Oh no!
But, it was oh yes. Ellis McKenna slid into the spare seat at their table of four with a belated, ‘May I join you?’ Setting his cup in front of him, he grinned as if he completed their chatty foursome every day.
Jess couldn’t speak, but at least she wasn’t the only one. The others were gaping at their new companion, as subject to the ‘dazzle’ effect as she was. Although perhaps for not quite the same reasons.
Ellis took a sip of what looked like jet black coffee and said, ‘Not bad … not bad at all.’ He took another sip, and then lounged back in his chair, beaming at them. ‘Seems a decent canteen. The only shortcoming I can see is that there’s no hot chocolate on the menu, but that can be rectified.’
Did you just wink at me? Oh you, devil, how could you? Stop it!
‘So, ladies, what do you think of the food? How’s that tuna thing?’ He nodded to the food still on Jess’s plate. ‘Nothing wrong with it, I hope? Nothing I need to look into?’
‘It’s excellent, actually.’ It was normally one of her favourites, but a certain person had put the kybosh on her appetite. ‘I’m just not particularly hungry today.’
‘And why is that? Nerves about meeting the big horrible ogre who’s just bought the company?’
Pam and Emma giggled. How the hell could she give them a ‘cool it and behave look’ without him noticing? They were exchanging looks and Jess had seen that secret code, and been part of it herself, when one or other of them had fancied a new male employee, and set their sights on the guy, here in the canteen. The look meant it was time to scuttle off and leave the field clear to the one who hoped to ‘click’.
‘No, not that at all.’ Jess paused to deliberately stab up a tuna chunk, convey it to her lips, and then chew. It tasted of nothing. ‘I think you’ve proved to us all that you’re not an ogre, so there’s nothing to be nervous about.’
It was Ellis’s turn to laugh. ‘Now that’s a shame. Obviously rumours of my power and awesomeness have been grossly exaggerated. I’m crushed.’
‘Look, it’s been lovely meeting you, Mr McKenna,’ said Pam, already on her feet, ‘but I’m a dutiful employee and I have some stuff to catch up on …’ She grabbed Emma’s elbow. ‘And so has Emma. Please excuse us.’
Emma clearly didn’t really want to be excused, especially as she was sitting right next to Ellis, their bodies almost touching, but she complied with a smile, and ‘Catch you later’, then followed the other girl away from the table.
‘Nice girls,’ observed Ellis, leaning forward again, eyes alight. ‘Very tactful … very perceptive.’
‘Yes, they are nice. They’re my friends. And we were enjoying our lunch together.’
‘I’m sorry …’ Oh, what an obvious, big fat lie. ‘But I wanted to continue our conversation and I thought this would be less conspicuous than summoning you upstairs again.’ His long, slightly tanned hands were on the table now, just inches from hers. Oh God, he wasn’t going to try and grab her, was he?
‘What do you mean, less conspicuous? Everybody’s looking at us, Mr McKenna, in case you hadn’t noticed?’
It was true. Everyone in the immediate vicinity appeared to be hanging on their every word, some blatantly, and some trying for at least a semblance of stealth.
‘I tend to have that effect,’ he said with a lift of his dark eyebrows, ‘but you’re right. This is quite a public place for the kind of questions I’d like to ask you. What say we go out for lunch? You’re not really eating that, and I know several places not too far away where the cuisine might be a bit more tempting. How about it?’ He looked as if he might reach out and take her hand, but Jess hid both quickly, in her lap.
You’re the temptation …
It was true, but to succumb was pointless. It would only make things worse. He was muddying the water. She only wanted a face and a body to star in her fantasies. There was no possibility of more, and she didn’t want to spill all the details of her non-existent sex life to a man she’d never see again. Especially one who was starting to make her cross as well as turned on, what with his arrogance and his alpha male games.
‘That’s very kind of you, Mr McKenna, but I’m afraid I’ve already got my lunch here, and to be honest, I don’t want to answer any questions. Not unless they’re to do with my performance as an employee here.’ She gave him a very firm look. ‘I really think that’s all you’re entitled to, don’t you?’
