Behind The Boardroom Door: Savas' Defiant Mistress / Much More Than a Mistress / Innocent 'til Proven Otherwise

“You don’t like sex?” He’d noticed how she cut herself off, changed what she’d been going to say. Make love.

“It’s fine,” she muttered.

“Ah, kissing’s fine. Sex is fine, but…” he goaded her now. “But what, Robson? You’re frigid? Can’t convince me of that.” His body was still humming from the heat generated by their passion.

“I’m not trying to convince you,” she fired back. “I’m just saying it isn’t happening again. Not with you.”

Their gazes met, locked, battled. Dear God, he wanted to stop fighting with her and take her to bed!

“You wanted me,” he argued.

“I already admitted to that. I’ll say it if you want—my body wants yours.” She flung the words at him. “But I don’t do ‘sex for sex’s sake,’ Savas. I don’t do ‘one-night stands.’”

“No one said anything about one night.”

“I don’t do ‘affairs,’ damn it.”

“You’re a virgin?”

The flush on her face deepened. “No. I’m not a virgin. But I’ve learned my lesson. And I want sex to matter. I want it to mean more than just making my body and yours feel good. I want it to be an expression of love, commitment, even marriage!”

He gaped at her. “With me?”

“Good God, no! With the man I fall in love with!”

Seb opened his mouth to argue—and shut it again.

The smile Neely gave him was both bitter and knowing. “Exactly,” she said.

It could have been worse.

Neely told herself that over and over, like a mantra, as she huddled shivering in a perfectly warm shower. Right now it didn’t seem like such a beautiful morning after all.

It wasn’t telling him about Max that bothered her. That bit of information was long overdue and she knew it. She hadn’t known how to work it into the conversation. Somehow “Oh, by the way, Max is my dad” just wouldn’t fall easily from her lips.

Still didn’t.

But he knew it now. And that was pretty much the least of her problems.

She could have been swept away by his damned kiss.

She could have slid her hands under the soft cotton of his T-shirt to caress the hard-muscled warmth of his back. Could have lain right down with him on the sofa and lost all her inhibitions.

Could have, let’s be honest, done exactly what she’d said when she’d thrown the “we could tear our clothes off and have mad passionate sex” words at him.

No, not could have. Might have.

Or even more accurately, would have, had Sebastian not stopped when he had.

Neely was beyond mortification. It didn’t bear thinking about.

And yet, she had to think about it—to come to terms with it.

You never got past things you didn’t face. She’d learned that from all the years she’d spent watching her mother simply move on rather than confront her demons.

But after having come within a hair’s breadth of making mad passionate lo—having mad passionate sex—with Sebastian Savas, God help her, a little retreat and regroup seemed in order.

So she had taken her tote bag and what was left of her shattered composure and climbed the stairs.

There she took a shower, washed her hair, scrubbed her body and, especially, her face, as if she could remove every vestige of Sebastian’s kiss, and tried to get a grip on her life.

She should move out.

But if she did, he’d think she was running away from him.

“You are running away from him, idiot,” she said aloud, wringing out a cold washcloth and pressing it to her face, tried to reduce the heat she still felt.

But even so, she resisted actually running. She wasn’t a wimp. She was a strong intelligent capable woman.

“Reduced to putty by a single kiss.” She said that aloud, too.

But she knew, even as she said the words that it wasn’t being reduced to putty that bothered her. Perversely the feeling was one that she’d often hoped for.

It was the way her mother had said kissing John made her feel. It was also the way she’d felt with Max.

In all honesty, Neely had longed for that feeling. Had begun to wonder if she ever would. And now she had.

With Sebastian Savas!

Of all the unsuitable men—a man who didn’t do love, who didn’t do commitment, who didn’t do marriage.

Not that she wanted any of those things with him. God forbid.

But why did she have to feel that way, need that way?

And why in heaven’s name did it have to happen now? With him?

A part of her wished she hadn’t admitted who her father was. If she hadn’t, she could have thrown herself into the charade of being Max’s girl.

But even as she thought it, Neely remembered telling Sebastian that she wasn’t hiding behind Max.

And she wasn’t, damn it!

