“Whatever would get me this job.”
“Real inspiring. Why didn’t you respond to the memo I sent last week?”
“If I spent all my time reading your memos, how would I get anything done?”
“You’ve installed miles of wiring that aren’t in the specs.”
“We’re ahead of schedule, so why are you concerned?”
“I suppose you’ll say the same about the cancellation of the prototype cosmic-energy converter?”
He merely arched a brow.
She frowned. Before she’d known about his lies, she’d shrugged off his changes to necessary modifications. But could it be more?
In a desperate attempt to suppress her frustration, Vivianne reminded herself how far she’d come. Peering at the Draco’s shiny metal, she had difficulty believing they’d built this ship in just over three months. Almost every system was a new design, and while the number of things that could go wrong was literally infinite, she had high hopes for success.
“If the story of your doctored credentials leaks, our client may get cold feet,” she explained.
“Chen won’t back out.” Jordan sounded completely certain.
She didn’t bother to keep the exasperation from her voice. “Billionaires willing to buy a spaceship in order to search the galaxy for the Holy Grail aren’t a dime a dozen.”
Jordan grunted.
“If Chen does back out, I’ll have to refund his investment. And with the way you’ve been spending, not even I have that much credit.”
“Down to your last few billion, are you?” Jordan teased without glancing in her direction.
She clenched her fists in irritation. “That’s not the point. Maybe we can break the news, spin it in our favor.” She pictured an advantageous story. Something like “Genius Engineer Discovered.” “Then the article could go on to praise you and some little-known college. I’ll have my PR department put together a package.”
“Not a good idea.”
His blue eyes glittered dangerously, and his response made her uneasy. Something wasn’t right. He should be grateful that she was willing to fix the publicity nightmare he’d created. Instead he was acting like a man with something else to hide. But what?
“Do you always make contingencies for contingencies?” he asked.
She snorted. Orphaned at age ten, Vivianne had become a ward of the state. Control became her lifeline. She planned her days from start to finish. She arranged her appointments, both business and personal, to the minute, and any disruption was cause to work twice as hard to get back on schedule. She’d used her obsession to earn herself a first-class education and to build a successful small business into a worldwide conglomerate.
The downside of running a huge company, however, was that she had to rely on others. Brilliant engineers like Jordan didn’t give a damn about her minute-to-minute expectations. He got the job done—but he certainly didn’t do things her way.
“In your case, I haven’t planned enough.”
Jordan rubbed his ear and stood, reminding her just how tall and broad he was. But if he was attempting to use his size to intimidate her, he’d learn she didn’t back down. He was, after all, her employee.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked. “You have someone else who can build the Draco on budget and under deadline?” He didn’t wait for her reply. They both knew the answer was no.
“Where did you go to school?”
Jordan shrugged. “Here and there.”
Her blood pressure shot up ten points, but she did her best to keep her temper under control. “Could you be a little more specific?”
He shot her a nonapologetic smile that was way too charming. “I’m pretty much self-taught.”
Hell. She needed more than a damn charming smile to convince her he hadn’t been educated on another planet. That he wasn’t a spy.
“You don’t have a PhD?”
He didn’t answer.
Vivianne reminded herself that she’d dealt with many difficult situations in the last few years. She’d funded archaeologist Lucan Roarke’s risky mission to a moon named Pendragon to find the Holy Grail. While he hadn’t brought back the Grail, he had found a cure for Earth’s infertility problem.
Vivianne stared at the scales on the insides of her wrists. Like one-tenth of the population, she could now shapeshift into a dragon and fly.
Too bad the vaccine hadn’t increased her intelligence. How could Jordan have fooled her so easily? More importantly, what was he hiding? What else hadn’t he told her?
“What about job experience?”
“Nothing verifiable.”
“I suppose you fudged the glowing recommendations, too?” Her pulse pounded, and she massaged her aching temple. “Who the hell are you?”
“You might want to take an aspirin—”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Her sarcasm escaped unchecked. “Oh, excuse me, you aren’t a doctor of anything, are you?”
“I don’t need a medical degree to see that your head hurts and you’re taking it out on me.” His tone was calm, low, and husky, and that she found it sexy irked her even more.
“So now you’re a shrink.”
He’d barely glanced at her before turning to work on his beloved circuits, but it was so like him to notice details, even her wincing in pain.
Vivianne willed Jordan to turn around. “How did you do it? It’s as if you appeared in Barcelona six months ago. Until then, you had no credit. You attended no schools. Even your birth records are fake. I can’t find anyone who knew you before you walked into my office to apply for a job.”