He shrugged; a beautiful, loose, mammalian movement, accompanied by a boyish, rueful smile. ‘You’re right, of course. But I just wanted to get to know you better, Jess. No pressure. No questions if you don’t want any. Just a bit of time spent in each other’s company.’
What was he playing at? Why was he playing with her? She was an ordinary woman, a middling happy insurance clerk heading for thirty. Her life wasn’t perfect – whose was – but mostly she liked it the way it was.
Ellis McKenna was as alien as a man from another planet. In every way that mattered, their worlds could never really intersect. Stop the madness now.
Coward, Jess. Coward …
‘I don’t think that’s really a good idea, Mr McKenna. I’m me and you’re you.’ She looked around. ‘I … I feel uncomfortable with you here. It’s making people stare at me. I like fitting in here. I like my job. But it’s going to get weird if people keep seeing me with you.’ She drew in a deep breath, preparing herself. ‘I really do wish you would go … Please.’
He frowned. Was he cross? Annoyed at not getting his way, as usual? Then he smiled again, shrugging that fabulous shrug. ‘All right. I see that. I’m being a bit of an oaf, aren’t I?’ His fingers flexed, as if he really was fighting the urge to reach out and grab her hand. ‘I’ll leave right now, if you’ll promise me one thing. No … two things.’
‘What things?’ Just go … go … you’re driving me crazy and making me want what I can’t have. Well, not with you …
‘One, you call me “Ellis”.’ He reached into his inner pocket and drew out a couple of business cards. ‘And two, you’ll at least consider having dinner with me some time. Away from here. Nobody need know.’ Reaching in his pocket again, he brought out a pen. ‘This is my private number …’ He scribbled it on the back of one of the cards, and then pushed both cards and the pen towards her. ‘Can I have yours?’ He waited, in one of his cleverly executed micropauses. ‘Please?’
She hesitated. People were watching, but she no longer cared. Exchanging numbers was like … serious … like a man properly interested in a woman, wanting a real date.
‘I could get your number from your personnel file, but that seems underhand. I’d rather you give it to me willingly, Jess.’
Give it to you willingly …
For a flash moment, a hot, vivid image rocketed into her brain. Herself, with Ellis, giving something willingly. Something she wanted to give. Oh God, how she wanted to give it. And, if she was going to, why not with him? A fabulous, beautiful, once in a lifetime man.
Snatching up the pen, she scribbled her mobile number and her home number on the back.
He beamed. ‘Anything to get rid of me, eh?’ Pocketing the card and the pen, he stood up.
‘Yes … anything to get rid of you … Ellis.’
Laughing softly, he waggled his fingers at her in a mock wave, then, just before he turned and walked away, he murmured, ‘I’ll be in touch, Jess. I mean it. Enjoy your lunch.’
And then he was gone, leaving a hum of conversation lingering behind him … and Jess wondering what the hell she’d just done.
I’ll be in touch, Jess. I mean it.
Yeah, right. And pigs might fly.
Back home that evening, Jess twirled Ellis McKenna’s card between her fingers. She wasn’t going to call his number because she didn’t think he’d intended her to, and he most certainly wouldn’t call her. It’d just been him going through the motions. Kindly perhaps, to make her feel special for a moment, but probably hoping she knew the score, really.
It was an ideal opportunity to review her encounter with a billionaire, and try and make sense of it. Especially as Cathy had left a note telling Jess there was half a bottle of white Zinfandel in the fridge that needed drinking up.
Why did you come to Windsor Insurance today, Mr McKenna? Because you were bored? Because you really are an eccentric weirdo, and you enjoy doing unexpected things and wrong-footing people, women and employees in general alike?
It had been a whim, really, she supposed. Windsor wasn’t the biggest insurer in the country, but its share in the market was growing. A nice profitable plum to be harvested by the McKenna group. And Ellis McKenna had probably thought it was a bit of a wheeze to drop in on the staff of its main northern HQ, simply because of the coincidence of him having a house in the area … which he probably didn’t visit much anyway.
You are weird, Mr McKenna.
