Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue

For the briefest moment she thought she saw actual concern flicker within his gaze. She blinked and it was gone. She hid the cuffs and her red wrists behind her. ‘I’m fine. Now how about that coffee?’

‘First things first,’ he said, rocking forwards on his heels until her personal space became his personal space. His dark scent became her oxygen. His natural heat her reason for getting up that morning.

Her toes curled and her tongue darted out to wet her lips.

‘I don’t make a habit of having coffee with a woman without at the very least getting a name.’ He held out a hand. ‘Dylan Kelly.’

Wynnie blinked, mentally slapped herself across the back of her head for letting her imagination run rampant, then took his hand, doing her best to ignore the frisson of heat that scooted up her arm as his fingers curled around hers. ‘Wynnie Devereaux.’

His eyebrows rose. ‘French?’

‘Australian.’

His eyebrows slowly flattened out, but the edge of his mouth kicked up into a half smile as he realised she had no intention of illuminating him further.

The truth was that Devereaux was the maiden name of a grandmother she’d never met, and her little brother, Felix, had never been able to pronounce her real name as a baby and had called her Wynnie from the time he could talk.

Felix. The whisper of his name in the back of her mind made her soul hurt, and reminded her how her patchy instinct on who to trust could go so terribly wrong.

Either way, she had no intention of talking to Dylan Kelly, or anyone else, about the existence of her brother. Or, for that matter, her real name.

‘Next,’ he said. Before I inflict you upon my place of business, he didn’t need to say. ‘Are you here on your own whim or as an ambassador for others like you?’

Wynnie raised an eyebrow at his snarky attitude. She then pulled a business card from the skinny travel purse looped beneath her shirt and hanging against her hip.

Her fingers brushed over the crystal and white-stone butterfly clip attached to the strap of her purse, and like the touchstone it was, it helped take the edge off her soaring adrenalin.

She handed her card over, a handcuff still dangling from that wrist.

The whisper of a half-smile tugged at Dylan’s mouth, and her body reacted the same way it had every time that happened. It stretched and unfolded and purred.

Which was insane. He’d made no bones about how unenthusiastic he was about the prospect of spending time with her. And he was a target, not some anonymous hot guy in a club who might, if she was very lucky, turn out to be an undemanding friend with benefits. But she couldn’t help herself. It was as though the laws of nature were having their way with her without her consent.

She whipped the cuffs behind her and unhooked them, shoving one end down the back of her trousers before they became more of a distraction. Or an apparent invitation.

He glanced at her for one long moment more before his eyes slid to her business card. His lip curled as he said, ‘You’re a lobbyist?’

‘Is that better or worse than whatever it was you were thinking I was before you saw the card?’

He tipped her business card into the palm of his hand and out of sight. And if she’d thought he’d filled out his suit before, now he stood so erect he looked as if he’d been sewn into the thing. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure.’

But at least he waved an arm in front of her, herding her towards the formidable Kelly Tower.

As Wynnie’s feet moved under her she realised she was kind of stunned. The spectacle had actually worked. Her employers, whose previous public persona was devout and dull, would come out of this appearing anything but. They would get prime-time news coverage, and she had gathered several leads with reporters who wanted follow-ups. She couldn’t have asked for more.

The fact that she was now heading inside enemy camp meant she was a few steps ahead of the game.

So naturally she had none of the meticulously prepared, Kelly-centric pamphlets loaded with detailed cost projections and time frames on hand to back her up. There was no room in her purse for more than a credit card and house key. And nothing else was going to fit down those trousers.

Well, she’d be fine. She’d just have to wing it. Having grown up with hippy parents in Nimbin, the flower-child capital of Australia, spouting green was what she had been born to do.

She snuck a glance sideways at her silent new acquaintance to find his profile was even more daunting than front-on. His thick, dark blond hair was being lightly and sexily ruffled by the breeze shooting around the building. Those stunning blue eyes were hooded beneath strong brows so that they looked to be peering down at the world via his perfectly carved nose. And then there were those lips.

