Rumors on the Red Carpet

by Carole Mortimer

  She was so damned stubborn, as well as ridiculously proud, that Lucien hadn’t even been able to guess what her reaction might be to his having had her things delivered to her at that disgustingly downbeat hotel in which she had chosen to stay the night rather than accept his offer of a room at Steele Heights. He certainly hadn’t expected that she would actually pay him a visit at his office in Steele Tower.

  And he should have done—Cynthia Hammond was nothing if not predictably unpredictable. ‘How determined is she, Ben?’ He sighed wearily, already far too familiar with Cyn’s stubbornness.

  ‘Very.’ His PA’s mouth twitched, as if he were holding back a smile.

  The wisest thing to do—the safest thing to do for Lucien’s own peace of mind, which would be best served by never seeing the beautiful Cynthia Hammond again—would be to instruct Security to show her the door...as if she didn’t already know exactly where it was! But if Cyn was determined enough to see him, then Lucien didn’t doubt that she’d just sit there and wait until it was time for him to leave at the end of the day.

  He pulled back the cuff on his shirt and glanced at the plain gold watch on his wrist. ‘I don’t leave for my next appointment for ten minutes, right?’

  ‘Correct, Mr Steele.’

  He nodded abruptly. ‘Have Security show her up.’

  Lucien leant back in his high-backed white leather chair as Ben left the office, knowing this was probably a mistake. He already knew, on just their few minutes’ acquaintance the evening before, that Cynthia Hammond was trouble.

  Enough to have caused him a night full of dreams of caressing that pearly skin, of making love to her in every position possible—so much so that he had woken this morning with an arousal that had refused to go down until he’d stood under the spray of an ice-cold shower!

  He had even had Paul drive by the hotel where he knew she had spent the night on his way to visit Jonathan Miller’s apartment this morning. The neighbourhood was bad enough—full of drug addicts and hookers—but the hotel itself was beyond description, and fully explained Dex’s concern when he had telephoned Lucien the night before to tell him exactly which hotel Cyn had checked into and to ask what he should do about it. What the hell had possessed her to stay in such a disreputable hovel?

  Money. Lucien answered his own question. He knew from his conversation earlier that morning with Jonathan Miller that Cyn really was exactly what she had said she was: a student working as a waitress to put herself through university, and just over here for a week’s visit.

  Her finances were not Lucien’s problem, of course, but he had been infuriated all over again just looking at the outside of that disgusting hotel earlier, imagining that vulnerable loveliness protected only by the flimsy door Dex had described to him. Dex had been so worried about the situation Lucien believed the other man would have decided to stand guard over her for the night whether Lucien had instructed him to do so or not!

  Just another example of the trouble Cynthia Hammond caused with her—

  ‘Wow! This is a beautiful building, Lucien! And this office is just incredible!’

  Lucien also gave a wow, but inwardly, as he glanced across the room to where Cynthia Hammond had just breezily entered his office. A Cynthia Hammond whose black hair was once again a straight curtain swaying silkily to just below her shoulders. The beautiful delicacy of her face appeared free of make-up apart from a coral-coloured lipgloss and the glow of those electric blue eyes. She was dressed in a violent pink cropped sleeveless top that left her shoulders and arms bare and revealed at least six inches of her bare and slender midriff—as well as the fact that she wore no bra beneath it. And below that bare midriff was the tightest pair of skinny low-rider blue denims Lucien had ever seen in his life. So tight that he wondered whether Cyn wore any underwear beneath...

  And that was just the front view. Ben’s admiring glance, as he lingered in the doorway long enough to watch Cyn stroll across the spacious office, was evidence that the back view was just as sexily enticing!

  Cyn did casual elegance well—so much so that Lucien felt decidedly overdressed in his perfectly tailored black suit, navy blue silk shirt and black silk tie. ‘Don’t you have some work to do, Ben?’ he prompted harshly as he stood up—and then sat down again as he realised his arousal had sprung back to instant and eager attention. The benefits of his icy cold shower earlier this morning obviously had no effect when once again faced with the enticing Cynthia Hammond.

