by Maggie Cox
‘Shall we go, Mr O’Brien? It’s already twenty to four. I just hope the traffic is in our favour.’
She’d tied back her hair, Conall noticed, almost as if trying to regain some lost control. The idea intrigued him, made him wonder if there were areas of her life where she willingly gave up the desire to stay in control. Like when she was in bed with a lover, for instance?
Although personally he preferred her beautiful hair left unconfined, however she wore it she would command attention—because Morgen McKenzie was not a woman who could pass unremarked. Her fitted suit accentuated a figure that veered more towards the voluptuous than the fashionably thin, but because she was tall as well—at least five eight, by his calculations—she could wear a black polythene sack and still look amazing. But he hadn’t missed the dark circles beneath her lovely eyes either, and he was sure she was ready to kill him for noticing. Was his first impression of her right? Was she a party girl burning the candle at both ends most nights after work? And—more to the point—did she have a man in her life?
‘That’s what I like to see—enthusiasm for the job. It’s going to be a long afternoon, by all accounts. I’ve already spoken with the client. Have you met Stephen Ritchie before?’
‘We’ve only spoken on the phone,’ Morgen replied, tension edging into her shoulders as she reflected on the irate telephone calls of the past week, not to mention the threats to sue the firm. All in all, Mr Ritchie did not sound like the kind of man she was eager to meet.
‘Well, it’s no exaggeration to say he’s baying for our blood—or Derek’s blood, at least. We’re going to have to jump through hoops to come out on top. Think we can save the day, Miss McKenzie?’
He paused in the doorway, crowding her with his impressive physique. His expression seemed to increase in intensity, causing a sudden outbreak of goosebumps beneath Morgen’s clothes. Trouble was, the sexy fragrance of his cologne—along with the highly alluring and more subtle scent of the man himself—kept drifting in and out of her nostrils, making it hard to think. Unable to wrench her gaze away from his, Morgen sucked in a shaky breath. His seductive blue gaze had become a perilous ocean, and she was in mortal danger of becoming irrevocably lost at sea.
‘I wish you would stop using my name as a means to taunt me, Mr O’Brien. I don’t like being intimidated.’
‘Is that what I’m doing? Intimidating you?’ Frowning, Conall let his gaze sweep her features with genuine surprise.
Morgen couldn’t find the words to answer him—not even a simple yes or no. Her senses were too besieged by his nearness.
‘Would you prefer it if I called you Morgen?’ he asked evenly, his voice dropping down a sensual octave or two.
Taken aback by his unexpected concern, she stepped hurriedly ahead of him into the corridor to cover her confusion. ‘That is my given name.’
‘Then Morgen it is.’
Easily falling into step beside her, Conall mused how well her name suited her. Morgan Le Fay sprang to mind—the legendary dark-haired enchantress in the tale of King Arthur. There was certainly something bewitching about her, that was for sure.
‘Got everything we need, Morgen?’ he asked conversationally, referring to the large manila envelope under her arm.
Her green eyes briefly met his. ‘I’ve got everything you need, Mr O’Brien.’
Sweet heaven, he couldn’t argue with that… ‘Call me Conall,’ he said brightly, just about getting the words out past the sudden aching dryness in his throat.
It was raining when they reached the site, where two new luxury apartment blocks were being erected. The rain had quickly turned the dry sand of the ground into a river of mud, and as Morgen donned the compulsory hard hat the site foreman gave her she wished she had had the foresight to bring some Wellington boots. Derek normally kept his in the boot of his car, and she had enough experience as his assistant to know that she should have done the same. As for Conall, he didn’t seem to notice the fact that his black hand-made Italian shoes were quickly sinking into a quagmire of mud and sand.
After shaking hands with the stocky foreman, and introducing both himself and Morgen, he followed the man to the nearby planning office that had been erected to monitor progress on the site.
