Becoming The Boss

‘Only in the technical sense.’

‘Gee, thanks.’ As if she needed reminding.

Then again, the last thing she wanted was to be like one of Finn’s regulars. They were the skirt to Serena’s jeans. The buxom bombshells to Serena’s boyish figure. The strappy sandals to Serena’s biker boots. The super-soft, twice-conditioned spiralling blonde locks to Serena’s wild mane of a hue so bizarre it defied all colour charts.

Which was wonderful. Inordinately satisfying. Exactly the way she liked it.

‘The last thing he needs is another bedmate,’ he muttered wryly. ‘He needs a kick up the backside. A challenge. And, let’s face it, you two create enough spark to fire a twin-stroke. Therefore I am asking—no, you know what…? I am telling you to help. You’re on my payroll. You move back in here and you chip in.’

Tough love.

Then his graphite gaze turned speculative. Calculating. An expression she didn’t care for that nailed her to the wall.

‘Or you can kiss the Silverstone launch of your prototype goodbye.’

A gasp of air hit the back of her throat. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

‘Wouldn’t I?’

Yeah, he probably would. He didn’t believe the racing car she’d designed would be anything special and she’d do anything to prove him wrong.

That prototype was her baby. Three years of hard work. Her and Tom’s inspiration. Launching at Silverstone had been their dream. The only tangible thing she had left of him.

‘Low, Dad,’ she choked out. ‘Really low.’

Averting his eyes, he scrubbed a palm over his face. ‘More like desperate.’

Serena sighed. Nailed. Every. Time.

‘Fine. I’ll try…something.’

Unease began to hammer at her heart—she had no idea how to handle the man. None.

‘But I know Finn will make it up. He had a slow start last year. The sponsors will forgive and forget once he starts playing to his fans. Monaco is in the bag. He always wins here. What happened in qualifying sessions today? He’s in pole position, right?’

Her father’s expression turned thunderous—one that boded only ill. ‘He screwed the engine.’

He blew the engine? ‘So he’s at the back tomorrow? In one of the slowest and hardest circuits in the world?’

‘Yep.’

Pop! Up came a vision in her mind’s eye—the scene she’d bypassed as she’d hauled her motorbike along the harbour—and her stomach fired, anger swirling like a tornado. Sparking, ready to ignite.

Raising her arm, she pointed one trembling finger in the general direction of Finn’s floating brothel. ‘And he’s along there, in that…that yacht of his. Engaging in some kind of…drunken debauched sex-fest to celebrate his latest cock-up?’

One weary hitch of those broad shoulders was all it took to light the fireball raging in the pit of her stomach.

‘What in the blue blazes is he doing? Doesn’t he care at all? In fact, don’t answer that. I already know.’

The man cared for no one but himself! And this was a newsflash? Obligation and decency had clearly been disowned in that gene pool.

‘I’ve had it with him.’

Bullet-like, Serena shot out through the door, her biker boots a clomp-clomp on the polished wooden floors as she raced through the galley. ‘I’m gonna kill him. With my bare hands.’

‘Serena! Watch your temper. I need him.’

Yeah, well, she needed her brother back—and that was about as impossible as keeping her mitts off Finn St George’s pretty-boy face. She’d had enough of that man messing with her family. Her team. Her life. Her brother was dead, the championship was heading for the toilet, and her dad was aging by the second as Finn continued to yank at his fraying tether!

How selfish could one man be?

Well, she was stopping it all. She was taking control.

Right now.

Chapter Two

SERENA DUCKED AND dived around the loved-up couples milling on the harbour, her sole focus on the Extasea, rising from the water, formidable and majestic.

Even moored among some of the finest vessels in the world, Finn’s super-yacht was in a class of her own—a one-hundred-and-sixty-foot, three-decker palace—reminding Serena of the resplendent seven-star hotels he favoured in Dubai and certainly more regal ocean liner than bordello.

Still, opulence aside, she had the acumen to know that appearances were deceptive, and the fact that she’d been lowered to this chafed her pride raw. But there was no backing out now. She was going to say her piece and he was going to listen.

