‘Are you okay?’ He frowned. Looked puzzled. Probably not as completely bedazzled and befuddled as she was, but somehow, amazingly, affected by the moment. ‘Do you have towels in there?’
‘What?’
‘Towels. For drying yourself.’
‘Er … No, not really, it’s mostly hand-dryers.’ Now there was a point.
He leant forward, popped open the glove compartment, and fished out a box of man-size tissues, as yet unopened. ‘Take those. They’ll be better than nothing. Your boss should provide better facilities for his staff than just hand-dryers. Especially in this soggy climate.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t …’ Easy for him to be Lord Bountiful. Nobody would get soaked to the skin by dank northern weather on his tropical-somewhere hideaway or any other parts of a billionaire’s exalted world.
‘Oh, go on. It’s just a box of tissues.’ He reached over, unzipped the top of her tote bag and shoved in the box of tissues. ‘Now, off you go. You’ll be late, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?’
‘No, we wouldn’t,’ she shot back at him, glad to have retrieved her backbone from somewhere. He’d given her a very brief lift – and the weirdest jolt of pleasure – but he wasn’t the boss of her … even if he was.
‘Thanks again,’ she cried, opening the passenger door and shooting out before things could get any weirder.
Soft laughter rang in her ears long after she’d entered the building, echoing as if imprinted on her brain.
2
Portrait of a young woman as drowned rat. I wouldn’t want to draw that!
Jess could still see her face in the ladies’ room mirror. Her makeup had mostly gone to hell, as had her hairstyle, leaving her looking generally gobsmacked and waterlogged.
And the man who’d given her an almighty shaking up for a variety of reasons had seen that impressive look, and obviously found her a rich source of amusement.
Arrogant bastard! In your world there’ll always be a nice dry car to take you where you want to go! No slumming it in the rain like us plebs …
Now though, at her desk, an hour later, she felt warmer, better, and at least slightly dryer. His big box of tissues had helped with the blotting, and she’d set it beside her computer, like a talisman. She entertained silly, subversive thoughts about hanging on to it when it was empty, as a keepsake of their ‘moment’.
Or at least your moment, Jess. Ridiculously bad timing. Couldn’t have been worse.
Silly mare, she chided herself, yet, even as she went through routine tasks, she tried to reclaim the sensations.
Heat, even though she was shivering. Heart racing. The deep, slow, honeyed surge, low in her belly. Astounding … alarming … wonderful! Everything she could induce in her fantasies, yet never feel here in the real, living world!
Unfortunately, though, the man who’d induced those feelings would never know it. Hell, he’d probably completely forgotten her even before she’d reached the door to the building, even though the smell of his gorgeously spicy cologne was still powerful and exotic in her brain.
Those blue-green eyes. That sunny smile. They were still with her too. And she kept seeing his strong, lightly tanned hands, so relaxed yet sure on the steering wheel … and in everything they did, probably. Could this man be the full-on placeholder for Dream Lover? A face she could picture in her fantasies? An avatar to make do with until somebody real came along? If they ever did …
Banishing that grim thought, she felt her fingers itch to start doodling, and after a sly look around, she succumbed, pretending to jot notes on her pad, yet in reality pencilling the curve of that smiling mouth, that sexily stubbled jawline. Just elements. She daren’t get absorbed in a full face sketch or she’d get no work done and somebody would notice. Not a good strategy at the best of times, but doubly unwise today. Everybody was supposed to look super-efficient, and wholeheartedly dedicated to insurance, for the ‘royal’ visit: the arrival of the group’s new owner to inspect their very humble and fairly insignificant division. Which was weird, but apparently the VIP’s eccentric habit.
And management doesn’t know the half of it. She grinned to herself while she doodled the curve of his gorgeous lips on her pad. That stuffy lot upstairs will have a fit when they see your flowered shirt with the tails hanging out.
