“I want to get started. Too much to do.”
It sounded reasonable.
Besides, telling Sierra that Christina needed a cold shower right away would’ve been far too telling.
Because she was going to win this bet.
And keep her self-respect.
The afternoon melted into a glorious twilight, and as it spilled through Christina’s office window, the room was bathed in orange and red.
The colors mingled over her hair, Derek noted, as he watched her from the love seat. The shades turned her upswept tresses into shimmers of dark, exotic rain.
When he was a kid, he’d seen something similar while his father had been stationed in South Korea.
One night, after Sir had gotten on Derek’s ass because he’d found a speck of spaghetti sauce on the dishes his son had washed, Derek had run into the rain, finding the darkest possible corner of the base. He’d watched it fall, how it sparkled and disappeared just as soon as it hit the ground.
Too bad Sir couldn’t cease to exist in just the same way, Derek had thought.
But, being too young to strike out on his own, he’d gone home. He always did—until it was legally possible for him to join the Marines.
Yeah, smart choice, wasn’t it? He’d chosen the Corps because Sir was in the Army, and Derek had known how much it’d tick off the old man. Sir had despised the Marines, calling them “Bullet Meat” and “Jarheads.”
It’d given Derek great pleasure to cause his dad that much consternation.
Until Derek realized how much like Sir he’d become.
At that point, he’d worked hard to establish his own identity, going into business with Patrick, proving that he didn’t need Sir’s rigid structures by dating woman after woman.
Derek blocked out the thought of the man by diving into his work once again, erasing the past with a parade of numbers and details.
And, soon, he and Christina were ready to do a final run-through of tomorrow’s adjusted presentation.
They set up in a conference room and, when they were ready, Christina took a spot near the slide screen while Derek pretended to be an observer. He’d have a minimal amount to say tomorrow, preferring instead to allow his employee to take the reins and quote statistics while both of them fielded questions.
She started PowerPoint, and he sat back to enjoy the show, ready to take notes about any adjustments they’d need to make.
For a woman who’d initially come off as cold and shy, she had commanding stage presence. Even if she was wearing khaki shorts and a blue blouse, Christina Mendoza was an erudite professional.
But there was something more, too. A red-carpet grace, a sense of white-gloved class that most women didn’t possess.
Derek couldn’t keep his eyes off of her.
The presentation went off without a hitch and, judging from the glow on her face, she damned well knew it.
“Well?” she asked.
“I took some notes. You’ll want to read them.”
She did a double take. “What did I do that wasn’t perfect?”
There was that career cockiness, which didn’t seem to suit her reserved personality.
Tossing the notepad on the table, he pointed to it. “Just read.”
She rushed right over, clearly ready to tell him why their presentation didn’t need retooling again. But she loosened up when she spied what he’d written: You were amazing.
A smile lit over her mouth, brightening her face until Derek warmed up just from the look of it. Then she poised her hands over her head.
“Yes!”
Derek laughed, liking this freed spirit. Every day brought more surprises from this woman, made her less removed and untouchable.
“Yes, yes, yes!” She wiggled her hips a little, doing an impromptu dance.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Salsa. Hot mama, lovely, I’m-done-with-this-presentation salsa!”
Well, he could certainly get used to watching this, her bottom waving back and forth in a smooth groove as she kept time to the musical celebration in her mind.
“Don’t you love it?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
She stopped her dancing, face flushed. “Not that, Rockwell. I’m talking about the rush you get when you realize you’re going to kick some caboose for dollars.”
Forget corporate profit. All Derek wanted was to see the look on Jack Fortune’s face.
Dammit, why’d he have to feel like a kid with a one-size-too-big batting helmet slumped over his sight, staring at the bleachers and waving to his big brother?
Because it’d be great to hit that home run and watch while Jack acknowledged how good he was.
Christina was still flittering around, high on success. “They say analysts are bad for employee morale in general. Humph. Take that whoever ‘they’ are. Pow!” She pretended to slap an invisible face.
Getting out of his seat, he said, “You’re practically drunk with joy.”
“I get like this.” She was slightly panting, holding a hand to her heart. “When I got home and went jogging this morning, I felt it. I know you feel it, too, after you row. The endorphins, kicking right in. I can’t get enough of them.”
As he moved closer to her, his heart started pulsing, much like it did during his exercise sessions. But this was different, if not just as addictive.
This was fear and desire wrapped around each other.
This was an unquenchable thirst in the face of a tall, cool drink waiting and within his reach.
Christina reached up and touched her hair. For a second, Derek thought she was about to set it free, to allow it to tumble to her shoulders.
His breath hitched in anticipation.
But she merely patted a loose strand back into the shimmery blue clip that was holding it captive.
“Sorry for acting like such a crazy fool,” she said, a glint in her eye, “but I need to let off steam. Getting just a few hours of sleep will do that to a person. This is like an all-nighter in college, when you’re working like a demon to get a project completed for the next day’s due date. Or when you’ve finished finals…”
Or, he asked himself, when you were so damned sexually frustrated that jumping around was the only way to release the pressure?
