you prefer it if I called you Morgen?’ he asked evenly, his voice dropping down a sensual octave or two.
Taken aback by his unexpected concern, she stepped hurriedly ahead of him into the corridor to cover her confusion. ‘That is my given name.’
‘Then Morgen it is.’
Easily falling into step beside her, Conall mused how well her name suited her. Morgan Le Fay sprang to mind—the legendary dark-haired enchantress in the tale of King Arthur. There was certainly something bewitching about her, that was for sure.
‘Got everything we need, Morgen?’ he asked conversationally, referring to the large manila envelope under her arm.
Her green eyes briefly met his. ‘I’ve got everything you need, Mr O’Brien.’
Sweet heaven, he couldn’t argue with that… ‘Call me Conall,’ he said brightly, just about getting the words out past the sudden aching dryness in his throat.
It was raining when they reached the site, where two new luxury apartment blocks were being erected. The rain had quickly turned the dry sand of the ground into a river of mud, and as Morgen donned the compulsory hard hat the site foreman gave her she wished she had had the foresight to bring some Wellington boots. Derek normally kept his in the boot of his car, and she had enough experience as his assistant to know that she should have done the same. As for Conall, he didn’t seem to notice the fact that his black hand-made Italian shoes were quickly sinking into a quagmire of mud and sand.
After shaking hands with the stocky foreman, and introducing both himself and Morgen, he followed the man to the nearby planning office that had been erected to monitor progress on the site.
Inside, three other men—one of them suited—were seated round the long rectangular table. The smell of brewing coffee and cigarette smoke immediately enveloped Morgen’s senses as they entered. All the men glanced at her with wary gazes, as though an alien had suddenly wandered in amongst them. Clearly some men still had old-fashioned views about women on a building site, she thought irritably, concluding it was about time they got over it.
‘Miss McKenzie is my assistant and will be taking notes,’ Conall explained, before pulling out a chair for her to sit down. ‘Unfortunately Derek Holden is on sick leave, so I will be taking over the project until his return.’
From the first few minutes, as plans were laid out on the table and one of the men got up to pour the coffee into waiting mugs, it was evident who was in charge and why. Conall O’Brien’s expertise in smoothing ruffled feathers and executing the necessary action to bring things back on course was a master-class in skill, diplomacy and people management bar none. Morgen saw and heard Stephen Ritchie’s initially hostile reception to Conall melt like snow beneath a sun lamp.
Previously sluggish and tired, she straightened her back, sat up and listened in awe as the man finally had both the client and the contractors shaking hands and inviting him for drinks later on in the week.
Back in the car at ten to seven in the evening, Morgen swept a shaky hand through her hair and sighed as if she’d been let out of prison. The business of the day taken care of, she was more than a little anxious to get back to her little girl, and then for a hot bath and a stiff drink. Stealing a glance at the man beside her in the driver’s seat, she was amazed that Conall O’Brien was showing no signs of fatigue or jet-lag whatsoever. Instead he was smiling as his big hands curved round the steering wheel, as if all was right with his world and everything in it.
‘I thought that went well. How about you?’
The fact that he’d asked her opinion when it was glaringly obvious that things had gone more than well—he’d practically had them eating sugar out of his hand, for goodness’ sake!—threw Morgen for a moment.
‘I thought it was an exercise in damage limitation par excellence. Remind me to get you on my side when I’m next negotiating my car insurance.’
‘Most people are driven by fear, Morgen. As soon as you come to realise that you’re halfway there. You’ve got to get past your own ego to soothe theirs, and once you can do that—you’re home free. You can get practically anything you want.’
She said nothing. The fact that he was willing to get past his own ego to soothe someone else’s fears was enough food for thought for one day, she decided—even if there was an ulterior motive.
‘I’m not rushing you, Mr O’Brien, but—’
‘Conall.’ There was mischief in his gaze, and it momentarily banished every coherent thought from her head.
‘Fine. I don’t want to rush you, but I’d really like to get home if we’re finished for the day now. If you could drop me off back at the office I’ll pick up my car and go.’
‘Going out somewhere tonight?’ he asked, expertly steering the big car smoothly away from the kerb.
‘No.’ Her answer was accompanied by a loud sigh. ‘Definitely not. All I want to do right now is cuddle up on the sofa with my favourite person and relax in front of the TV.’
Her favourite person? Jealousy sliced through Conall’s gut like a knife heated over a red-hot blaze. So there was a man in her life after all? He’d been stupid to hope there wasn’t.
It was because he hadn’t been in a relationship for a while, he reflected moodily as he drove through London’s crawling traffic. A man had needs, and the delicious Miss McKenzie was a provocative reminder that his weren’t being met. There was something singular about her that completely tantalised him. Hooked him up and reeled him in. Something in that slightly aloof façade of hers which could just as suddenly reveal her anxieties as candidly as a child’s that made him want to get to know her better. Okay, so he badly wanted to get her into bed too. It was just his bad luck that she was already spoken for.
‘What about you?’
‘Excuse me?’ Stealing a glance, he saw that she seemed to be waiting for him to speak.
‘Have you any plans for this evening?’
Yeah. After he’d popped one of his sister Teresa’s home-cooked meals in the microwave to heat he intended pouring himself a large glass of wine, then catching up with everything that had been happening in the New York office in his absence.
Unfortunately he did not have a favourite person to cuddle up to on the couch and watch TV with. It was just a shame that Teresa had been called away on business just before he’d caught his flight to Heathrow and would be gone indefinitely. She’d left her keys with a neighbour for him, but right now he could do with some company. He supposed after his transatlantic phone call he could ring his mother and speak to her, but he really didn’t feel like listening to one of her lectures telling him it was high time he came back home to England for good.
‘I’ll probably be working.’
Shrugging, Conall made the necessary right turn, then reached out to switch on the radio. As a beautifully articulated voice announced the seven o’clock news from the BBC, he couldn’t deny he was suddenly ridiculously glad to be home again—even if he was staying at his sister’s and not a home of his own. There were definitely some things about the mother country that he missed.
‘Mummy, why did Nana make you angry?’ Her brown eyes pensive, the little girl with bobbed dark hair slid into bed and waited anxiously for an answer.
Morgen bitterly regretted that she’d given way to temper where her mother was concerned. But all she’d needed after a day fraught with tension—because of the arrival of Conall O’Brien, the sorry state they’d found her boss in and the anxiety of the site meeting—was for Lorna McKenzie to verbally demolish her as soon as she walked through the door.
Fingering the vee of her blouse, Morgen reached out to drop a tender kiss on Neesha’s pink cheek, happy beyond measure that the child appeared to be so much better than she had been for the past few days.
‘Nana and me just had a little