by Trish Morey
She turned to the man at her side. His jaw was working grimly, his eyes like stone, and Mackenzi knew she’d way overstepped the role he’d assigned her for the evening. ‘I think,’ he said at last, ‘that perhaps we should forget about the deal for a while and enjoy our meal.’
‘What the hell was that all about?’
Dinner had concluded, a pleasant enough evening if one could ignore the simmering wariness that had marked the two battling sides. It was a pity it had been impossible to ignore it. Dante had been silent during the journey back to the hotel, striding through the lobby like a lion unleashed while she’d battled to keep up in his wake. Now he stood there, a glass of malt whiskey in one hand, leaning on the credenza with the other.
‘What was what about?’
‘That suggestion for collaboration—where did that come from?’
She shrugged, dropping her beaded bag onto the coffee table, and stretched her neck this way and that, trying to ease some of the tension that had gathered there in the last few hours. ‘I don’t know. It just seemed the logical thing to do. Quinn needs funds to upgrade an iconic boat–building business that’s missing out on contracts because it can’t retool, given you’ve put a stop on finance—and meanwhile you merely want to turn the land into some kind of waterfront-apartment desert. Why not build something bigger than just another set of apartment buildings, something that builds on and also preserves a business that’s been part of the harbour-front for the better part of a century?’
‘I’m not in the business of boat building.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know. You’re so obviously not in the business of building anything!’
‘That’s garbage. I’ve built an entire fortune. From nothing!’
‘To what end? So you can pull down and destroy every iconic property you can lay your hands on? How many hotels have you already destroyed?’
‘I built on those sites—’
‘What—more of your characterless concrete apartment-blocks? That wasn’t building. That was merely sticking band-aids over the scars you’d left behind. And now you’ve got both Ashton House and Quinn Boatbuilding lined up in your sights.’
‘Ashton House has got nothing to do with Quinn Boatbuilding!’
‘Hasn’t it? You seem so determined to destroy everything you touch—’
‘Did you hear me? I said nothing!’
She blinked, wondering at the raw emotion she saw behind his eyes, the depths of emotion that lay behind that statement, wondering what it meant for her quest. ‘Which means what, exactly? How are they different, then?’
He turned away. ‘Believe it. They are.’
She took a reluctant step closer, wanting to know. Needing to know. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘And I don’t understand why you made that suggestion to Quinn in the first place. I expect more from someone who’s supposed to be on my team.’
‘I was on your team until you made me redundant, remember? Now I’m working on my team, to get what I want.’
‘And what is it you want—to undermine my negotiations when they’re already at a critical stage?’
‘You know damn well what I want. To stop you destroying Ashton House. To make you see the madness of doing so.’
He shook his head slowly from side to side as he came closer, the look on his face coldly triumphant. ‘No, it’s not. You like to think you’re here for some noble reason, but I know what you really want. You’ve made that patently clear over the last twenty-four hours, with your taunts and your goading and your all-too-innocent attempts at seduction. That’s what you were trying to do this morning when you let the covers slip so innocently to show off your cleavage. A pity you were wearing your neck-to-knees pyjamas when it was clear you were trying to lure me into your bed!’
She was shaking her head at everything he said, shocked at the veracity contained in his statements, shocked that he had read her so well, not wanting to believe her need had been so transparent.
‘And when it didn’t work,’ he continued, ‘you got desperate and figured that, if you made out you were leaving, I’d get angry enough to want to stop you. As I did, to our mutual benefit.’
‘No,’ she said, truthfully this time. ‘I was leaving. I’d had enough.’
‘But you hadn’t had any! That’s what was really bugging you, wasn’t it? Admit it, Mackenzi, you’re not here to save anything—not Ashton House, not the world. You’re here because you want me in your bed. Against the wall. Any way you can damn well get it!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
HIS COARSE WORDS slashed her like a knife, because he was so wrong. She wanted to save Ashton House—it was the reason she was here, the reason she’d agreed to this crazy deal in the first place.