Still, she would have liked to spend the rest of the day—or the rest of her life—in her room. But that was just another hiding place. So she dried her hair and got dressed and went back downstairs, not sure what to say now. Not sure what to do.

Only sure she wasn’t kissing Sebastian again.

No question about that.

He was sitting at his computer working with his CAD program as she entered the living room. He had his back to her, but she saw him stiffen at the sound of her footsteps. Harm padded over and nudged her hopefully, then ran to the door.

“Yes,” she said, relieved for the suggestion. “We’ll go for a run.” But she had something to say to Sebastian first.

She waited impatiently until he finished whatever he was doing, then she cleared her throat. For a moment she didn’t think he was even going to bother to turn around, but finally he spun his chair around her way.

“It’s not going to happen again,” she said.

He blinked. “What’s not?”

Oh, great, he was going to pretend it hadn’t happened?

“The kiss,” Neely said. “Any kisses.” She felt like an idiot saying it, expecting he would shrug and say, “Nobody asked you,” but he didn’t.

He scowled. “Because you think I’m coming on to you because you’re the boss’s daughter?”

That hadn’t even occurred to her. But before she could say so, he went on fiercely. “Well, forget it. I don’t do that sort of thing ever.”

“Oh.” She paused. “Um, good.” Pause. “I guess.”

He looked at her, apoplectic. “You guess?”

“Well, I wasn’t thinking you were. I mean, you didn’t know, did you? When you…kissed me?”

“No, I didn’t know! Then. But now I do and—” his tone was measured, but his gaze was not. It was simmering and intense “—I just want it to be clear.”

She nodded. “It’s clear. But really, it doesn’t matter.”

He blinked, then looked quizzical.

“Because it isn’t happening again. No kissing,” she repeated.

“Why?”

Now it was her turn to be apoplectic. “I told you why! Because kissing has to lead to something!”

“It does.”

“To love? To marriage?”

“To bed,” he said. “What’s wrong with that? Or do you never kiss without wanting a proposal first?”

“What I don’t do is kiss without any kind of possibility of commitment!”

“Ever?” He sounded stunned.

“Well, I just did, obviously.” And the truth was, she wasn’t that stingy with her kisses when they didn’t matter. It was when they did—when they threatened to make her lose all sense of propriety, when they could have her tumbling straight into bed without a thought for tomorrow or next month or next year—yes, then she was very stingy indeed. “No kisses,” she said again and met his disbelieving gaze with unblinking ferocity.

“You are a dinosaur,” he told her.

“I am a dinosaur,” she agreed. Better he think that than think she was a complete pushover.

He stared at her, then shook his head. “You just expect us to live together completely platonically when we could burn the boat to the ground with a kiss?”

“Yes.”

He barked a laugh, but it wasn’t a joyful sound. “Sure you don’t want to move out, Robson?”

“I’m sure,” she lied. She thought perhaps she ought to be running away as fast as she could. “We are, after all, adults,” she reminded him.

“I’d say that’s the problem, not the solution.”

“We have self-control,” she went on relentlessly. “Or I do,” she added. “Don’t you?”

His teeth came together. “I have self-control, Robson,” he said flatly, just as she had hoped he would.

“So it won’t be a problem, then. It will just be hands off,” she said brightly.

For a long moment Sebastian didn’t say anything. Then he agreed gruffly. “Hands off.”

“And…mouths off?”

“What are you, a lawyer?”

“Just covering…all eventualities. So, no kissing?”

A muscle ticked in his temple. “I already said that.”

“Just making sure.” But at the same time she was extracting the promise, she was staring at him sprawled there in that chair. He was still wearing a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt that treated her to far too much visual stimulation. Sebastian Savas with his long bare legs splayed and his muscular arms flexing as he cracked his knuckles did disastrous and very unfair things to her libido.

It wasn’t fair that such an unsuitable man should be able to make her heart kick over and her pulse quicken and other intimate parts of her body tingle with the mere awareness of him.

Their gazes met. And held. And held some more.

Sebastian swallowed. And even the sight of his Adam’s apple moving in his throat was an enticement.

