Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin

How strange to see some of the actual people in the world who shared her blood, her genes. Even perhaps, if she were lucky, things in common. Though she’d loved her adoptive parents, they had a much older daughter in England from Bea’s first marriage, and Sophy had sometimes had the feeling she was being compared to her. Lauren was good at maths and science. While Sophy liked them, too, she preferred the arts. Lauren had done medicine, while Sophy had chosen to study child language development. Lauren went hiking and shinning up mountainsides, while Sophy liked growing things and browsing through bookshops.

Soon after Sophy had turned eighteen, it was as though Henry and Bea felt they’d discharged their responsibility towards their adopted child, for, even though there’d been lots of teary regrets and one long visit, they’d emigrated back to England to be with Lauren, Bea’s real daughter, when she started her family.

Sophy often thought that if only she’d had brothers and sisters, she mightn’t have missed her parents so badly. Still be missing them. That little brother…

As she remembered his big brown eyes her heart made a surge of pleasure, though it was tinged with concern. He’d been so sweet, but she’d had the most overwhelming instinct that he was lonely. Afterwards, going over and over the encounter in her mind, it had struck her clinical brain that, while Elliott Fraser had waited in Reception with him, he hadn’t made one single eye contact with his son. There were books and toys for the children to investigate while they waited, but Matthew had sat all hunched up on the seat beside his father, as if hedged into his own little world. Elliott hadn’t spoken to him once.

She saw that often in the clinic. Parents who didn’t understand that their communication with their child was crucial. She wished there were some way she could help Matthew. Dreaming about it, she was so deep in thought that by the time she disembarked at Circular Quay she realised she hadn’t noticed the early morning sights and smells of the harbour once in the entire trip. In Macquarie Street, she broke into a run, not easy in a pencil-slim skirt.

Thank goodness Security had already unlocked the building’s heavy glass doors. Once inside, she pressed the button for the lift, but then decided she couldn’t spare the time it took for the creaking cage to descend, and took the stairs instead.

The great domed skylight let in the morning, lighting the tiers of galleries where the doctors had their rooms. Tall, stained-glass windows at either end of the building tinctured the weak morning light with the faintest hues of rose and lavender.

Few people were in evidence this early, although the rich fragrance of coffee as she sprinted past the second gallery, mingled with the aromas rising up from the basement café, suggested that Millie, her friend and colleague, was there already, establishing herself in her new room.

Millie’s old room was right next door to hers. It was bound to be unlocked, waiting to be refurbished. If she didn’t find the envelope in the mothers’ room, or even the washroom, it would have to still be safe in there.

At the top of the stairs she paused to regain her breath, and was faced with the sight of Millie’s door, firmly shut. With a shock she saw a new sign emblazoned on it.

Connor O’Brien.

The words leaped out at her, bold and alive like a confrontation.

Connor O’Brien. Who was Connor O’Brien?

She flew along to the ladies’ room, praying Security had unlocked it. To her relief the heavy mahogany door gave at once. Turning first to the washroom, she pushed through the swing door and scanned all the wash units, checked the bins, then strode through to the innermost room and peered into all the cubicles. Nothing.

Disappointing, but no surprise. The odds were still on the mothers’ room.

She hurried across the tiny foyer, swung open the door to the mothers’ room and was brought to a sudden standstill. For a confused instant she was confronted by what looked like a dark pillar shimmering in the white-tiled space, until she blinked and her vision cleared.

It was a man.

Naked to the waist, he was tall and lean, with strongly muscled arms and pitch-black hair. He was standing at the sink, his face half covered with shaving cream. A jacket and shirt were draped over a briefcase at his feet. His powerful torso was tanned, as if he’d spent real time in the sun, and as he performed his task small ripples disturbed the sleek, satin skin of his back.

His feet were as firmly planted on the floor of the mothers’ room as if they had every right to be there. Didn’t the man have a bathroom?

As he leaned further in she caught a glimpse of an angry, jagged scar across the ribs on his right side. A breathless sensation shook her, like the moment of sudden uplift on a ferris wheel. The door escaped from her paralysed fingers just as he was laying bare a swathe of smooth, bronzed cheek. His hand halted in mid-swipe, and in the mirror his gaze collided with hers.