Yet at the same time he was so right. Because she had been prepared to walk away—to flee—and to leave Ashton House to its fate when she hadn’t been able to take the pressure-cooker tension of waiting for him to make her his mistress any more. To make her feel as good again as he had that first night together.
‘You can believe whatever you like,’ she whispered. ‘But I tell you one thing—whatever I’m here for, it’s not to save your damned deal. If you’re so dead set on destroying any business that stands in your way, that you can’t see the potential good in collaborating with Quinn rather than wiping his business of the face of the earth, you don’t deserve to be in business.’
‘You don’t know the first thing about it.’
‘I know that someone should at least have costed the proposal. My gut feeling is that if you can come up with a waterfront proposal that features a new and improved Quinn Boatbuilding organisation as an integral part of the harbour-front design and attach it to a marina, you’re going to have interest from every boatie in town—plus the endorsement of every regulatory body going, because you’ve taken care of one of their own.’
‘You’re guessing.’
‘Of course I’m guessing. I don’t have the numbers. But I suspect that if you play your cards right you’ll probably be able to ask double for your precious apartments, even if you do end up with planning permission for only half as many. Financially it may be a different kind of deal from what you originally envisaged, but there’s a chance with any future profits from Quinn Boatbuilding that you’ll come out way ahead. And, let’s face it, how else are you going to get around the zoning regulations? Quinn certainly seemed to think it might work.’
‘He was humouring you.’
‘Is that so? Well, at least he damned well listened and didn’t put me down in the process. But you’re probably right, and, let’s face it, Quinn’s probably much better off having nothing to do with you. And now, if you excuse me, it’s been a very long night. I’m going to bed.’
Dante made a move towards her, unbuttoning his collar and pulling his tie askew in the process. ‘That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said all night.’
Heat scorched her cheeks as he came closer. She reeled back, her senses on red alert. He had to be kidding! Despite the veracity in the accusations he’d earlier charged her with—the frustration she’d felt waiting for him to make a move, the utter desperation when he hadn’t—there was no way in the world he was coming anywhere near her tonight.
And it wasn’t just his total disregard for her ideas, it was the impression he gave her that she had no right to have any ideas, that her role began and ended in his bed. She jagged up her chin with a note of defiance. ‘I meant alone.’
‘So did I.’ He tossed back the rest of his whiskey and turned away, heading for the office. ‘Go put your flannelette defences up. And don’t wait up.’
She didn’t wait up. Not intentionally. She wasn’t waiting for anyone, she told herself as she tossed and turned in the wide, lonely bed. Especially not him.
Yet sleep still eluded her, her body too hot under too much cover, her mind in turmoil over a man who was such a contradiction. A man who went from ruthless tycoon to passionate lover and back
again without giving her time to either catch her breath or guard her emotions. A man she didn’t want.
So why did it sting so much that he hadn’t wanted her?
Dante opened his laptop and dug out the files he had on the deal and the financials he had on Quinn’s operation. Mackenzi had no idea what she was talking about, and he’d damn well prove it to her. He had to, in case Quinn got it into his head that she’d been on to something and made it even harder for them to close the deal.
It was hard enough already, given Adrian’s disaster with the zoning regulations; he didn’t need any more complications. He spread the development plans out on the desk alongside him, weighting down the corners with paperweights as the files loaded—page upon page filled with numbers, calculations, projected costs and revenue streams—and got to work.
It was almost dawn by the time he pushed back his chair from the desk, his work done as the first hint of light formed a grey smudge around the blinds.
He sipped at the strong coffee room service had just delivered and pulled the curtain sash, revealing a city shrugging off the night. It had rained some time during the night, the clouds hanging low over the city. Street cleaners patrolled the gutters many floors below, their yellow lights flashing. Beyond them he could see the motorways, now flowing freely, soon to become choked and snarled, and beyond them the harbour, the heart and soul of Auckland, a piece of Auckland he wanted a share in.
