As the cab pulled away from the curb, a low-slung sports car shot past. She recognized the dark, familiar profile of Marc Lewis and hastily turned away, hoping he hadn’t seen her. She couldn’t stop the wave of remembered desire that the mere sight of him provoked, however. It seemed that no matter what happened, her body would always want Marc Lewis.
Tough luck, she told herself. I want my life back. I want me back.
No more out of control. It was too much, and she wasn’t cut out for it.
MARC PARKED HIS CAR and slammed the door behind himself as he exited. The house was in darkness and he left it that way as he stalked his way through the garden and onto the back terrace. He was filled with anger—at Anna for having so much control over him, and at himself for having so little. He still couldn’t believe that they’d had sex just meters from a packed art gallery. He knew some men would revel in the sexual conquest, but he wasn’t one of them. His father had been an inveterate womanizer, a man who never denied his passions. Marc had learned early on what kind of damage such self-indulgence could wreak. He’d worked hard to prove to himself and the world that he was not his father’s son.
Now here he was, being led around by his cock, just like his father. Why hadn’t he just walked away from her? But he knew why—the moment he’d touched her, he’d been gone.
He reminded himself that it was over now. Even if he’d wanted to pursue things with her—which he didn’t—she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested.
Swearing under his breath, Marc began stripping his clothes off angrily. He dove into the pool, the cold water like a slap in the face. He wanted to wipe the night out, just erase it from his mind and body.
Kicking off from the wall, he started swimming.
6
“JACINTA, WHERE THE HELL is that file I asked for?” Marc demanded.
He braced his arms against either side of the door frame, leaning out into his assistant’s domain aggressively.
She flinched at his surly tone. “I’m still waiting for it to come back up from R & D.”
“And do we think that’s going to happen sometime this century?”
She blinked at his sarcasm. “I’ll get straight onto them.”
She swiveled abruptly in her chair and reached for the phone, turning her back on him deliberately, he guessed. He stared at her hunched shoulders for a moment, guilt stabbing at him. Since when had he become the kind of grade A arsehole who took his moods out on his secretary?
Sighing heavily, he pushed himself away from the door frame and back into his office. Huge floor-to-ceiling windows covered one wall, but he stared blindly out at the view.
He owed Jacinta an apology. In fact, if he put his mind to it he was sure that he could probably come up with a lengthy list of people he owed an apology to. Gary, his personal trainer, his lawyer, his sister…all of them had copped the brunt of his temper in one way or another over the past few days. Hell, he’d even had a go at his niece, Sally. And now Jacinta.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and turned away from the window. It wasn’t as though he didn’t know what his problem was: frustration. In the enticing, hourglass form of Anna Jackson.
He was thirty-five years old, newly single, wealthy and in charge of a large private company. He employed more than five hundred people, he owned one of the best views in Sydney and this year’s after-tax profit looked on target to set a new all-time record.
And, despite himself, he was fast becoming sexually obsessed with a certain platinum-haired chauffeur.
He swore, furious that his thoughts had drifted toward her yet again. This was the last thing he wanted or needed in his life, but he’d been like this since Saturday night. Sure, he could concentrate on work for minutes, even hours at a time. But as soon as he relaxed his vigilance, in she crept, with her silken thighs and her panted demands and hungry hands.
He didn’t want to want her, and she obviously shared his wariness regarding their explosive sexual chemistry. She also resented her lack of control over it, he guessed, just as he did. Which left them…nowhere. He dug his hands into his pockets and stared hard at the plush carpet beneath his feet.
His nights were peppered with fantasies of having Anna again. He knew what she tasted like now, the texture of her skin, the sound of her desire. The scent of her, the essence of her. His dreams were incredibly explicit, and every morning he woke with a raging hard-on. He’d even reached for the phone a couple of times to test whether she really had barred herself from taking jobs with his company. He told himself that if he called and she’d barred him, that was it, he wouldn’t pursue it any further. But if she hadn’t followed through with it…well, then she was fair game and he could seek her out and quench his need for her.
That was when he’d yelled at Gary, he remembered. He shook his head at his own behavior. He was not his father. He would prove it to himself if it killed him.
Running a hand through his hair, he crossed to his desk and sat. A click of his computer mouse, and the online version of the Yellow Pages came on screen. He found a local florist’s number, and made a quick call. A generous arrangement of oriental lilies would hopefully put him back in the good books with Jacinta. As for the rest of the people in his world—perhaps he should just do them a favor and take himself off to a desert island until this…thing he had for Anna Jackson had burned itself out.
ON FRIDAY ANNA WALKED through the double glass doors of the advertising agency where her brother worked and blinked dully in the halogen lighting. Color assailed her from all sides, and the frown that had become a permanent fixture on her face over the past week deepened. The foyer was filled with bright and chirpy people to match the bright and chirpy decor, and Anna gritted her teeth and dodged her way through the people to the elevator.
This was the first time she’d ever visited her brother at work, but he’d invited her out to lunch and one of the perks of owning her own business was that she could decide when and where she lunched. Negotiating her way into an almost-full elevator, she watched impatiently as the numbers on the floor indicator slowly crawled by, one foot tap-tapping away as the doors opened and closed, opened and closed on what seemed like every floor.