Inside, three other men—one of them suited—were seated round the long rectangular table. The smell of brewing coffee and cigarette smoke immediately enveloped Morgen’s senses as they entered. All the men glanced at her with wary gazes, as though an alien had suddenly wandered in amongst them. Clearly some men still had old-fashioned views about women on a building site, she thought irritably, concluding it was about time they got over it.
‘Miss McKenzie is my assistant and will be taking notes,’ Conall explained, before pulling out a chair for her to sit down. ‘Unfortunately Derek Holden is on sick leave, so I will be taking over the project until his return.’
From the first few minutes, as plans were laid out on the table and one of the men got up to pour the coffee into waiting mugs, it was evident who was in charge and why. Conall O’Brien’s expertise in smoothing ruffled feathers and executing the necessary action to bring things back on course was a master-class in skill, diplomacy and people management bar none. Morgen saw and heard Stephen Ritchie’s initially hostile reception to Conall melt like snow beneath a sun lamp.
Previously sluggish and tired, she straightened her back, sat up and listened in awe as the man finally had both the client and the contractors shaking hands and inviting him for drinks later on in the week.
Back in the car at ten to seven in the evening, Morgen swept a shaky hand through her hair and sighed as if she’d been let out of prison. The business of the day taken care of, she was more than a little anxious to get back to her little girl, and then for a hot bath and a stiff drink. Stealing a glance at the man beside her in the driver’s seat, she was amazed that Conall O’Brien was showing no signs of fatigue or jet-lag whatsoever. Instead he was smiling as his big hands curved round the steering wheel, as if all was right with his world and everything in it.
‘I thought that went well. How about you?’
The fact that he’d asked her opinion when it was glaringly obvious that things had gone more than well—he’d practically had them eating sugar out of his hand, for goodness’ sake!—threw Morgen for a moment.
‘I thought it was an exercise in damage limitation par excellence. Remind me to get you on my side when I’m next negotiating my car insurance.’
‘Most people are driven by fear, Morgen. As soon as you come to realise that you’re halfway there. You’ve got to get past your own ego to soothe theirs, and once you can do that—you’re home free. You can get practically anything you want.’
She said nothing. The fact that he was willing to get past his own ego to soothe someone else’s fears was enough food for thought for one day, she decided—even if there was an ulterior motive.
‘I’m not rushing you, Mr O’Brien, but—’
‘Conall.’ There was mischief in his gaze, and it momentarily banished every coherent thought from her head.
‘Fine. I don’t want to rush you, but I’d really like to get home if we’re finished for the day now. If you could drop me off back at the office I’ll pick up my car and go.’
‘Going out somewhere tonight?’ he asked, expertly steering the big car smoothly away from the kerb.
‘No.’ Her answer was accompanied by a loud sigh. ‘Definitely not. All I want to do right now is cuddle up on the sofa with my favourite person and relax in front of the TV.’
Her favourite person? Jealousy sliced through Conall’s gut like a knife heated over a red-hot blaze. So there was a man in her life after all? He’d been stupid to hope there wasn’t.
It was because he hadn’t been in a relationship for a while, he reflected moodily as he drove through London’s crawling traffic. A man had needs, and the delicious Miss McKenzie was a provocative reminder that his weren’t being met. There was something singular ab
out her that completely tantalised him. Hooked him up and reeled him in. Something in that slightly aloof façade of hers which could just as suddenly reveal her anxieties as candidly as a child’s that made him want to get to know her better. Okay, so he badly wanted to get her into bed too. It was just his bad luck that she was already spoken for.
‘What about you?’
‘Excuse me?’ Stealing a glance, he saw that she seemed to be waiting for him to speak.
‘Have you any plans for this evening?’
Yeah. After he’d popped one of his sister Teresa’s home-cooked meals in the microwave to heat he intended pouring himself a large glass of wine, then catching up with everything that had been happening in the New York office in his absence.
Unfortunately he did not have a favourite person to cuddle up to on the couch and watch TV with. It was just a shame that Teresa had been called away on business just before he’d caught his flight to Heathrow and would be gone indefinitely. She’d left her keys with a neighbour for him, but right now he could do with some company. He supposed after his transatlantic phone call he could ring his mother and speak to her, but he really didn’t feel like listening to one of her lectures telling him it was high time he came back home to England for good.
