Secrets In The Boardroom: A Perfect Husband / The Boss's Secret Mistress / Between the CEO's Sheets

The hotel doors swished wide. More media were inside, along with curious hotel staff and guests. Lilah worked to keep her expression serene, although she was uncomfortably aware that her cheeks were burning. “I didn’t ‘play’ with anyone.”

“You went to Medinos. That was some first date.”

The nervy thrill of Zane turning up to protect her evaporated. “I didn’t exactly enjoy the experience.”

As first dates went it had been an utter disaster.

Zane ushered her into an open elevator. The heat of his palm at the small of her back sent a small shock of awareness through her. Two large Medinian security guards stepped in on either side of them. A third man, blocky and muscled with a shaven head, whom she recognized as Spiros, took up a position by the door and punched buttons.

Lilah’s ruffled unease at Zane’s closeness increased as the elevator shot upward. “I suppose you’re in Sydney for the charity art auction?”

“I’m also doing some work on the Ambrosi takeover, which is why Lucas asked me to mind you.”

The last remnants of the intense thrill she had felt when Zane had come looking for her died a death. “I suppose Lucas told you what happened last night?”

“He said you found him with Carla at his apartment.”

Lilah’s blush deepened. Zane made it sound like she had been involved in some kind of trashy love triangle. “I didn’t make it to his apartment. Security—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

Lilah’s gaze narrowed. The surface calm she had been clinging to all morning, ever since she had seen the morning paper, shredded. “Since Medinos, I haven’t been able to get an appointment to see Lucas. I got tired of waiting. I was there to resign.”

The doors slid open. Adrenaline pumped when she saw the contingent of press in the lobby of the concierge floor, although these weren’t the sharp-eyed paparazzi who had been out on the street. She recognized magazine editors, serious tabloids, television news crews.

She took a deep breath as they stepped out of the elevator in the wake of the security team.

Zane’s fingers locked around her wrist. “If you run now, what they’ll print will be worse.”

“Any worse than ‘Discarded Atraeus Mistress Abandoned on Street’?”

Zane’s expression was grim. “You should have known Lucas was playing out of your league.”

Something inside her snapped. “Is it too late to say I wish I’d never met Lucas?”

The moment was freeing. She realized she had never actually connected with Lucas on an emotional level. Marriage with him would have been a disaster.

Zane’s gaze captured hers, making her heart pound. “How worried are you about the media?”

Lilah blinked. The focused heat in Zane’s eyes was having a mesmerizing effect. “I don’t have a TV and I canceled my newspaper subscription this morning. Dealing with the media is not my thing.”

“Is this?”

His jaw brushed her forehead. Tendrils of heat shimmered through her at the unexpected contact. His hands framed her face. Dimly, she registered that he intended to kiss her. In the midst of the hum of security, press and hotel staff, time seemed to slow, stop. She was spun back two years to the seductive quiet of the empty reception room, eleven days ago to the flight to Medinos.

She dragged in a shallow breath. She needed to step back, calm down, forget the crazy attraction that zinged through her every time she was near Zane. Constantine and Lucas had both gone through gorgeous women like hot knives through butter, but Zane had a reputation that scorched.

His breath feathered her lips. She closed her eyes and his mouth touched hers, seducingly warm and soft. A shock wave of heat shimmered out from that one small point of contact.

He lifted his head. His gaze, veiled by inky lashes, locked on hers. Instead of straightening, his hands dropped to her waist. The heat from his palms burned through the finely tailored silk as he drew her closer.

The motorized whirr of cameras and the buzz of conversation receded as she clutched at Zane’s shoulders and angled her jaw, allowing him more comfortable access. This time the kiss was firmer, heated, deliberate, sizzling all the way to her toes. By the time Zane lifted his mouth, her head was spinning and her legs felt as limp as noodles.

The smattering of applause and wolf whistles shunted her back to earth. She stared at the forest of microphones trying to break through the wall of security, her wild moment of rebellion evaporating.

The phrase “out of the frying pan and into the fire” once more reverberated through her. “Now they’ll think I’m sleeping with you as well.”

Zane’s arm locked around her waist as he propelled her through the reporters and into the room in which the press conference was being held. “Think of it this way, if you’re with me, at least now they’ll wonder who dumped whom.”

Forty-five minutes later the official part of the press conference was over. Lucas and Carla, Lucas’s mother, Maria Therese, and Constantine’s P.A. Tomas had left in a flurry of publicity over their engagement announcement and the further announcement that Sienna and Constantine were expecting a baby.

Zane flowed smoothly to his feet. “Now we leave.”

Relieved that Lucas’s announcement had taken the unnerving focus of the press off her, Lilah hooked the strap of her handbag over her shoulder.

Two steps onto the still crowded floor and an elegant blonde backed by a TV crew shoved a mike at Zane. “Can we expect another engagement announcement soon?”

“No comment.” Zane lengthened his stride, bypassing the TV crew and the question as he propelled her toward the elevator.

Even though Lilah knew that Zane’s lack of response was the only sensible option, his comment left her feeling oddly flat and definitely manipulated.

The end of the nonrelationship with Lucas had not mattered. Standing on the pavement the previous evening while a reporter had snapped her witnessing Lucas and Carla locked in a passionate clinch had not been a feel-good moment. But, as embarrassing as her association with Zane’s brother had turned out to be, after the toe-curling intimacy of the kisses in front of the media, in that moment she felt the most betrayed by Zane.

Five (#ud90b6dcb-865b-5101-8c13-a633e6e6da34)

Zane hustled Lilah out into a private underground parking lot and opened the door of a gleaming, low-slung black Corvette. He waited for Lilah to climb into the passenger-side seat then walked around the vehicle and slid behind the wheel.

He had been annoyed enough with Lucas to want to stake a claim on Lilah, although he hadn’t planned on doing it in quite such a public way.

He also hadn’t expected Lilah to kiss him back quite so enthusiastically. Although ever since they had hit the elevator on the way down she had been cool and reserved and irritatingly distant.

He lifted a hand as Spiros and the two security guards climbed into a black sedan.

He fastened his seat belt. The back of his hand brushed Lilah’s. The automatic jolt he received from the brush of her skin against his increased his irritable temper. A temper that, just days ago, he had not known he’d possessed.

The dark sedan the bodyguards had climbed into cruised out of the parking building. Seconds later, Zane followed, emerging into the glare of daylight.

He transferred his gaze to the woman beside him. Dressed in her signature ivory and white, her hair smoothed into a loose, elegant confection on top of her head, smooth teardrop pearls dangling from tiny lobes, Lilah looked both cool and drop-dead sexy. The fact that he had kissed off her lipstick, leaving her lips bare, only succeeded in making her even more sensually alluring.

Grimly he noted that the same addictive fascination that had tempted him to lose his head two years ago was still at work. Lilah Cole was openly and unashamedly husband-hunting. She was the kind of woman he couldn’t afford in his life, and yet it seemed he couldn’t resist her.

Lilah stared straight ahead, her purse gripped in her lap. “I know I’ve been invited to lunch with your family, but with everything that’s happened, maybe that isn’t such a good idea. If you drop me off, I can get a taxi back to the office.”

Zane’s jaw tightened at the subdued, worried note in Lilah’s voice. Lucas should have known better; he should have left her alone. “It’s lunchtime. You need to eat.”

She looked out of the passenger window. “I had cereal and toast for breakfast. I’m not exactly hungry.”

Zane found the thought of Lilah crunching her way through cereal and toast before facing the press oddly endearing. He wondered what kind of cereal she ate then crushed his curiosity about her.