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twinkled at him. ‘Are you going to be doing something…private in here that you don’t want me to walk in on?’
    Three weeks, six days, two hours—and counting!
    Gideon felt a nerve pulsing in his tightly clenched jaw. ‘I just don’t like you coming in here unannounced.’
    Joey had decided, during the three hours since she had last seen Gideon, that the best way to deal with her earlier lapse into fantasyland was to face it head on. To face
him
head-on.
    Looking at him now, as he sat behind Lucan’s desk, golden hair slightly ruffled from the cool breeze outside, his jacket removed and the width of his shoulders and muscled chest clearly visible beneath that white silk shirt, suddenly she wasn’t so sure…
    Oh, get a grip, Joey,
she instructed herself impatiently. So she’d had a sexual fantasy about the man? So what? Yes, Gideon was as handsome as sin, but he had just been out for a minimum two-hour lunch with another woman. No doubt a woman only too happy to cater to his sexual preferences, whatever they were…
    ‘My mother sends her regards, by the way.’
    Joey blinked. ‘Your mother?’
    Gideon gave a mocking smile—almost as if he had known exactly what she was thinking. ‘I had lunch with her before she caught the afternoon train back to Edinburgh.’
    The still beautiful and very gracious Molly St Claire. Dowager Duchess of Stourbridge now, following Lucan’s marriage to Lexie on Saturday. And apparently the woman Gideon had just had a two-hour lunch with.
    Was that
relief
Joey was feeling? If it was, then it was totally inappropriate. Ridiculous, even, when he had already made it perfectly obvious she was the last woman he would ever be attracted to.
    And was she attracted to him?
    Well, she was a woman with a pulse and a heartbeat, wasn’t she?
    Maybe she was—but she wasn’t a
stupid
woman with a pulse and a heartbeat! Being attracted to Gideon—a man who showed no interest in her, and no emotion whatsoever for anyone other than those he considered his close family—would be the height of stupidity on her part.
    She might choose to present an outer shell of sophistication, but inside Joey knew herself to be as soft as marshmallow—as emotional and vulnerable, in fact, as her outwardly softer twin. She really wasn’t about to get her heart broken by falling for the coldly unattainable Gideon St Claire.
    ‘What an attentive son you are, to be sure,’ she commented.
    Gideon visibly stiffened. ‘Maybe you aren’t aware of it, but the wedding on Saturday was a difficult time for my mother.’
    Joey instantly felt guilty at this reminder that Lucan and Lexie’s wedding must have been something of an ordeal for Molly St Claire; Lexie was the granddaughter of Sian Thomas—the woman Molly’s husband, Alexander St Claire, the previous Duke of Stourbridge, had left Molly for twenty-five years ago.
    Some sort of truce on the past had been called between the two older women before Lucan and Lexie’s wedding on Saturday, but even so it couldn’t have been an easy time for Gideon’s mother.
    ‘I am aware of it.’ Joey grimaced in acknowledgement of her faux pas. ‘Sorry.’
    Gideon continued to eye her coldly for several seconds, before giving an abrupt nod. ‘Let’s move on, shall we? What did you want to see me about?’
    What
did
she want to see Gideon about? Oh, yes. ‘Jordan rang while you were out; he and Steph have arrived safely back in LA.’
    Gideon nodded. ‘He left a message on my voicemail.
    It still felt slightly odd to him that he and this woman were connected by the marriage of their twin siblings. Not that he and Jordan were identical twins. But Joey and Stephanie were—even if they chose to be completely different in appearance. Gideon had always thought Stephanie to be warm and charming, while her sister had all the softness of a porcupine. An impression that had been shaken earlier that morning, when he’d heard the aching loneliness in Joey’s voice as she’d