‘I’ll probably be working.’
Shrugging, Conall made the necessary right turn, then reached out to switch on the radio. As a beautifully articulated voice announced the seven o’clock news from the BBC, he couldn’t deny he was suddenly ridiculously glad to be home again—even if he was staying at his sister’s and not a home of his own. There were definitely some things about the mother country that he missed.
‘Mummy, why did Nana make you angry?’ Her brown eyes pensive, the little girl with bobbed dark hair slid into bed and waited anxiously for an answer.
Morgen bitterly regretted that she’d given way to temper where her mother was concerned. But all she’d needed after a day fraught with tension—because of the arrival of Conall O’Brien, the sorry state they’d found her boss in and the anxiety of the site meeting—was for Lorna McKenzie to verbally demolish her as soon as she walked through the door.
Fingering the vee of her blouse, Morgen reached out to drop a tender kiss on Neesha’s pink cheek, happy beyond measure that the child appeared to be so much better than she had been for the past few days.
‘Nana and me just had a little difference of opinion, sweetheart. Sometimes it’s hard for her to understand that I need to go out to work to support us both. But if there was any other way I could arrange things differently, believe me, I would.’
‘Nana thinks you drove Daddy away because you were too stubborn. She thinks if you were nicer to him he would have stayed.’ Neesha was biting her lip, and her expression was all eyes.
Feeling as if she had a lead weight in her stomach, Morgen clasped her daughter’s small plump hand in her own and forced a smile.
‘Nana had no right saying such a thing to you, honey. She doesn’t want to accept that your daddy was scared about being a father. She thinks there must have been something I could have done to make him stay.’
No matter how ‘nice’ she might have been to Simon, he wouldn’t have stayed. She knew that for a fact. Now there was a lump in her throat too. Not because she pined for him, but because she could see the confusion on her child’s face. Why had her daddy abandoned her? How was a child supposed to understand that? Oh, how could her mother have been so selfish and stupid to say such things to her?
‘Some people just aren’t cut out to be parents, darling. It’s a hard fact of life, but true, I’m afraid.’
‘Then why did you and Daddy have me?’
‘We made you because we wanted a baby—even if Daddy got scared later on and couldn’t stay. And when I held you in my arms that very first time I thought you were the most beautiful, most perfect, most amazing little person that I’d ever seen in all my life, and I loved you with all my heart and always will.’
Clutching the child to her breast, Morgen breathed in the fresh clean smell of her hair, the impossibly soft black silky strands tickling her nose while the heat and softness of the sweet little body pressed fiercely against her own.
‘I love you too, Mummy. You’re the best mummy in the whole world and the prettiest. When I grow up I want to look just like you!’
Gently tucking her back down into her bed, with its quilted pink counterpane, Morgen smiled. ‘You’re good for my morale, you know that?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Morale means your confidence—the way you think about yourself. You make me feel good when you say such sweet things to me. That’s what I mean.’
‘Good. I want you to feel good. I hate it when Nana makes you sad. I’ll say goodnight now, Mummy, I’m feeling rather tired.’
‘Okay, gorgeous. You snuggle down now, in your cosy bed, and I’ll see you in the morning. You don’t mind going back to school tomorrow?’
‘I’m looking forward to it. I miss my friends.’
‘I’m sure they’ve missed you too, poppet. Goodnight, angel, God bless.’
Back in the living room, Morgen stooped to pick up a purple stuffed elephant and an anatomically unlikely Barbie doll from the carpet, along with two dog-eared storybooks that were Neesha’s favourites. Straightening the soft velvet cushions on the couch, she flopped down wearily, at the same time reaching for the remote and flicking on the television.