Sure, he knew how that felt.
“If it weren’t such a bad idea,” she added, getting squirrelly again, “I’d give you a dancing lesson.”
“You’re right. Dancing and getting loose at the office is completely inappropriate.”
Christina shot him a knowing glance. “That’s not what I mean.”
So they were back to employee and boss.
And here he thought they’d made some personal progress, even though Derek knew he shouldn’t want it—for more reasons than just keeping his hands off his subordinate.
He recalled how sad his mom had been, waiting for her Army husband to return from the far corners of the earth.
Commitment stunk, all right. And Christina Mendoza wasn’t the type of woman who came without that sort of price attached.
Even Derek wasn’t a good enough negotiator to avoid that caveat.
“Before you get too happy,” he said, turning to the next page of his notes, “maybe you should read this.”
Breath coming in deep gasps, Christina stilled her private party, then crept toward the table again, peeking at the paper.
He’d written a couple of things that required finetuning: the pacing of the slides, a typo that reflected an inaccurate pricing quote from when they’d gotten hold of the Pecos College dean today.
“And the next page,” he added.
When she looked at it, her smile returned. She no doubt realized that the troubleshooting would be insignificant.
On the last piece of paper, he’d written: You’re going to blow them away.
“You scared me to death!” she said, jumping up and grabbing his button-down shirt while pulling him toward her in a show of excited fru
stration.
Flying high, Christina was hardly even aware of what she was doing. All she knew was that she was happy. Reckless with the exhilaration of success.
She could do anything! And she had, putting together a damned good presentation in record time.
As Derek’s dark eyes widened, she even felt a bit more power at his surprise. The scent of him—a tinge of clear, crisp new money and heady musk—spiked her good-girl hormones, throwing them off-kilter.
Before she could tell herself to stop, she was impetuously pulling him down to her, crushing her mouth to his.
For a second, he stiffened, but something buried, something deeply tamed within Christina took this as a challenge.
She could control a man for once. Bring him to his knees instead of the other way around. Couldn’t she?
Christina increased the urgency of the kiss, wanting so badly to know that he would give in.
Then, just as she was losing confidence, patience, Derek reacted, echoing the insistent pressure of her lips. He placed a hand at the base of her head to urge her closer, slid his other hand to the small of her back, where his fingers clenched her blouse as if his life depended on it.
Ecstatic, she moaned against him, encouraging his willingness by fisting his hair, seeking, devouring.
As her breasts pressed against his chest, her own body echoed the rise and fall of his breathing, the extent of a shared mindless hunger.
And his head was bursting with confusion, a passion he couldn’t contain.
The ice queen was kissing him.
How had this happened?
No time to analyze. Who cared anyway? She was excited, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to push her away.
But how could he explain the need to take her in his arms, to hold her against him so she wouldn’t back away? Because he knew she would, and the knowledge of it ached, made him burn and long to possess her.
Yet Derek didn’t work that way. He didn’t keep something once he had it. That’s why he’d jumped at the chance to move from New York to San Antonio. There’d been too many roots forming, attaching him to a lifestyle that was becoming a habit.
And the act of wrapping his arms around her was too reminiscent of something like ivy, clinging.
Needing something outside of itself to stay standing.
To survive.
Belly fisting, Derek took one last moment to enjoy the scent of her clean hair. The smoothness of her skin. The heat of her lips.
With something close to regret, he ended the kiss, their mouths remaining a whisper apart.
“That was a real moment of insanity,” he said, trying to play off the situation.
His heartbeat was loud enough to shake the room.
Obviously mortified, Christina’s skin blazed a bright red as she turned and walked away from him. She crossed her arms over her chest, looking for all the world as if she were shivering in the cold in front of a house that she’d been locked out of.
“Whoo.” She tried to laugh. “You’re right. Not enough sleep.”
Relieved by her willingness to take this less than seriously, Derek agreed. “Too much coffee.”
“Or tea.”
They both nodded thoughtfully, unwilling to move and force the truth out of its hiding place.
“Well.” He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “We should rest up for tomorrow. Big day. You good to go?”
“Definitely.”
While she slowly walked to the door, he stayed in the room, wanting to allow her to leave the building first. To give her room.
But then she turned around, mouth opened to say something.
Frozen, Derek hoped she wasn’t about to remind him of what had just happened. He was too afraid of what he might say back to her.
She must have read his fear, his doubts. “’Night, Rockwell.”
“’Night.”
She paused, sighed, then left him standing there, playing that kiss over and over in his mind like a flag that wouldn’t stop snapping in the wind.
Finally, the place went dark.
Clearly, the sensor had detected that there wasn’t any life left in the room.
Chapter Six
“Damn him.”
It was Monday, just moments after the presentation and, already, Derek was on fire. As he burst into the small lobby of his office, his assistant glanced up from her desk.