The discovery made Neely gulp. She moistened her lips with her tongue.

Sebastian shut his eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake, just get the hell out of here.”

There.

It was simple.

Mind over matter. Or libido. Or something.

It wasn’t as if she wanted to want Sebastian Savas, after all. He was the last man she should be interested in.

She wasn’t interested in him.

Much.

It would have been easy—or at least easier—if he’d had to go back to Reno. But he didn’t. He was there—on the houseboat whenever she got up in the morning, coming out of his bedroom just as she was getting out of the bathroom. Coming abruptly face to breastbone with his bare chest was not conducive to pure innocent thoughts.

And then he would come downstairs looking all polished and professional—long-sleeved pale-blue starched dress shirts and dark trousers that should have looked like body armor but on Sebastian looked sexy as hell because she had no trouble imagining the hard-muscled man beneath them.

He was there at work, too. Not often. They didn’t work together. She was working with Max on Blake-Carmody, and Sebastian was doing whatever it was Sebastian was doing—but every now and then she caught a glimpse of him, caught him looking at her.

And abruptly they would both look away.

And no matter what she was doing or saying or supposed to be doing or saying, in fact she was thinking instead about what it had been like to kiss him.

It wasn’t just one day or two. It was the whole week. Day in, day out.

“What’s the matter with you?” Max asked. “You don’t have your eye on the ball.”

No, she didn’t.

She had it on Sebastian Savas.

It was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard.

No kissing!

What was she, a department store dummy? No feelings? No urges? No needs?

Of course he could control his libido—but why should he? It wasn’t as if he was going to get emotionally involved.

Was she?

The thought brought him up short. He wasn’t used to dealing with women who wanted more from him than he was inclined to give.

Did Robson want more? Was she in danger of falling in love with him? Was that what she was saying?

Of course she wasn’t! She hated his guts for saying she designed doll houses. She was attracted, that’s all.

And resisting.

So she’d come up with a silly rule.

Well, fine. He could abide by it. It wasn’t as if he spent every day thinking about Neely Robson…imagining her lips under his…fantasizing about kissing her.

Well, he hadn’t until the day he’d actually done it.

And now, damn it, he couldn’t seem to forget.

It would have been easier if he’d got to go back to Reno this week. But no, he was stuck in Seattle the whole time, running into her first thing in the morning when she was still sleep-rumpled and soft-lipped.

“Oops, sorry!” she said, and skittered out of his way. But not before she’d brushed against him doing so. And how the hell was he supposed to just pretend his body didn’t leap in response to that?

And then he came downstairs to find her playing with the kittens or sitting in her rocking chair cuddling the rabbit under her chin or nuzzling the blasted guinea pig—and his fingers itched to take the animal out of her hands and pull her into his arms and do a little nuzzling and cuddling of his own.

Ordinarily he got away from her at work, but it was uncanny the number of times he ran smack into her in the hallway and she licked her lips, startled, and he couldn’t help staring straight at them.

Almost worse was going into the blueprint room to see her leaning over the drafting table, her derriere so neatly outlined in her navy trousers as she’d sketched something in for Max. At the sight he’d slopped his coffee on his hand, making him curse.

Worst of all, though, was seeing her disappear into Max’s office and knowing perfectly well that she wasn’t in there coming on to Max at all.

She was perfectly free.

And—by her own decree—totally off-limits. Sebastian ground his teeth at the pointlessness of it.

But then he reminded himself that sex was simply a biological urge. Any appealing woman would do.

Only his father seemed to feel the need to marry them.

Sebastian didn’t. Sebastian wouldn’t. So he either had to put her out of his mind and find someone else to occupy his wayward thoughts. Or he needed to change her mind.

Soon.

The best defense might be a good offense in football and war and all those sweaty fierce masculine pursuits.

But as far as Neely could tell, the best defense for dealing with the effect Sebastian Savas was having on her was going out, keeping busy—and meeting other men.

“Running scared?” Max said when she told him she was playing intramural volleyball on Monday nights and going bowling on Wednesdays after work. She had gone to book discussion group at the library on Tuesday and she was giving serious thought to taking Harm to obedience class on Thursdays.