  Trouble with a capital T!

  ‘Thanks, Ben.’ Thia turned to smile at the PA before he closed the door on his way out, then returned her gaze to the impressive office rather than the man seated behind the desk, putting off the moment when she would have to face the disturbing Lucien Steele. Just a brief glance in his direction as she had entered the cavernous office had been enough for her to feel as if all the air had been sucked from her lungs, and her nerve-endings were all tingling on high alert.

  This black and chrome office was not only beautiful, it was huge. Carpeted completely in black, it had an area set aside for two white leather sofas and a bar serving coffee as well as alcohol, and another area with a glass and marble conference table, as well as Lucien Steele’s own huge desk, bookshelves lining the wall behind him, and an outer wall completely in glass, giving a panoramic view of the New York skyline.

  It really was the biggest office Thia had ever seen, but even so her gaze was drawn as if by a magnet inevitably back to the man seated behind the chrome and black marble desk. The office was easily big enough to accommodate half a dozen executive offices, and yet somehow—by sheer force of will, Thia suspected—Lucien Steele still managed to dominate, to possess, all the space around him.

  As he did Thia?

  Maybe she should have power-dressed for this meeting rather than deciding to go casual? She did have one slim black skirt and a white blouse with her—they would certainly have blended in with the stark black, white and chrome décor of his office. Much more so than her shockingly pink cropped top.

  Oh, well, it was too late to worry about that now. She would have to work with what she had.

  ‘Say what you have to say, Cyn, and then go,’ Lucien Steele bit out coldly. ‘I have to leave for another appointment in five minutes.’

  Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at Lucien. A Lucien who was just as knee-tremblingly gorgeous this morning as the previous night. Thia had convinced herself during her restless night of half-sleep that no one could possibly be that magnetically handsome, that she must have drunk too much of the Carews’ champagne and imagined all that leashed sexual power.

  She had been wrong. Lucien Steele was even more overpoweringly attractive in the clear light of day, with the sun shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows turning his hair that amazing blue-black, his bronzed face dominated by those silver eyes, and his features so hard and chiselled an artist would weep over his male beauty. And as for the width of those muscled shoulders—!

  Time for her to stop drooling! ‘Nice to see that you’re still living up to my previous description of you as being arrogant and rude,’ she greeted with saccharine sweetness.

  He continued to look at her coldly with those steel-grey eyes. ‘I doubt you want to hear my opinion of you after the stunt you pulled last night.’

  She felt the colour warm her cheeks and knew he had to be referring to the hotel in which she had spent the night, which Dex would no doubt have described to his employer in graphic detail. ‘I didn’t have the funds to stay anywhere else.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have needed any funds if you had just accepted the room I offered you at Steele Towers,’ Lucien reminded her harshly.

  ‘Accepting the room you offered me at Steele Towers would have put me under obligation to you,’ she came back, just as forcefully.

  Lucien stilled, eyes narrowing to steely slits.
‘Are you telling me,’ he asked softly, ‘that the reason you refused my offer last night was because you believed I would expect to share that bedroom with you for the night as payment?’

  ‘Well, you can’t blame me for thinking that after the way you came on to me outside on the balcony and then again in the lift!’

  Lucien raised dark brows. ‘I can’t blame you for thinking that?’

  ‘Well...no...’ Cyn eyed him, obviously slightly nervous of his quiet tone and the calmness of his expression.

  And she was wise to be! Because inwardly Lucien was seething, furious—more furious than he remembered being for a very long time, if ever. Even during the visit he had paid to Jonathan Miller’s apartment earlier this morning he had remained totally in control—coldly and dangerously so. But just a few minutes spent in the infuriating Cynthia Hammond’s company and Lucien was ready to put his hands about her throat and throttle her!

  If it weren’t for the fact that he knew he would much rather put his hands on another part of her anatomy, starting with that tantalisingly bare and silky midriff, and stroke her instead...

