Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue

His voice dropped until it was so low it felt vaguely threatening. ‘Tell me, then, what it is that you want from me.’

‘I want you to take the same duty of care with your business practices, in the example you set for your employees and clients with regards to your impact on the environment, as you do your choice of footwear. I want your company to do its part and reduce its prodigious impact on the environment.’

He slid his feet shoulder-width apart, his toes pointing directly at her. ‘Honey, I’m not sure what you think we do in there but we sit at computers and wangle phones. Not so much rainforest felling as you might believe.’

‘You might not be the ones swinging the axes, but, by not being as green as you can be, you may as well be.’

While he looked as though he was imagining ways in which he might surreptitiously have her removed from the face of the earth, she kept her eyes locked on his and was as earnest as she could be when she said, ‘Just hear me out. I promise you’ll sleep better at night.’

Dylan’s eyes narrowed. For a moment she thought she might have pierced his hard shell, until his exquisitely carved cheek lifted into a smile. ‘I sleep just fine.’

And she believed him, to the point of imagining a man splayed out on a king-sized bed, expensive sheets barely covering his naked body as he slept the sleep of the completely satiated. Okay, not a man. This man. That body right now unfairly confined by the convention that city financiers wear suits.

She blinked, and her lashes stuck to her hot cheeks reminding her she’d been standing in the sun for half an hour, strapped to a sharp, uncomfortable, metal statue. ‘Come on. What do you say? Don’t you want your family name to stand for something great?’

Finally, something she said worked. The chiselled jaw turned to rock. The blue eyes completely lost the roguish glint. His faint aura of exasperation evaporated. And right before her eyes the man grew into his suit.

Debonair and cheeky, he was mouth-watering. Focused and switched on he might, she feared and hoped, be the most exceptional devil this angel was yet to meet.

His blue eyes locked hard and fast onto hers, pinning her to the spot with more power than the manacles binding her hands ever could. Her skin flushed, her heart rate doubled, her stomach clenched and released as though readying her to fight or fly.

His voice was rough, but loud enough for every microphone to pick it up as he said, ‘Both KInG and the Kelly family invest millions every year in environmental causes such as renewable energy research and reforestation. More than any other company in this state.’

‘That’s excellent. Truly. But money isn’t everything,’ she shot back, holding his gaze, feeling the cameras zoom in tight. ‘Action is the marker of a man, and the actions within that building beside us in the last year have added up to the waste of more than forty thousand disposable paper cups a month, more water usage than the whole of the suburb I live in, and enough paper waste to fell hectares of old forest. What I want from you is the promise that you are going to become the solution rather than being the problem.’

When the devil in the dark suit didn’t come back with an instant response her heart thundered with the thrill of a battle won, with the knowledge that the cameras had their sound bite. And if Dylan Kelly, VP Media Relations, was worth his salt he knew in that moment there was no way that he could just walk away.

‘So what do ya say?’ she said, bringing her voice back down to a more intimate level, loosening her grip, relaxing her stance and slipping on a warm, friendly and just a little bit flirty smile. ‘Invite me in for a coffee and a chat and I’ll spend tomorrow bugging someone else.’

She felt the whole forecourt hold its collective breath as they awaited his next move.

When it finally came, Wynnie was again glad of her shackles, uncomfortable as they had become, as this time when those blindingly blue eyes met hers they were filled with such self-possession, such provocation, such blatant reined-in heat her knees all but buckled beneath her.

‘You want to come up to my place for coffee?’ he asked, his voice like silk and melted dark chocolate and all things decadent and delectable and too slippery to hold on to. ‘Now why didn’t you just say so in the first place?’

CHAPTER TWO

AS THOUGH Dylan Kelly had a magic button in the pocket of his trousers, Security arrived at that moment to discreetly move the onlookers away. The city workers and tourists had had their free lunchtime show. The press had their story. Wynnie’s awareness campaign was off to a flying start. Everyone was happy.

Everyone except Dylan, who was staring at her as if she were a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

‘That was a cheap trick you just pulled,’ he growled quietly enough that only she could hear.

