The Elliotts: Bedrooms Not Boardrooms!

“We’re here, bud,” the taxi driver’s heavy Bronx accent interrupted. Liam’s muscles turned rigid beneath her.

Shocked by her uncharacteristically brazen behavior, Aubrey scrambled out of Liam’s lap and back to her side of the cab. Her face—her entire body—burned. Rather than look at Liam, she glanced out the car window and blinked in surprise. Park Avenue? Liam lived only a few blocks away from her place on Fifth. Walking distance. Her heart missed a beat. So close … and yet worlds apart because of their employers.

Liam opened the door and offered his hand. Wisdom decreed Aubrey say goodbye and give the driver her address. But she’d promised Gilda Raines that she’d explain the painting to Liam.

You don’t have to. His mother will understand it and Gilda will never know.

But you promised.

And she didn’t break promises.

Snatching up her purse and her leather satchel, she slid across the seat, placed her hand in Liam’s and let him help her from the car. She quickly released his hold when a fresh wave of longing swept through her.

This can’t happen. But her mind and body didn’t seem to be speaking the same language. Turning away from temptation, she studied the gray stone building and waited on the sidewalk while the cabbie removed the painting from the trunk.

A doorman rushed from the apartment building. “Need help with that, Mr. Elliott?”

“No thanks, Carlos, I have it.”

Aubrey followed the men into the building and across the marble floor past a bank of elevators to a private elevator located at the end of a short hall. Private elevators meant one thing. Penthouse. She’d had fantasies about elevators, a handsome stranger and a blackout. She’d never even considered having an elevator all to herself and not having to rely on being trapped by a power outage to pursue her naughty dream. She shouldn’t be thinking that now, but knowing the man had the power to lower her IQ fifty points with a single kiss and that he had his own elevator sent her mind sprinting down a dangerous alley.

Everyone in Manhattan or magazine publishing knew the Elliotts were wealthy, but she’d had no idea Liam owned such an expensive piece of real estate. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe like her he rented a family-owned property. Aubrey loved her bright and airy apartment, but she sometimes wished for more independence. She and her father had an odd relationship. Aubrey yearned for his approval, but she wished she didn’t. Being on her own. She sighed. Probably wouldn’t change a thing. Her father would continue to give her everything she wanted materially, but nothing emotionally.

The elevator doors closed, leaving the doorman behind. Aubrey faced forward, but turning her back on Liam didn’t help. Dark wood wainscoting covered the bottom half of the doors and walls of the elevator, but the top half was mirrored. No matter which way she looked she faced multiples of Liam’s reflection. He surrounded her. She lowered her gaze to the marble floor.

“You get used to it,” he said, drawing her eyes back to his. “The mirrors,” he added when she lifted an eyebrow.

He rested the painting on the floor and shoved his free hand in his pocket. His relaxed pose would have fooled her if not for the intensity in the blue eyes watching her. She didn’t know what to say. Evidently, her adolescent, tongue-tied stupor had returned.

The doors glided open into a small carpeted hall containing two doors, one on the left and another on the right. So the elevator wasn’t exclusively Liam’s. It would take a power outage to ensure privacy, after all—not that it mattered since she and Liam wouldn’t be doing the deed in the elevator or anywhere else.

He unlocked the door on the right and motioned for her to precede him. Aubrey walked through the dark wooden portal. Her heels tapped across the granite floor leading into Liam’s living room. The warm wood tones, scatter rugs and traditional furniture and fabrics surprised her. She’d expected a bachelor pad to look more like … well, a bachelor pad. Black leather, chrome, fur rugs. But other than the granite floor, his home had none of those I-am-man-hear-me-roar attributes. Jewel tones of emerald, ruby and sapphire dominated a decor that was surprisingly classic and very similar to her tastes. A couple of landscapes hung on the walls. Vineyards, unless she missed her guess.

The man continued to surprise her. Too bad she couldn’t hang around to uncover the rest of his secrets.

“Tell me why three women just looked at me like I was a pitiful dumbass.” Liam balanced the heavy frame across the arms of a wing chair.

Aubrey’s grin hit him in the solar plexus. “Didn’t like that, did you? Here let me do that.”

She approached to help him remove the paper from the painting. Their fingers tangled as they reached for the same piece of tape. It was a wonder the sparks between them didn’t ignite the heavy brown paper protecting the artwork. Liam jerked too hard and a tearing sound rent the air.

“Careful,” she said. “You’re going to want to rewrap this to take it to your mother.” She carefully removed the remainder of the paper and then placed it on the floor beside the chair. Stepping back, she tilted her head and observed the picture. “Tell me what you see.”

Liam looked at the painting. “A white flower with a magenta center surrounded by green vines.”

Aubrey closed the distance between them. Her shoulder brushed his. In her heels she stood almost eye to eye with him. “Focus on the vines. What do you see?”

