, obviously waiting to see him, because he was now standing up, and beyond her she could hear Ian Davies saying something about taking him to lunch.
    For a moment the shock of seeing him had paralysed her completely, and then Rosie turned quickly on her heel, her heart hammering furiously fast as it drove the blood through her veins, overheating her pale skin.
    She felt hot and sick, filled with panic and a frantic desire to escape. It had been bad enough seeing him yesterday, but this was worse.
    Frantically she tried to cling to her self-control and professionalism, but in her haste to escape she moved too quickly, and the papers she was carrying slid from her hot, tense grasp.
    She bent immediately to pick them up, her face flushing with angry mortification, and then, to her horror, she realised that two pages of paper had drifted to where Jake Lucas was standing.
    For a moment she was too panic-stricken to move, and could only crouch where she was, staring numbly at them, filled with sickness and terror at the thought of having to retrieve them.
    When Jake himself bent down and picked them up she could only stare at him, unable to drag her gaze from the flat metallic hardness of his grey eyes—like a rabbit trapped by a car’s headlights, she thought mechanically, as he came towards her.
    She struggled to stand up, and then completed her self-humiliation by half losing her balance.
    The shock of Jake’s hand curling round her arm was like a jolt of electricity. He was so close to her that she could see the dark line along his jaw where he shaved, smell the crisp, clean scent of his soap, see the masculine curl of the dark hairs on his arm where his wrist protruded from his shirt sleeve.
    He was still holding her, still watching her... Do something, her brain screamed frantically. Do something...
    Somehow she managed to find the willpower to get to her feet, but, as she did so, either because of her tension or the heat it had generated, she was suddenly sharply conscious of the smell of the body lotion she had used to clean her legs, and, she realised, Jake Lucas was aware of it too... She saw the slight, and very betraying, fastidious twitch of his nose, the way his eyes narrowed, the brief, downward glance he gave the lower half of her body and, while she automatically thanked him for his help and turned quickly to make her escape, she was sickly aware of the contempt that faint curl of his mouth had carried.
    The look he had given her as she dragged her arm away from his grip had underlined that contempt.
    He had never made any attempt to hide from her what he thought of her: that he thought she was sexually promiscuous, that she used her body as a means of getting what she wanted out of life...out of men. And he had just let her know quite plainly that by scenting her legs with that strong, voluptuous perfume she was amply confirming his judgment of her.
    What business woman who wanted to be taken seriously at a professional level did anything like that? A discreet touch of something light and cool, a subtle message that said that she was a woman and proud of that fact—that was permissible and acceptable. To wear something so heavy and voluptuous gave off a very different