“Come-on-come-on-come-on,” she muttered under her breath, nearly rolling her eyes with frustration. What was with the world all of a sudden? Lately everything seemed either too slow, or too fast, or too loud, or too expensive, or just plain old annoying. She felt as if she was on the perpetual verge of a primal scream, and that any tiny miscalculation on someone else’s behalf might just push her over.
Kind of like PMS to the power of a million. Fortunately for her, Australia had strict rules on gun control, so the only weapon she had to hand was her tongue—and oh, how she’d used it this past week. The dry cleaner had got an earful for shortchanging her. A young kid in a purple hatchback had scored some abuse for swerving dangerously across her lane on the freeway. And she’d treated a parking inspector to a public rant on the failures of government when she’d found him writing up her car for being one minute over time on the parking meter.
Maybe it was PMS. She did a quick mental calculation, but the math didn’t add up. Maybe it was a full moon. Or maybe her frustration tolerance was just at an all-time low.
Another possible cause for her unusual bout of crankiness occurred to her, but she resolutely refused to consider it. Saturday night was an aberration. Marc and her response to him was an aberration. She simply wouldn’t let herself go there.
The doors pinged open and she stepped out onto the creative level where her brother worked. He was loitering near the elevator bank waiting for her, and they embraced briefly.
“Sorry I’m late. Stupid lift had to stop on every floor,” she explained.
“It’s cool. I’ll just grab my phone and wallet from my desk,” Danny said, gesturing for her to follow him up the hallway.
He showed her into a spacious corner office full of groovy furniture and more jewel-toned colors
.
“How can you stand all these bright colors all the time?” she asked, poking a finger at his purple mouse pad.
“It’s nice. Most people like it,” he said, giving her a peculiar look.
“Is that what some focus group told you? Or is it just what the interior designer said to justify his bad taste?”
Danny made a show of looking taken aback. “Yow! Saucer of milk, table two. Someone’s in a bad mood today.”
Anna opened her mouth to protest, but she knew he was right. Hadn’t she just been thinking about how annoying she was finding everything all of a sudden?
“I think I got out of the wrong side of the bed this week,” she said apologetically.
“Hmm, I wonder,” Danny said, then his eyes slid over her shoulder and narrowed slightly. The look he refocused on her was speculative as he scanned her from head to toe. Then he nodded, and took her arm confidentially.
“Anna, I need a favor. No time to explain, but I need you to just play along with me for the next few minutes, okay?”
She’d barely nodded before Danny reached for the top button on her shirt and slipped it loose. When he reached for the next one, she slapped his hand away.
“Danny! What are you doing?” she hissed at him, fingers automatically reaching up to redo her buttons.
“Just work with me here. I need some cleavage. Come on, Anna—I’d do it for you,” Danny wheedled.
Anna glared at him, and he put on his best little-boy-lost look. She’d never been able to resist it.
“This had better be really good,” she said grumpily as she slid another button free and pulled her lapels wide so that a substantial amount of bosom was exposed in the V of her shirt.
She turned to Danny for approval, but he was focused on the man emerging from the office across the hall.
“Hey, Ben, wait a minute,” Danny called out, his tone supercasual.
A young guy in his early twenties popped in the doorway, a smile on his tanned face.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Danny shrugged. “Just wanted to ask where that new sushi place is you were talking about the other day,” he said.
“Just opposite Circular Quay. Near the McDonald’s,” Ben said easily.
“Right. Thanks for that,” Danny said.
Then, before Ben could move off, Danny knocked a pile of papers off his desk and onto the floor. Anna stared at him, sure the move had been deliberate.
“What an idiot!” Danny said self-deprecatingly.
Laughing at Danny’s clumsiness, Ben stooped to pitch in and help collect the papers. “Hope this isn’t the Arnott’s account,” he said.
Danny cut his eyes across to Anna and jerked his head, signaling for her to join Ben in collecting the papers. Anna frowned at him, and Danny grimaced, then pointed at her cleavage, then at Ben as though the connection should be obvious. Sighing heavily but knowing she owed Danny for all his vixen counseling, Anna stooped down beside Ben.
“My brother’s always been a doofus,” she said as she started stacking papers.
Ben glanced up, a smile in his bright blue eyes. He was very good-looking in an aftershave-ad kind of way, with a nice straight nose and carelessly tousled blond hair.
Behind her, Danny nudged her meaningfully, and Anna took advantage of the moment to lean forward, treating Ben to a panoramic view of her supercleavage. “Not the same Danny who made the photocopier explode? I find that hard to believe,” Ben joked.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re both hilarious,” Danny said, finally stepping in and taking over. “Thanks, Ben, but I can clean up after my own disasters.”
“Just as well,” the other man said as he stood. Then he waved a friendly acknowledgment to Anna and exited.
Anna waited until Ben had been gone a good few beats before she spoke.
“You want to tell me what that was all about?”