Wynnie shook her hair out of her face. Now the crowd had dispersed, the breeze whipping up George Street was swirling around her like a maelstrom. ‘I prefer fearless, indomitable and inventive.’

‘In the end it will be they who decide one way or the other.’ He motioned with a slight tilt of his head to the row of news vans on the sidewalk.

‘Lucky for me,’ she said with a smile.

‘Mmm. Lucky for you.’ He glanced at his watch, then back at her. ‘So did you want to conduct your bogus meeting out here or were you planning on staying here for the night?’

Wynnie twisted to get her hands to the tight back pocket of her capri pants, which had been ideal for the Verona autumn she had left behind, but in the warm Brisbane spring sunshine they stuck to her like a wetsuit. ‘Oh, no. I’m done. Horizontal is my much preferred method. Of sleeping,’ she added far too late for comfort.

She glanced up to find him thankfully preoccupied enough to have missed her little Freudian slip. Unfortunately he was preoccupied with the twisting and turning of her hips.

His voice was deep, his jaw tight, when he said, ‘I could have had you arrested, you know. This is private property.’

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘The globe belongs to none of us.’

He’d moved closer, having seemingly reconciled himself to the fact that she wanted to get out of the handcuffs as much as he wanted her to, and that her shoes were made for looks and functionality, not for use as a secret weapon. Without the clamour of the crowd making the square smell like a fish-market, she caught a waft of his aftershave—clean, dark, expensive. Suddenly she felt very, very thirsty.

Despite his focus, she twisted some more. Her shoulder twinged but better that than have to keep trying to appear professional while cuffed to the statue, and while the touch of his eyes made her skin scorch beneath her clothes.

Her fingers made it to the bottom of the tight coin pocket to find it was empty. Her heart leapt into her throat until she remembered she’d put the tiny key inside the breast pocket of her shirt at the last minute.

Naturally when she tried to reach it, she couldn’t. She stood on tiptoes, looking for Hannah, knowing it was a lost cause. She would have been back at the office the minute lunch hour was up.

Wynnie closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath and said, ‘Would you do me a favour?’

Dylan’s deep voice rolled over her. ‘You certainly aren’t backwards about asking for what you want, I’ll give you that.’

‘I need you to get the key for my cuffs.’

After a long, slow pause he said, ‘The key?’

She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. ‘It’s in my top right breast pocket. I can’t reach it. So unless you do want me to become a permanent fixture—’

The rest of her words dried up in her throat and her eyes sprang open.

It seemed she hadn’t had to ask twice. Dylan’s hand was already sliding into the pocket, his fingertips brushing against the soft cotton over her bra; just slowly enough to make a ripple of goose bumps leap up all over her body, and just fast enough she couldn’t accuse him of taking advantage.

All too soon he held up the key. ‘This the one you’re after?’

She hoped to God it was. If he made another foray in there she didn’t know what she might do.

She nodded and looked up into his eyes. Up close they were the colour of the sky back home, the unspoilt wilds of country Nimbin—the kind of wide-open blue found only in the most untouched places on earth. But the colour was the only virtuous thing about them. Barely checked exasperation boiled just below the surface.

She lifted her hand to take the key, was reminded why he had it in the first place, then gritted her teeth as she twisted so that she could expose her wrists, and her back view, to him instead.

This time he managed to have her unlocked without touching her at all. Not even a whisper, an accidental grope, a playful pat. She actually felt disappointed.

When God was handing out the mechanism for knowing who a girl could safely lean on, Wynnie had so-o-o missed out. If there was ever a man in her vicinity who was about to act against her own interests, that was the one she was drawn to.

She shook her head and vowed to ask Hannah to set her up on some sort of blind date and fast. Or maybe just a night out dancing at some dark, hazy club. Or she could take up running. Not as though she’d ever lifted a foot in purposeful exercise in her life, but there was no time like the present to begin! If she didn’t manage to release some of the sexual tension this man had summoned, she was going to make a hash of everything.

She slid the cuffs from her right wrist, sucking in a short sharp breath as the pain of their release grew worse than the dull ache of the wearing of them.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, and she looked up in surprise.