The ice queen? That description couldn't be further from the truth, Brian mused. But Brian wasn't about to tell Taneesha that Lily had the capacity to generate more "heat" than any women he'd ever touched. Just the scent of her hair or the sound of her voice was enough to make him ache for her.
He handed the microphone to Taneesha. "We're through here," he murmured. "I'll meet you back at the station." He jogged to the entrance.
"Where are you going?" Taneesha shouted.
"I've got a few follow-up questions," he said, waving. Brian caught up to her at the elevator, smoothly stepping between her and the doors. "Hi, Lily," he murmured. "It is Lily, right? Lily G-A-L-L-A-G-H-E-R?"
Lily crossed her arms over her breasts and sent him an uneasy look. "I-I don't have anything more to say to you."
"I told you I wasn't going to back off," Brian said. "People are starting to talk about Patterson. It's only a matter of time, Lily. You can't save this guy."
"I'm going to do my job," she said, straightening her spine.
"And I'm going to do mine," he countered. "Have you had lunch yet? I know this great seafood place just a few blocks from here." He grabbed her hand, weaving his fingers through hers. "Come on. You'll love it."
Lily stared down at their tangled fingers, then suddenly yanked her hand from his. "No! I'm not going to lunch with you. I'm not going anywhere with you. We will not be seeing each other outside of my capacity as Richard Patterson's media spokesperson. And you can quote me on that."
She punched the button on the elevator over and over again, as if she were frantic to get away from him, but the doors still didn't open. A few seconds later, a maintenance man carrying a toolbox walked up beside them. "That elevator is out," he mumbled. "Some idiot hit the stop button and now it won't start. You can wait for the other one or use the west elevators."
Lily started toward the stairs and Brian had no choice but to follow. "You know Patterson is ass deep in alligators, here," he shouted. "If I don't expose him, some other news reporter will. At least with me, you know I'll get the facts straight."
"I was hired to do a job and I'm going to do it," Lily said, shoving open the stairwell door.
Brian jogged after her. "Don't you have any ethical qualms about this?"
She stopped at the first landing and turned to face him. "What does this come down to? A little piece of property with a view of the water? We're not talking about war or disease or famine here. We're talking about a shopping mall and a few restaurants and some condos. I think you're the one who needs a little perspective. Why don't you go investigate some drug dealer or murderer?"
Brian stared at her for a long moment. He was sick of talking business. There were so many more pleasant things to talk about when he was with Lily. "You're thinking about kissing me right now, aren't you," he said.
Lily gasped. "Wh-what?"
"You heard me." He glanced around the stairwell and frowned. "What the hell are we doing in here? Patterson's office is on the twentieth floor."
"I'm in shape," she said. She jogged up another flight of stairs and Brian groaned softly. Though he worked out, twenty floors was a long way up. After chasing her that far, he might not have the energy to kiss her. With a low curse, he slipped out of his jacket, dropped it on the floor and started up after her.
"You can admit it, you know," he called, his voice echoing through the stairwell.
"Admit what?"
"You like me. I'm not afraid to admit that I like you."
She stopped on the next landing, then slowly turned. Step by step, she descended. But when she was just above him, her heel caught on the edge of the step and she lurched forward. He reached out and caught her in his arms, slowly letting her body come to rest against his. Brian smiled and bent forward, waiting for her to surrender to a kiss. Five seconds later, he was still waiting.
A weak smile twitched at her lips. "Now who's thinking about kissing who?" she murmured.
"Whom," he corrected.
She pushed away from him, then smoothed her hands over the front of her suit. "This is war," she said. "And I'm not about to cozy up to the enemy."
"It doesn't have to be war," he said, leaning forward and brushing his lips over hers. He waited for a moment, sure she'd retreat up the stairs. But when she didn't, he tried again, this time testing her lips with his tongue. Lily hesitated but then opened for him, a tiny sigh slipping from her as she did.
