“And did she learn anything?”
“I think so.” In fact, she was sure of it. Fiona remembered the horrified expression on the girl’s face when she’d been tracked down.
“And that’s your business?” he asked. “Tracking down jackets stolen by starry-eyed schoolgirls?”
“It’s an example.” This wasn’t the first time someone had been dismissive of her business. But she bristled a little at his tone anyway. Feeling a little defensive now, she said, “I’ve helped people research their thesis, found a lost engagement ring, arranged for a band for a wedding and just a couple of months ago, I reunited a woman with the daughter she gave up for adoption thirty years ago.”
And that case was the main reason she was here today. Of course, she couldn’t tell Luke that. He might put things together if he found out that Fiona had done work for the sister of his grandfather’s secretary.
His eyebrows arched. “That’s impressive.”
“Thank you. I know to some, my business might sound silly or not worth doing, even.” Lifting her martini for another sip, she let the icy liquid cool the bubbles of insult in the pit of her stomach. It was ridiculous to take offense at Luke’s remarks or outlook. It didn’t matter what he thought of her business, did it? She’d faced the same thing from a lot of people over the years. It hadn’t changed anything for Fiona.
She had a skill that she’d used in high school to make friends and, once grown, she’d honed her talents into a business that served a real purpose, and Fiona was proud of what she’d built. As proud, she was willing to bet, as Luke was of his tech business.
“But when it’s your engagement ring that’s missing, it’s a big deal. Or when you manage to surprise your grandmother with tickets to a play she’s been wanting to see.” Fiona smiled at that memory. “It’s not just the big things that are important, right? Sometimes, the small things in life mean the most.”
“How did you get started in this ‘business’?”
“You don’t have to say it like that,” she said. “As if it isn’t a real company. I’m not as big as Barrett Toys and Tech, but I support myself and provide a service.”
He gave her a slow nod. “Understood. So, how did you get started?”
“Kind of a long story...”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Fiona shrugged. “Okay, then. I grew up in a series of different foster homes.” Before he could offer sympathy that she didn’t want or need, she rushed on. “So that meant going to strange schools and always being the new girl.”
“Rough.”
“Especially for a teenager,” she agreed, happy he hadn’t gotten the pity gleam in his eyes that too many people did when learning about her background. It hadn’t been easy, sure. But she’d survived. “So to make friends, I started offering help to people. Dog walking. Babysitting. Finding a pair of lost glasses. Tutoring football players. If it needed doing, I could do it.”
He didn’t say anything, just kept his gaze on her. She shifted a little uncomfortably under his steady stare but continued. “I went to community college, took business courses and turned my skill into a way to make my living.”
“You still dog walking?”
“If someone needs it, sure. I also arrange for DJs for weddings, bounce houses for kids’ parties, tours of movie studios...”
“And how do you pull that off?” He was curious, she could see it in his eyes, and she smiled.
“I’ve got a lot of friends with interesting jobs and we help each other out.” She paused, then said, “I know that most of what I do doesn’t sound important to you—or anyone else. But it’s important to the people who hire me, and isn’t that the point?”
He thought about that for a long moment, his gaze locked with hers. “Yes,” he finally said. “You’re right. It is.”
His phone vibrated on the table and sounded like a rattlesnake in the brush. Fiona jumped, then frowned a bit when Luke reached for it. He glanced at the screen.
“This is business, just excuse me for a minute.”
Times had changed, she reminded herself. Now no one thought twice about taking phone calls during dinner, or at a play or in the movies. And watching Luke, she could see his grandfather’s point. Sure, technology was a great thing to have. It kept people connected—but it also had the ability to isolate them. If someone was more interested in a phone conversation than talking to the person he was with, why be with another person at all?
In spite of her annoyance, Luke’s deep, rumbling voice sent shivers along her spine. His expressions shifted according to whatever the caller had to say. She could barely hear him, so she had no idea what the conversation was about. All she knew was that she was sitting opposite a gorgeous man who was more interested in his phone than in her. In the long run, that was probably best, she told herself. After all, she wasn’t trying to make a romantic connection. She looked around the elegant dining room and saw that most of the people were staring at their phones.
It was a plague, she thought suddenly. And she was sympathetic to his grandfather’s efforts to fight it... Strange that she’d never really paid all that much attention to people’s dependency on technology until accepting this job from Jamison Barrett. She’d never paid much attention to people’s love of technology simply because she was usually too busy. The evidence had been all around her all the time. Heck, she’d no doubt been guilty of it herself. Until today. As she sat there, waiting for Luke to hang up and look at her again, Fiona realized that she really liked him. Which had not been in the plan at all.
When Luke hung up, she said, “I propose a phone ban.”
“Excuse me?”
“No more phones tonight. You took two calls earlier and now this one.” Shrugging, she said, “I suggest we both put our phones on the table and the first one to reach for it loses.”
“Loses what?”
“The agreement.”
His eyes sparked and she saw a definite gleam there that kindled the fires inside her to burn hotter and higher. Apparently, Luke Barrett thrived on competition.