Ellis, he’d insisted.
You’re weird, Ellis. Gorgeous but decidedly strange.
Maybe it was the loss of his wife that had affected him? It must have been devastating, enough to throw the hardest head off kilter. Or maybe he’d always been capricious, and into playing mind-games?
She could clearly picture him nodding in agreement, imagining him right here in her bedroom with her, in a way that was far clearer than her hazy erotic fantasies about Dream Lover.
Even though the wine had been open a day, it was still cool and delicious from the fridge. Jess set her glass aside, not wanting to swig it down all at once. She’d bathed and changed into her pyjamas early, and was in bed, with the sound turned off on the telly, and all her ‘stuff’ spread around her on the bed.
A pristine new drawing pad. Freshly sharpened pencils and a proper putty eraser. Some snacks, although she’d have to be careful not to get crisp grease on the paper. Her old laptop, with Firefox open at Google search.
She’d told herself not to get involved in finding out about Ellis McKenna, and that it was better just to remember today as unusual, interesting and, yes, sexy. The day a billionaire had kissed her feet, and got her in such a kerfuffle she’d told him she was a virgin. But she couldn’t help but be curious about him. The bloody man had had an unprecedented effect on her and she just couldn’t sweep that aside. It had to be acknowledged. He had to be acknowledged. And known, if only a little.
The next half an hour was both fascinating and frustrating. How could there possibly be so little information about Ellis McKenna in this no-secrets digital age? Oh, she found business statistics about the McKenna group, some background about his extended family, who seemed to be spread all over the world, but mainly in the States, Australia and also in the UK … She also found pictures of what must have been the ‘old’ Ellis, clad in razor sharp suits and with a razor sharp haircut. One full length shot even showed ‘proper’ shoes, hand-made no doubt, in gleaming leather, rather than the footwear he wore now, that looked as if he’d walked right off the beach.
Yet apart from his age – thirty-six – and some academic stuff and more notable business achievements, there was tantalisingly little personal information to be found on Ellis himself. Just snippets in news archives.
Clearly, even in these times of celebrity exposés and phone-tapping, if you were rich enough, you could still fly pretty much beneath the radar. She couldn’t even discover what the name of this supposedly local house of his was, or the specifics of its location.
But there were one or two brief news pieces on the death of his wife. A horrible tragedy that the press had found so juicy they just had to pursue the details.
Billionaire’s Bride gunned down in Mall … McKenna’s little angels slain.
It’d happened five years ago, in a popular, newly opened shopping mall. Ellis’s wife Julie had been out for the day, with their two daughters, Annie and Lily, when a gunman, believed to be high on drugs, had run amok, mowing down a dozen or more shoppers in a rain of bullets, including the McKennas. The two little girls had been just five and seven at the time.
Icy horror gripped Jess, just from reading the piece. It must have been devastating beyond belief. With a history like that it was no wonder Ellis was a bit strange. And no wonder he hadn’t offered any detail beyond the fact he was a widower.
I should have been nicer to him. Poor man.
Jess picked up the card. Should she call him? No, it was silly. If he could make a pass at a random virgin like her, he probably had a whole little black book full of much more experienced girlfriends who could offer him the solace of physical pleasure. The brief oblivion of the flesh that would momentarily dull the pain of his loss.
Hmm … the glass she’d been randomly sipping from was empty. As was the bottle.
Thinking about the loss of loved ones would make her maudlin, and that wouldn’t do anybody any good. Not her. Not this strange, beautiful, arousing man she’d never meet again. Time to put a positive spin on her peculiar day.
Time to draw. And perhaps do other things.
She flipped open the drawing pad, and shuffled to sit up against the pillows with it resting on her knees. Reaching for one of her good graphite pencils, she set to work.
Sometimes, Jess had a knack of being able to draw from memory, or from a combination of memory and pure imagination. Tonight those skills seemed a bit addled, surprise, surprise.
She worked on an eye, crinkled at the corner, as if he was grinning or laughing. She laboured over a mouth, curved, playful and sensual.
