by Kris Pearson
“Please, not until I’ve finished complimenting you,” he said, eyeing the small machine.
“If that’s your idea of being polite, you’re on the wrong track.”
“You look more a tiger than a meek little pussy cat.”
“Damn right! You’re a control-freak. I don’t like being bossed around in front of other people. Who said you could grab my neck and force my head down when I had the hiccups? I almost overbalanced.”
“In shoes like those, I imagine it would be easy...” He cast an admiring glance down to her ankles.
“Try being five-foot-three. I bet you wouldn’t like it,” she said, running her scorching gaze down his very long legs in return.
Alexandre imagined he felt the leather burn and crisp around his thighs, his knees, his calves, and ankles in turn. Did those gorgeous big brown eyes have built-in lasers?
“Miss Lush,” he began.
“Ms.”
“Ms Lush. I was perhaps hoping you were single?”
She rolled her eyes at that. “I just bet you were.”
“You do a lot of betting, Ms Lush. In less than sixty seconds you’ve bet I kiss the hand of every woman I meet...that I wouldn’t like being five-foot-three, and that I was hoping you were single.”
Another sharp breath. Another delightful lift of her outraged breasts.
“No, I wasn’t betting you hoped I was single. I was being...facetious.”
He hid a further smile. “But you’re still a betting woman?”
“I like a little flutter,” she allowed. “A few dollars each way on the horses, a lottery ticket now and then. Normal Kiwi stuff.”
“And that’s where the danger lies,” he couldn’t help inserting. “So many people get swept up in the excitement of gambling they take ever more unwise chances. You’re not one of these unwise people, Ms Lush?”
“Oh for God’s sake, call me Kerri. Ms Lush sounds like an old-fashioned school-teacher.”
Alex leaned back in his chair and finally allowed his grin to show. “A very curvaceous one, possibly. So you prefer Kerri to Kerrigan? And yet Kerrigan is pretty and most unusual.”
“My mother’s maiden name. Her surname. I was supposed to be a boy.”
“Which would have robbed the world of a beautiful woman.”
“Oh puh-lease...” She reached out and clicked the little recorder on.
“So the flirting really is done and now it’s on to business?” he asked, enjoying the faint flush staining her cheeks. Enjoying more than that, if he was honest. Kerri Lush looked like a firecracker about to explode. Small but delightfully dangerous. Her eyes sparkled with intense tawny fire. Her hair swirled around her head in a bouncing dark cloud. It appeared to have very fine bright streaks running through it at least as red as her sexy shoes.
“Yes, business,” she snapped. “This is scheduled to appear in the Saturday morning paper. We run a lift-out called ‘People’—feel-good stories and so on.”
“And I’m a feel-good story?”
“Well, you’ve donated a whole building to a very worthy cause. I presume you didn’t do it only because there’d be tax advantages to the deal?”
Alex tucked his tongue into his cheek at such candor.
“Are there?” he asked, with the most innocent expression he could manage.
Kerri sent him a look of disbelief.
“Well, perhaps there are, but it was more to honor my mother’s memory.”
“The Isabelle Beaufort Centre—I’m sure she’d be pleased. You said she was a compulsive gambler, so I presume you didn’t have much money to start with?”
He nodded, and waited for her next question.
“So how did you get it?” She bit her lip and managed to look curiously contrite. “I’m sorry—that sounds terrible. I’m afraid I don’t know much about you yet.”
Alex wondered how he could deflect her interest. That was the question he had no intention of answering. But the prickle of unease shimmied away as she added, “The journalist who was supposed to be doing this interview went into premature labor at lunchtime and your story was re-assigned to me in a hurry. I’ll bet she’s not having a great time of it right now.”
“You’re making bets again, Ms Kerrigan Lush.”
“For heaven’s sake, it’s only a figure of speech!”
“Touchy,” he teased. “Positively defensive.” Relieved the initial source of his wealth had been glossed-over, he hoped it would stay that way.
“I’m not trying to hide the fact I gamble a little. Everyone gambles on something. I don’t gamble on stupid stuff.”
“So what odds do you consider acceptable?”
She narrowed her eyes, and Alexandre could have sworn he felt them cutting right into his flesh. He was enjoying their sharp exchange more than he’d enjoyed anything in months. Something about her was so alive.
“Not Russian Roulette—six to one is beyond a joke.”
“Ten to one?”
“Getting better. Still not good.”
“For example?” He leaned further forward in the chair, pleased with the excuse to watch her animated face a little longer before they got back to the interview.
“Well...” She pushed her hair back from her eyes and gazed upwards for a moment, thinking apparently of her friend who’d just been rushed to hospital. “The chances of getting a woman pregnant are about ten to one, I suppose. She’s only really fertile for about three days in every month. That’s one instance.”
“On those days the chances are a lot higher.”
“Right into Russian Roulette territory,” Kerri agreed. “Much more than that. But there are other factors—her age, her fertility, his fertility... And you have to know when those dangerous days are. She might not tell you. Could be you’d waste all that effort with huge odds against you.”
“I’ve never considered making love a wasted effort.”