Any dog who knocked people into the water needed obedience, didn’t he?

“Running scared?” Neely echoed Max’s words and tried to invest them with as much scorn as possible. “Of what, pray tell?”

“Your roommate,” Max said. He arched a speculative brow and regarded Neely with amusement.

She was beginning to wish she hadn’t bothered to stop in his office on her way to the gym. “Why would you say that?” She couldn’t be that obvious, could she?

“You never felt the need to get out every night when you were living with Frank.” Max shrugged. “And you didn’t last week when Seb was in Reno.”

Neely glared at him. “Don’t you have anything better to do than work out my motivations?”

A grin flashed across Max’s face. “You’re my daughter. I’m catching up on all the years I never got to be a father.”

“If you want to practice all the things you missed, Mom’s coming out this weekend.”

Abruptly Max’s smile vanished and he straightened up in his desk chair, put both feet on the floor and gave Neely a hard look. “Your mother and I are past history.”

Neely gave an airy wave of her hand. “Just thought you’d like to know.”

Max grunted. “Go bowl.”

She did. She even went out for a beer with the group afterward. It was nearly nine when she got home. Sebastian was working at the computer. He didn’t turn around when she came in, but kept working while she made a fuss over the kittens, then scratched Harm’s ears and said, “Hang on. Let me put my stuff upstairs and I’ll take you for a run.”

“I already did.”

She blinked as Sebastian spun his chair around and met her surprise with an unsmiling stare. “Oh. Well, um, thanks.”

“And I fed the cats and the rabbits and the guinea pig. Maybe you shouldn’t have animals if you’re not going to take care of them, Robson.”

Neely straightened, eye wide. “I beg your pardon? Who says I don’t take care of them?”

“Well, you’re gone all day and all night—”

“I came home at lunch and took Harm for a run. I came home before I went bowling and fed him and took him out. I fed the kittens. I played with them. I took the rabbits out on the deck. I never neglect my animals! And if you think I do, then you can—”

Sebastian raised his hands, palms out. “So, fine, you do take care of them, I didn’t know. You weren’t here. At least you’re not here whenever I’ve been here. Which must take quite a lot of effort on your part.” He paused and then repeated, “You aren’t here. I wonder why….” He let his voice trail off.

Their gazes met and she knew Sebastian knew exactly why she wasn’t here.

She waited for him to suggest, as Max had, that she was running scared, but he just said gruffly, “Anyway, I took him for a run.”

“Thank you.” Her tone was stiff. And she turned away to clip Harm’s leash on his collar anyway.

“I’m leaving in the morning,” he said to her back. “Back to Reno. So I won’t be here to walk your dog. “

“I’m sure we’ll manage,” she said, still not looking at him, heading toward the door.

“Or kiss you senseless.”

She spun around and stared at him.

He smiled. “Only saying.”

It was far better that Sebastian was gone.

Really, it was. She didn’t have to keep bumping into him in the hallway or on the stairs. There was no T-shirt hanging on the hook in the bathroom tempting her to pluck it off and breathe in the subtle scent of him. There was also no coffee container sitting on the countertop because he’d forgotten to put it away, and no running shoes by the door to trip over, and no pair of smoky-green eyes watching her every time she looked up.

It was a relief all the way around.

So why did the place seem so empty?

It wasn’t empty, of course. Harm was here. The kittens were here. And the rabbits and the guinea pig.

It was exactly the way it would have been after Frank left.

Exactly the way it was when Seb had gone to Reno after the very first weekend he’d bought the houseboat. It hadn’t been lonely then, had it?

Well, actually, now that you mentioned it…

No! Forget it. And it was true that she did breathe easier while he was gone—though she still felt his presence everywhere.

But she had to admit she was surprised and a little disconcerted when Friday came and Sebastian didn’t.

She didn’t go out on Friday night, actually sat home and worked and played with the kittens and, heaven help her, played the violin that Sebastian had brought with him.

Why not? She thought crossly. He never played it.

She was always careful to put it back where she found it. She didn’t think he ever knew she’d touched it.

She shouldn’t touch it. And yet she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off.