“And what does the winner get?”
“Hmm. Good question. The pride of knowing they won?”
“Not much of an inducement to get me to ignore business calls,” he said.
What would be enough? she wondered. She couldn’t offer a cash prize because he was a billionaire; he wouldn’t need her twenty bucks. Then an idea occurred to her that stirred up the flames inside to make them bright enough to read by.
“Okay,” she countered as a dangerous thought occurred to her. “A kiss.”
Well, she had his attention anyway. Kissing Luke Barrett was more tempting than she wanted to admit even to herself. And maybe that’s why she’d suggested the prize. After all, she knew very well, that whatever was between she and Luke now, it wasn’t going to go anywhere, so why not a kiss?
“One kiss?” He lifted an eyebrow, and she wondered how he did that. “One kiss isn’t much of a prize.”
“It is if you know what you’re doing,” she said.
His eyes darkened until they were the color of a stormy sea. “A challenge. I like it.”
“So you agree? No phone. Winner gets a kiss.”
“Then the loser gets one, too.”
“True, but—”
“But,” he said, “the winner chooses where, when, for how long and how deep.”
Just hearing him say those words set up a low, throbbing ache and made her heart quicken into a beat that was wild and fierce.
And that was just talking about a kiss. Maybe this wasn’t a very good idea.
“Deal?” He set his phone on the tabletop.
Fiona had one last chance to back out, but somehow, she just couldn’t. Instead, she laid her phone beside his and the challenge began.
* * *
Dinner was
good, but Luke hardly tasted it. All he could think of was the kiss that was coming his way. He’d wanted to taste her since the moment they’d met, and now it was so close, his mind was completely fixated.
His phone buzzed again. Third time in the last half hour, and he didn’t even look at it. Instead, he met her gaze and saw the smile in those brown depths. She fully expected him to cave. To take the call, because she’d been seeing him do just that too many times. But Fiona Jordan had no idea just how determined he could be when he was focused on a goal.
And tonight, she was the goal. A temporary distraction? When he was back home, he could focus on his company. Here...
“I’m sorry to interrupt...”
Luke turned to look at a tall blonde woman in a slinky black dress standing beside a little boy clutching a stuffed green alligator to his chest.
After a brief glance at Luke, the woman looked at Fiona and smiled. “I’m really sorry, we’ll only be a minute.”
“It’s no problem, Shelley,” Fiona said, then looked down at the little boy. “Hi, Jake.”
“Tank oo.” He gave her a shy smile, snuggling up to his mom’s leg as he rubbed his alligator across his cheek. “You find Dragon.”
“Well, you’re very welcome,” Fiona told him with a grin. “He looks so happy now to be back with you.”
Jake gave her a wide, two-year-old’s smile and hugged the threadbare stuffed animal a little harder. “Me, too.”
“I’m glad.”
“He wanted to say thank you himself,” Jake’s mother said, “so when we saw you in the dining room, we had to come over.”
“It’s not a problem. I was happy to help.”
“You have no idea how much you helped.” Shelley smoothed one hand over her son’s tousled blond hair. “He was heartbroken because Dragon was lost. He couldn’t even sleep last night.”
“Tank oo,” the boy said again, then turned and scampered back to the table where his father sat, holding a baby girl with a bright pink ribbon in her hair.
“Seriously, thank you.” Shelley shook Fiona’s hand and left.
“Another satisfied client?”
Fiona smiled. “Jake lost Dragon yesterday somewhere in the hotel and, today, I saw his mom searching for it. But she was holding her baby and Jake was crying in his father’s arms, so I volunteered to find it.”
He frowned as he glanced at the happy little boy again. “We were together all day. When did you do this?”
She waved one hand. “When I went upstairs to change for dinner, I met up with them in the elevator.”
Luke thought back. “You were only gone forty-five minutes. You found it that quickly?”
“This one was easy,” she said. “They’d been at the pool most of the day, so I checked and found out the towels had been taken to the hotel laundry right after the family left the pool. Turns out, Dragon got lost in a bunch of towels. So, I went down there, and they let me look through the gigantic tubs of damp towels from the pool area that hadn’t been washed yet and I found him.” She shrugged. “No big deal.”
Luke looked back to where the little boy was sitting, holding tightly to his alligator, and then turned his gaze back to Fiona. “To Jake it was.”
She beamed at him. “You get it.”
“Yeah,” he said, now more determined than ever to win their bet because there was nothing he wanted more than to kiss her senseless. To lose himself in her. “I think I do.”
Her phone rang, a medieval-sounding tune, and still smiling, she automatically reached for it.
“You lose,” Luke said.
She stopped, hand poised above her phone. The music finally ended as the call went to voice mail, but it was too late, and they both knew it. “Not fair. I was distracted.”
Luke smiled, looked her dead in the eye and whispered, “Not nearly as much as you’re going to be.”