His eyes were dark, deeper than the night, and heavy-lidded, fringed with black lashes beneath strong black brows. What grabbed at her, though, and shook up her insides, was their expression.

At that first instant of connection a sardonic gleam had shot through them. As if he’d recognised her.

Except… She didn’t know him. Why should he recognise her?

He half turned and she caught a glimpse of his profile, a devastating sweep of forehead and long straight nose. Then he faced her full on and…

Gorgeous. Even half coated with foam, strength and masculine assurance declared themselves in the symmetrical bone structure of his lean, handsome face.

‘Hi. Connor O’Brien.’

His voice was deep, with a rich, smooth texture. A smattering of dark whorled hair on his powerful chest invited her mesmerised gaze to follow its tapering path down beneath his belt buckle to…somewhere.

‘Oh, er…er…hi. Sorry.’ She backed out again into the foyer.

Connor looked after the closing door with some amusement. He began to regret postponing checking into a hotel. The last thing he needed was to alert Miss Sophy Woodruff to the suddenness of his arrangements. But who could have guessed she’d be so early to work?

He felt an intrigued little buzz in his veins. For a first glimpse, she had been nothing like he’d expected. Big soft eyes and sensitive, passionate mouths didn’t go with tough little operators.

Unless, of course, they were her stock-in-trade. Perfect for sucking in middle-aged pigeons.

Outside in the foyer, Sophy tried to unscramble her brain. Whew. It took a few seconds to get the chest image out of her mind. Who needed to watch reruns of Die Hard with men like him around?

But, for goodness’ sake, who could do any kind of a decent search in the presence of a semi-naked man? He was a damned nuisance. The cheek of him, treating the ladies’ room like his own private en suite, even if it was barely six thirty.

And why, now she came to think of it, had she given ground? Whose rooms were they? If any of her fellow members of the Avengers netball team had been present, they’d have been yelling, ‘Attack. Attack. Evict the intruder.’

She braced herself, and walked back in.

He was buttoning his shirt. Too late, though. That first impression was already seared into her brain. He might just as well have emerged dripping from a plunge in a weedy pond, his shirt clinging and transparent, for all the good it was doing him now.

At the sound of her step he flickered a glance over her from beneath his dark lashes. She knew that look. It was the hunter’s assessment of her curves and sexual availability, as automatic to wolves and other male beasts as breathing.

‘This is the mothers’ room,’ she asserted. His dark eyes sharpened beneath their dark lashes, and a sudden tension in the room seemed to affect her voice with an unwelcome throatiness. ‘In case you didn’t know.’

‘I did know.’ He rinsed his razor under the tap and gave it a couple of shakes. She waited for some sign he’d received the hint, but he resumed shaving with cool unconcern.

So who was he, what was he, that Millie had been obliged to make way for him? He didn’t look like any of the doctors she knew.

She made a quick survey of the floor and surfaces. The cleaners had already done their work by the time she’d come in yesterday evening, but someone else might have picked the letter up after she’d left and thought it was rubbish. She glanced about for the bin and spotted it tucked under the sink. Directly in line with the man’s long, elegantly shod feet.

Right. She straightened her shoulders, cleared her throat and stated with cool authority, ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll have to finish that up somewhere else. There is a men’s room further along.’ She opened the door and held it wide with graceful, though determined, insistence.

Seconds ticked by, until she began to wonder if he’d even heard what she’d said, then he flashed her a lazy, long-lashed glance. ‘I don’t think so.’

To her intense indignation he remained as immovable as a tree trunk, continuing to scrape the foam from his handsome jaw as if he had all the time in the world. After a charged second in which her brain was jostled by a million incredulous thoughts about calling the police or the state emergency services for back-up, he had the nerve to add, ‘No need to panic.’

Panic. Who was panicking? Even if such tall, dark sexiness was a rarity at the Alexandra, Sophy Woodruff was perfectly well able to deal with it, in the mothers’ room or anywhere else.