And today, come hell or high water, he’d make it happen.
He snapped open his mobile phone and hit an oft-used code. It answered on the third ring.
‘Adrian, have you got what I wanted?’
‘I’m working on it,’ his second-in-charge said, with just a hint of tiredness in his voice. ‘There’s a politician I’m meeting with later today, to see if he’ll pull some strings on the re-zoning.’
‘So you’ve got nothing.’
There was a pause at the end of the line. ‘Like I said, I’m working on it. These things take time.’
‘We don’t have time. Cancel it.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Cancel the meeting,’ Dante told him. ‘I need you to do something else…’
She hadn’t slept well, he could tell from the way she’d launched the pillows all over the bed and tangled herself in both the sheets. And her hair—it half-covered her face now, coiling around her neck, its curled ends spiralling lower.
Tantalisingly lower.
He dragged in a lungful of air, clearing a head still too full of discounted cash-flows and projected rates of return, only to find her perfume curl inside him, warm and welcoming, beckoning him, and turning the figures into a blur. He looked down at her sleeping form as he unbuttoned his shirt, feeling himself stir, already anticipating that first unbeatable contact of skin against skin, a prelude to the delicious slide of flesh against flesh.
Or, he grimaced, flesh against flannelette. Wherever she’d found those crazy pyjamas they were little defence against him.
Would she still be angry with him when she woke up? Damn him to hell, but half of him hoped she was. There was something to be said for anger, especially when it turned a mere mistress into a tigress. And, whatever he’d been expecting from taking Mackenzi as his mistress, he hadn’t been expecting the tigress she’d proved herself to be.
He purred softly as he shucked off the rest of his clothes. She was beautiful, awake or asleep, from her slightly crooked nose to her painted toenails. Angry or not, she was still his mistress, and he intended to make the most of her.
He slid into the bed alongside her, propped up on one elbow, drinking in her sleeping body-heat and nestling close. He put a hand to her hip, unable to resist tracing the sensual curve to the sweet dip at her waist and back again. She stirred, untangling herself from her hair, her vivid green eyes blinking open, first slowly as sleep slid away and then widely with surprise.
She reared away from him, her eyes now flashing and wary, circled by shadows that confirmed her lack of sleep. But he held her in place, his hand anchoring her where she lay. And then he leaned over and lightly kissed her startled mouth.
She surveyed him suspiciously, her hands already working the bedclothes higher in defence. ‘What was that for?’
‘That’s to say thank you.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’
‘Because I think you might just have saved this deal.’
It was her turn to prop herself up on her elbows, but her expression was guarded, her eyes still harbouring the remnants of last night’s hostility. She shook her head, brushing hair back from her face with one hand. ‘You’re kidding.’
He shook his head. ‘No. It could be tight, but it’s definitely workable. Adrian’s scheduling a meeting with Quinn later today.’
She said nothing for a while, just stared at him. Then, ‘That’s nice. I’m happy for Stuart Quinn and the people who work for him. I think.’
He hauled in a breath and forced it out again, his teeth gritted, but knowing he could expect little more after the browbeating he’d given her. ‘I should have listened to you,’ he admitted, letting his hand move rhythmically under her pyjamas and over that curve from her hip to her waist and back again. ‘I should at least have given you a fair hearing.’
‘Yes.’
His hand swept up her side, his fingers brushing the underside of her breast, another seductive curve. Air hissed through her teeth but she didn’t pull away, so he ventured back, letting his fingertips trace the swell of her breast. Her breathing was quickening now, her green eyes showing the merest hint of desire.
‘And, I know you don’t have to make this easy for me, but what I’m trying to say is I’m sorry. I was wrong.’
‘You’re apologizing? To me?’