Brian picked her up, his arms wrapped around her waist, and set her down beside him, then captured her face in his hands. Their kiss turned more intense as Lily ran her hands over his chest. Kissing Lily was always an adventure. He was never quite sure how she'd respond, but when she reciprocated, he found himself instantly caught in a vortex of desire.
Her body was soft beneath the conservative clothes. He slipped his hands under her jacket and circled her waist, then yanked her closer, her hips tight against his. Clothes were a barrier to his need and he tugged at her blouse at the same time she fumbled with the buttons of his shirt.
Why did he want her so much? He'd had other women but Lily was different. Whenever he was near her-and even when he wasn't-he needed to touch her, to kiss her… to reassure himself that she was really there. Was this all about the chase? Brian had been known to be relentless in his pursuit of the opposite sex, only to grow bored once he'd made the conquest.
His thoughts jumped back to the first night they'd spent together, to that moment when he'd "saved" her from a boring evening with a boring man. Maybe Sean had been right to warn him. His brothers had fallen victim to the Quinn curse. But Brian thought that if he just didn't believe in it then he wouldn't be affected by it.
A door creaked above them and Lily froze. He slowly drew back and gazed down at her, her eyes wide. She blinked, then swore. "That is absolutely the last time I let you kiss me." Frantically, she rearranged her clothes, then hurried up the steps.
Brian didn't follow her. Instead, he leaned back, against the wall and raked his fingers through his hair. Maybe he ought to heed her warnings. After all, he couldn't seem to control himself when he touched her. Considering that little problem, he might do something stupid-like fall in love. And recent history had proved that when a Quinn fell in love, there was no way out.
"We need a strategy," Lily said, pacing the width of the conference room. "Brian Quinn isn't going to give up."
Her mind flashed back to the kiss they'd shared in the stairwell and realized she might as well be talking about the undeniable desire between them, rather than her problems with Patterson.
Up until that kiss, Lily had maintained the delusion that she was still in control of her feelings for him. But all it had taken was a simple meeting of lips to make her realize he held some strange power over her, the power to turn her into a woman obsessed with her own lust. She just had to avoid him, that was the only solution to her problem.
"I'll just have to avoid him," Lily repeated.
She glanced around the room at Patterson's public relations staff, then forced a smile. "The injunction will be lifted within the week and we're going to schedule the ground-breaking right after that. Meanwhile, I need you all to flood the media with positive messages. We need the public to turn on Quinn. We need them to see that the waterfront project is good for Boston and that he's just stirring up trouble for his own benefit."
"But he's one of the most popular reporters in Boston," Derrick Simpson said. "His Q rating has been through the roof for a year now, especially with women."
Lily sighed. Yes, she did have a difficult job ahead of her and there was no doubt the women of Boston found him as irresistible as she did. But there had to be a way to get Brian Quinn to back off the story. Just the whiff of a scandal was enough to drive investors away. "We need to shift his focus," Lily said. "What we really need is a bigger scandal. Some public official taking a bribe or some celebrity caught sleeping with his sister-in-law."
"You can't make that happen, can you?" Margaret Kinger ask
ed.
Lily frowned. "Shift his focus?"
"No, make a celebrity sleep with his sister-in-law."
She smiled. "I'm good, but not that good. But there should be a way to keep Brian Quinn distracted." Lily quickly evaluated her options. "We could… mislead him. Make it so he's not sure which sources to believe and which to discredit. It will be difficult for him to track down the truth that he might not have time to get the story straight."
"That's a great idea," John Kostryki said. "We can plant some false leads. And then, if he's lazy and reports them without checking his sources, we've got him. His reputation as a reporter in this town will be ruined."
Lily hesitated. She shouldn't have any qualms about hitting Brian Quinn right where it hurt-in his reputation. Still, she didn't want to completely ruin him, she just wanted to keep him busy for a while, until all the furor died down. "That's a possibility," she said.