Violet eyes. Sleek, milk-chocolate hair. Smooth ivory skin. Her scent filled his senses. Roses? Gardenias? Something floral and heady, reminiscent of hot summer evenings at The Tides, his grandparents’ estate in the Hamptons. If the kiss they’d shared in the taxi had shaken Aubrey as much as it had him she didn’t show it.

Sunlight streamed through the window, heating his skin. He shrugged out of his suit coat and tossed it over the back of the sofa and then transferred his attention from the woman who had his hormones in an uproar to the piece in question. “Curves. The vines are curvy.”

“Resemble anything you’ve seen before?”

“Yes. Plants.” His tone and expression must have revealed his frustration.

She reached out and traced a fingertip over the thickest vine. “Look again.”

He felt stupid—neither a familiar nor welcome feeling. “Hills. Valleys.” And then it clicked, and it was so obvious he didn’t know how he’d missed the shape before. “A woman’s body. Reclining.”

Each leaf and vine shimmered like wrinkled emerald-green satin sheets and the woman’s form lay right in the middle. Damn, how had he missed that?

Because any man who wasn’t thinking about sex would only see a tangle of vines.

“Very good.” Her approving smile filled him with an inordinate amount of warmth. “Now look at the morning glory itself. Notice the dew trembling on the edge of the blossom and the curling tendrils of the shoots surrounding the flower.”

Her description made it impossible for him to miss the hidden meaning. Liam’s ears burned and he swore. “I bought a pornographic painting for my mother.”

Aubrey’s low chuckle danced down his spine. “No, you bought her a sensual one. There’s nothing dirty about this picture.”

“If that symbolizes what I think it does, then I can’t give it to her.”

“Gilda Raines paints of life, birth, femininity and sensuality. Like you said, it’s just a flower to the uninformed observer, but to someone who looks deeper it’s the cradle of life.”

“It’s a woman’s—”

She held up a hand to stop him. “Liam, don’t make this ugly. It’s a beautiful piece. Your mother will adore it.”

She turned back to the painting. The way Aubrey looked at it—with parted lips and flushed cheeks—was the same way she’d looked at him before they’d exchanged names and again right before he’d kissed her. The air in the room thickened. He shoved his hands through his hair. He should call her a cab before sexual attraction and thoughts of this … erotic picture overrode his good sense.

His brain and his mouth took opposite paths. “Can I take your jacket and get you a glass of wine?”

She hesitated, catching her bottom lip between her teeth. Her gaze traveled to the door and back to him as if she, too, were weighing the wisdom of staying. “Yes.”

Politeness demanded he step forward and help her remove her blazer, but watching her shimmy out of the black garment impeded the blood flow to his cerebral cortex. Mesmerized, he watched one bare shoulder appear and then the other. Her camisole top with its pencil-thin straps clung lovingly to her slender figure.

He’d noticed her sensuality at the pub. Her interpretation of the painting confirmed it. Aubrey Holt was undoubtedly the sexiest woman Liam had ever encountered. He’d never experienced such strong magnetism in his life. Who she was didn’t dampen his response in the slightest.

Desire pulsed heavily in his groin and tightened his rib cage, making it impossible to draw a deep breath. She extended her arm with the jacket in her hand. Liam took it. Without turning he pitched the garment in the direction of the sofa, curled his fingers around her waist and pulled her forward until her body pressed flush against his. Aubrey’s breath hitched a second before his mouth covered hers.

Her lips parted immediately, welcoming and meeting the thrust of his tongue. She tasted better than the finest wine in his collection. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him closer, pressing her breasts against his chest.

He usually dated petite women, usually had to bend himself in half for a kiss, but Aubrey rose on her tiptoes and their bodies aligned perfectly. Breast to chest. Thigh to thigh. Her feminine mound cradled his erection and when she arched her back and ground against him, electricity crackled down to his toes, up to his skull and back again to settle hot and heavy below his belt. He cupped her tight buttocks and pushed back, relishing the way her whimper filled his lungs.

Skin. He needed skin. He raked his hands upward, dragging the hem of her top from her skirt, and then he found the warm satin of her waist and the ridge of her spine with his fingertips. She shivered in his arms and drew back to gasp. He dipped his head, burying his face in the juncture of her neck and shoulder, tasting her sweetness, inhaling her heady fragrance, feeling her rapid pulse against his tongue. His heart hammered as if he’d raced up the stairs to the twenty-fifth floor of the EPH building. His lungs burned. And he ached to lose himself in the dewy center of the woman in his arms.

Desire. That’s it. That’s what the painting represented. A woman on the brink of desire.

A single brain cell broke through the surface of the testosterone flooding him. This was Aubrey. Aubrey Holt. The enemy’s daughter. Liam drew back, breathing heavily, and looked into Aubrey’s passion-darkened eyes. This wasn’t love. It was pure, unadulterated lust. He’d experienced lust before, but never like this, never this potent, never this intoxicating. “Aubrey?”