Forced to, if she didn’t want to look like an idiot, she let the door swing shut, as, without the slightest interest in her wishes, he started on the moustache area. Naturally her eyes were drawn to watch the delicate operation. Before she could properly drag them away, he paused and the corners of his mouth edged up a little.

‘I’ll be out of your way in a few seconds. Don’t let my presence make you nervous.’

His voice might have risen from some bottomless inner well of chocolate liqueur, so appealing its deep timbre was to the clinically trained ear. Or would have been, if it hadn’t been for the subtle mockery in it.

‘Nervous?’ She gave a careless laugh. ‘My only concern is that at any minute now mothers may need to come in here to nurse their babies.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘At six thirty-six?’

‘Well, certainly.’ It was only a bit of a lie. In truth, the clinics didn’t usually open until seven-thirty, but in an emergency they very well might open earlier. ‘There could be early appointments. I think you should be aware that this room is intended for the sole use of mothers.’

‘Ah.’ A gleam lit his dark eyes. ‘Then in that case we’d both better leave.’

Without waiting for her reply, he turned back to his reflection. Shaving foam outlined his mouth, highlighting its chiselled perfection, the top lip straight and stern, the lower one sensual in that ruthless, masculine way. Mouths could be deceptive, though. In terms of kissing, sometimes even the most promising lips could end up being a disappointment. It all depended on the proficiency of the kisser. And the chemistry with the kissee.

Connor O’Brien’s razor hand arrested in mid-air and his eyes locked with hers.

‘Missed a bit, have I?’

The depth of knowing amusement in his glance burnt her to the soles of her feet.

‘Pardon?’ she said, forcing herself to hold that mocking gaze and ignore the pinkening tide flooding to her hairline. ‘Are you asking for my advice? I’m afraid I can’t help you. I know very little about men’s hair-growth problems.’

With supreme dignity, she turned away and made an emphatic effort to search.

Connor smiled to himself, noting Miss Sophy Woodruff’s apparent sensitivity with a pleasurable leap of surprise. It was rare to draw a blush in a woman, and strangely stirring. If she was the cold opportunist Sir Frank suspected, her ability to colour up was quite an accomplishment.

She was paused now in the middle of the room, making a slow twirl in search of something, giving him ample opportunity to observe her undulating curves, long slim legs and slender, graceful neck. He wouldn’t have expected Elliott Fraser to risk everything over a scrubber, but that grainy photo had hardly done her justice.

He wondered what she was searching for.

‘I humbly apologise for intruding on your sacred female space,’ he said, in a bid to tempt her to turn his way again, the better to drink in more of her oval face. Luminous blue eyes—or had her lavender shirt turned them violet?—fringed by thick black lashes. Rosy lips against pale creamy skin. Enough to make any man’s mouth water. ‘No threat intended,’ he added soothingly.

Sophy sent him a sardonic glance. A man caught in flagrante shouldn’t try to flirt his way out of trouble. She wished now she’d called Security and had him thrown out.

‘Do you usually prefer the women’s to the gents’?’

Beneath his black lashes his eyes glinted. The air she breathed suddenly felt charged with dangerous, high-voltage sparks.

‘Nearly always. You know how it is. I like to network. And what better place to meet people?’ His bold, dark gaze drifted from her mouth to her breasts, down to her legs and back again.

Skin cells scorched all the way to her ankles. She turned her back on him and bent to check the sofa where she’d sat yesterday, slipping her hand down behind the seat cushion and feeling around the perimeter.

There was nothing there except dusty lint. Hyper-conscious of him, she straightened up to skim the change table and benchtops. He was pretending to be engaged again on his task, but she wasn’t deceived. He was tuned into her every move, or her name wasn’t Sophy Woodruff.

Or…or whatever it was.

She eyed the leather case beside him on the draining board. He might, just might, have found the envelope and be intending to hand it in. ‘Er…’ It was a stretch now at this late stage, but she tried to crank some goodwill into her voice. ‘Have you by any chance—found a letter in here?’

‘A letter.’ His expressive brows gave a quizzical twitch while he considered. ‘This seems an unusual place to expect a mail delivery. It isn’t a covert letter-drop for the CIA, now, is it?’

