Not to mention the way her tongue had caressed the ice cream cone he’d bought her at the park.
He briefly closed his eyes and muffled a groan at that thought.
To distract himself while he sat in the bar and waited for Fiona to arrive for their dinner date, he opened his phone and checked his email. There were twenty new messages to go through and as he did, Luke shut out the rest of the room as if he were alone on an island.
The truth was, if he hadn’t met Fiona, he’d have been bored out of his mind.
This conference had nothing new to offer him. Luke had already chosen his path, knew his own plans and had no interest in making changes to what was, in effect, a newborn company. He’d only come to San Francisco because he’d felt that he should make an appearance, talk to a couple of old friends. Then he’d met Fiona. She’d shaken him and he had no problem admitting that—at least to himself. She was smart and funny and confident and all three of those things, combined with that body and those eyes, had his mind wandering even while dealing with email.
“Not good.” Luke shook his head to clear it. He had enough going on in his life right now and definitely didn’t need the distraction of a woman—even one as intriguing as Fiona. Hell, he thought, maybe especially not one as intriguing as Fiona.
He had to focus on his company. No time in his life at the moment for a woman like her.
Blowing out a breath, he read the message from his assistant, Jack.
We’ve hit a snag in early production, boss. Peterson says they’re backlogged and won’t get to do the run of our new tablets in time for a Christmas release.
“Well, damn it.” Frustration roared through him. Yes, to anyone else, talking about Christmas releases in February sounded ridiculous. But these things were always planned out months, if not years, in advance. Usually for just this reason. Something always went wrong.
This wasn’t the first time Luke had had to deal with wrenches thrown into the works. At Barrett Toys and Tech, they’d often had to pull off last-minute miracles. Yes, his cousin Cole had supposedly been in charge of taking care of their production partners, but more often than not, that job had fallen to Luke. He’d handle it this time, too. Quickly, he fired off an email to Jack.
Tell Peterson we have a contract, and I expect him to honor it. Tell him I said to find a way. If he gives you any crap, I’ll take care of it myself on Monday.
That would probably be enough to keep the man on track. If it wasn’t, Luke would find someone else to do the job and word would spread that Peterson’s Manufacturing couldn’t be trusted to honor its schedules.
Focused now on his business, he answered a few more emails from marketing, engineering and design, then skipped the one from his grandfather. He knew damn well that Jamison would be telling him again that he should come back to the family business.
A quick ping of regret echoed inside him, but he ignored it. He loved that old man, but damned if he’d go back where his opinions weren’t trusted. His new business wasn’t just a company but a matter of pride. Luke wasn’t going to walk away from it.
“Excuse me?”
A woman’s voice from right beside him. One of the waitresses had already tried to freshen his drink twice before. He waved one hand at the table. “I don’t need a refill, thanks.”
“Good to know,” the woman said, then added, “So do I have to fall into your lap again to get your attention?”
He went still before turning his head to look up at Fiona. If he’d thought she was stunning earlier in that short, flirty skirt, it was nothing to what he was thinking now.
She wore a dark red, off-the-shoulder dress that defined every curve in her body like a lover’s hands. The dress was nipped in tightly at her narrow waist and the short, tight skirt stopped midway on her thighs. The black heels completed her outfit and made her legs look amazing. Instantly, he had a mental image of those legs locked around his hips while she pulled him deeper inside her heat.
And...just like that, he was too hard to stand.
Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail that hung between her shoulders and her coffee-colored eyes sparkled as if she knew exactly what effect she was having on him.
“Have you seen enough?” she asked, “or would you like me to do a slow turn?”
If he saw her butt in that dress, it would finish him off. “Not necessary. Have a seat.”
“Oh.” She glanced toward the dining room. “I thought we were going to dinner. I am sort of hungry.”
“Right. Carnivore. I remember.” He nodded and as she sat down, he signaled for the waitress. “But that’s going to have to wait until I can walk again.”
Her mouth curved and he wanted nothing more than to taste it. “Again?” She smiled. “You’re really good for my self-esteem.”
“Yeah. Happy to help...” When the waitress arrived, Fiona looked up at her.
“Vodka martini, please. Dirty.”
When they were alone again, Luke finished off the email he’d been composing. Anything to get his mind off what his mind wanted to stay on.
“Are we having a phone date?” Fiona asked, and her voice was so soft and sultry, he had to look up and meet her eyes.
“Should I get mine out of my purse?” She reached for the small black clutch she’d set on the table a moment ago.
“What? No. Just a little business I have to take care of.”
“Uh-huh.”
The waitress returned, set a chilled cocktail glass in front of Fiona and left again. Taking the stirrer from the glass, Fiona ate one of the three olives, then took a sip. “So business, anytime, anywhere?”
He tore his gaze from the email and glanced at her again, just in time to watch her put the second olive in her mouth and slide the stirrer between her lips.
Luke took a deep breath. “It’s important.”