The choice of viewing was pretty dismal. Between a documentary on car crime, an awful soap whose soundtrack instantly depressed, football and one of those mindless reality TV programmes where members of the public were only too eager to humiliate themselves in front of the viewing masses, there was nothing to remotely tempt her. Pushing herself to her feet again, Morgen rifled through the bottom drawer beneath the television for a video.
When her hand settled on a much-loved romantic comedy, she knew that if the trials and tribulations of the perfect couple onscreen couldn’t capture her attention then nothing would. Slipping the film into the VCR, then making a quick detour into the kitchen for a bag of crisps and some cheese, Morgen tucked her feet beneath her on the couch and settled back to enjoy the film.
When ten minutes had passed, and she realised she’d barely registered any of the action unfolding before her because her mind was unwittingly preoccupied with Conall O’Brien, she frowned deeply, then turned up the volume on the film to drive any further troublesome thoughts away. There was nothing about him she liked, she decided. Just because he was too handsome for his own good and was impressive under fire didn’t mean that she was going to join his fan club. Along with his assets he was autocratic and domineering, and clearly possessed of a heart made of stone or something equally unbreakable. Thank God he was in the UK on a purely temporary basis, as far as she knew, and as soon as either Derek was back or they found a suitable replacement, Conall O’Brien would be back on a plane to America.
‘Amen to that,’ she said aloud, munching a handful of crisps. But even the impeccable credentials of the gorgeous hero onscreen, endearingly pleading his case to the equally gorgeous but wary heroine, for once didn’t have the power to distract her from thoughts of the man she was certain she disliked intensely.
‘Get those letters done and on my desk for signature in an hour, Miss McKenzie.’
Morgen’s gaze moved from the stack of paper Conall had dropped onto her desk up to his broad shoulders in yet another classy suit as he strode back into Derek’s office and slammed the door. She shook her head from side to side and grimaced.
‘Whatever happened to “Would you prefer it if I called you Morgen”?’ she queried beneath her breath.
Obviously he’d had a change of heart overnight. Perhaps he’d worked too hard and too long and jet-lag had finally caught up with him? Hah! The man didn’t need an excuse to be ill-mannered. She’d bet her last penny it came naturally to him.
‘Enough, already!’
Irritated beyond belief at
the way he was getting to her, Morgen sifted through the impossibly untidy writing on the stacked pages before her, automatically prioritising them in order of importance. Twenty-four letters, some running to at least two pages apiece—was he trying to break some kind of record?—were not going to get typed up in an hour, no matter if her fingers were on fire. That said, she liked a challenge. Slipping off the black jacket she wore over a sleeveless pink top, she settled herself more comfortably in her seat, then swivelled round at the curved desk to face the computer at the other end.
Okay, so Conall hadn’t imagined it—this intense, completely incomprehensible instant attraction to Derek Holden’s raven-haired assistant. Just now, when he’d dropped those letters onto her desk and seen that voluptuous body of hers lovingly filling out a little black suit that, hard as it might try, did nothing to conceal those sexy curves, the wildly inappropriate desire that had stabbed through his body had completely staggered him. He’d had to retreat quickly to recover himself.
Now he stared out of the window at the familiar dome of St Paul’s cathedral and completely missed the view. Last night when he’d been unable to get to sleep he’d naturally blamed the jet-lag. But if he was absolutely honest sleep had eluded him because he’d been plagued by erotic thoughts about Morgen McKenzie that had simply refused to go away.
‘Damn!’
Curse words came easier than explanations right now. He had a lot to do today too. The phone hadn’t stopped ringing since he’d set foot in the office at eight. News of his arrival had travelled fast, and the world and his wife wanted a piece of him just now…and that included his mother. He’d promised faithfully to drop by tonight for dinner, but already he was regretting it. He wouldn’t be able to escape her reprimands about staying away for so long, and neither would he be able to avoid the usual unwanted references to him and his father.
Scribbling a reminder on a pad to get Morgen to send some flowers to his mother’s address in Marylebone, Conall pulled open the door and decided there was no time like the present. She was seated at the computer, her slim straight back towards him, so Conall swung round to the front, where she could see him.