  * * *

  Thia took a step back as Lucien Steele stood up and moved round to the front of his desk. His proximity, and the flat canvas shoes she was wearing, meant she had to tilt her head back in order to be able to look him in the face. A face that made her wish she were an artist. What joy, what satisfaction, to commit those hard and mesmerising features to canvas. Especially if Lucien could be persuaded into posing in traditional Apache clout cloth, with oil rubbed into the bare bronzed skin of his chest and arms, emphasising all the dips and hollows of those sleek muscles—

  ‘What are you thinking about, Cyn?’

  She looked up guiltily as she realised her appreciative gaze had actually wandered down to that muscled chest as she imagined him bare from the waist up—. ‘I—you—nice suit.’ She gave him a falsely bright smile.

  Lucien Steele’s mouth tilted sceptically, as if he knew exactly what she had been thinking. ‘Thanks,’ he drawled derisively. ‘But I believe we were discussing your reckless behaviour last night and your reasons for it?’ His voice hardened and all humour left his expression. ‘Do you have any idea what could have happened to you if Dex hadn’t stayed outside your room all night?’

  She had a pretty good idea, yes. ‘It was stupid of me. I accept that.’

  ‘Do you?’ he bit out harshly.

  She nodded. ‘That’s why I’m here, actually. I wanted to thank you.’ She grimaced. ‘For allowing Dex to stand guard last night. For having my things delivered to the hotel this morning. And for sending that keycard, in the envelope Dex gave me, for a suite at Steele Heights.’

  For all her expectations of what Lucien Steele might have put in that vellum envelope Dex had handed her this morning, there had been nothing in it but a keycard for a suite at Steele Heights, which he had obviously booked for her.

  Thia had wrestled with her pride over accepting, of course, along with that old adage about accepting sweets from strangers. This was a different sort of suite, of course, but she told herself it was still sensible to be wary. But pride and wariness weren’t going to put a roof over her head tonight, and she couldn’t possibly go back to Jonathan’s.

  Lucien leant back against his desk and seemed to guess some of her thoughts. ‘I trust you’ve overcome your scruples and moved in there now?’

  ‘Yes.’ Thia grimaced. Just the thought of that luxurious suite—the sitting room, bedroom and equally beautiful adjoining bathroom—was enough for her to know she had done the right thing. It might take her a while, but she fully intended to reimburse Lucien for his generosity.

  He quirked one dark brow. ‘Does that mean you no longer mind feeling under obligation to me?’

  Thia looked up at him sharply, unable to read anything from his mocking expression. ‘I think the question should be do you believe I’m under any obligation to you?’

  ‘Let me see...’ He crossed his elegantly clad legs at the ankles as he studied her consideringly. ‘I left a perfectly good party last night because I thought we were going on somewhere to have a drink together. A drink that never happened. You flounced off in a snit after I offered to drive you somewhere, which greatly inconvenienced me as Dex was then forced to stand guard over your room all night. And I was put to the trouble this morning of asking your ex-boyfriend to pack up your belongings in that hideous lime-green suitcase before having my driver deliver it to that seedy hotel.’ He gave a glance at the slender gold watch on his wrist. ‘Your unexpected visit here this morning means I am now already three minutes late leaving for my next appointment. So what do you think, Cyn? Are you obligated to me?’

  Well, when he put it like that... ‘Maybe,’ Thia allowed with a pained wince.

  ‘I would say there’s no maybe about it.’ He slowly straightened to his full height of several inches over six feet, that silver gaze fixed on her unblinkingly as he took a step forward.

  Thia took a step back as she was once again overwhelmed by the unique lemon and musk scent of Lucien Steele. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look as if I’m doing?’

  He was standing so close now she could feel the warmth he exuded from his body against the bareness of her midriff and arms. His face—mouth—only was inches away from her own as he lowered his head slightly.

  She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘It looks to me as if you’re trying to intimidate me!’