So, she’d actually met Ellis P. McKenna, international financier and general all-round filthy rich tycoon. One to one. He was the scion of a billion-dollar entrepreneurial family who’d bought out Windsor Insurance as part of a group along with a large number of other financial concerns, just like someone going out and buying three sweaters in different colours rather than only one. If actual whole companies were so easy to acquire and dispose of to him, it didn’t bode well for the little people like her who worked in them.
We all might be just as disposable as cheap jumpers if you decide to keep this operation lean and mean, Mr McKenna.
Jess shuddered. She needed her job, because she didn’t have any reserves. Ensuring that her gran had been comfortable at Baxendale Court in her final years had hoovered up every scrap of Jess’s modest savings, and she was still gradually paying off the loan she’d taken out to make up the difference. She didn’t regret a thing, and would do it again in a heartbeat, but it had left her finances since then a tad precarious, even long after Gran had passed on.
Impatient suddenly, she flung down her pencil, breaking the point and attracting curious looks from Jim and Michelle, who shared her ‘pod’ of desks.
Oh, come on, Mr McKenna, let’s see you again. We’ll all sit here tugging our forelocks for a bit, then we can get back to our normal drone activities … and I can be sure that Dream Lover is just Dream Lover, a man I once met for about thirty seconds.
Would he even acknowledge her? Or just swan past, barely noticing the faces behind the desks? She pushed his box of tissues to a more prominent place. Perhaps that might remind him?
Even as Jess was thinking that, there was a faint jumble of voices out in the corridor, a small commotion like a looming weather front. People around her sat up straight, fiddled with their ties or smoothed their hair. Michelle even pressed her lips together to refresh her lipstick. Ridiculous! The VIP would come blowing through the office, barely breaking stride, a self-identified deity amongst them, hardly bothering to acknowledge the individual insects he now employed.
The minor hubbub intensified, still approaching. Unconsciously, Jess did the smoothing of the hair thing too. She’d drawn it back now in the best ‘do’ she could manage at short notice and with her clip smashed and gone, a ponytail at the nape of her neck, secured by a covered elasticated band she’d discovered at the bottom of her bag. She patted at her blouse too, the only part of her ensemble that had more or less avoided getting soaked. Unlike her skirt, which was soggy round the hem, and her shoes, which audibly squelched when she walked. She could have changed into her comfy shoes, but they were far too casual. Ah, the irony, considering that Ellis McKenna was more casually dressed than anyone here.
Jess’s heart thudded. Some of those voices were distinct now – those of her bosses – but another one also sounded vaguely familiar.
Oh holy shit, you are tall, dark and handsome, Mr McKenna!
The potential candidate for Dream Lover met the height credentials too.
Flanked by the Windsor Insurance bigwigs in their best dark suits, stringently ironed shirts and sober ties, the man with the vintage Citroën strolled into the room, looking like a shabby but dazzling peacock god surrounded by a scuttling murder of crows. Sharp aquamarine eyes scanned the desks and the people behind them, registering, summing up, and passing by with the efficiency of a Terminator. It took but a split second for him to find her … and smile.
Oh no!
Without any warning to his entourage, the newcomer abandoned them and strode towards her. Jess had the ridiculous urge to shoot to her feet.
God damn it, he’s not a king or anything! I haven’t even decided whether he’s
Dream Lover or not yet.
Sitting tight, she offered him a friendly smile. He had stopped and given her a lift, after all. ‘Hello, Mr McKenna,’ she said quickly, getting in there first, amazed that she suddenly felt both super-confident and quivery as a jelly inside. He was definitely having Dream Lover effects on her.
His gaze flicked to her nameplate. ‘Hello, Ms J. Lockhart. Have you dried out yet?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
His brow puckered as he took in her still damp hair, and then, as he peered around the edge of her desk, her wet-hemmed skirt and her sodden shoes.
‘Fibber,’ he said in a low voice, possibly audible only to her as he leant closer. Jess gripped the edge of her desk to steady herself, made woozy by a sudden waft of his intoxicating male fragrance. It seemed stronger now than it had been in the car.
Who the hell were you intending to impress that you needed to top up your cologne?
