Soliman, Wendy - The Name of the Game (BookStrand Publishing Romance) by Wendy Soliman

threw back her shoulders, looked up at Charlie, placed her hand on his arm, and laughed at whatever it was he’d just said to her. She had no idea what it was.
    Another man joined them.
    “Ah, Philip, how’s it going?” Before the other man could speak, Charlie cut him off. “Let me introduce you to Ashley Wilde, our office manager here in Reigate. Ashley, this is Philip Roker, Marketing Director for Stevenson’s.”
    Ashley shook hands with him. “Nice to meet you,” she said, resisting the urge to wipe the hand that had touched his on the side of her dress.
    “Likewise. I’ve heard good things about you,” he said.
    Ashley knew of Roker by reputation but had never met him before. He had to be approaching fifty, with slicked back silver hair, angular features, and a rake thin body. But it was his opaque eyes that unsettled her. They examined her for far too long and, frankly, gave her the creeps. It was as though he could see inside her head and read her thoughts.
    “Phil is almost a member of the family,” Charlie said. “He worked for Interactive for years before decamping to the opposition.”
    Ashley thought she saw a shadow pass across Roker’s face at this rather crass but typically Charlie-like reference to Roker’s employment history. Before the situation could become embarrassing, dinner was announced, saving Ashley the trouble of thinking up something diplomatic to say.
    Charlie pulled out all the stops, and when they took their seats, Ashley, who’d been hoping to get rid of him, found that she had been placed on his right. Deliberately, or by some deft rearrangement of place cards? Surely she should have been seated between two of the Stevenson’s lot? Still, it wasn’t her problem.
    Matt was on the other side of the table, several places down from her. She hadn’t spoken one word to him since entering the room, nor did she intend to. He was seated next to Giles Yardley, Stevenson’s CEO. On his left was an attractive woman, who had earlier been introduced to Ashley as Stella Rawlings, her opposite number at Stevenson’s. Matt chatted with Giles but bestowed an equal amount of attention on Stella, apparently engrossed by whatever she had to say for herself.
    Ashley reminded herself that shining in social situations was second nature to Matt. She watched as he treated Stella to that full on look of his, probably making her feel like the only person that mattered on the entire plant. She was certainly eating up the attention. Ashley felt a bolt of raw jealousy streak through her, even though she knew that beneath those polished manners Matt would be sparing less than one-tenth of his attention for his dinner companions. The diamond hard gleam in his eye, the smouldering anger he couldn’t entirely conceal from someone who knew him as well as she did, told her all she needed to know. She caught him watching her on several occasions, impotent to do anything about the way she responded, quite deliberately, to Charlie’s flirtatious banter.
    Matt, she suspected, was quietly seething.
    Ashley ought to be pleased to have extracted such an extreme reaction. Instead, she felt spiteful and cheap. Revenge, she was fast discovering, was not always as sweet as people would have you believe. Charlie refilled her glass yet again, and she knocked back its contents without a thought for the consequences. She was competing in the most important dressage competition of her life the following day, but that didn’t prevent her from getting progressively tipsy. It was the only way to quell the overwhelming desire she still felt for the formidably smooth, disconcertingly angry male sitting just across from her, the planes of his handsome face locked in a combination of helplessness and disgust whenever he looked her way.
    The meal finally came to an end, and the representatives of the two firms left the table to mingle at the bar. Charlie still didn’t leave Ashley’s side, which was odd. He ought to be up