"We could catch him in a compromising situation," Allison Petrie suggested.
"I hear he has quite a reputation with the ladies," Margaret said. "If we catch him with the wrong kind of woman that might cause him to lie low for a while."
Lily found that idea downright distasteful. Plus, she couldn't ignore the current of jealousy that shot through her at the thought of Brian with another woman-especially some sexy harlot with big breasts and the appetites of a nymphomaniac. "We can consider that."
"You know, he has a record," Derrick said.
"He was a singer?" Lily asked. "Now that might be something. I mean, if he imagined himself some kind of rock star and he was really awful, we could get his record played on the local radio stations. That would be really embarrassing."
"Not that kind of record," Derrick said. "A criminal record."
Lily gasped. "Brian Quinn has a criminal record? How do you know that?"
"Mr. Patterson had him investigated after he reported on building code violations on the Minuteman Mall project."
"I read the report," Lily said. "I didn't notice any mention of a criminal record."
Margaret held out a file folder. "This is the latest report from the investigator. It came in this morning and Quinn's got a whole history with the police. They way it looks, the only reason he isn't in jail right now is that his brother is a cop."
"Did you know that Quinn actually had the nerve to crash the benefit that Richard Patterson sponsored last weekend?" Allison asked. "A whole bunch of people saw him there."
Lily snatched the folder up. "From now on, I'd like to be the first person to see the reports from the investigator. Margaret, you make sure that happens. We'll meet again tomorrow morning. I want to brainstorm a few more options."
She opened the folder and quickly scanned the report. There was a complete background piece on Brian's childhood. "We-we can use this," she murmured. Lily glanced up at the four expectant faces staring at her. They were looking to her to take the lead, but she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. Not yet. "We'll meet again tomorrow morning. I need time to look this over."
When Lily got back to her office, she didn't go inside. She wandered over to her assistant's desk and picked up her messages, then flipped through them. There were two from Brian, one with a number she recognized as the station's and the other listed as his cell phone.
"I think he might be calling for a quote," Marie said. Lily crumpled them up and tossed them both in a nearby trash can. She meant what she'd said! They were virtual enemies on opposite sides of an issue. And she would not put herself in a position to be seduced by the enemy again.
Lily slipped the investigator's report inside her bag. "I'm going to get some lunch," she said to her assistant. "And then maybe I'll walk over to the park. If Brian Quinn calls again tell him that I have nothing to say to him." She paused. "No, just tell him that I'd appreciate it if he'd stop calling. No, wait, don't say that." She shook her head. "Don't say anything. Just take a message."
As she walked out to the elevator, she couldn't contain her curiosity. The report, like the first one she'd examined, was neatly typed and meticulously researched. But this report focused more on Brian's personal life than his professional one.
The elevator opened and Lily stepped inside, joining a crowd of workers on the way down for their lunch hour. When she finally reached the lobby, she hurried outside, into a rush of pedestrians marching down the sidewalk. An unbidden surge of loneliness washed over her, as stifling as the warm, humid air.
Every day she spent in Boston, Lily was reminded that she was a stranger in this town. She had no friends, no one she could confide in, no one who might sympathize with her problems. The only person she felt close to was Brian Quinn and now she'd resolved to put him out of her life for good.
Lily sighed and walked toward the park at Post Office Square, a pretty little oasis in the midst of skyscrapers. When she reached the park, she headed right for the glass fountain and found a grassy spot nearby where she could listen to the soothing sound of water.
She spread the folder on her lap and picked up the report, skimming through it to find mention of the fund-raiser. "According to several guests," she read out loud, "Brian Quinn attended the fund-raiser sponsored by Richard Patterson, held at the Copley Plaza Hotel on Saturday, June 14. He entered without a ticket and was seen dancing with a red-haired woman in a gold dress, her identity unknown to other guests."
Lily took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. There was no mention of what Brian had done after he danced with her, nothing about them leaving together or having sex in the back of her limo. Relieved, Lily flipped back to the first part of the report and began to read. The detective had done a thorough job of describing a rather difficult childhood.