“And you’ve never regretted it.”
“Until now.” Damn him.
“You don’t mean that.” Jordan shrugged. “You don’t regret letting me build you this ship.”
Vivianne hadn’t built up her company by allowing handsome men to sweet-talk her into trusting them or by ignoring urgent government warnings. Both Vivianne and the Tribes were after the same goal—both wanted the Grail. So it was very possible that the reason her chief engineer had faked his past was because he was a spy—for the Tribes.
Feeling sick to her stomach, Vivianne’s tone snapped with authority. “Jordan, put down your tools. You can’t work on the Draco until security clears you.”
In typical Jordan fashion, he kept right on working. “Don’t you want to see if the new engine’s going to work?”
“We’ll straighten that out later.” Her temper flared because Jordan knew just how to pique her interest. From the get-go, the engines had been a major issue. It almost broke her heart to know that the Draco might never fly now that she was pulling him off the project.
“I’m about ready to test a new power source.”
“What are you talking about? What new power source?”
“The Ancient Staff.” Jordan reached to a sheath he wore on his belt and drew out an object that resembled a tree branch with symbols carved into the bark. When he flicked his wrist, the rod telescoped and expanded with a metallic click. Extended to five feet, the Ancient Staff gave off an otherworldly shimmer unlike anything Vivianne had ever seen.
The air around the staff glittered like heat reflecting off hot pavement. It was as if the staff folded and compressed the space around it, the eerie effect and haze continuously rippling outward.
She peered at Jordan. The cords in his neck were tight, his broad shoulders tense as if he were bracing for her reaction.
She tried to tamp down a pinch of panic. “Don’t move.”
He turned to place the staff into position. “The Ancient Staff will supply far more power to the Draco’s engines than a cosmic converter.”
That staff wasn’t in the plans. It hadn’t ever been discussed. For all she knew, once he attached the strange power source to the Draco, they’d all blow up. Unnerved, she reached for her handheld communicator to call security, but there was no time. It would take only a second for him to snap the Ancient Staff into the housing.
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She’d have to stop him herself. “Turn it off.”
“The staff doesn’t have an off switch.”
Vivianne jerked back a step. “Don’t attach that thing to my ship.”
“It’s meant to—”
“I said no.” Mouth dry with suspicion, she clamped her hand on his shoulder.
Before she could yank him back, Jordan snapped the rod into place. The anxiety she’d been holding back knotted in her stomach.
But controlling her fear was the least of her worries as the air around the rod shimmered, then spread up his arm.
“What type of energy is this?” she asked.
“The powerful kind.”
“The engines can deal with that kind of power?”
“I hope so.”
The energy crawled all the way up his arm and stretched toward her hand. She tried to jerk back, but her body refused to obey her mind. Her feet wouldn’t move. Her fingers might as well have been frozen.
Panicked, she watched the glow of energy flow over his shoulder to her hand. Every hair on the back of her neck standing on end, she braced for pain. But when the glowing energy engulfed her fingers and washed up her arm, then sluiced over her body, the tingling sensation somehow banished her headache and expelled her fear.
The effect was instantaneous and undeniable. Her breasts tingled. Her skin flamed as if they’d spent the past fifteen minutes engaging in foreplay rather than arguing over his nonexistent past. She’d always found Jordan attractive, but now it was as if the staff had turned on a switch inside her.
She swallowed thickly. If he was feeling the same effects, he wasn’t showing it.
Every centimeter of her skin now was demanding to be stroked. Unwarranted sensations exploded all over her erogenous zones. Her nipples tightened, exquisitely sensitized. The scales on the insides of her arms and legs fluttered. Sweet juice seeped between her thighs.
Drenched in pure lust, she shook her head, trying to clear it. “What the hell is going on?”
“Don’t know.” Jordan practically growled, as if it took superhuman effort just to speak.
So he felt as totally, inexplicably aroused as she did. Obviously, he wasn’t handling it well, either, but that didn’t stop desire from rushing through all her senses.
She craved him like a starving dragon needs platinum, yet this could not be. Not without an emotional connection. She didn’t do chemistry. She didn’t do one-nighters. She didn’t crave a man she barely knew.
But there was no fighting or denying the potent passion slamming her. Sexual need burned into her flesh, blazed in her bones, smoldered through her blood, the sensations fiery hot.
If she didn’t have sex in the next few seconds, she was certain she would spontaneously combust.