The promise of a kiss hung over the rest of their dinner date, and by the time they were finished and the bill was paid, Luke was strung tighter than a harp string. He’d never looked forward so much to a damn kiss. Hell, he’d been torturing himself since the moment she’d dropped into his lap. Knowing that he was finally going to get a taste of her was pushing him closer and closer to the edge.
“You know, we should probably talk about this...”
He had one hand at the small of her back, and he could have sworn he felt heat pouring from her body into his. “You’re not trying to back out, are you? This was your idea.”
They walked out onto the wide flagstone patio and walkway that wended its way through a gigantic garden before winding around the hotel itself.
“Yes, but—”
“But you thought you’d win,” he finished for her and saw her mouth work as if she were biting back what she wanted to say. “Admit it. You thought I’d cave and grab for my phone.”
“Well, of course I did,” she said, tossing a quick look up at him. “Who knew you could be so...”
“Determined? Strong? Single-minded?”
“All of the above.”
He grinned and kept her walking until they were in the deserted garden. The wind was whipping in off the ocean, and February in San Francisco could be downright cold. It seemed no one else was willing to brave the chill and that suited Luke just fine.
“It was a silly bet,” she said.
“And yet we made it.”
She stopped, looked up at him and narrowed her eyes. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“So much,” he admitted. He smiled at her, but that smile slowly dissolved as he really looked at her. That long dark hair was lifting in the wind and her brown eyes looked almost black in the moonlight.
If Luke had been looking for a romantic setting, he couldn’t have picked a better spot. Trees swaying, flowers scenting the air, and the moon, shining out of a cloud swept sky, painting shadows on the grass. There were a few old-fashioned lamps made to look like gaslights sprinkled throughout the garden, adding splashes of gold in the darkness.
But it wasn’t romance he was after, he reminded himself. He wasn’t looking for a relationship, just to quench the fires inside. Lust was driving him. Pure need and a desire so all-consuming, he’d never known anything like it before.
“Are you trying to back out of our deal?” he asked quietly, keeping his gaze locked on hers so he could see if there was the slightest hesitation there.
“That would be awkward, since it was my idea in the first place.”
“Not an answer,” he said, his voice deepening with the need clawing at his throat. Still watching her eyes, he saw desire, irritation at herself for losing this little bet, but he didn’t see “no.” Thank God.
“No, I’m not trying to back out,” she said, and took a deep breath as if steeling herself for a challenge. “You won, so it’s your call. Just as we agreed.”
He reached for her and slid his hands up and down her arms until she shivered under his touch. Her tongue swept out to lick her bottom lip, and everything in Luke fisted tight.
“I suppose if I were a gentleman, I’d let you squirm out of this...”
“But you’re not a gentleman, are you?” she asked, tossing her wind-blown hair back from her face.
“Nope,” he whispered, bending his head to hers.
“I’m glad,” she murmured just before his mouth took hers.
The moment their mouths met, Luke knew he’d never be satisfied with a single kiss. The taste of her swamped him, filling every cell, flavoring his breath, fogging his mind.
She swayed into him and his arms came around her, one hand sweeping up her back to cradle her head in his palm. His fingers threaded through her hair, he held her still so he could drown in the sensation of having her with him at last.
It had been the longest day or two in his life. Being constantly tortured at he
r presence and not touching her had driven him crazy. And now he was determined to make the most of the kiss she’d lost to him.
Their tongues tangled together, and he swallowed her sigh. He devoured her, feeding the need within and spiking it to heights he hadn’t known existed. She was more than he’d expected. More than he’d thought possible. And a part of him realized that made her dangerous to a man who wasn’t interested in anything that lasted longer than a couple of weeks.
Who would have guessed she would be so addictive? The taste of her. The feel of her body, pliant and giving, pinned to his. The slide of her hair against his hand and the sound of her sighs. Everything about her demanded that he take his time. Everything he was told him to stop now while he still could.
Regretfully, Luke drew his head back and stared down at her. Her eyes were closed, her mouth still ready for the kiss to continue. Her breath heaved in and out of her lungs, and he saw her pounding pulse in the elegant column of her throat.
He couldn’t seem to let her go. Her heat called to him. The need still gripping him erupted into a throbbing ache in his dick. All he could think about was sliding her dress down her shoulders, so he could bare her breasts to him. But damned if he’d act like a horny teenager in a public garden.
Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked up at him. Her tongue crossed her top lip, and she gave him such a sensuous, deliberate look, it was all Luke could do to keep from tasting her again.
“Wow.”
He snorted. “Wow?”
Fiona took a deep breath, giving him a glimpse of her cleavage that only deepened the ache he felt. “Well, yeah. That was a really good kiss.”
Luke grinned. No games. No playing or trying to pretend that kiss hadn’t shaken both of them. Damned if he didn’t like Fiona Jordan almost as much as he wanted her.
“Thanks,” he said wryly, lifting one hand to stroke his fingertips along her cheek. “I try.”
She patted his chest, then swept both hands through her hair. Taking another deep breath as if to steady herself, she blew it out in a rush. “It’s appreciated. Seriously. So. Deal honored?”
Jet Set Confessions (HQR Desire) Page 6