Lily read about Brian's fisherman father and his missing mother, about the difficulties in their home on Kilgore Street in South Boston, the older brother who took care of five younger siblings before becoming a cop. Another brother had become a fireman. "Conor and Dylan," she murmured. "Brendan the writer. Sean is a… private investigator." She frowned. And the youngest brother, Liam, was a freelance photographer. There was also a sister, but Lily skimmed over details of a complex history.
So far, she hadn't found anything that could be used against him. It wasn't a crime to have a bad childhood, an absent father and a mother who deserted the family when he was only three. But then she moved onto the next paragraph and she stopped. "Brian Quinn has several juvenile offences on his record including miscellaneous charges of shoplifting, vandalism, and petty theft. There is proof of an auto theft at age fifteen, but his older brother, Conor, then a rookie cop, convinced the owner to drop the charges." Grand theft auto. Now there was something that his bosses at the station probably didn't know about.
Was she willing to drag his past out into the light? Lily had been forced to play dirty on occasion, but she'd never deliberately hurt another person. And giving the public this information might seriously affect Brian's career. "Knowing his luck, it would raise his popularity," Lily muttered.
Lily lay back on the grass and covered her face with the report, blocking out the sun. She needed to relax and put all her cares and worries aside for a few minutes. Her thoughts drifted, the sound of the fountain in the background soothing her mind. But the images that filled her head weren't of pretty waterfalls and swaying trees. Instead, she saw naked bodies and disheveled clothes, historic scenery passing outside tinted windows. This time, she didn't brush the images aside, but let them linger.
"Imagine my luck."
The voice came out of nowhere and at first, Lily thought it was part of her daydream. But then she realized that she'd dozed off, right in the middle of the park. She slowly lowered the report to find a tall figure standing over her. Though the sun was behind him and she couldn't see his face, she knew who it was. She pushed up, setting the report behind her. "I don't think this has anything to do with luck. I think I must be cursed."
"You, too?" Brian asked. "I guess we have one thing in common."
She
glanced up at him and watched his gaze slowly drift from her face to her feet. She wore a business suit, hardly a sexy outfit. But then Lily noticed that her silk blouse gaped open in the front and her skirt was bunched up on her thighs. She quickly rearranged her clothes only to catch him grinning at her.
"May I sit down?" he asked.
Lily braced her hands behind her, trying to ignore the pounding of her heart. Why did he have to be so charming? Even dressed as she was, he made her feel like the sexiest woman on the planet. "No. But you can continue standing there. I forgot my sunscreen and you're providing shade."
"When I was a kid, I dreamed about a career as a tree," he said, sitting down beside her. He set a paper bag on her lap.
"What's this?" Lily asked.
"Lunch. I called your office and your assistant told me that you were probably in the park."
Lily gasped. "She told you where to find me?"
He nodded. "Right after I told her I was an old friend from college, here in Boston on business. I also told her what a lovely voice she had and that Marie was my favorite name. Hey, I have picked up a few valuable skills as an investigative reporter."
"I still can't believe she did that." Lily tossed the bag back in his direction and got up, tucking the report under her arm before he had a chance to see it. "I have to go." She hurried toward the sidewalk, then glanced back at, to find him smiling at her.
But the smile quickly turned into a frown. He scrambled to his feet and came after her. "Lily, look out for that-"
Her foot caught on something and she looked down and found it tangled in the wheels of a bicycle lying on the grass. She felt herself falling. There was nothing to stop her from tumbling on top of the bike… until she felt a strong hand on her elbow. When she looked back, she found Brian standing next to her.
"Be careful," he murmured. "Watch where you're going." He smiled as he smoothed his palm along her back and she felt her defenses waver. "Come on. Have lunch with me." He walked over and retrieved the bag.
"You're not going to take no for an answer, are you."
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