THE DISH
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Susan Kearney
Dear Readers,
I came up with my idea for RION, the second book in the Pendragon Legacy Trilogy, in the usual way. As the sun dipped below the horizon, a time machine landed on the aft deck of my yacht. And another hunky alien, muscles rippling, climbed up the ladder and joined me on the third deck.
Rion.
Damn. How lucky could a girl get? After LUCAN’s story, I was filled with excitement at the prospect of hearing about the next installment in the Pendragon Legacy series.
Rion had even arrived at my favorite time of day. As the sun cast slashes of red and streaks of pink across the Gulf of Mexico, the sunlight kissed Rion’s skin, accenting his sharp cheekbones. And shadowing his eyes—eyes that really got to me. Eyes that were both kind and hard. Eyes that revealed past heartaches and perhaps a newfound sense of peace.
Did I mention the guy was also hot? From his casual jeans to his open shirt that revealed a ripped chest, he looked more like a treasure hunter than a king from the planet Honor. Between his five o’clock shadow, the dark gleam in his eyes, and the bruise at his temple, he could have just stepped off a battlefield.
And as twilight deepened into darkness, as the waves lapped gently against the hull, Rion told me his story.
He spoke in a sexy rumble. “Lucan said that you’re interested in love stories about the future.”
“I am.” Pulse escalating with excitement, I sipped my wine.
“In the future, my planet will be attacked, my people will be enslaved.”
Uh-oh. “But you saved them?” I asked.
“I couldn’t do it alone.”
“You needed the help of a woman?” I guessed, always a romantic at heart.
“A special woman from planet Earth. In fact, she’s Lucan’s twin sister.”
“Marisa?” Oh, this story sounded exciting. Lucan had told me how his sister had given up a job as a reporter to train dragonshapers. How she’d longed for children of her own. And I could envision the feisty woman with this man. They’d have cute babies… “Marisa agreed to help save your world?”
“Not at first.” A smile played over Rion’s lips. “I had to kidnap her.”
Wow. “I’d imagine it took her a while to get over that.” While Rion was quite the catch, still… he’d kidnapped her. I swallowed hard. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. The woman in me told me he’d more than made it up to Marisa. “You mentioned a love story? So she forgave you, right?”
Lucan’s face softened. “Marisa, she didn’t just help me. She helped my people, too.”
“And you made her your queen?”
His eyes sparkled. “First she ran away and almost got herself killed.”
“But you saved her?”
He grinned. “We saved each other.”
If you’d like to read the story Rion told me, the book is in stores now.
You can reach me at www.susankearney.com.
Enjoy!
From the desk of Margaret Mallory
Dear Readers,
I love to catch characters on the cusp of change—on the verge of disaster, falling in love, or just growing up.
At the start of my current release, KNIGHT OF PLEASURE, Sir Stephen Carleton is disillusioned, drinking too much, and going to bed with all the wrong women. I think we have all known someone like that—a bright young man with so much potential that you want to scream or cry when you see him slipping into a downward spiral and wasting all that talent. What Stephen needs, of course, is the right woman. He is at a crossroads—with one foot on the wrong path—when he meets the no-nonsense, strong-minded Isobel. She is just the inspiration Stephen needs to step up and become the man he was meant to be.
If you read my first book, KNIGHT OF DESIRE, you already know Stephen has a hero’s heart beneath all that charm. In that book, he is the hero’s younger brother, an endearing youth of thirteen, full of gallantry and prone to trouble. By the time I finished writing KNIGHT OF DESIRE, I was so attached to Stephen that I simply had to give him his own story.
While I was writing Stephen’s story, KNIGHT OF PLEASURE, the same thing happened with Jamie, Stephen’s fifteen-year-old nephew: Jamie had to have a book. But Linnet, a young French girl, is such a strong character that she fairly jumped off the page, begging for a leading role. It was not until I tried outlining a book for each of them that I realized these two characters were meant to be together. And so they will be, in KNIGHT OF PASSION. Look out, Jamie, because the fiery Linnet has revenge—not marriage—on her mind.
Now, as I write KNIGHT OF PASSION, I am keeping a close watch on the teenagers who seem to pop up of their own accord in my books. I wonder which one will demand a love story of his own… Whoever my next hero and heroine turn out to be, I’m bound to put them on the verge of disaster before I reward them with their happy ending.
I hope you enjoy all three books (so far) in my medieval series, All the King’s Men: KNIGHT OF DESIRE, KNIGHT OF PLEASURE, and KNIGHT OF PASSION.
www.margaretmallory.com
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