“Maybe your ‘odds’ aren’t all that huge, either,” she said with a naughty grin.
Alexandre exploded with laughter. “My ‘odds’ have never been found wanting,” he shot back.
“So you claim.”
He watched as the expression of mischief faded from her lively face.
“Dammit,” she said, and took a deep breath. “This is terrible. We need to get back to the interview. I can’t write about your huge—er—odds, although our readers might be absolutely fascinated.”
His laughter escaped again. Somehow, he felt freer on this far side of the world, away from the ever-increasing weight of his responsibilities in Europe.
“Dinner, Ms Lush? I sense the conversation could be great fun. Are you free tonight, by any miracle?”
“What do you think the chances are?”
“About a hundred to one, but I’m asking anyway.”
She smiled, and kept him waiting a little longer.
“That could be very pleasant, Monsieur Beaufort. As long as you don’t keep grilling me about my bad habits, of course. They’re not so very bad, you know.”
“And as long as I don’t try to get you pregnant, I suppose?”
CHAPTER TWO
Alex bit the inside of his cheek at her outraged expression, and watched with enjoyment as she struggled to control her sassy tongue.
She finally managed a cool “Not a hope in hell.”
He sat there, strangely exhilarated. He considered himself a serious and responsible man. He was well-known in France, with an important position to guard, and he conducted his social life with rigid control. It felt amazing to be flirting with such ease and crossing the boundaries of decency without the restraining ropes of caution that usually held him back. Get her pregnant? Where had that come from?
Well, not get her pregnant. But that was really no better because it still conjured up visions of lips moving sensuously over aroused flesh...pleasure delayed or deflected, and therefore all the more delicious.
Something primal urged him on.
“You think?” he ask
ed, pushing down with one foot so his chair rolled closer to hers until they were knee to knee. Their warm flesh pressed together, but she didn’t flinch away.
“You’re not much of a threat,” she taunted.
He wondered if this was her natural sass or a dare. The air thickened around them, and he sucked in a suddenly necessary breath.
“I wasn’t planning to threaten you,” he murmured. “Just take you out to dinner.”
Her mouth curled at the corners as she stared him down, nodding slowly.
Then, unbelievably, she parted her thighs and pushed her own chair just a little closer. He heard the scratch of sheer stockings against leather—a small suggestive whisper—and felt her knee slide a few snug inches past his. He clamped his legs together, holding her there. Brown eyes flared to lock with blue.
Kerri registered what she’d just done and found undoing it was impossible. The grip of his long, strong, leather-clad thighs allowed no escape.
Trapped and astounded, she stared at him, trying to find a few casual words to extricate herself with. The faintest waft of almond fragrance floated in the air.
No, no words. Her brain wasn’t processing efficiently now he was so close.
She could see every tiny spike of his dark day-old stubble. Every curving black eyelash with its unexpected golden tip. All the blue-on-blue stripes in his eyes.
She dragged in a breath and smelled almonds again. His cologne? Something European and expensive? Why didn’t he smell like leather?
“Why don’t you smell like leather?” she asked, immediately wishing she hadn’t.
The slightest twitch of his lips told her he knew what she was really saying.
“It’s called Cognac. You like it?” He reached over and caught her hand. Drew it slowly up his neck and rubbed it against the skin of his jaw as though he was a big cat claiming territory. Kerri felt the pounding pulse in his throat, then the bristly rasp of his beard as her fingers slid higher.
His hand held hers prisoner. He turned his face a few degrees and his lips slid over her palm. Warm firm lips. Warm soft breath. Such an intimate and unexpected sensation that her small whimper of want and appreciation escaped into the shivering air between them.
He drew in a breath.
“Now I can smell me on your skin.”
He moved his face so his lips grazed over the sensitive inside of her wrist and part-way up her forearm.
“And I can smell you, too. I like you better than my Cognac.”
“There’s...nothing...there,” she stammered.
“There’s you. Not perfume—your own scent. Sweet as sugar.”
Kerri stared at him, snared by his eyes, his hand, his thighs—desperate to move away but apparently as transfixed as a small bird by the unwavering gaze of a snake.
No-one’s eyes had ever held hers like that. No-one had invited, indeed demanded, physical contact so soon. Within seconds of meeting her he’d had his hand on her nape and her face practically against his trousers. Now he’d thrust his knee between hers, had drawn her fingers against his face, and run his lips over her skin. He’d also pushed up her sleeve so he could draw her scent into his long straight nose.
And she’d said he wasn’t much of a threat?
“Now you,” he said, aching seconds later as he brushed her hand down his face. Again she felt his breath against her skin, but this time there was no contact from his lips. She wanted his lips—that soft slow drift of his warm mouth over her wrist, so much more personal than the perfunctory kiss he’d mockingly given her fingers when she’d first entered his office.
And maybe his lips on her wrist weren’t nearly enough? His lips on her neck would be nicer. His lips settling at the join of her shoulders and neck, and then nibbling higher to that tender spot just below her ear, and down the sensitive edge of her jaw until they met with hers.
What the hell is happening to me?
“Oh God,” she muttered. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what, cherie?”
“Don’t be like this.”