That sexy, teasing note again in his deep voice. And there was something hard underneath, almost as if he didn’t believe in her sincerity.

In an effort to show she was in earnest, she ignored his tone. ‘It’s not a delivery. I’ve misplaced an envelope. I think it may have dropped from my bag somewhere. Over there where I was sitting, or…’

‘What sort of envelope?’

‘Just a plain, buff-coloured…You know, with a window in it, like—’ Like any official communication to Miss Violet Woodruff, she was about to say, until it occurred to her then how ridiculous it was, having to describe it. How many envelopes was he likely to have found? ‘Look, does it matter what kind it is? Have you or haven’t you found it?’

In her frustration, she might have sounded a tad impatient, because he turned from the mirror and directed the full force of his dark, shimmering gaze on her.

‘I don’t know if I should answer that. It would depend to whom such an envelope was addressed.’

She felt a small shock, as if she’d come up against an unexpected concrete wall, but said, as pleasantly as she could, ‘Well, obviously, it’s addressed to me.’

‘Ah. So you say.’ The infuriating man had finished shaving at last, and turned to wash his razor under the tap. ‘But, then, who are you?’

It was clear he was toying with her. ‘I’m—’ She drew herself up to her full five-seven in heels and asserted, ‘You know, Security in this building is very strict. They wouldn’t tolerate your intrusion in here.’

‘Ah. Now, that’s where you’re wrong. The fact is, it was the Security guy with the freckles who unlocked these rooms for me, since the Gents is having some sort of problem with the pipes.’

‘Oh.’ Nonplussed, she took a second before she managed a comeback. ‘Well, it’s a pity he didn’t explain that that sink you’re using is intended for nursing mothers who want to make themselves a cup of tea. I hope you give it a good wash when you’re finished.’

The man’s eyes gleamed, but he continued, musing, ‘Not all states feel the need to pursue this rigid segregation of the sexes. Take France, for example. A French woman visiting the mothers’ room in, say, the Louvre, would be very unlikely to feel threatened by the presence of a man shaving. Though, I suppose any woman who’s not used to being around men…a woman, say, who’s never watched a man shave…never been kissed, as the saying goes…’

Never been kissed. Was he trying to insult her? She hissed in a breath through her teeth. ‘Look, all I want to know is if you found my envelope. If you didn’t…’

He put on a bland expression. ‘I think I might be able to help if you could be more specific. For instance, if you could give me some idea of the letter’s likely contents…’

‘What?’ She stared at him in incredulity. ‘Are you for real? Look, why can’t you just say—?’

She broke off, shaking her head in disbelief as he bent to splash his face, his composure unruffled.

Her heart started to thud. He must have found it. Why else was he being so obstructive? She breathed deeply for several seconds, wondering how to go about extracting the truth from him. Often she could sense things in people, but in his case she was aware only of an implacable resistance. Despair gripped her. What was left for her to try? An appeal to him as a human being?

He reached for a paper towel and turned to her, patting his face dry.

‘Are you sure—absolutely sure—you didn’t find it?’ Despite an attempt to sound calm she knew the plea in her voice revealed her desperation, loud and clear.

He crumpled the paper towel and dropped it in the bin. Then he slipped a purple silk tie under his collar and tied it, practice in the fluid movements of his lean, tanned fingers. At the same time he turned to appraise her with his dark, intelligent gaze. Drops of moisture sparkled on his black lashes.

‘It’s beginning to sound like a very important letter.’

‘It is. That is—’ She checked herself. The more she talked up the importance of the letter, the more likely he would be to read it if he found it. Just supposing he hadn’t already. ‘No, no, well, it’s not really. It’s only important to me. Not to anyone else.’

He nodded in apparent understanding, his sardonic face suddenly grave. Perhaps she’d misjudged him. Perhaps he could even be sympathetic. Although, how safe was it to trust him? If he could only be serious for a minute…

She watched him shrug on his jacket, then slip the leather case into his briefcase, all the while continuing her theme of playing the letter down. ‘It’s nothing really. Just a small—private thing.’

‘Ah.’ His dark lashes flickered down. ‘A love letter.’

‘No,’ she snapped, goaded. ‘Not a love letter. Look, why can’t you be serious? Why can’t you give me a straight answer?’