“Mr. Rockwell? What’s wrong?”
Regretting that he couldn’t restrain his disappointment, Derek made an effort to calm himself.
“Nothing I can’t get over, Dora. Any messages?”
She bestowed a sympathetic smile on him and handed over some papers. “No urgent calls or summons. How did the presentation go?”
Derek bristled, but hoped he didn’t show it. “Really well. Our audience loved what we had to say and, in fact, they want more ideas.”
So why was he cranky?
After accepting Dora’s “Good job, Mr. Rockwell,” and walking into his office, he admitted that he knew the reason.
Jack, naturally.
During the postpresentation briefing session, Derek’s new partner had basically congratulated Christina on being the driving force behind the concept of personal development. He’d even heaped praise on the rest of the team.
Yet he’d all but ignored Derek’s contributions.
Not that Christina and the team didn’t deserve acknowledgment. Derek wasn’t begrudging anyone—especially their business analyst—that. And she’d taken great pains to give credit to Derek. But, dammit, just once he’d like Jack to say, “You did a hell of a job, Derek.”
But maybe he was being ridiculous. So what if his ego had been wounded? He wasn’t thirteen anymore, under the thumb of Sir, always seeking impossible approval.
He’d move on and get over it.
So he did, in the best way he knew how—by settling into work, developing ideas for the next phase of the personal development project: constructing “game rooms” and “creative rooms” in order to promote employee productivity.
But just as he was warming up his computer, in strolled Christina.
The gorgeous woman he’d been trying to think of as “his employee” since last night.
Dressed in a deep purple suit, she was riding the wave of success, still glowing, containing whatever overwhelming urges that had caused her to kiss him.
God, if only they were in a different place, in a different situation.
He wouldn’t mind another of those lip-locks.
Without thinking, he leaned back in his chair, running a hand over his mouth to erase a grin of provocative reminiscence.
“You scooted off before we could catch you,” she said, hands behind her back, body swaying back and forth playfully as if she had something to hide.
“Why linger? Jack didn’t have much to say to me.”
Damn. He hadn’t meant for that to come out.
“Jack had plenty of good things to say about everything. After you left, we finally got around to talking about the college classes for credit. Like Patrick and the rest of our audience, Jack loved it.”
Derek couldn’t help a spark of pride from lighting up inside of him.
As Christina took a couple more steps into the room, he could see the flush of her skin intensifying.
Was she fighting it, too? Remembering the way she’d kissed him, held on to him, molded her body against his?
When she smiled softly and glanced at the carpet, he knew it was true. His heart banged against his rib cage.
Why? It didn’t make sense. Maybe it was because Christina Mendoza was all contradictions: increasingly willing, yet a double dose of challenge that he wasn’t used to.
“What’re you working on now?” she asked.
“Getting started on the rooms.”
“Not yet you aren’t.” She raised her voice. “Ready!”
A round of cheers sounded from outside his lobby and, through his windows, he could see the rest of
the team—Twyla, Seth and Jonathan—enter, carrying a cake and beverages.
Finally, Christina brought her hands out from behind her back. Champagne glasses.
“To a job well done!” she said, beaming.
“Booze?”
“No.” She guided Twyla and the cake to the table by the entrance. “Sparkling cider. We still have a lot of work to do today, so it’s no use clouding our heads. Still, we deserve some good times.”
As Seth and Jonathan poured, Twyla came over to pull Derek out of his seat. He thought he detected a curious glance from Christina as the blonde linked arms with him and led him to the treats.
But then his analyst glanced away and laughed at something Seth said, making Derek wonder if Christina cared about Twyla’s flirtation at all.
In moments, they all had filled glasses raised in a toast.
“Boss?” Christina said, indicating that he should lead.
Boss. That told him all he needed to know.
Officially, the kiss had never happened.
Derek wasn’t in the mood for toasts or celebrations. “Here’s to Seth and Jonathan climbing on the Pecos College wagon and getting it up and running. Today. And here’s to Twyla arranging in-house personal development classes. Starting now. And here’s to me and Christina Mendoza putting together the next presentation. Pronto.”
Elevating his glass, Derek quickly tossed back the cider.
Twyla, Seth and Jonathan just stared at each other, then cautiously consumed their own drinks. Christina merely tapped her fingertips against her glass.
“That’s it?” she asked. “Not even a half hour to bask in a bit of glory?”
“I’ve got a lot to do.”
Derek wanted to clam up, to stop his simmering resentment from ruining everyone else’s day. In fact, he hated that his ego was so damned easily bruised.
Christina had tilted her head, gauging him with that clever gaze, as if she knew exactly what was bothering him.
“You were sensational,” she said. “Every person in that room realized it.”
“Enough.”
Her eyes widened, lips parting ever so slightly.
Her compliments had pushed a button in him, revealing his need to be valued by Jack. The emotion made him weak, and seeing her acknowledge it laid him bare.
Fortune's Heirs: Reunion Page 24
