If You Can't Stand the Heat... (Harlequin Kiss) by Joss Wood Read Free Book Online Page B

and into his room. Jack heard Mitchell splutter with annoyance but continued anyway. ‘And, by the way, why did you teach Ellie such crude Arabic insults when she was a little girl? They are, admittedly, funny as hell, because she gets them all mixed up, but really...’
    ‘She still remembers those, huh?’
    Jack pulled his T-shirt over his head, walked into the bathroom and dropped it into the laundry basket. Yanking a bottle of pills out of his toiletry bag, he shook the required daily dosage into his hand, tossed them into his mouth and used his hand as a cup to get water into his mouth.
    Those pills were his constant companions, his best friends. He loved them and loathed them in equal measure.
    ‘And why did you tell Ellie that I’m helping you write this book?’
    As per normal, Mitch ignored the questions he didn’t want to answer. ‘So, have you spoken to Ellie yet about me ?’
    ‘No. The woman works like a demon. I haven’t managed to pin her down yet.’ Jack frowned. ‘And she’s not exactly jumping for joy at the prospect.’
    Mitchell didn’t answer for a minute. ‘Ellie and I have had our ups and downs...’
    Ups and downs? Jack suspected that they’d had a lot more than that.
    ‘She didn’t like me being away so much,’ Mitchell continued.
    Jack rolled his eyes at that understatement. As he walked over to the window his eye was caught by two frames lying against the wall, behind the desk in the corner. Pulling them out, he saw that they were two photographs of a younger Ellie and a short blond man in front of the exclusive art gallery Grigson’s in London. Jack asked Mitch who the man in the photograph was.
    ‘Someone she was briefly engaged to—five, six years ago.’ Jack heard Mitchell light a cigarette. ‘She wanted to get married. He didn’t.’
    Jack felt a spurt of sympathy for the guy. He’d had two potential-to-become-serious relationships in the past ten years and they’d both ended in tears on his partner’s face and frustration on his. They’d wanted him to settle down. He equated that to being locked in a cage. He’d liked them, enjoyed them, but not enough to curtail his time or freedom for them.
    ‘Jack? You still there?’ Mitchell asked in his ear.
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘I spoke to most of our commissioning editors today and told them that you’ve been injured. They will leave you alone for three weeks. Unless something diabolical happens—then all bets are off,’ Mitchell stated.
    That was enough to yank his attention back, and fast. Jack felt his molars grinding. ‘You do know I get very annoyed when you interfere in my life, Mitchell?’
    Mitchell, never intimidated, just laughed. ‘Oh, get over yourself! You haven’t taken any time off in two years and we all know that leads to burnout. You’ve been flirting with it for a while, boyo.’
    ‘Crap.’
    ‘If you don’t believe me, check your last couple of stories. You’ve always been super-fair and unemotional, but there’s a fine line between being unemotional and robotic, Jack. You are drifting over that line. Losing every bit of empathy is every bit as problematic as having too much.’
    ‘Again...crap,’ Jack muttered, but wondered if Mitchell had a point. He remembered being in Egypt six weeks ago and watching a paramedic work on a badly beaten protester. He’d been trying to recall if he’d paid his gas bill. Maybe he was taking the role of observer a bit too far.
    ‘I’m going to courier you my notebooks, my diaries,’ Mitchell told him. ‘Get some sun, drink some wine. But if you don’t get cracking on my book...’
    Mitch repeated the most gruesome of Ellie’s Arabic curses from the night before and Jack winced.
    Jack tossed the mobile onto the bed, slapped his hands on his hips and stared at the photographs he’d replaced against the wall. Ellie... Maybe he should think about leaving, and soon. Almost kissing her last night had been a mistake...
    Sure, he was attracted to her—she was