Wishful Thinking (a journey that will change lives forever) (19 page)

The morning was unseasonably cold and miserable, and Dara was delighted to get to the office.  She’d been out meeting a client first thing that morning, and was just checking for messages with Breda the receptionist before heading upstairs to her desk.

Just then, a client approached the desk.  Dara politely moved aside to the other end of the counter, while the man announced his appointment.

“Hello, I have a meeting at two o’clock with Paul Owens,” he said confidently.

Dara was too busy reading through her messages to really listen, but afterwards she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t recognised the voice.

Immediately.

Breda smiled at easily the best-looking client she’d seen in all her ten years working here. “Mr Morgan, is it?” she confirmed.  “Just take a seat and I’ll let him know you’re here.”  

At the mention of the surname, Dara’s head snapped up, and as the man turned his back she gave a quick surreptitious glance at him.  It wasn’t … it couldn’t … could it be?

She stood rooted to the spot, almost afraid to move. 

No, no, her mind was playing tricks on her, of course it couldn’t be him. Still, her head grew dizzy all of sudden, and she had to hold onto the high front of the desk for support. 

“Dara, are you alright?” Breda asked in a very low whisper. “You’ve gone a bit white.”

“I’m … I’m fine,” Dara managed to say.  But she wasn’t fine.  Just then she was about as far from fine as she’d ever been.

“Dara?” came a voice from behind her. “Dara Campbell, is that you?”

And then, Dara turned around and came face to face with the man she was so sure she would never see again. 

“It
is
you!” Noah said. “I don’t believe it!  I had no idea you worked here – I thought you were still at Brophy’s.”

“Noah, lovely to see you,” was all Dara could manage, afraid that Breda could tell exactly what was happening, exactly what was going on here.  Because she was certain her feelings were written all over her face. “No, I work here, now.”

“Fair play to you,” he said, gently. “I’m delighted you’ve done so well.” Then he smiled, the same incredible smile that melted her heart in the same way it had all those years before. “So how have you been?”

“Very well, thanks,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even, trying not to betray her utter astonishment and disbelief at seeing him here. 

“Mr Morgan? Come this way, please,” Paul Owens’ assistant appeared in the doorway and Dara’s heart stopped, realising something.  Paul Owens specialised in family law. Separation agreements, child support –
divorces
.

Noah looked at her speculatively, those magnificent green eyes probing, searching, almost reading her mind. “Maybe we could have a chat when I’m finished here?” he suggested casually.

And before she could stop herself, Dara nodded.

“It would be great to catch up,” he went on.

“Sure, let Breda know when you’re ready,” she replied, a little out of breath, and Noah smiled.

Dara moved like a zombie on the way up the winding stairs back up to her office, having left instructions for Breda to buzz her when Noah was finished with Paul.  What on earth had just happened? 

Of all the solicitor’s firms in all the world … she couldn’t comprehend it.  How,
how
had Noah Morgan ended up at this one?  It was fate, wasn’t it – it had to be fate.   Because things like that just didn’t happen, other than in the movies.  Things like that didn’t happen, unless it was for a very good reason.

At the thought of seeing him and talking to him, spending time with him again, after all this time, Dara’s heart soared.

Noah Morgan – the love of her life, the man of her dreams, the one who got away – was back.

*******

The sex was even better than Dara had ever imagined. 

She hadn’t been able to help herself.  Once she’d seen him standing innocently in the lobby like that, once they’d laid eyes on one another once more, Dara knew deep down that it would come to this.  It was just a matter of when. 

Noah was all she could think about when she went back upstairs. The next half hour or so passed in a blur until finally Breda buzzed to let her know he was waiting out front for her. 

Dara tried to calm herself, she tried to keep her legs steady as she walked outside, but once she came face to face with Noah, all right and reason went straight out the window.

She wanted him, she wanted him so much that had he taken her in his arms there and then in full view of the whole street, she wouldn’t have cared.  The desire was so great it was almost unbearable.

“Hi,” she said softly, and when Noah looked at her she could see it in his eyes that he felt the same way.  The look he gave her made her head spin and her legs turn to jelly.

They walked for a little while, each saying nothing, until eventually the incredible magnetism between them was just too much to bear. 

Then, without a single word passing between them, Dara let Noah lead her into a nearby alleyway – the back of some stationery company the office used.

Then, he lifted her in his arms, pinned her against the wall, and without saying a single word, without planting a single kiss on her mouth, Noah positioned himself between her legs. 

Her arms clinging tightly around him, Dara couldn’t comprehend how anything could feel so good. As Noah’s breathing deepened, and his thrusting grew deeper and then faster, she held on tight, praying that he would never, ever stop.  She was drunk on him, drunk on the feel of him inside her, drunk on the notion that he was here – really here.  She remembered thinking that it all had to be a dream, some dangerous, delicious dream, one from which she didn’t want to awaken. 

Finally, Noah bent his head and kissed her fiercely and, as he did, she cried out inside his mouth in sheer ecstasy.  It was the most incredible pleasure she had ever experienced.  

After that, and still without saying a word, they went straight to the nearest hotel, Dara dazedly asking and paying for the room.  Once upstairs, they roughly undressed one another and spent the entire afternoon drinking in each other’s bodies.  All throughout, she wondered why on earth she’d given him up, how she’d ever convinced herself that another man could be any sort of a substitute.