She wondered which lucky girl out there was allowed to kiss them whenever she pleased. Was able to run her finger across their planes whenever the fancy took her. Was able to lean her chin on her palm and watch them as they talked, and smiled and laughed. Her own lips tingled just looking at them.

His cheek dimpled and she knew she’d been caught staring. As he turned his head her chin shot skyward so that she might pretend to be taken with the facade of the skyscraper named after his equally daunting family.

She lifted her right hand to shield her eyes from the glare shooting off the glass panels of the top floors when pain bit her shoulder. She crumpled in on herself and let out a shocked squeal.

He noticed. This time there was no mistaking the flicker of a supporting arm in her direction. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

She grabbed the handle of a glass door leading inside, using her left hand. ‘Once you’re standing beside me in front of a bank of cameras, telling the people of Brisbane the ways in which you and your company have helped reduce your impact on the planet thanks to the help of the Clean Footprint Coalition, and admitting how easy it will be for every individual sitting there on their couch at home to follow suit, then I’ll be ecstatic. Until then, assume I’m about middling.’

She pulled open the door and, with her head held high, stalked through.

The thick glass wasn’t thick enough to shield her from the surge of laughter tumbling from Dylan’s beautiful lips. Or the ripple of awareness that lathered her entire body at the seriously sexy sound.

She frowned. He didn’t need to be declared a protected species. He needed a warning label stapled to his head. Beware:come within ten feet and your sexual appetite willexceed local limits.

A few more steps inside and Wynnie’s high heels clacked noisily to a halt as she tipped her head back, spun about and assimilated the Kelly Tower’s entryway.

Acres of golden marble floors were only made more stunning by the most intricate black marble inlays. Two-storey-high columns acting as sentinels to a long hallway leading away from the front doors were lit by reproduction antique gas lamps. Numerous arched windows a floor above let in streams of natural light. And a massive clock, twice her height, ticked away the minutes until the banking day was closed.

It was the most stunning space she had ever seen. And that was just the lobby.

The CFC think tank had been spot on. This place, this family were the right choice. If the businesses of Brisbane didn’t all secretly want to be them, if every single citizen didn’t want to do behind closed doors exactly as they did, then she might as well have stayed in Verona.

That would have kept her from spending the past glorious month hanging with Hannah, her closest friend in the whole world. It would have kept her from working for an organisation that rang her bells like no other on earth. It would have kept her tens of thousands of miles from the beautiful place she grew up rather than a few hours’ drive…

‘You can buy a postcard with this exact view from the newsstand on the corner,’ a deep voice rumbled from just behind her.

She turned to him, her legs twisted awkwardly and a hunk of hair caught in her eyelashes. As elegantly as humanly possible she disentangled herself. ‘Not necessary.’

‘Then would you care to accompany me upstairs?’ he asked.

Right. Yes. She might be inside his lair but the hard work had barely begun.

It was game on. His job was easy—all he had to say was ‘no’, over and over again. Hers was nearby impossible—all she had to do was get him to say ‘yes’.

She took a deep breath and followed Dylan into the large art-deco lift. Going with the catch-more-flies-with-honey theory of negotiation, she cocked a hip and smiled at his reflection. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m not the first girl you’ve invited into your office for coffee?’

Though the rest of him could have been cut from the same marble as that in the lobby, a flicker of heat ignited in his eyes. They were his tell. The one sign that she had that maybe one day his ‘no’ might turn into a ‘yes’. Lucky for her, looking into them was no chore.

As long as she gave no tell of her own. She didn’t need him knowing that her need to get this job done right was as important to her as anything she’d ever done. Or that her body was as attuned to his as a weathercock channelling a coming storm.

Dylan took a seat behind his one of a kind, polished-oak desk, and waited for Eric to lay out a chai latte for his unexpected two-o’clock appointment and a sweet black for him. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves in preparation for whatever the hell else would be thrown at him this afternoon.

Eric moved to the doorway, half terrified and half smitten with the creature ambling about the office. His eyes begged Dylan to let him back in. But this was one meeting he was doing all on his lonesome. Dylan shook his head once and the door closed with a pathetic click.