The bravado felt wonderful. Freeing. Cleansing. She should have done this months ago, she realised—had it out with him instead of letting everyone sweep her under the carpet like some bothersome gnat, as if her feelings were of no importance. Her grief had been so all-consuming that she’d allowed it to happen. Well, not any more.

Closer to the yacht now, she felt the balmy air cling to her skin and the thud of her boots become drenched by the evocative beat of sultry music. As she marched up the gangway the splash of water from the hot tub on the sun deck followed by intimate squeals of sexual delight made her trip over her size fives.

Flailing, she gripped the rail on both sides. Then a tidal wave of apprehension crashed over her and she stood soaked with a keen embarrassment. She was about as comfortable with this scene as she would be treading water in the company of killer sharks.

You don’t belong here, Serena. Surrounded by sex and women who exuded femininity. Don’t think about it. Just get in there, find Finn, and make him clean the decks himself!

Hovering a few feet from the top, she inhaled a deep wave of saltwater air to reel back her bravado.

In every direction—whether it was left, towards the luxurious seating area abounding with plush gold chairs, or right, towards the outer dining suites—there were bodies, bodies and more bodies. Wearing as little clothing as possible.

She shivered, chilly just looking at them.

One step further and still no one seemed to notice the impromptu arrival of an uninvited guest. No ravaging lips ceased to kiss. No fervent hands slowed their bold caresses of sun-kissed flesh. No flutes of champagne paused on their way to open mouths and the laughter rolled on in barks of joyful humour that only served to remind her of the last time she’d laughed—which made a scream itch to peal up her throat.

Why should Finn and his entourage be laughing when she was still unable to cry? Unable to shed one solitary tear? Because boys don’t cry…

Indignation launched her the final few feet and out of nowhere a sinister-looking figure loomed and grabbed her wrist in a manacled grip.

‘Ow!’ Pain shot up her arm and she flipped her hand in an attempt to dislodge the hold—even as she was flung back in time and any lingering panic was ramped up into bone-shattering fear. ‘Get off me!’

Except the more she struggled, the tighter the hold became—until the knife-edge of terror scored her heart and her vision swam in the blackest waters…

A rough yet familiar voice shattered the obsidian glaze. ‘Hey, let her go. She’s okay.’

Mr Manacle released her so fast she stumbled backwards. Her only conscious thought was that she was taking up self-defence classes again. Pronto.

Righting her footing, she glanced at the owner of that masculine rumble.

‘Thanks,’ she murmured, her voice disgustingly fragile as she rubbed at her wrist to ease the throb of muscle and friction burn.

‘You okay, Serena?’

Vision clearing, she focused on the handsome, boyish face of one uneasy chocolate-haired Jake Morgan. Scott Lansing protégé and an apparent star in the making. She’d never watched him drive. For some reason he always got a bit tongue-tied around her, and the fact that he was Tom’s replacement gave her heart a pang every time she looked at him. Not his fault, Serena. Let it go.

‘Peachy. Since when does Finn have security?’

‘Had them on and off all season. Mainly for parties when there’s a big crowd.’

Translation: when he needed to fend off gatecrashing bombshells.

‘Where is your dissolute host?’ she asked, somewhat surly and unable to care. She was shaking so hard she had to cross her arms over her chest to stop her bones rattling.

‘Not sure.’ Jake’s Adam’s apple bobbed and his eyes jerked to a door leading to what she guessed was the main salon. ‘I haven’t seen him for a while.’

Oh, wonderful. He was covering for Finn. ‘Forget it. I’ll find him myself.’

The sensation of copious eyes poring over her wild mane and crumpled clothing made her flesh crawl and she had to fight the instinct to race across the polished deck. Ironically, the door to the devil’s lair suddenly seemed very appealing and she slipped inside with a bizarre sense of relief.

The lavishness of the place was staggering, and way too gold-filigree-and-fussy for her. She might have a DNA glitch but it didn’t even suit Finn. Granted, he’d purchased the mega-yacht from some billionaire, but at least a year had passed since.