His Mediterranean eyes, and the way they flashed, supplied the answer.
I’ve told you before! Don’t be idiotic, Jess, you’re nothing to him.
But against all reason, that was wrong. The way he looked at her said she was something to him. Something she couldn’t completely believe. She could almost imagine she was his Dream Lover.
He didn’t say more, but his intent expression, and the little quirk of his firm, rosy, biteable lips said their conversation was merely postponed, not over. With a wink, he turned from her, his sharp eyes focusing elsewhere, this time on a step stool against the filing wall, close to her desk. Swooping down, he drew it out, and then leapt lightly up onto it, just a yard or so from where Jess was sitting.
‘Right, everyone. I guess you know who I am, and if you don’t, I’m Ellis P. McKenna and three weeks ago I took Windsor Insurance into the UK portfolio of the McKenna Group.’ He beamed around at everybody. Jess didn’t know what the men in the section were making of this, but she could feel a cresting wave of fluttering female excitement building in the room. Stop showing off, she wanted to say to him, even though every part of her subconscious and most of her conscious mind loved his display. His body was lithe, but strong-looking, and its proximity was like having some kind of sweet, heady alcoholic syrup bubbling inside her. He was inducing all the reactions that her fantasies managed to trigger, but which never occurred outside of them. Against her will, she found herself zeroing in on his waist … his linen clad thighs … his crotch … Wondering and wondering.
Desiring … At last. An actual living, breathing man. It was just like in the car. She was experiencing real female lust for a male who wasn’t simply a figment of her imagination. All her adult life she’d wanted this to happen, and she’d believed she was weird and a freak because it hadn’t. She’d never experienced the siren call. Never want to give …
Blinking, she realised he was speaking again. But there had been a pause. A pause where he’d looked back into her eyes, and, yes, watched the birth of her physical attraction to him. Had he sensed its unusualness?
‘What I just wanted to assure you all was that there won’t be any redundancies or any cuts in salaries. Well, not at this level.’ He winked again, to all the deskbound assembly in general. ‘I haven’t decided about this lot yet though.’ He made an elegant sweeping gesture to the suits in his retinue, then beamed again, obviously highly amused by their discomfiture.
‘Well, that’s it really. I’m not one for speechifying. I just didn’t want anyone to worry.’ He leapt down from his vantage point. ‘As they say in the movies, “Have a nice day.”’
Yes, please go. I can’t think. I need to settle down. Go away, Mr Dream Lover McKenna. Just walk out of my life so I can keep you in my fantasies.
A new emotion sluiced through her, as shocking and intense as the lust she’d felt. It was a black, aching sense of loss and despair. Why feel what she felt now, for a man she’d never see again? Why couldn’t it have happened with someone attainable, with whom there might be a future? And more to the point, somebody that she liked, not this clearly supremely arrogant alpha male.
But Ellis McKenna didn’t walk. He stayed where he was, scoping her, and frowning.
‘You really are still a bit damp there, Ms J. Lockhart, aren’t you?’ The frown deepened, became layered somehow, as if his attention to her was operating on multiple levels at once. ‘We can’t have that. I’m not keen on the idea of an employee of mine coming down with pneumonia on the very first day I meet her. I think you’d better come with me.’ Imperiously, he held out his hand, as if to draw her up from her seat. ‘Please?’
And there it was again, that strange hint of entreaty in his eyes. That very human quality, a need for genuine interaction, however brief.
What the hell is going on? This is just barmy!
Still not sure whether she was succumbing to a consummate manipulator, or a man’s real wish for her company, she took the offered hand, snatching up her bag from the side of her desk. His fingers closed around hers, firm and unyielding as if he thought she might flee if he let up on the hold. It was impossible not to follow him now as he led her the length of the desk farm, running the gauntlet of dozens of pairs of curious eyes tracking their every move.
‘Where are we going? You can’t just waltz me away somewhere,’ she hissed, in the lowest voice she gauged he could hear without it carrying to the curious ears of her colleagues.