He sighed. ‘All right. How about this one? I haven’t found your letter. You can search me if you like.’ He spread his hands in invitation, offering her the pockets of his jacket, his trousers, then as she glared at him in disbelief he thrust his briefcase at her. ‘Go on. Search.’

As if she could. She wanted to snatch the briefcase from him and whack him with it. But even without touching it, she knew there was nothing of hers inside. He was tormenting her, when all he’d had to do was to tell her in the first place…

‘Do you know,’ she said, an angry tremor in her low voice, ‘you are a very rude and aggravating man?’

‘I do know,’ he said ruefully, wickedness in the dark eyes beneath his black lashes. ‘I’m ashamed of myself.’

She felt her blood pressure rise as he moved closer until his broad chest was a bare few inches from her breasts. The clean male scent of him, the masculine buzz of his aura, plunged her normally tranquil pulse into chaos. She became suffocatingly conscious of the nearness of the vibrant, muscled body lurking beneath his clothes.

The dark gaze dwelling on her face grew sensual and turned her blood into a molten, racing torrent. ‘And do you know that you’re a very uptight little chick? You should learn to relax.’

His sexy mouth was uncomfortably near, and, involuntarily, her own dried. She glowered at him, anger rendering her unable to breathe or speak.

He flicked her cheek. ‘I’ll let you know if I find your letter.’ His bold gaze travelled down her throat to the neck of her shirt, then back. ‘You know, with those eyes your name should be Violet.’ He turned and strolled to the door, and while she stood there, the cool touch of his fingers still burning on her skin, it swung shut behind him. Then the enormity of what he’d said hit her like a train. The incredible words resounded in her ears.

He knew her name.

He’d known it all along. That had been no coincidence.

But how could he know it? How, unless he’d found her letter?

CHAPTER THREE

SOPHY strode along the gallery to the children’s clinic. Connor O’Brien’s door was closed, but she had to steel herself to walk past it and breathe the air he was infecting with his intolerable masculine game-playing. He was probably in there now, gloating over her DNA profile.

Although, what could it possibly mean to him? What could he do with it? Apart from post it on the Internet. Take it to the papers. Contact Elliott…

She shut her eyes and tried to breathe calmly. The man could be a blackmailer. He looked bad, with that mocking dark gaze and that sardonic mouth. Just remembering his refusal to take her seriously made her blood boil all over again. She wished she’d said something clever and cutting enough to douse that insolent amusement in his eyes.

She used her pass key to unlock the clinic, relieved that neither Cindy, their receptionist, nor Bruce, the paediatrician, had arrived yet, praying that against the odds someone wonderful had found the letter and popped it through the mail slot. But no such luck. In her office she plunged into a frenzied search, her desk, her drawers, all around the children’s table and chairs, the armchairs for parents, only confirming what she already knew—she’d lost it after she’d left yesterday.

Millie was her last resort. She’d spent a good hour in there yesterday, helping her friend pack up her files. Fingers crossed, she phoned her, but again her luck was out. Amidst all her files and books, Millie had been in too much of an uproar to find anything, let alone something so ordinary and unobtrusive as an envelope.

She slumped down in her chair. Perhaps she should alert Elliott, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet. He’d seemed so paranoid at the idea of the news getting out. Not that she could blame him altogether. Her existence had come as a complete shock to him. She pitied him for what he must have gone through when he found out. Anyone—anyone would have been upset.

She tried to crush down a nasty feeling at how he might react when he knew the letter was out of her hands. Then, with some relief, she remembered he said he’d be out of town for a week, and brightened a little. At least that gave her a bit of breathing space. He might not have even received his copy yet.

And, honestly, what was the worst that could happen to him if the news got out? Thousands of people had given up their children for adoption, for all sorts of reasons. It was hardly such a shocking scandal anymore. His wife should be capable of understanding something that had happened twenty-three years ago.

And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t an independent adult. She hoped she’d made it absolutely crystal clear that it wouldn’t cost him anything to invite her into his life—their lives. Only a bit of friendship. Not a relationship, exactly. She knew she couldn’t expect that.