Hope gleamed in her eyes, but Derek wasn’t about to give in. He could let up on their schedules when this was over and done with. If he stayed here, he’d never relax anyway.
Work was the only way to calm him.
From the look on Patrick’s face, the older man understood. They’d been partners for too long.
“I wish you’d slow down, Derek,” he said softly.
“You know me better than that.”
Christina was trying to shrug out of the lasso. In a flash of guilt, Derek almost helped her.
But he wanted her with him. Needed her help, damn it.
She caught his gaze and stopped moving. Shaking her head, she seemed to comprehend his urgent hunger to succeed, too.
“Ay,” she said reluctantly. “I’ll come to the darn office. You’ve got me paranoid that the presentation isn’t good enough.”
Great, now he was feeling like a real heel. He freed her, more out of shame than anything else.
What had he been thinking?
Patrick was still watching Derek, a slight quirk to his mouth. Why was he looking so smug?
“Just don’t work too late kids,” he said, traipsing back toward the barbecue.
Both Derek and Christina followed his progress, then stood in silence as the patio door slid closed.
“Well…” she said, walking toward the front door.
“You can stay.”
His mouth snapped shut before he could back down any further.
Christina glanced toward where Patrick had disappeared, then at the floor, almost as if she’d realized just how damned much this meant to him.
His heart clenched into itself.
She resumed her progress toward the door, sighing. “Since I’m now as nervous as you are about the presentation, I’ve got no stomach to stay. I’ll meet you at the office. I’d like to have access to the AV equipment instead of working out of your trunk.”
“Christina?”
She stopped, hand on the doorknob, but didn’t turn around.
“I appreciate…” What? Her understanding?
They didn’t know each other enough for that. And they never would.
She opened the door, aiming her next words over her shoulder. “I know. Believe me…I know.”
As she left, he didn’t say a word.
He’d said too much already.
Chapter Four
At midnight, Derek felt as if there were still a thousand things left to do, even though he and Christina had been working nonstop for hours.
Saturdays usually meant that there were employees in and out of the building all day, but no one else was crazy enough to be in the offices at this time. Thus, the lonely glow of lights and the hum of his and Christina’s computers only added to what went unspoken between them.
He glanced up from the spreadsheet he was laboring over, his gaze finding his co-worker yet again, pure lust clutching at his body.
She was sitting on a chair that had been reversed and was slumped over the back of it while reading a community college catalog. Chin resting on a forearm, she moved her lips slightly as she took in the text, as if mouthing the words would make their meaning clearer. A sure sign of her tiredness.
Her hair was still up, of course, but tonight she’d used a leather thong with a wooden stick to fashion a bun with strands spiking out of it. A looser style, he thought.
And she’d kicked off her sandals long ago, the casual gesture making Derek wonder how she’d look walking around his bedroom, barefoot and clad in one of his own shirts, hair tumbled.
Caught up in the image, Derek sat back in his chair, running a hand over his smile.
“Pecos Community College has a good program,” she said, still inspecting the catalog.
“It’s close by, too,” he said.
This was part of his big idea: offering college-level financial classes to the employees for credit, which would go toward salary raises.
Earlier, after he and Christina had arrived at Fortune-Rockwell in their separate cars, he’d tried to make her forget about his hotheaded me-man-you-employee act by explaining the positives of his new plan. Luckily, she’d bought into it right away, immediately getting to work and seeming to forget that he’d literally roped her in here.
He just wasn’t used to reacting so strongly to the word no. Probably because he wasn’t used to hearing it.
“So what do you think?” he asked. “Would the college dean be open to chatting with us at this time of night? It’d be worth his while to hear us out.”
Christina shot him a half-amused, lowered gaze over the top of the catalog. “Not everyone is at your beck and call. You need to learn some boundaries, Rockwell, even if I was stupid enough to give in to you just this once.”
“Maybe I can get a hold of him tomorrow to talk specifics, then we can run from there. Think we need to call in Twyla, Jonathan and Seth to help us out?”
“Our team needs to enjoy their weekend.” Putting down the catalog, Christina shut her eyes, then raised her hands over her head, arching her back. “We can handle this ourselves, if you can refrain from acting entitled.”
Ya-ow.
As she stretched, her small, firm breasts pressed against her olive T-shirt. He could almost feel them in his hands, the tips aroused and beaded against his palms.
He could imagine slipping his hand into the curved small of her back, gently bending her away, shaping her so she’d fit against his own body, skin-to-skin under the moonlight.
Damn. The agony of wanting her when she was only a few feet away, the knowledge that he wasn’t going to have her.
Not if he was a smart businessman.
“Okay,” she said, ending the stretch and rubbing her eyes. “We’ve adjusted the slide presentation to our best ability tonight. And it looks like we need to get hold of Pecos College’s administration before we go any further. Should we line up some alternative colleges, just in case Pecos refuses?”
Time to get his mind back on work, eh? “We probably should.”