Noah’s body was toned and hard and that afternoon, it seemed, in a permanent state of arousal.  He was totally insatiable, but they were in perfect harmony – each knew exactly what the other wanted, what the other one needed.  It was just as good as it had always been between them – raw, passionate, ferocious – yet the intervening distance made it seem a million times better.  

Noah had obviously learned a lot on his travels.

Since leaving Dara’s office, they’d barely spoken at all – they’d simply let their bodies do the talking.  There were no questions, no answers, nothing but the two of them, wrapped in some timeless bubble, locking out the rest of the world.

For Dara, it felt as though she was under the influence of some powerful mind-altering, pleasure-inducing drug, and she had absolutely no control over what her body was doing.  Her rational mind didn’t get a look-in, let alone her conscience.  She just had to have him, to be with him again. 

When she’d seen him standing there in the lobby, in the flesh again after all those years, it was almost too much to take, and she hadn’t given Mark a second thought.  It was as though he’d never existed and –

“Dara, Dara, Dara …”

Now, he was calling her name over and over again and she felt his lips lightly brush her cheek.  She didn’t think she’d ever get the chance to hear him utter her name like that, to be with him like this.  But then, for no apparent reason, he started … he started
shaking
her all of a sudden. What was wrong with –?

“Dara! Dara! Come on! You’re going to be late for work!”

“What? Where …?”

Dara’s eyes fluttered open, and she stared up at the ceiling, groggy and disorientated.

Then somewhere above her head, Mark’s face appeared out of nowhere and ...
Mark!
 

Instantly, Dara leapt up, horrified.

“That must have been some dream!” Mark laughed easily and sat down at the edge of the bed.  “You were thrashing around like something from
The Exorcist
.”

Dara burned with embarrassment at what she’d been dreaming, at what she’d been
thinking
!  OK, it might have just been her subconscious, but still!  What the hell was she doing – dreaming about making love to another man while her husband slept soundly beside her?  Had Noah’s reappearance the day before got to her
that
much?

“I … I . . .” Dara couldn’t find the words.  “It was a nightmare,” she blurted eventually, before getting up and heading straight for the ensuite bathroom, still a little disorientated and very, very guilty.

And it was a nightmare.  It was a
hell
of a nightmare to think she’d been so affected by seeing Noah that she’d been having a dream about it – that kind of dreams.  Shit!  She undressed and turned on the shower. 

Mark was chuckling. “Some nightmare,” he called after her.  “Was it the usual one? The one where you keep getting shot?” 

Dara winced.  That was one way of putting it!

“Something like that,” she replied vaguely.  She was so guilt-ridden she could hardly answer him. God, how embarrassing!

All of a sudden, Mark put his head around the door, startling her. He gave her an odd look. “Was it
that
bad?” he asked. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine, sorry – still a bit groggy, that’s all.” She attempted a half-hearted smile.

“Well, I have to head off now, but I’ll see you later, OK?”

She nodded. “Talk to you soon.”

He closed the bathroom door behind him, and she stepped into the shower, hoping that the hot water might somehow wash away her still-vivid memory of that utterly embarrassing dream.   

******

On the train journey to work, Dara recalled the previous afternoon’s events.

After Noah had finished his meeting with Paul Owens, they’d arranged to meet for lunch, and mercifully, she thought wincing, the encounter had been nothing like last night’s mortifying dream. 

There was certainly no venturing into grubby alleyways or anything like that – what was she
think
ing? 

Dara made a mental note there and then to bin her Mills & Boons collection when she got home that evening – those books had obviously sent her imagination into overdrive. That was it, she decided, her mind resting a little easier, the sexy, virile man she’d been … ahem …
dreaming
about had not been Noah Morgan. No, it had been some rugged hero from
The Italian Stallion’s Baby
or something. Yes, that was definitely it, she reassured herself, and it was only pure coincidence that he happened to look a little bit like her old boyfriend. 

And
far
from spending the afternoon having a passionate tryst in some hotel room, she had simply gone back to work and tried not to think too much about meeting Noah again.  She was married to Mark now, and she had missed the boat where Noah was concerned.  She couldn’t forget that.  So, there was no point in driving herself mad thinking about it, was there?

Even though Noah was still as charming and gorgeous as ever, and his eyes were still a fabulous Mediterranean green, and the years had made his strong jaw-line more pronounced and sexier than ever and –

Stop it! Dara took a deep breath, and willed her thoughts to stop wandering.  That bloody dream had really unnerved her.  Thank heavens someone hadn’t yet invented a gizmo allowing people to read one another’s thoughts, otherwise poor Mark would have asked for a divorce there and then!

But despite her best intentions, her mind couldn’t help but replay the details of yesterday’s meeting with Noah.  They’d had lunch in a small café near the office, and over a couple of (very
un
sexy) paninis, Dara discovered that she’d been correct in her assumption about his visit to Paul Owens.  He and Maria, the girl he had married in Rome, were in the process of getting divorced.

“What happened?” she asked, trying not to sound too interested.

Noah shrugged, his toned and broad torso clearly outlined in a tight-fitting T-shirt, which really, Dara decided, men like him should never be allowed to wear.  It was way too dangerous.  Stop it, stop it! she admonished herself, trying desperately not to notice things like Noah’s incredibly attractive chest.  Mark had an attractive chest too, so try and think of Mark. 
Think of Mark, think of Mark,
she chanted silently to herself.

But no, that was no good – if she tried to think of Mark then of course she felt guilty about being here with Noah in the first place. Not that she was doing anything wrong or anything, but still.