He lifted a hand.
Tessa stiffened. The door was just behind her. She didn’t have to stay—wouldn’t stay—if he started approaching her. She was not going to be used like that, not by anybody.
He waved an invitation towards the chair in front of his desk. “I want to talk to you,” he said quietly. Soothingly. As though he could read what she was thinking and was subtly backing off.
Tessa hesitated. She didn’t like the idea of sitting down while he was standing up. The last time they were in that situation he had taken advantage of it. No, it was better if she remained on her feet and near the door. Besides which, she wasn’t sure her legs would carry her over to the chair with the dignity she was determined on maintaining.
Her eyes challenged his. “What would you like to talk about, sir?”
He sighed and turned away from her, walking to the front of his huge executive desk. He swung slowly around to face her again, then propped himself against the desk and folded his arms, deliberately adopting a relaxed and non-threatening pose.
“We have a problem, Stockton,” he said. “If you’d be so obliging as to sit down, I’d like to discuss it with you.”
She remembered how he had used body language to great effect with the Japanese delegation. Blaize Callagan was a master of it. What was in his mind was not necessarily what he portrayed at all. Yet she was also aware of his ability to switch on and off. Perhaps he had stopped remembering and actually did have some business to discuss with her. In an ultimate sense, he was her boss.
Tessa sent a shot of willpower to her shaky legs and moved to the chair. She sat down, extremely conscious of her short skirt and the amount of thigh she was showing. However, Blaize Callagan kept his gaze fixed on hers. Which reassured her. Slightly.
“Yes, sir?” she said, inviting him to state the problem.
The dark eyes bored into hers, commanding her full attention. “It’s not working, Stockton,” he stated softly.
“What’s not working, sir?”
“Parting the way we did. I have given it more thought, and I can’t agree.”
Tessa’s heart leapt. “Can’t agree with what, sir?”
“We haven’t run our course, Stockton. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve barely started running our course. I want you to spend the weekend with me. I have a boat moored at Akuna Bay. I’ll take you cruising around the Hawkesbury River. Just the two of us together. For the whole weekend. Agreed?”
Tessa was torn by temptation. A whole weekend with Blaize Callagan. No business. Just the two of them getting to know each other. Except he only wanted to know her in the biblical sense. A weekend of saturation sex. That’s what it would be. Another interlude. And this was one weekend when she had to face real life.
“I’m sorry, sir. I have other plans for this weekend,” she said, her tawny gold eyes mocking his disinterest in her real life. He hadn’t asked if she was available. He arrogantly assumed that his time was more important than hers and she would fall in with his plans.
“Cancel them, Stockton.”
The command in his eyes riled resentment. “Oh, I am cancelling them, sir. All the plans I’ve made for years. I realise you don’t know about them. I realise you don’t care about them. But other people do. Particularly my parents.’’
She smiled sweetly. “You see, sir, I’m going home to cancel my wedding. I can’t leave it any later. Six weeks is the cut-off point. The obligatory notice one has to give or pay the penalty of financial loss on the arrangements. I don’t want to put that on my parents, as well as the costs they’ve already incurred on my behalf. So, quite simply, I’m not free this weekend.”
Shock tightened his face. His eyes sharpened, drilling into hers with urgent intensity. “This wedding, Stockton. Is it being put off because of me?” he asked quietly.
Tessa assumed a carefree expression. “Oh, no, sir. Nothing to do with you, sir. How could it possibly have anything to do with you?”
There was a further tightening of his facial muscles, a fleeting look of puzzlement—or irritation—jetting across his brow. “I don’t understand you at all, Stockton. When did you make the decision to cancel?” he shot at her.
“Last Sunday night. Before I—”
“Why?”
Tessa shrugged. “Well, if you must know, sir, I found my fiancé in bed with another woman.”
“Hell!” he said, astonished.
“That was, to put it mildly, the beginning of the end,” Tessa said.
He made a contemptuous sound, straightened up and strolled to the window. Tessa turned in her chair to look at him. There was an angry cast to his face. His mouth had thinned. The view was giving him no pleasure. He was probably vexed because she had put a spoke in his cosy little plan for the weekend.
Goaded by his dismissal of all the pain she had felt over a man to whom she had devoted four years of her life, however foolishly, Tessa cynically asked, “Are you feeling any better now, sir?”
“Worse,” he bit out, not looking at her.
“There are always other women,” Tessa said derisively. “There seem to be plenty of them around, willing to take their chances.”
He gave her a sharply mocking look. “Never the right ones.”
It hurt. Even though she knew she wasn’t the right woman for him, it still hurt. “Sorry I failed you, sir,” she said flippantly.
“You didn’t fail, Stockton.” His mouth curved into an ironic smile. “You were very good for me.”
It was some balm to her wounded soul. “Thank you, sir.”
The memories were back in his eyes, burning into her again. Tessa’s pulse started to act erratically. She was beginning to have trouble breathing. Her mind dictated that she had to get away from him. Fast. She pushed herself up from the chair before her legs went all watery on her.
“I’ll go now, sir.”
“Stockton...”
She wrenched her eyes from the simmering seduction in his and turned toward the door.
“Miss Stockton...”
“Goodbye, sir.” She sliced the words quickly at him, and forced herself to walk, one foot in front of the other.
“Tessa...”
The soft caress of her name curled around her, holding her still.
“I’m asking you, very nicely...please, would you reconsider our, er, arrangement?”
Tessa did not look back. She took a deep breath, stiffened her spine and held fast to a sane sensible course. She was not going to be anybody’s floozy on the side. Not even Blaize Callagan’s. “No, sir,” she said firmly.