After ten minutes of being creeped out by cherub wall sconces she was standing in a corridor surrounded by more doors. It was all like a bad dream…

Moaning, purring, steamy and impassioned noises drifted from the room at the far end of the panelled hallway, licking her stomach into a slow, laborious roll.

Pound-pound went her heart as she edged further towards the sounds, her gaze locked on the source as if drawn by some powerful magnetic force.

Her hand to the handle now, a wisp of a thought passed through her brain: did she really want to catch Finn the notorious womaniser in flagrante with his recent squeeze? She had enough nightmares to contend with at the best of times. Except…she could hardly roam around here all night, could she? If he was in a drunken stupor she only had sixteen hours to clean him up, and she was not leaving this place without some answers!

Astounded at what she was about to do, she pressed her ear up against the door panel in an effort to decipher voices.

Rustle went the sheets and creak went the muffled bounce of springs, as if bodies were interlocked and undulating in an amorous embrace. Cries of rapturous passion bloomed in the air and her blood flushed hotly, madly, deeply, in an odd concoction of mortification, inquisitiveness and warmth.

Jeepers, what was wrong with her?

Focus.

Ignoring the anxious thump in her chest warning that exposure was imminent, she leaned further in and relished the cool brush of wood against her fevered flesh.

The woman, whoever she was, was clearly glorifying in what was being done to her. No subdued cries or awkward silences while she wished it were over. Just murmurs of encouragement in a deep velvet voice that made the damp softness between Serena’s legs tighten.

Not Finn. She would recognise that seductive rasp of perfect Etonian English laced with the smattering of an American drawl any day. A distinct flavour from the time he spent in the off season, presenting a hugely popular car show in the States.

Not that she liked his testosterone-and-sex-drenched tone—not at all.

Edgy, she licked her arid lips and told herself to back away before she was nabbed. So why couldn’t she move? Why did she strive to imagine what was happening behind this door? Wonder how, precisely, Mr Velvet Voice adored his lover’s body for her to reach such hedonistic heights that she became paralysed, unable to do anything but scream in wanton pleasure and abandon—?

‘Has she come yet?’

A voice, richly amused and lathered with sin, curled around her nape.

A squeak burst from her throat.

Her head shot upright.

Boom! Her heart vaulted from her chest and she pivoted clumsily, then spread herself against the door panel like strawberry jam on toast.

One look…

Oh. My. God. No!

Squeezing her eyes shut she began to pray. This is not happening. Not again. I am not the unluckiest woman alive!

‘Good evening, Miss Seraphina Scott. Come to join the party?’ he asked, with such unholy glee that she was fuelled with the urge to smack her head off the door. ‘There’s always room for one more.’

‘When…’ Oh, great—she couldn’t even breathe. And her heart—God, her heart was still on the floor. ‘When hell freezes.’

She wanted out of here. Now. Except the idea that she was acting like a pansy made her root her feet to the floor like pesky weeds and she prised her eyes wide. Only to decide being a sissy wasn’t so bad.

Leaning insolently against the polished panels, no more than two feet away, Finn St George smouldered like a banked fire and the heat spiralling through her veins burst into flames, seared through her blood. All she could think was that she must have done something atrocious in another life to deserve this.

After what he’d done, had it truly been too much to hope his mere presence would have stopped affecting her?

She hated him. Hated him! He hadn’t changed one iota. Still the most debauched, moral-less creature on two legs. And clearly he intended to go on as if he hadn’t taken a crowbar to her life and smashed it to smithereens. What had her father said? ‘He goes on like nothing’s happened…’

Over her dead body.

Seraphina. No one was allowed to call her that. No one!

‘This isn’t a social call, I assure you,’ she said, proud of her don’t-mess-with-me voice as she restrained the urge to shiver before him. ‘Any other time it would take an apocalypse to get me into this den of iniquity.’

His mouth—the very one that had been known to cause swooning and fever-pitch hysteria—kicked up into a crooked smile and one solitary indentation kissed his cheek. ‘And yet here you are.’

Here she was. It was a pity, that for a moment, she couldn’t remember why. All she could think was that that mouth of his was a loaded weapon.