“But I thought you liked the scent of my Cognac and wanted more?”
“Mmmm...”
“So here’s more.”
And, limp as a rag-doll, she felt him moving her arm and settling her hand over her own nose and mouth. She sniffed. Yes, the almond smell was stronger, and she just bet if she got close enough to breathe in properly he’d smell even better than this faint fragrance her own skin had absorbed from his.
If she was sugar, maybe he’d be brown sugar – deeper, richer, tanned and foreign...
His mobile suddenly intruded with a short burst of Beethoven. Cursing under his breath, Alex relaxed the clamp of his knees, released her hand and pushed back his chair so he could check the caller ID.
“I must take this,” he apologized after checking the screen. “It’s the important call I had to defer earlier. Leave your home address with Lydia,” he added. “Wear trousers and a warm jacket and we’ll conclude our interview this evening.”
Kerri shook her head and lurched up out of her chair. The spell was broken.
“What?”
“For the dinner you agreed to. A very nice dinner. I’ll take you somewhere you’ll find interesting, and then we can talk.”
She stared at him, seeing only temptation and danger.
“No, I couldn’t possibly have dinner with you now. Not after...that.”
He smiled—a warm and wicked grin. “That was nothing, cherie.”
Kerri grabbed her briefcase and raced from the room, more flustered and overheated than she could ever remember.
Nothing?
Nothing to him, maybe.
To her it had been a revelation the scent of a man could be such a turn-on. That she’d enjoyed his touch so intensely.
Wanted more and dared not take it.
As for leaving her home address with Lydia—not in a million years! She pulled his office door closed behind her and huffed out a huge breath of frustration.
How had he done that? And worse, why had she let him?
Encouraged him, even?
It was no way for a competent journalist to behave. She had absolutely nothing for her article in Saturday’s paper. She’d have to try and cobble something together from his speech and bits she could glean from Google...
“Merci beaucoup. Au revoir.”
Alexandre concluded his phone call, placed the mobile back on the desk, and began to pace to and fro with agitation.
What the hell? He’d never grabbed for a woman like that. Never felt such a ridiculous rush of—what?
Testosterone?
Possession?
Possession had him worried; that was far too intimate a word for what had happened. But the instant he’d seen her pupils dilate and her lips part in that soft astounded way...the moment he’d registered the mutual attraction...he’d been out of control. He’d had to pull his chair closer to hers, had to touch her, had to draw her hand against his face so he could breathe in her scent and somehow imprint himself on her in return.
And now she’d turned down his dinner invitation. He wanted to enjoy her tart company over a good meal. And take the opportunity to talk some sense into her too. The girl simply couldn’t go around flirting and letting men touch her like that. The unscrupulous ones would take advantage of her.
The unscrupulous ones like you? his rock-hard erection suggested hopefully.
A few minutes later, once he appeared less rampant, he strode out to find Lydia, mindful his next appointment was now close.
“Have you seen Ms Lush again?”
“I thought she was still with you, Monsieur Beaufort.”
He shook his head and scanned the remaining people in the big room. No small breathless reporter in red stilettos was anywhere in sight. He tried to suppress his annoyance. After all, it wasn’t poor devoted Lydia’s fault.
“She was going to leave an address with you,” he added. “When you find it, please see that I get it.”
Lydia inclined her head as he turned on his heel and loped away.
Five minutes later Alex paced his office, seething. The delectable Ms Lush had not left her address. Lydia’s search had turned up only a duplicate business card. Kerri had decided to avoid him, and he reluctantly conceded he couldn’t blame her.
He needed to apologize for his behavior.
He closed his eyes and the scene sprang all too clearly into his mind. The tension between them had been electric. There’d been such flirty challenge in her big brown eyes that the urge to plaster himself up against her compact curvy body had been irresistible. He’d simply had to touch her and inhale her enticing scent, but he’d neither planned nor expected to enjoy it so much.
Then he grinned. The perfect excuse to see her again had just presented itself. Her mini-recorder still sat on the corner of his desk. He clicked it off and rewound it to the start of the tape, wanting to hear her voice again. Wanting to relive the conversation that had just jerked his body and brain so alive.
He shook his head as he heard her admit so blithely to her enjoyment of gambling, closed his eyes as his own voice claimed he’d never considered making love a wasted effort, pictured again her naughty grin as she suggested his ‘odds’ were not that huge. Then was appalled to hear himself say “As long as I don’t try to get you pregnant, I suppose”.
Hell—he’d only been joking—a flippant comment in a flirty conversation. It sounded terrible now. Had it sounded as bad to her?
A second or two later had come her cool recovery of “Not a hope in hell.”
He’d deserved that. But somehow it had turned him on so much he’d rolled his chair towards hers until they were knee-to-knee. Yes, that was the small shuffling noise of it. And then the answering shuffle of her chair and her breathy enquiry of “Why don’t you smell like leather?”
The almost-silence must be where he’d reached for her, brought her hand over to caress his face, and inhaled the perfume of her skin. And that tiny whimper told him he wasn’t the only one on fire. Then there were soft to-and-fro comments until her clearly anguished “Oh God. Don’t.”