The Bravos: Family Ties: The Bravo Family Way / Married in Haste / From Here to Paternity

No doubt about it. Trouble. Capital T.

“This way.” She opened the door to her office and ushered him inside, gesturing at a guest chair. He sat and she went to her chair behind the beautiful desk he’d had built just for her. “Now,” she said, sounding brisk and businesslike and feeling anything but. “What’s up?”

He studied her for a moment before he spoke. She felt his gaze as if it were a physical touch. At last he said, “You’ve done an amazing job with this project. I didn’t really believe you’d succeed in doing what you’ve done here—not in two and a half weeks, anyway.”

She couldn’t resist reminding him, “I believe you chose the time frame.”

He gave her one of those regal nods of his. “I did. I like setting impossible goals. They make people try harder. And you did.” Another regal nod, then he said, “Well done.”

“Thank you.” So. He’d only taken her aside to give her a pat on the back for the work she’d done.

That was good. She was pleased. He wasn’t putting any moves on her and she wanted it that way.

Too bad she felt so let down.

He asked, “Aren’t you glad now that I wouldn’t leave you alone until you agreed to go for it?”

To her, the question had more than one level of meaning. She reminded herself not to go to those other levels. “Yes, I am. It’s worked out beautifully.”

He slid a hand into the inside pocket of his suit coat and produced a red leather jeweler’s box embossed with gold.

Another gift.

Well. So much for a purely professional pat on the back. Damn him. She had told him not to—

“Don’t,” he said, as if she had spoken her objections aloud—which she hadn’t. Yet.

“Fletcher, I asked you not to—”

He raised his free hand for silence as he set the red box on her desk. “Open it.”

“No.”

Her refusal didn’t faze him in the least. “All right. I’ll open it for you.” He took the box again, raised the lid and set it down facing her so she could see what waited inside.

A watch. White gold or maybe platinum, with a black alligator band. A small, oh-so-tasteful row of diamonds running down either side of the square face and the single word Cartier beneath the upper numerals. A go-anywhere watch. Gorgeous and simple and absolutely perfect.

And very, very expensive.

He explained, “It’s engraved on the back with the date and ‘KinderWay at Impresario’—and don’t look at me like that. Yes, it’s a gift. A strictly professional one. To commemorate a job much more than well done.”

Strictly professional. Did she believe him?

Yes. No. She didn’t know.

She did know that the watch was beautiful and she had done a hell of a job in the past weeks and … yes, she wanted it.

What did that make her? A professional justifiably proud of her latest accomplishment? Or a woman finally saying yes to a man’s slow, relentless seduction?

Or both?

The really scary thing was that it didn’t matter what it made her. Whether this gift was strictly professional or not, she was keeping it.

Her doubts fell away. She knew at that moment that she would have to break up with Danny. And that someday soon Fletcher would ask her out to dinner again. And when he did, her answer would be yes.

No qualifications. And no restrictions. Simply, completely, yes.

She picked up the box and removed the watch, turning it over, reading the inscription, which was just what he’d said it would be. “Thank you,” she said for the second time. “It’s an important day and now I have something to remember it by.” She laid it over her wrist and caught the tiny diamond-studded buckle to clasp it.

“Let me….”

She started to refuse—and then stopped herself. What good would refusing him such a small thing do her? In the end, she would say yes to everything. She understood that now. And her intuition told her that the man across from her had always known, from that first day when she met with him in his office. He had always known … and he had been right.

She extended her wrist to him.

He stood. It took him only a moment to hook the delicate pin into the buckle. He held on a few seconds longer than necessary. “It looks good.”

She met his eyes without wavering as those now-familiar sensations of heat and longing danced beneath her skin. “Yes. Thank you again.”

With obvious reluctance, he released her. “And I have to go.” He waited for her to rise and come around the desk. When she did, he fell in behind her. It was only a few steps to the door.

She felt him acutely at her back. She wanted him. She’d tried to deny it, but the wanting did not go away. So she was yielding to it, finally, her capitulation at last complete—so much so that she almost stopped in midstep and turned to him and …

No.

Not here. And not now.

She had come to the point where she realized what was bound to happen, where she even accepted it. But not today, not in her office. And most important, not until she’d talked to Danny and told him goodbye.

Still, she simply couldn’t resist turning back to Fletcher as she opened the door to the outer room. “I am glad,” she conceded. “That you kept after me. That it’s worked out so well.”

He took a long time to answer—sizzling, delicious seconds during which heat shimmered in their shared glance. “I’m pleased, too. Very much so,” he said at last, and they both knew he referred to more than KinderWay.

She leaned back against the open door and allowed it to happen—for one more sweet, seductive moment before he left her, to get lost in his beautiful, dangerous eyes.

Then, with a slow sigh, she turned back toward the outer room. And blinked in guilty horror at what she saw.

Danny.

He was sitting on the sofa against the wall opposite Rae-Anne’s desk with a heart-shaped box of candy in his lap.

“You have a visitor,” said RaeAnne.

Danny took the box of candy in his beefy hand and stood. “Hey. Got home early.” His soft, dark eyes took it all in: Cleo standing stunned in the doorway and the tall, commanding, beautifully dressed man behind her. “Thought I’d drop by and see how things are goin’.”

Chapter Six

Danny understood in an instant what Cleo had refused to accept for nearly a month. He kept it calm and low-key, shaking Fletcher’s hand when Cleo introduced them, even smiling that sweet, open smile of his. The two men exchanged a few quick words of greeting and then Fletcher took his leave.