But both of them just sat there, exhausted.
“We could take a break,” he said.
“Too much to do.”
“Right.”
Still, neither of them moved.
Instead, he fixed his gaze on her laptop, which was stranded on the cushions of his leather couch. The screen saver—a picture of a gigantic ice cream sundae swirled with rainbow colors—hypnotized him.
Better to look there than at Christina, he thought.
But then he started thinking about the comparisons. Christina. Ice cream.
Both of them would taste real sweet.
“Well, I’ll be licked,” she said.
Flinching, Derek turned his attention toward her.
She was inspecting her cell phone, which she’d explained earlier was always set on silent mode during marathon work sessions.
“Sierra called three times.” Christina laughed. “I’m sure she wants to know if I’m safe from your overzealous charm.”
“What, she doesn’t trust me?”
“Rockwell, you lassoed me.”
He smoothed a hand over his hair. “I can’t say I’ve ever tried that method of getting someone to work. But it was highly effective.”
“You’re just fortunate I have a sense of humor.”
There was something about the tone of her voice that gave him pause.
“I know. You’re right, Christina. You have my deepest apologies.”
She hesitated. “I appreciate that, Rockwell.”
Last name again. Somehow, he’d been hoping that the hushed office and the midnight hour would lend themselves to some humanization.
Giving up, he said, “Maybe you ought to call Sierra’s voice mail, tell her that your big bad boss is treating you with kid gloves.”
“Are you referring to this torture by sleep deprivation?” Christina shut her phone, stuffed it back into her bag. “That’s kid-glove treatment?”
Derek held
back from elaborating on just how he wanted to be treating her:
Warm candlelight.
Soft sheets.
Hot kisses.
“Besides,” she continued, amazingly oblivious to the rise in his body temperature, “I called home on my way here. Gloria answered, and I told her not to worry.”
“Worry?” he asked, trying to appear innocent. “With me? A family couldn’t want more for their little girl.”
Christina raised her eyebrows. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?”
Derek shrugged. “I’m not such an awful guy.”
“Oh, you’re not a corporate wolf, huh? Patrick seems inordinately proud of your feral instincts. Your tear-’em-up reputation.”
She had to be talking about his business calling card, because Derek wouldn’t have said the same thing when it came to females. Sure, he wasn’t exactly a one-woman guy, but he liked to think he treated the fairer persuasion with appreciation—even if the relationships didn’t last long.
“Patrick helped me become a success,” he said. “I’m sort of a younger version of him, I guess.”
Except for the part where Patrick was head over heels for one woman—his wife, Lacey.
Christina’s gaze softened, and Derek’s chest got tight, numb with wanting to actually deserve such an admiring look from her.
“You and Patrick have a bond,” she said. “I can tell. Is that why…”
“What?” Did she want to ask about his tension with Jack?
“Nothing.”
She stood from her chair, glancing away from him.
“Is Patrick the reason Jack and I have that sibling rivalry going?” he finished for her.
“I’m tired, and my mouth is running before my brain can catch up. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
As she moved toward his desk, all lean grace, with those long, bare legs and sun-toasted skin, she touched the picture of his mom and her dogs. It took all his strength not to put it facedown on his desk, turn his past away from this woman as he’d done the other day.
Besides, something about the dead of night encouraged him to tell her about himself. But why? Derek never talked about his family to anyone—except Patrick.
So he was incredulous when the words spilled out.
“Patrick really helped me,” he said. “I was purposely aimless as a kid.”
Still, he wouldn’t tell her everything, like how his rebellion had been in reaction to all of Sir’s rules and regulations.
He continued. “Even so, just as soon as I could, I joined the Marines, right out of high school.”
Christina leaned against the side of his desk, crossed one leg over the other. She was close enough so he could catch the shine of deep red polish on her toenails.
Red. So that’s the color she’d been hiding under her usual business-day pumps.
“I guessed it,” she said. “Even on that first day, I thought there was something precise about you. Your hair, your clothes. Very regimented.”
A spark of anger lit through Derek. Is that how she saw him? A reflection of Sir?
“You’ve got a naturally commanding presence,” she added.
Then she looked down, and Derek knew she’d given away too much of her opinions to him.
Quelling the rage of his memories, he tentatively reached out to tug on her T-shirt. She startled, but didn’t move away.
“I don’t seem to scare you too much,” he said.
She didn’t respond to his comment. Instead, she turned back to him, redirected the subject.
“And how did you get from the Marines to Fortune-Rockwell?”
He drew his fingers back from her shirt, keeping his hand in front of him on the desk. “I had a short stint in the military. Basically…”
He thought of how he would glance at himself in the mirror and see a man in uniform. A man who looked too much like his father.
After the mirror epiphany, he’d quit the Corps as soon as possible.
Derek’s fingers tightened around a pen. “Basically, in school, I’d liked math, and I was always the guy who had some kind of scheme to get rich. So it made sense for me to learn more about business. That’s how I ended up with an MBA at Columbia.”