‘I do seem to find you in the most…deliciously compromising situations, Seraphina.’ His prurient grin made his extraordinary eyes gleam in the dim light. ‘Listening at doors? Bad, bad girl. I ought to take you over my knee.’

Thanking her lucky stars that she wasn’t prone to blushing like a girl—because, let’s face it, she’d never been one, and the fact that this man made her feel like one was probably the greatest insult on earth—she weighed up the intelligence of answering that symphony of innuendo. Meanwhile she returned his visual full-body inspection just as blatantly. Why he insisted on going through this rigmarole every time they met was a mystery. With one arching golden brow he arrogantly put her in her place—ensuring she understood that she was a duck among swans.

Unluckily for him intimidation didn’t work on her. Not any more.

As she soaked up every inch of him she decided she didn’t understand the man’s appeal.

Obviously there had to be some basis for his being named the world’s greatest lover, an erotic legend in the racing world. But, come on, plenty of men must be good in bed—right? Plenty had sexy dimples in lean jaws. Plenty had a mouth made for sin, lips that moved sensually and invitingly and downright suggestively, and eyes the colour of—

Ohhh, who was she kidding?

Finn St George was flat-out, drop-dead insanely gorgeous—an abundance of angelic male beauty.

Thick dirty-blond hair; cut short at the back and longer at the front to fall in a tousled tumble over his brow, gave him a sexy, roguish air. And that face…

Not only did he defy nature, he literally bent the laws of physics with his intriguingly wicked mouth and that downright depraved gleam in his cerulean eyes. Eyes that had catapulted him into the hearts and fantasies of women the world over.

Between his leading-man looks and his celebrated body—currently dressed in low-slung board shorts and an unbuttoned crisp white linen shirt, showcasing his magnificent torso—he was mouth-watering, picture-perfect in every single way.

It was a good thing she knew how well a polished chassis could hide an engine riddled with innumerable flaws.

‘What do you think you’re playing at, Lothario? Don’t you think drinking and partying the night away before a race is dangerous, even for you?’

‘I have to find some way to work off the residual adrenaline rush from the qualifying session, Seraphina. Unless you’re offering to relieve some of my more…physical tensions.’

Her lower abdomen clenched in reaction to that catastrophically sensual drawl, and as if he could sense it his lips twitched.

‘I’d be quite happy to knock you out—would that help?’

There it was again. That smile. A dangerous and destructive weapon known to bring women to their knees. And the fact that it turned her own to hot rubber made her madder still. ‘Then again,’ she sniped, ‘we wouldn’t want to mar that pretty-boy face, would we?’

A trick of the light, maybe, but she’d swear he flinched, paled…before something dark and malevolent tightened the hard lines of his body until he positively seethed.

Whoa…

Her mind screaming, Danger! Danger! Run!, she backed up a step and nudged the door. She wanted to snarl and bite at him. It was as if her body knew he was the enemy and she was gearing up for a fight. The fight she’d once been incapable of.

Not any more.

Her blunt nails dug into her palms, but in the next breath he pursed that delectable mouth in suppressed amusement, as if it had all been some huge joke, and the change in him was so swift, so absolute, she floundered.

‘There’s something dark about him all of a sudden.’ Or she could be hallucinating from an overdose of his pheromones.

‘If you don’t mind,’ he drawled, ‘I’d appreciate it if we kept my face out of it. After all, I wouldn’t want to distress the ladies with some unsightly bruising.’

‘Like you need any more ladies! Looks to me like you’ve had your fair share already this evening.’

He looked well-sexed, to be sure. Hair damp, with his glorious fresh water-mint scent flirting with her senses, she guessed he’d just stepped from beneath the assault of a shower.

‘On the contrary, I was just about to indulge in a good workout.’

Disgust drove her tone wild. ‘Yes, well, bedding the latest starlet or pit-lane queen is one thing—partying the night away before racing on the most dangerous circuit on the calendar is downright risky and inappropriate!’

He gave an elaborate sigh. ‘Where is the fun in being appropriate? Even the word sounds dull, don’t you agree?’