  He gave a slow and mocking smile as he regarded her through narrowed lids. ‘Am I succeeding?’

  ‘You must know that you intimidate everyone.’

  ‘I’m not interested in everyone, Cyn, just you.’

  Thia’s heart was beating such a loud tattoo in her chest that she thought Lucien must be able to hear it. Or at least see the way her breasts were quickly rising and falling as she tried to drag air into her starved lungs. ‘You’re standing far too close to me,’ she protested weakly.

  He tilted his head, bringing those chiselled lips even closer to hers. ‘I like standing close to you.’

  She realised she liked standing close to Lucien too. That she liked him. That she wanted to do so much more than stand close to him. She wanted Lucien to pull her into his arms and kiss her. To make love to her.

  Which was strange when she had never felt the least inclination to make love with any man before now. But Lucien wasn’t just any man. He was dark and dangerous and overpoweringly, mesmerisingly, sexually attractive—a combination Thia had never come across before now. She knew her breasts had swelled, the nipples hard nubs, pressing against her cropped top, and between her thighs she was damp, aching. For Lucien Steele’s touch!

  As if he was able to read that hunger in her face, Lucien’s pupils dilated and his head slowly lowered, until those beautiful sculptured lips laid gentle but hungry siege to hers.

  Thia felt as if she had been jolted with several thousand volts of electricity. And heat. Such burning heat coursing through her. She stepped in closer to that hard, unyielding body and her arms moved up and over Lucien’s wide shoulders as if of their own volition. The warmth of his strong hands spanned the slenderness of her bare waist as her fingers became entangled in that silky black hair at his nape, her lips parting as she lost herself in the heat of his kiss.

  * * *

  Trouble...

  Oh, yes, Cyn Hammond, with her black hair, electric-blue eyes, beautiful face and deliciously enticing body, was definitely Trouble with a capital T...

  But at this moment, with the softness of her responsive lips parted beneath his, his hands caressing, enjoying the feel of the soft perfection of her bare midriff, Lucien didn’t give a damn about that.

  Nothing had changed since last night. If anything he wanted her more than he had then.

  Again. Right
here.

  And right now!

  Lucien deepened the kiss even as he moulded her slender curves against his own much harder ones, intoxicated, lost in Cyn’s taste as he ran his tongue along the pouting softness of her bottom lip. Groaning low in his throat, he let his tongue caress past those addictive lips and into the heat beneath, plunging, possessing that heat as his hands moved restlessly, caressingly, down the length of her spine. Soon Lucien was able to cup that shapely bottom and pull her snugly into and against the pulsing length of his arousal.

  The softness of her thighs felt so good against his, so hot and welcoming. He shifted, the hardness of his shaft now cupped and cushioned in that softness, and moved one of his hands to cup her breast through her T-shirt. It was a perfect fit into the palm of his hand, the nipple hard as an unripe berry as Lucien brushed the soft pad of his thumb across it and heard Cyn’s gasp of pleasure, felt her back arching, pressing her breast harder into his cupping hand in a silent plea.

  Her skin felt as smooth as silk beneath Lucien’s fingertips as he slipped his hand beneath the bottom of her top to cup her bare breast—

  * * *

  Thia wrenched her mouth from Lucien’s and pulled out of his arms before taking a stumbling step backwards—as if those few inches in any way nullified Lucien’s sexual potency, or the devastation wrought upon her senses by that hungry kiss and those caressing hands!

  ‘No...’ she breathed shakily, her cheeks ablaze with embarrassed colour as she attempted to straighten her top over breasts that pulsed and ached for the pleasure she had just denied them.

  Lucien’s gaze was hooded. There was a flush across those high cheekbones, a nerve pulsing in his clenched jaw. ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ Thia repeated more firmly. ‘This is—I don’t do this.’

  ‘“This” being...?’

  ‘Seduction in a zillionaire’s office!’

  He arched one dark brow. ‘How many zillionaires do you know?’