Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue

He tried dragging his eyes away from the small round hole formed between her full lips, but then realised he might as well get his enjoyment from this unfortunate meeting where he could. ‘Your predecessor at the CFC.’

‘Oh. He doesn’t work there anymore, and now I do.’

Dylan’s cheek twitched, and not for the first time that day.

Meeting Wynnie Devereaux in the flesh had done nothing to temper the fact that at first glance she’d seemed just the kind of woman he would normally like to sink his teeth into after a long day at work—pocket-sized, hot-blooded, skin like fresh cream.

Half an hour in her presence had told him she was also just about the most infuriating creature he’d ever met. She was a lobbyist, of all the rotten things—a professional charmer who’d chosen his family to lure to her cause. She had to be new in town or she would have known better than to come gunning for him.

Still, for one tiny moment out there in the forecourt, something in those absorbing brown eyes had yet again charmed him. And as that chink in his usually rock-hard armour lay exposed she’d been able to confound him, twist his words and finally outfox him at his own game. All that with both hands strapped behind her back.

His gaze meandered away from her lips to her small hands. Both of her wrists were so pink and painfully chaffed that his own itched and stung in empathy. And the instinct to soothe the hurt, to make it his own, slammed him from nowhere once more. Only this time he managed to catch himself in time before, like a sucker, he asked her if she was okay.

He shifted on his seat. Every part of him uncomfortable, some for different reasons than others. ‘If you’re hoping to find where I keep the busts of the baby seal cubs I club for fun, they’re in my home office.’

Her mouth curved into a smile. ‘Right by the barrels of crude oil you spill into the river at night just for kicks.’

‘You have done your research. So, where were you before the CFC?’

That had her eyes sliding back to his. Despite himself he searched their depths for the singular vulnerability that kept grabbing him through the middle. Now all he saw was the rush and fire of fierce intelligence. Unfortunately it didn’t serve to squash the attraction nipping at his skin.

She said, ‘Where I’ve come from is not important.’

‘It is if you wish to finish that coffee before my burly security guards throw you out on your sweet backside.’

She gave him a blank stare, but she couldn’t hide the rise and fall of her throat as she swallowed. She slowly took her seat, put her half-drunk chai latte on the edge of his desk, crossed her legs and dug in.

He hid his smile as he pretended to look for something in the top drawer of his desk. Poor old Jerry would have been quivering by now. And apologising. And practically offering to throw himself out.

Then again, he would never have accused Jerry of having a sweet backside. True, Jerry had never managed to be alone in a room with him before and he hadn’t been as close to Jerry’s backside as he had to Wynnie Devereaux’s…

The few remaining bits of him that weren’t coiled like springs coiled now, so tight they ached as he relived her turning her sweet backside his way so that he could set her free of her restraints.

Curves poured into tight white fabric, thick but not completely opaque, offering him the faint outline of a floral G-string. A flash of creamy skin peeking out from between her beltline and her shirt. His hand following the gentle curve but not touching. How did he manage to get so close without touching…?

Who was he kidding? The painful pleasure of those few moments of deliberate self-restraint were the highlight of his week.

He shut his drawer, sat back in his chair. Now he really wanted to know where the CFC had found her. And he made a mental note to get HR to headhunt their headhunter.

Her nostrils flared as she took in a breath. ‘Mr Kelly, what I’ve done before is not nearly as important as why I am here. My method of getting the name Clean Footprint Coalition on everyone’s lips may not have been typical by any means, but my mission is a deadly serious one. The CFC is a collective of respectable, hopeful, forward-thinking people. And it’s clear to all of us that KInG needs to go green, and quick smart.’

She sat forward, shuffled her sweet backside to the very edge of her chair and gripped the perimeter of his desk.

‘I need you,’ she said.

Her breathy voice came to him on a plea. A vulnerable, naked, genuine supplication. His own ability to breathe seemed to have gone walkabout as all the blood in his body was suddenly needed elsewhere.

She was good. More than good. She was a siren with a mission. But then, right when she had him where surely she wanted him, she seemed to recognise exactly how she had affected him, and her fingers uncurled from the edge of his desk and she sat slowly back in her chair. Confounding woman.

‘Our organisation,’ she said with added emphasis, ‘needs KInG. And KInG need us. Getting into bed together is win-win for all of us.’

He shifted on his seat again, knowing he was running out of positions in which he could sit upright and not hurt himself. At least he saw a chance to give her a taste of her own medicine.

‘All of us, hey?’ he said. ‘For some reason I’m seeing futons involved and that’s just not my style.’

She shook her head, and seemed to struggle to find her words, the siren lost within the skin of a delightfully befuddled mortal woman. ‘Forget getting into bed.’

‘But now you’ve brought it up, it’s out there. I like big beds, not too firm, with plenty of room to move.’

She held out a steadying hand, as if willing him with every fibre of her being to shut up and let her finish. ‘I meant it’s a win-win situation for both companies. We are looking to make a difference, and just think of all the lovely, happy, warm, free PR that would come to KInG if you led the way on how to be an authentically green business.’

An electronic Post-it note blinked up onto Dylan’s computer from Eric, telling him he had a client waiting. ‘You have two more minutes. Give it to me straight up. What exactly do you want?’

‘A partnership.’

Dylan couldn’t help himself, he laughed. Her responding dark frown was adorable.

‘With KInG?’ he clarified.

‘And the Clean Footprint Coalition.’

He leant forward. ‘Honey, I’m not sure which hay cart you rolled in on, but somebody’s been pulling your leg if they gave you any indication that this company had any desire, need or care to be in cahoots with anyone.’