“Not bad,” she said.
Her respect made him kind of giddy. Or maybe he was just too tired to think straight.
“Then I met Patrick at a mentor dinner. Our philosophies meshed and, soon afterward, I went to work for him at Fortune Banking. It wasn’t long until the business evolved into Fortune-Rockwell.”
And, from there, he’d become the toast of New York. Charity functions, galas, the opera…He attended them all, with the gossip columns capturing a new beauty on his arm every time he hit the town.
Where had that guy gone?
“You’re lucky,” she said, “to have found a friend in Patrick. My family feels the same way.”
“He’s one in a million.”
The conversation dwindled, and he searched for something to say. He was afraid she’d hop up from his desk to blurt, “All rightie, then. Enough talk. Time to get back to college catalogs.”
But she surprised him by laughing instead.
A low, sultry sound—something you might hear as a bow moved over the strings of a cello.
She was staring at his loosened collar with those forever-deep hazel eyes. Irises that hid libraries of knowledge, years of wisdom that she’d experienced in her short life.
“Um, your…” She gestured with her hand.
He looked down, pulled at his collar and discovered that wrinkle again. Each morning it started out straight, perfect. But somehow, during the day, the material curled, thwarting his best efforts.
When he glanced back up at her, he snared her gaze with his. The throb of an endless heartbeat pulsed between them.
She reached over.
With slow care, she folded the linen back where it belonged.
“It was distracting me,” she said, her voice throaty. Different from the normally clipped, professional tone of Christina Mendoza, business analyst.
Now, she was just a woman.
And he was a man.
Alone together on a Saturday night.
He didn’t even breathe for fear of reminding her that her fingertips were still brushing his collar. The heat of her skin lingering so close to his neck turned him inside out, exposing a side of himself he always kept locked away.
Did she see the unguarded desire in his eyes? The terrifying curiosity of wanting to know what it was like to be with a woman who had great substance?
Maybe she did because, before his heart could beat again, she’d pulled away, stood, walked toward her computer on the couch.
Dammit, why hadn’t he made a move on her?
From the way she’d been acting, he could’ve had her. Could’ve been stripping off her T-shirt, her shorts.
Could’ve been kissing his way down her body.
What was so different about this woman that he hadn’t taken advantage of the fleeting intimacy?
She’d thrown him off guard for some reason. He just wasn’t used to easy touches, drawn-out beats of uncertain tension.
Tender gestures.
As she sat down on the couch, attention suddenly glued to her computer, Derek longed to make a joke of what had just happened. To ease the obvious discomfort.
But if there was one thing he knew about this woman already, it was that she was incredibly skittish about compliments and intimate office situations.
He’d forget about what had happened.
It was the best solution.
Determined to erase his emotions, he tapped at the keyboard, but it did no good.
The new awareness filtering the room wouldn’t lift.
It was only when his cell phone rang that he felt halfway relieved.
Yet, when he checked to see who was calling at this hour, he cursed. She was the last person he needed to talk with right now.
And
a perfect way to get his mind off Christina, he supposed.
Remember the bet. Remember Gloria in a French maid suit…
Oh, did Christina ever have to convince herself to stay here, rooted to the couch. She’d do anything to keep from dashing back over to Rockwell and wrestling him to the floor in a love hug.
When his phone rang, it was as if her senses had slammed right back into her from wherever the heck they’d been vacationing.
Now, she was just trying to get back to normal.
Peace. Calm. Yoga breathing.
Good. Now that she had it together, she could berate herself for how dumb she’d been.
Touching his collar?
Granted, it hadn’t been as if she’d licked him up and down like a lollipop, but the gesture had been just as obvious.
Never again, she thought.
Just remember William Dugan.
As a matter of fact, maybe it’d even be a good idea for Christina to go home. Time had gotten away from her, and she hadn’t given a second thought to how an isolated nighttime work session with her boss would look.
All right. She’d wait for him to get off the phone and check out for the night. Then she could take some work home until tomorrow, when daylight would bring other employees into the office, just like she’d seen today.
Although she was being cautious, Christina would get through this without having to deal with rumors or more Rebecca Waters–type insinuations that could damage a business reputation.
From Rockwell’s position behind the desk, he cursed, giving Christina an excuse to look at him.
He was staring at his ringing phone, frowning. She wanted to ask who it was and why the call put him on edge, but she refrained, thinking she’d already been way too forward tonight.
Punchy. Si, that was why she’d lost control. Lack of sleep had frazzled her nerves as well as her common sense.
Relieved to have justified her behavior, she accessed an Internet search engine so she could absorb herself in local community colleges. But her attention wavered.
Especially when Rockwell answered his phone.
“Derek, here.”
There was a pause as the person on the other line talked. While Christina pretended not to peek at his reaction, he kept his demeanor unconcerned, unemotional.
Fortune's Heirs: Reunion Page 22