“Oh, I’m sure.” She sat back in the black leather chair and sipped at her drink. “Do you always do business after business hours?”
A little irritated with himself at how easily Fiona affected him, Luke concentrated on composing the email. “When I have to.”
“You were working yesterday afternoon when we met, too.”
“Things have to get done, whether I’m at the company or away.”
“But today, you almost never checked your phone.”
“Making up for it now,” he said. It had been years since he’d gone most of the day without checking emails. But he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her. It wasn’t just a sexual pull he felt for her. He actually enjoyed listening to her, talking to her. It had been a long time since a woman had captivated him like this.
And right now, for Luke, that was off-limits. Fiona wasn’t the kind of woman you walked away from easily. So, it was better to not get involved at all, right?
“So, you’re never really off duty?”
“Not usually.” He hit Send, and a response to his earlier message to Jack arrived. Dutifully, he clicked on it and smiled in satisfaction.
“What’s the point in having your own business if you never have any time off?”
He lifted his gaze to hers and reached for his drink. “Clearly, you don’t know how much is involved in running your own business.”
“Not true. I just don’t let my business interfere with my life.”
He snorted. “This business is my life.”
“Well, that’s just sad,” Fiona mused.
Luke stared at her. “Sad? I’m building a company from the ground up. That’s not sad. It’s exciting. Challenging.”
“And sucking up everything around it like a black hole?”
He laughed shortly, looked back at the email he was writing to Jack. He finished it off, hit Send and then set his phone on the table beside him.
“Amazing,” he said. “For a second there, you a
lmost sounded like my grandfather.”
Her eyebrows arched. “What every woman longs to hear.”
“Not what I meant.” Luke shook his head. “It’s just that he’s suddenly anti-technology.”
“Oh, then I’m not like him at all,” Fiona said, sipping at her drink again. “I like technology. I love email and texting with my mom who makes hilarious typos, and I’m very fond of my washing machine, car and television.”
Nodding, he smiled. “Glad to hear it. That’s what people don’t get—including my grandfather. Tech isn’t just computers or robots or drones. More than a hundred years ago, tech was the first airplane. It’s about the future. Seeing it. Grabbing it.”
“What about the present?”
“What?”
“The present,” she repeated, giving him a knowing smile. “As in dinner? Can you walk yet?”
“As long as you don’t sit on my lap again, I think we’re good.” He stood up, then walked around the table to pull her chair out.
She slowly rose, took a deep breath that lifted the tops of her breasts to dangerous levels and said, “I’ll try to restrain myself.”
And it wasn’t going to be easy. She didn’t have to actually touch him, Luke realized. Just looking at her was enough to feed a fire that threatened to burn him to ash.
Luke steered Fiona toward the hostess, then followed behind as the woman guided them to a table by a wide window. His gaze dropped to Fiona’s butt and the way it swayed with her every step. He wanted his hands on her. Soon.
Four
“We’ve spent the day together and I still don’t know why you’re in San Francisco,” Luke said.
True. She’d managed for most of the day to steer the conversation around to him. To keep him talking about his own company and, every once in a while, to bring up the grandfather who was so desperate to get Luke back into the fold.
Because she couldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. Couldn’t reveal that she had been hired to meet him and ease him back into his family. So, she was left with half-truths and outright lies. Fiona wasn’t comfortable with them, but sometimes, there was just no other way.
“I’m actually here on business,” she said.
His mesmerizing eyes locked on her, and she just managed not to shiver.
“Who do you work for?”
“Oh, I’ve got my own business.” Fiona reached for her purse. She dug inside for the brightly flowered, metallic card holder that had been a gift from her best friend, Laura. Opening it up, she pulled out a card and handed it to him.
He looked at it and a quizzical expression crossed his face. She couldn’t blame him. Most people had that initial reaction.
“ICanFixIt?” He lifted his gaze to hers, and Fiona gave another little jolt. His eyes had a sort of power over her she hadn’t really expected—or found a way to combat, yet.
“Fix what?”
She shrugged. “Anything, really. If you need it fixed, I can do it.”
He tucked her card into his inner jacket pocket in a move that felt oddly intimate. “That’s fairly vague.”
“What’s vague? Actually, it’s a perfect description of what I do.”
“Explain.”
Well, it wasn’t the first time she’d had to give an explanation of what she did. Her business card really said it all.
“If someone’s lost something or if they have something they need and can’t get, then they call me, and I fix it.”
“Easy as that.”
It wasn’t a question, but at the same time, it was. “I didn’t say it was easy.” Fiona smiled at him because, honestly, he looked so dubious it was going to be fun to prove him wrong. Plus, she still had flames licking at her insides when she looked into his eyes. There was definitely something happening between them that she hadn’t counted on. That she hadn’t expected at all. Was it going to complicate the situation? Absolutely. Oh sure, he was paying attention to her and that would help with her goal of convincing him to go back to his family business. But she wasn’t a one-night kind of woman and, once he found out she’d set him up from their first meeting, that’s all she would be relegated to. Was that going to change how she was feeling? Nope.