He smiled. ‘Don’t spread it around.’ He cupped her breast in his hand, felt the tight nub of nipple pressing into his palm and wanted more. He shrugged down the covers, pushed up her top and dipped his mouth to one dusky nipple. ‘I wasn’t sure Mackenzi suited you,’ he said. ‘But Rose does. It suits these…’ And he turned his attentions to the other.
She gasped. ‘What time is it?’
‘Getting on for six,’ he whispered, his lips dancing over the tip while his hand toyed lazily with its neighbour, rolling it gently between finger and thumb.
He caught her fractured breath, the involuntary arch of her back that accompanied it as his tongue circled its prey.
‘And you’re just coming to bed?’
‘Yes.’
‘You worked through the night again?’
He filled his mouth with her, drawing her in, releasing her ever so slowly from the heated embrace of his mouth, his hand now venturing southwards towards another even greater goal. ‘Guilty.’
‘And you’re quite sure you’re not a bat?’
He laughed, a low and deep rumble against her breast, suckling at her flesh as her body moved seductively under his, then grazing her satiny skin with his teeth.
‘Quite sure,’ he assured her as his fingers worked at edging her pyjamas lower, insinuating themselves between her thighs. ‘So, do you accept my apology?’
There was the slightest hint of resistance. ‘I don’t know.’
His mouth travelled a line from her breasts to her throat, finding a pulse point, feeling the frantic drumbeat of her heart under his mouth, and his tongue lapped it up. ‘Can I help make up your mind?’
She pushed her head back into the pillows as she parted her legs for him. ‘You can try…’
The phone woke her, Dante answering with a terse, ‘Yes?’ as he threw his legs over the side of the bed and sat up.
Bleary eyed, she glanced at the clock, finding it already after ten. She collapsed back into the pillows, tiredness from a restless night followed by a passionate awakening still dragging at her. But the memories of that awakening brought a satisfied smile to her face. How could it be possible that the sex could keep getting better when it had been so good to start with? But i
t was better, and he’d been so tender and sweet and genuinely remorseful, a different Dante Carrazzo from the one she thought she knew.
She escaped to the bathroom while he was busy, aghast at how wanton she looked, her hair wild and untamed, her lips rosy and plump, and her breasts still bearing the brand of his whiskered chin. She looked a thorough mess. She looked utterly seduced.
As she had been, she knew, turning on the shower. She’d been seduced by a master of seduction, a man who had seduced an acceptance of his apology out of her. And she’d told herself just last night she didn’t want him! Who was she trying to kid? She needed him for the power of life or death he held over Ashton House, but she wanted him for herself.
Mackenzi let the massaging thrum-beat of water cascade over her. Was that so wrong? Why couldn’t they both enjoy each other for as long as this arrangement lasted? All she had to do was keep her wits about her. And she was sensible. She always had been, and she certainly wasn’t about to fall in love with another totally wrong man. She’d made that mistake once already. At least this one wasn’t going to get away with telling her she was frigid.
The shower’s massage-setting wove its magic on her scalp and skin, and she emerged in a fluffy white robe ten minutes later feeling refreshed, her skin tingling. He was still on the phone; she could tell that this time he was talking to Quinn, and he looked up at her and smiled, holding up crossed fingers.
Her heart gave a funny little lurch that stopped her in her tracks and she turned, uncertain, fleeing straight back into the bathroom.
He found her there a few minutes later. ‘Are you all right? You looked like you’d seen a ghost.’
She offered him a quick smile and made a play of towel-drying her hair. ‘Perfectly,’ she lied, though at least her heartrate was something approximate to normal again. Which in this man’s proximity meant erratic at best. Especially when, like now, he was naked. How was a girl supposed to think when faced by that unashamed display of potent masculinity?
‘Good,’ he said, oblivious to her reaction, turning on the shower behind her. ‘Because Quinn wants to take us all out in his boat today. He’s excited about the new deal, but he’s insisting you’re there.’