‘No, I don’t—and nor do our sponsors.’ She rubbed her brow to pacify its exasperated throb. ‘I swear to God, if you don’t start pulling through for this team I will make you wish you’d never been born.’

‘You know, I believe you would.’

‘Good.’

He brushed the pad of his thumb from the corner of his mouth down over the soft flesh of his bottom lip. ‘So if you haven’t come to indulge in some heavy petting why are you here, beautiful?’

His voice, disturbingly low and smooth as cognac, was so potent she swayed, nigh on intoxicated.

For an infinitesimal moment his cerulean-blue eyes held hers and a riot of sensations tumbled down the length of her spine. Pooled. Pulled. Primal and magnetic. And she hated it. Hated it!

Beautiful?

‘Don’t mock me, Finn. I’m not in the mood for your games. I want this place cleared and you sober. How dare you party it up and put the team at risk while everyone sits around feeling sorry for your little soul?’

‘You know as well as I do that sympathy is wasted on me. Especially when there is a profusion of far more…enjoyable sensations to be experienced at my hands.’

Ugh.

Temper rising, implosion imminent, she felt her breasts begin to heave. ‘For someone who blew up an engine this morning—and, hey, this is a wild idea—how about you start thinking of how to salvage the situation instead of screwing around? Have you been drinking? You could get banned from the race altogether!’

With a shake of his head he tsked at her. ‘No drinking.’

‘You swear?’

One blunt finger scraped over his honed left pec. ‘Cross my heart.’

Time stilled as she walked headlong into another wall of grief and memories slammed into every corner of her mind. The games of two children. One voice: ‘Cross my heart.’ The other: ‘Hope to die.’

There it was. The elephant in the room.

Tom.

Cold. Suddenly she was so very, very cold. Only wanting to leave. To get as far away from this man as she could before the emotion she’d balled up in her chest for months punched free and she screamed and railed and lashed out in a burst of feminine pique.

She’d tell her dad he was barking up the wrong tree. No way could she work with Finn. She felt unhinged, her body vibrating with conflicting emotions, all of them revving, striving for pole position. And that was nothing compared to the hot whirlpool of desire swirling like a dark storm inside of her. How was that even possible? How was that even fair?

Life isn’t fair, Serena. You know that. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Makes your heart beat harder and your will indestructible.

So before she left she was getting the answers she wanted if it was the last thing she did.

In all the times over the last eight months when Finn had imagined coming face-to-face with Seraphina Scott, he’d never once envisaged the tough, prickly and somewhat prissy tomboy with her ear smashed against a door panel, listening for the orgasmic finale sure to come.

How very…intriguing.

It had certainly made up his mind on how to handle her impromptu arrival. With one look his heart had paused and he’d stared at the sweet, subtle curve of her waist, battling with innumerable choices.

Apologise? Not here, not now. Wrong place, wrong time. The risk that his defences would splinter equalled the prospect that she wouldn’t believe him.

Wrap her tight in his arms because for a fleeting moment he’d sensed a keen vulnerability in her? Far too risky. If he buried his face in that heavenly fall of fire he might never come up to breathe again.

Act the polite English gentleman? Despite popular opinion he was more than capable of executing that particular role. He could be anyone or anything any woman wanted, as long as it wasn’t himself. The problem was that kind of outlandish behaviour would only make her suspicious and no doubt she’d hang around.

He might be responsible for the words delectable, fickle and playboy appearing in the dictionary, but he was far from stupid. Soon she’d start asking questions about her brother’s death, and he had to ensure they never came to pass those gloriously full raspberry lips. Lips he’d become riveted upon. Lips he’d do anything to smother and crush. To make love to with every pent-up breath in his taut body until she yielded beneath his command.

Never.

So in the end he’d settled for their habitual sparring. The usual back and forth banter that was sure to spark her every nerve and induce the usual colourful dazzling firework display. Make her hate him even more. Followed by her departure, of course.

While a vast proportion of him had rebelled at the notion, some minuscule sensible part had won out. After all, if there were fairness and justice in the world he would be the man six feet under and not an innocent kid who’d always looked at him as if he were some kind of hero.