She leant in towards him, too, recrossing her legs, and giving eye contact as good as she got. ‘But you already are. Your largest corporate clients are in car manufacturing, oil production, shipping, some of the largest polluters on the planet. Is that something you’d rather we were focusing on in our press material?’

The skin beneath his left eye twitched. It was a timely reminder that no matter how adorable her frowns might be she had an agenda, and it involved targeting his family in her tree-hugging games. If she backed him any further into a corner he would have no choice but to claw his way back out, and if she was in his way so be it.

His voice was as sharp as cut glass as he asked, ‘So why the hell didn’t you chain yourself to a sculpture outside one of their businesses?’

Rather than sensing how close she was to grave danger, the minx smiled, her eyes gleaming like warm honey. ‘I like yours better.’

Dylan growled. He actually growled, right out loud, and shook his fists beneath his desk. And right when his frustration reached its peak, her voice came to him like hot chocolate on a cold night. ‘Mr Kelly, I told you a small fib when I promised to bother someone else tomorrow. You’re it; the only company I even have on my radar. My every working hour has been and will be focused on bringing you home. So why not save us both some time, and a lot of aggravation and let my people come in here, strip you down to your bare essentials and build you back up again when it comes to energy consumption, consumables and waste? You’ll barely notice the cost and you will go to bed knowing the planet is breathing better for your minimal efforts.’

‘Why me?’ he asked, questioning not only her but whichever god he’d annoyed enough that day to bring this woman to his doorstep.

‘You are the company every other one in the country wants to emulate. Your success is legendary. Your influence off the chart. Where you lead others will follow, and we want them to follow. Turn off one light overnight, who’d notice? Turn off all the lights of Brisbane overnight, and it’s a revolution.’

She took a breath, licked her lips, sent his body temperature up a notch in the process, then said, ‘So what do you think?’

He leant back in his chair, but his eyes never once left hers. ‘Here it is, hopefully clear enough none of it will flutter over your head. I do not respond well to threats. I do not respond well to having my business or my family singled out so publicly by upstarts with an agenda. I think the stunt you pulled out there might be a lucky winner for one news cycle, but in taking me on you have bitten off more than you can chew. I think you should shine your green light elsewhere before you find it’s dimmed forever.’

She blinked up at him, those warm brown eyes somehow holding in whatever it was that she was thinking. Eventually she uncrossed her legs and she stood. She ran her hands down the sides of her thighs and he noticed they were shaking. His gut clenched. He pinched himself on the arm, hard.

She gave a small nod, and said, ‘Okay, then. That sounds like my cue to thank you for your time and let you get on with your day.’

She made her way to the door of his office. He pushed himself from his chair and followed. Halfway there he laid a hand on her lower back to guide her. Guide her? It was a straight line to the office door. He held his hand as still as could be while the muscles of her back and hips slid against him in an erotic rhythm.

There was no professional reason to touch her. If she’d been Jerry he wouldn’t have even left his chair. If she’d been Jerry she wouldn’t have made it past the front door. He was touching her as a lightning rod, as a way to stop himself from doing anything more extreme.

When she reached the hallway and turned towards him, his hand slid around her waist. The twist of her shirt, the soft dip of warm skin… He pulled his hand away quick smart.

She looked at him as though she had no clue as to the commotion raging inside him. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for this afternoon. We appreciate your time.’

Suddenly he found himself not quite ready to have seen the last of her. He leant his shoulder against the doorframe of his office door. ‘Thank you for this afternoon. It has to be the most eventful Tuesday we’ve seen around this place since Melbourne Cup Day.’

‘Stock prices soar by triple figures, did they?’

His laughter carried out into the hall and several lackeys rushing past stopped to see why. He ignored them and explained, ‘A bunch of guys and girls from the legal floor dressed up as horses and jockeys and replayed the race for our amusement.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I can only hope that when you tell the board about our meeting today you do so with as much verve and enthusiasm as you had for an inter-office lark.’

Her voice was pure sarcasm, yet she stayed where she was on the ocean of polished wood with its discreetly papered walls and sculpted cornices, and flurry of assistants keeping the place abuzz, and she clung to her small purse with both hands.

And it hit him like a three-foot fishhook through the guts. She wanted more than their two companies to work together. She wanted him. She was standing there acting as if she had ants in her pants as she was crushing on him big-time.

For the briefest moment he imagined sliding a hand into the back of her hair, pulling her to him and kissing the daylights out of her.

It rankled. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get suckered in by the simple sweet tug of desire. Only those of a particularly cool and indifferent ilk warranted his time. And Wynnie Devereaux appeared neither cool nor indifferent. While she was outwardly vivacious and implacable, he had the sense that on the inside she was as fragile and beautiful as the jewelled butterfly her fingers were tracing on her purse.

She was also a lobbyist working the other side of the table.

He pushed his way back upright and looked into her eyes just long enough that he didn’t feel the strange, warm, encouraging trap closing over him, and said, ‘I’ll plant a tree this weekend and think of you.’

Her full lips curved into a slow smile. ‘Plant a dozen and think of your kids.’

‘I don’t have kids.’ He added a wink. ‘So far as I know. Goodbye, Wynnie.’

‘Till next time, Mr Kelly.’

After one last long look, one he understood all too well, she turned and walked down the hallway.

He couldn’t help but grin when he spotted one half of her handcuffs swaying and bouncing against her sweet backside until she rounded the corner, out of sight.

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