She’d missed not playing, but she hadn’t realized how much until she began again. It had nothing at all to do with it being Sebastian’s violin.

Nothing!

Saturday her mother arrived and there was barely time to think about Sebastian, except to be grateful he wasn’t there. Her mother wasn’t going to stay with her; she’d arranged to stay with a friend on Vashon Island. But of course Neely was picking her up at the airport and would take her back to see the houseboat.

Still she hoped he hadn’t come back while she was at the airport. She didn’t think Sebastian needed to meet her mother, and she was quite sure Lara didn’t need to meet Sebastian.

She hadn’t seen her mother since going back to Wisconsin at Christmas, but Lara was the same as ever, rather like the weather—mostly sunny and with scattered clouds and the occasional rain shower whenever she teared up remembering “the good old days” with John.

“It’s so empty without him,” she told Neely in the car on their way from the airport to Lake Union. “Even after all this time.”

“I know,” Neely agreed, because it was—and because knocking around the houseboat the past two days had given her a glimmer of how empty life could seem—and how aware she was of a man who wasn’t there.

“But he’d be glad I’m out visiting you instead of staying home,” Lara went on as they drove north from the airport. “I can hardly wait to see your houseboat.”

“Oh, er, about the houseboat…” Neely hadn’t told her mother about what happened. Now she did, and watched Lara’s consternation grow.

“You’re sharing a houseboat with a man?”

“I’ve always been sharing a houseboat with a man. This is just a different man.”

“What sort of man?”

“He’s like Dad. A workaholic architect. Totally consumed by his job.” Well, almost.

Lara looked appalled. “Like your father? You’re not sleeping with him!”

“What?” Neely almost drove into the side of a fish seller’s van.

“Of course you’re not. You’re far more sensible than I ever was.” Lara shook her head at the memory. “But if he’s really like your father you have to be careful.”

Tell me something I don’t know, Neely thought. “I am being careful, Mom,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “You don’t need to worry. We have an understanding.”

Lara muffled a snort. “You might. Does he?” she asked sceptically.

“Of course he does.”

“Mmm.” Lara’s doubts were evident. “If he’s like your father he can be very persuasive.”

“Mom!”

“I’m only saying,” Lara said defensively. “Max was very determined.”

Thank you for sharing, Neely thought, reasonably certain she could have done without the knowledge. “Speaking of whom, are you planning on seeing him while you’re here?”

“Not likely,” Lara said. “He wasn’t pleased that I took you and scarpered.”

Neely blinked. “You did?”

Lara made a noise that might have been agreement. “He was very bossy. And he expected me to just fall in with whatever he thought we should do. Or not do. And then, he worked all the time and I was just supposed to get the leftovers—a few minutes here and there, which there were damn few of,” she said darkly. “He didn’t even have time to get married.” She shrugged. “So I left.”

“Really?” The details had never been forthcoming before. It must have been coming back to Seattle that coaxed them out of her mother.

“Yes, really. What was I supposed to do? Just sit around and wait for him to come to his senses? Hardly likely. Max wasn’t the type. So I thought I’d do something dramatic, like leave. And he’d wake up.” She laughed a little bitterly. “The more fool I. He hated all that commune stuff so when I took off for the place near Berkeley, I was sure he’d come and grab us both back. But—” she shrugged “—he didn’t. So it’s good I left. He had a lousy sense of priorities.”

Neely had been barely four at the time they’d decamped for the commune. She had few memories of her father from those days. Mostly she remembered waiting and waiting for him to come and pick her up—and then her mother saying, “I guess something really important happened. Let’s you and I go to the park.”

Now she gave her mother credit for not bad-mouthing her father when she easily could have.

“I think he might have changed a little,” she said now. “He does go sailing with me.”

“Hasn’t stood you up?” Lara said with a wry look.

Neely shook her head. “I bet if we invited him to dinner, he’d even come.” Though in truth she wasn’t sure at all.

Lara just shook her head. “Don’t play matchmaker. Your father and I had our chance. I came out here to see you and to get together with Serena.” That was the friend she was staying with. “I’ve had a good marriage. I have no intention of trying to rekindle a fire that burned out a long time ago.”