She made a mess of his nose, making it too straight and sharp, rubbing out several times.
But damn it, she couldn’t seem to put the whole face together.
Maybe I should call you after all, and ask you to pose for me, you aggravating man!
Shaking her head, she tossed the card away across the bed. That way madness lay.
Her drawing wasn’t working for her tonight. Time to try something else. Rising from the bed, she went and turned the light off, relying only on the silent flickering from the television for illumination.
Then she returned to the bed, shoved her stuff aside and smiled to herself. Dream Lover had a face now, at least, so why not enjoy him? Use her strange day and her encounter with a billionaire, rather than let it go to waste, and just fade away?
Shooting a quick glance at the drawer in her bedroom cabinet, she wondered about the cheap and cheerful vibrator and a small tube of lubricant she kept in there. Why not, she had the house to herself and no worries about being overheard?
But even so, she didn’t fancy the noise the rather basic toy made. The sound was like another presence in the room, and she only wanted it to be her and Dream Lover.
Her and Ellis.
What would it be like? Being with him? Because of who and what he was, a deluxe experience, no doubt. No coupling in an ordinary suburban bedroom like this one, no way.
Unfastening her pyjama top, she formed a picture of a gorgeous hotel room, acres of space and a huge, white bed made up with immaculate, luxurious linen. She switched perspective, seeing the room from the aspect of the sumptuous bed itself, with herself at its centre, clad in equally sumptuous lingerie: an ivory silk camisole, fastened up the front with delicate pearl buttons, worn with the tiniest matching thong, and white hold-up stockings with a thick welt of intricate lace.
Bloody hell, I look fab!
She’d never fantasised in quite this detail before, but somehow it was easy. But what about her lover, her dream … Ellis McKenna?
Both in the fantasy and in reality, she looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes. Would he come to her naked, or clothed in something? Well, initially … She imagined him bare-chested but wearing silk pyjama bottoms. Never having seen his unclothed chest, she imagined it smooth. Or maybe just a little bit of dark fuzz, to match the hair on his he
ad, and that sexy designer stubble he wore.
He didn’t speak, but he advanced towards her and lay down gracefully on the wide, white bed at her side. Astonishingly, she almost experienced the dip created by his body for real.
Cupping her breast, she replaced her own fingers with his. She knew his touch already. He had beautiful hands and he used them well. He was as much an artist as she was, in this at least. His thumb glided over her nipple, masked by the silk, strumming it in a way that was both arousing and frustrating. It made her want more. Silently directing the action, she willed him to undo the phantom silk ribbons and bare her.
‘Delightful.’
The sound of his voice was so real that it shook her from the fantasy for a moment. This was a first. Dream Lover had a voice now too, why hadn’t she expected that, knowing the real man who was the template had such an intriguing layering of accents within his basically English tones? A British education, enriched with time spent in other lands; Australia, America.
‘You’re beautiful, Jess.’ The words were like caresses in themselves, exciting her even more, as if the syllables played over her nipples … and her clit. She moved uneasily, plucking lightly at the former; wanting to rub the latter, but holding off. To make things last.
I’m not beautiful. Not really …
But in the fantasy it was easy to believe it. To feel powerful and seductive, and regard him with sultry amusement as he undressed her. Those eyes of his, so gorgeously coloured and mutable, they flared with heat as he teased open the notional ribbons and bared her breasts. She arched upwards as he swooped down, kissing her nipples, licking and sucking them. Dimly at the back of her mind she knew the pleasure came from her own hand, but what her imagination was creating for her was more real than ever before, painted in a thousand colours, informed by the actual experience of Ellis McKenna and his dazzling good looks.
Dream Jess dug her fingers into Dream Lover’s thick silky hair, compelling him to lavish her bosom with kisses.
But she wanted more, and because he was idealised, he knew what that was. Still plaguing her nipple with his tongue, he reached down, pushing his fingers beneath the tiny silk thong to find her centre. She imagined that she might be shaved down there, trimmed and groomed, and he zeroed in on her clitoris with no pause or hesitation.
How to Seduce a Billionaire Page 5