Danny finished collecting the last of the papers and returned the now-messy stack to his desk.
“Once we’re outside the building, absolutely,” he said, eyes sparkling mischievously.
Biting her tongue, Anna rebuttoned her shirt and let him lead her back to the elevators and down to the street. As soon as they hit the pavement she punched him on the arm.
“Well?”
“Ow. What is it with you today? Is it that time of the month or something?”
“No! Why is it that men automatically assume that just because a woman is feeling a little emotional it’s got something to do with her hormones?” she said defensively.
“I don’t know—maybe because it usually does?” Danny returned flippantly.
Anna punched him again.
“You can stop that any time you like,” Danny said, glaring at her now.
“Are you going to tell me what that little performance was all about or not?”
He shrugged. “It’s no big deal. Ben’s our new gun in creative, fresh out of university, full of vim and vigor, blah, blah. The next wunderkind to storm the ranks.”
“And the reason I was throwing my breasts in his face was…?”
“You saw him. He’s very cute. But I can’t get a read on him, and usually my gaydar is spot on. Sometimes I think yes, then he does something or says something that just throws me right off….” Danny rubbed his chin thoughtfully, lost in the conundrum.
Anna stopped in her tracks. “Please tell me you weren’t just using my breasts to find out if your new work colleague is gay,” she asked warningly.
“They’re very nice breasts, Anna Banana, if it’s not too creepy for me to say so. I figured if he didn’t go for them, he’s either gay or he’s just got a little plastic mound like a Ken doll.”
She couldn’t believe it. Her brother really was completely beyond the pale.
“What? It’s not like they’re going to wear out or anything. It’s not like I just used up one of your breasts’ nine lives,” Danny said, arms spread wide in appeal.
“It’s just wrong, Danny.”
“Peanut-butter-and-honey wrong? Or dogs eating their own sick wrong?”
She couldn’t help herself: she laughed. He always got her like this, and always had. “You are so lucky you’re a funny guy,” she told him as they crossed the street and entered a busy downtown food court.
“What do you feel like? Sushi, burger, souvlaki? My treat,” Danny offered.
“Sushi’s fine, since that’s the line we fed Ben,” she said.
“Hmm. The mysterious Ben Grayson,” he mused as he began selecting sushi from the open display.
“Well, what was the verdict?” she said as she added some double-avocado and teriyaki chicken rolls to her brother’s selection.
“Well, he looked. He definitely looked,” Danny said.
“They were right in his face, Danny. I nearly took his eye out.”
“That’s true. I don’t know. Maybe my methodology was flawed.”
“You could always just ask him out. Revolutionary concept, I know.”
“And out myself at work? I don’t think so,” Danny scoffed.
Anna shot him a curious look. He always seemed so on top of things that it was easy to forget that there was a big part of his life that he kept under wraps from most of the world. He was like a human version of an iceberg, with most of his truth lurking beneath the surface.
“Would it be a problem if your work knew?” she asked. “I thought advertising was a pretty broad-minded industry.”
“Oh, they are, they are. Just ask all the straight men at the top of the pile,” Danny said sardonically.
“But you don’t care about that stuff. You’ve told me over and over again that you love your job and you don’t have any ambitions to be in management,” Anna said shrewdly, guessing Danny wasn’t being completely honest.
He shrugged, spearing a piece of sushi with his chopsticks. “Look, my sexuality isn’t that important, you know. People don’t have to know about it. It’s not like you wear a T-shirt saying ‘I’m straight’ or a
nything.”
Danny stopped suddenly, then shook his whole body, like a dog shaking off water after a swim. “Right, no more on that old chestnut. Let’s tackle something a little less boring—like your love life.”
Anna frowned. “Next topic.”
She reached for a piece of sashimi, but it slid off her chopsticks slickly. Her frown deepened as she tried to pick it up again, and yet again, and still it eluded her.
“Bloody hell!” she swore, finally giving up and stabbing the darned thing repeatedly with a single chopstick until at last it stuck.
Dipping the fish into her soy bowl, she raised it to her mouth to find Danny staring at her in amazement.
“What?”
“You are wound tighter than a rattrap, my dear. What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She shrugged, keeping her attention on the sushi platter. She’d told Danny the bare basics of her last “encounter” with Marc, but she’d also told him it was over and done with for good this time. The last thing she wanted was to rehash the whole stupid mess.
“Nothing. Right.”
She sighed, knowing what was coming. “This has nothing to do with Marc Lewis, okay? So we tore each other’s clothes off in public again. Big deal. It’s history, Danny, like I told you. The stupid dreams will disappear soon, I’m sure.”
“Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Tell me about these dreams you’ve been having.”
Anna colored, realizing she’d given a little too much away. “You’re not my psychologist, so just give it a rest,” she snapped.
“Hmm. Irritable. Sleep-deprived, if I don’t miss my guess. Snappy. Defensive. I’m afraid I’m going to have to diagnose this as a severe case of sexual frustration,” Danny said.
“I am not sexually frustrated!” Anna screeched, remembering they were in a very crowded food court a few seconds too late.
Cruise Control Page 11