“Tell me something you’ve ‘fixed’ lately.”
“Okay.” She did a quick flip through her mental file folders and came up with a quick example.
“About two weeks ago, a woman called me for help finding her son’s letterman jacket.”
He laughed.
Fiona scowled at him. She wasn’t really surprised at his reaction, but she was a little disappointed. Just because it seemed silly to Luke didn’t mean that it wasn’t important to the kid who’d lost his jacket.
“It seems like a small thing to you, but that boy worked really hard to earn his varsity letter. And his mom paid a lot of money for that jacket. Money she couldn’t spare.”
“But she could afford to hire you?”
Fiona grinned. “She made her son pay my fee out of his savings.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Good for her. So how did you solve the problem?”
Pleased, Fiona continued. “I backtracked. Found out where he’d been, who he’d been with, if he’d stopped anywhere along his route.”
He frowned again. “Sounds like a lot of work.”
She shrugged that off. “You work hard, don’t you?”
“Of course.”
“So do I. Anyway,” she said, “I went everywhere that Ryder went over a long weekend, because he couldn’t remember where he was the last time he’d seen the jacket.”
“Of course he couldn’t.”
She ignored that. “Really, it’s amazing how many places a teenager can go in one weekend.” Smiling now, she said, “I went to a hamburger stand in Bolsa Chica, a surf shop in Huntington Beach, a movie theater in Newport and a shake shack in Laguna. He was also applying for some jobs, so that took me back to Long Beach and then Palos Verdes, and I really hate driving over the Vincent Thomas Bridge.”
He laughed again. “Why?”
“It’s huge,” she said. “Really long and really high, and I drive a Volkswagen Bug so when a truck gets close, I just picture myself sailing over the edge.”
“You won’t go over the edge. The railings are too high.”
“Okay, then, being crushed.”
“Reasonable,” he admitted.
“Thank you.” How very kind of him to admit she had a right to be nervous. A little irritated in spite of her attraction to him, she went on. “So, I talked to dozens of people, went through a lot of lost-and-found boxes, and finally found the jacket.”
“I admit it. I’m intrigued. Where’d you find it?”
“At a girl’s house.” Grinning, Fiona picked up the martini she’d carried with her to the dining room and took a sip. “She’d seen the boy at a coffee shop in Long Beach where he was applying for a job. She goes to school with him, has a huge crush on him, and when he forgot the jacket after his interview, she picked it up.”
“She just took it?” His expression said he was appalled.
“Well, she said she had completely planned to give it back to him at school, but instead, she held on to it. I do think she was going to give it back eventually, she just liked having it.”
“So she stole it.”
Fiona held up one finger for correction. “She rescued it.”
“And held it hostage.”
Laughing, Fiona shook her head. “There was no ransom, and I really think you’re missing the point of this.”
“Fine. Clue me in.”
“The point is, I found the jacket. I returned it to the boy and his very grateful mother.”
“And did you tell him about the girl who had it?”
Fiona winced. “Since she pleaded with me not to, no. I didn’t. She was embarr
assed.”
“She was a thief.”
Fiona tipped her head to one side and studied him. This was a side of him she hadn’t seen before. Until now, he’d been charming, funny and just sexy as hell. His response now, though, painted a hard, unforgiving picture that was a little startling. “That’s cold.”
“Just a fact.” He shrugged. “She took it and didn’t return it.”
“She was going to.” Fiona was sure of it. Heck, she remembered being in high school and completely infatuated with the star of the baseball team. Who had, naturally, not been aware of her existence. She had understood what the girl was thinking, and Fiona had believed her when she’d sworn that she was going to give the jacket back. “So to you, facts are all that matter? No straying from the straight and narrow?”
“Is that so unusual? You’re okay with people stealing things?”
“Of course not, but I’m willing to admit that people do things they regret—”
“Everyone does.” His features darkened for a moment before he said, “Doesn’t mean you don’t have to accept the consequences.”
“I’m all about responsibility, but a little understanding wouldn’t hurt, either.”
“Right and wrong. Period.” He sipped at his drink and looked completely at ease with that pronouncement.
Well, that didn’t bode well for her, Fiona thought. She’d started this—whatever it was between them—with a lie. She doubted he’d understand that.
“So, no shades of gray in your world?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
“Must be difficult being perfect in an imperfect world.”
His lips curved briefly. “I didn’t say I was perfect. When I’m wrong, I own it.”
Her guess was, he didn’t consider himself wrong very often. “And do you confess it?”
He didn’t say anything, and Fiona could guess what that meant. No, he didn’t. She imagined that apologies didn’t come easy to a man so sure he was right all the time. So she used that moment to drive home her point. “Then why should this girl confess? Or have what she did pointed out? Who would gain? I returned the jacket. The boy was happy. His mom was happy. And the girl doesn’t have to be worried about being teased or bullied at school over it.”
Jet Set Confessions (HQR Desire) Page 5