‘I can. I’m the boss,’ he said, twinkling at her over his shoulder.
‘You’re only the boss of me as an employee, not as a person. I ought to report you to my union rep for harassment.’ And in any other circumstances, it might have been harassment, but this … this was something else entirely.
He stopped as they got to the lift, and released her hand.
‘I’m sorry. I’m being a bit of an arse, aren’t I? Do you want to go back to your desk?’ His expression was still that curious blend of provocation and appeal. He was daring her to walk back between the rows of avidly gaping faces, yet hoping that she wouldn’t call his bluff.
But what on earth is he planning?
Jess shot into the lift, and almost adhered herself to the far wall, about as far away from Ellis McKenna as she could get. After pressing the button for the top floor, he winked at her, and leant against the opposite wall. Why did she feel disappointed that he didn’t lunge in her direction?
But, he didn’t need to lunge. He just did it with his ocean-green eyes, scrutinising her from head to foot while a little smile played around his lips.
Jess wished, wished, wished she looked more impressive. She lifted her chin and eyeballed him back boldly, but she was all too aware of the soggy hem of her skirt, her squelchy shoes and the stringy wet strands of her hair. Still, pretending she looked fabulous, she stayed strong, trying not to be intimidated by his effortless, scruffy glamour and his sexual aura, an emanation so intense it was like a mist that filled the cabin of the lift.
Oh shit. Oh Lord. I want him. I’ve no practical idea how to do sex, but I want to do it with him, even if I will be the most hopeless lay.
Ellis tilted his head a little, his eyes narrowing almost as if he’d heard her. For about a fifth of a second, he caught his plush lower lip between his teeth, and looking at him, at that complex expression on his face, she could imagine that it wouldn’t matter to him that she was inexperienced. Whatever happened, he would be good enough for both of them. He’d be sensational.
The ‘ding’ of the lift arriving at their destination made her jump, physically. They’d been in the lift less than thirty seconds but it felt like a lifetime.
‘Where exactly are we going?’ she asked, following him as he strode out of the lift, then paused to wait for her.
‘I’ve commandeered old Jacobson’s office for the day. He’s slumming it, in with one of his henchmen.’ Ellis winked at her again. ‘He says he doesn’t mind in the slightest but I can see he’s really fuming inside.’
Jess had no idea what Mr Jacobson, the head honcho, looked like
when he was fuming. He hadn’t even been the one to interview her, and staff on her level never really interacted with senior management.
Looks like I’m interacting with a level of management way above ‘old Jacobson’ today. It isn’t possible to reach a higher level than this.
‘I hope he doesn’t decide to take reprisals on people like me when you’ve flitted on to wherever you plan to flit to next,’ she said crisply, as Ellis ushered her into the Executive Director’s office suite. Jacobson’s secretary gave her a curious glance, but only momentarily. The woman barely seemed to have eyes for anyone but Ellis McKenna.
‘No interruptions please, Ms Brown,’ he instructed, pausing at the older woman’s desk to bestow a brain-melting smile.
‘Of course, Mr McKenna,’ she replied, sounding suspiciously breathy.
You make all women crazy, don’t you? Jess accused him silently as he held open the door to the inner sanctum for her.
The way his beautiful mouth quirked seemed to suggest, once again, that he’d heard the thought.
It was a large office, with a very fine leather-topped desk, banked computer workstations to one side, and an ‘informal’ area over by the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the busy street below. Across the rooftops, in the distance, there was a tantalising view, between two high rises, of the city park, a bit of breathing space amongst the built-up metropolis. There was even the faintest glint of the boating pond, the glitter of water.
Two long settees faced each other at right angles to the triple-glazed glass, with individual armchairs drawn up to the sides and a couple of small, low tables strategically placed.
But wasn’t really the seating arrangement that caught Jess’s eye. It was the collection of items assembled, some on one of the tables, some on one of the couches.
Ellis led her to the nearest couch.
How to Seduce a Billionaire Page 2
