‘You are the company every other one in the country wants to emulate. Your success is legendary. Your influence off the chart. Where you lead others will follow, and we want them to follow. Turn off one light overnight, who’d notice? Turn off all the lights of Brisbane overnight, and it’s a revolution.’
She took a breath, licked her lips, sent his body temperature up a notch in the process, then said, ‘So what do you think?’
He leant back in his chair, but his eyes never once left hers. ‘Here it is, hopefully clear enough none of it will flutter over your head. I do not respond well to threats. I do not respond well to having my business or my family singled out so publicly by upstarts with an agenda. I think the stunt you pulled out there might be a lucky winner for one news cycle, but in taking me on you have bitten off more than you can chew. I think you should shine your green light elsewhere before you find it’s dimmed forever.’
She blinked up at him, those warm brown eyes somehow holding in whatever it was that she was thinking. Eventually she uncrossed her legs and she stood. She ran her hands down the sides of her thighs and he noticed they were shaking. His gut clenched. He pinched himself on the arm, hard.
She gave a small nod, and said, ‘Okay, then. That sounds like my cue to thank you for your time and let you get on with your day.’
She made her way to the door of his office. He pushed himself from his chair and followed. Halfway there he laid a hand on her lower back to guide her. Guide her? It was a straight line to the office door. He held his hand as still as could be while the muscles of her back and hips slid against him in an erotic rhythm.
There was no professional reason to touch her. If she’d been Jerry he wouldn’t have even left his chair. If she’d been Jerry she wouldn’t have made it past the front door. He was touching her as a lightning rod, as a way to stop himself from doing anything more extreme.
When she reached the hallway and turned towards him, his hand slid around her waist. The twist of her shirt, the soft dip of warm skin… He pulled his hand away quick smart.
She looked at him as though she had no clue as to the commotion raging inside him. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for this afternoon. We appreciate your time.’
Suddenly he found himself not quite ready to have seen the last of her. He leant his shoulder against the doorframe of his office door. ‘Thank you for this afternoon. It has to be the most eventful Tuesday we’ve seen around this place since Melbourne Cup Day.’
‘Stock prices soar by triple figures, did they?’
His laughter carried out into the hall and several lackeys rushing past stopped to see why. He ignored them and explained, ‘A bunch of guys and girls from the legal floor dressed up as horses and jockeys and replayed the race for our amusement.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I can only hope that when you tell the board about our meeting today you do so with as much verve and enthusiasm as you had for an inter-office lark.’
Her voice was pure sarcasm, yet she stayed where she was on the ocean of polished wood with its discreetly papered walls and sculpted cornices, and flurry of assistants keeping the place abuzz, and she clung to her small purse with both hands.
And it hit him like a three-foot fishhook through the guts. She wanted more than their two companies to work together. She wanted him. She was standing there acting as if she had ants in her pants as she was crushing on him big-time.
For the briefest moment he imagined sliding a hand into the back of her hair, pulling her to him and kissing the daylights out of her.
It rankled. He wasn’t the kind of guy to get suckered in by the simple sweet tug of desire. Only those of a particularly cool and indifferent ilk warranted his time. And Wynnie Devereaux appeared neither cool nor indifferent. While she was outwardly vivacious and implacable, he had the sense that on the inside she was as fragile and beautiful as the jewelled butterfly her fingers were tracing on her purse.
She was also a lobbyist working the other side of the table.
He pushed his way back upright and looked into her eyes just long enough that he didn’t feel the strange, warm, encouraging trap closing over him, and said, ‘I’ll plant a tree this weekend and think of you.’
Her full lips curved into a slow smile. ‘Plant a dozen and think of your kids.’
‘I don’t have kids.’ He added a wink. ‘So far as I know. Goodbye, Wynnie.’
‘Till next time, Mr Kelly.’
After one last long look, one he understood all too well, she turned and walked down the hallway.
He couldn’t help but grin when he spotted one half of her handcuffs swaying and bouncing against her sweet backside until she rounded the corner, out of sight.
CHAPTER THREE
WYNNIE nudged her high heels off her feet, let them fall to the floor beneath her bar stool, and massaged one bare foot with the other. She then closed her eyes and pressed her fingers into the tops of her eyelids.
‘What are you doing?’ Hannah asked.
‘Trying to permanently block out several particular moments of my day.’
Hannah laughed. ‘Come off it. You did brilliantly! Better than we could ever have hoped. You’ve already made the four-thirty reports. You actually got inside the building. As far as the CFC is concerned you’re a rainmaker.’
‘Nevertheless I’m still of the opinion that threatening to start a campaign whereby I would blame the most influential business in town with single-handedly poisoning the planet on purpose was a real high point.’
Wynnie let her head thunk onto the shiny red bar of the funky Eagle St Pier beer garden. But the knock to the head did nothing to shift the images stuck fast to the outer curve of her skull.
Dylan Kelly’s knee-weakening half-smiles when she flirted with him. His debilitating dark smiles when she pushed him a step too far. And most of all his delicious parting smile, which had made her think, for one brief shining moment, that maybe she wasn’t the only one who’d spent the afternoon having a professional conversation on the outside and a very personal one on the inside.
‘Nah,’ Hannah said before downing the rest of her cocktail in one gulp and asking for another in one swift move. ‘I’m going to have to vote for the nickel allergy as my favourite Wynnie moment.’
Wynnie lifted her head, flicked her fringe away from her face and ran gentle fingers over the bandages on her wrists. ‘That’s not funny.’
Hannah laughed so loud a dozen heads turned to see what they were missing. ‘Right. You went from making a business contact no one at the CFC has ever managed to wangle, to having a just-out-of-med-school doctor diagnose you with being too cheap to buy quality handcuffs.’
Wynnie sat on her hands. ‘No way was I going to use the funds of a non-profit organisation to spend as much as I could on top-of-the-line handcuffs.’
Hannah only laughed so hard she had to push her stool back so that she could clutch her stomach. Wynnie grabbed her so-called friend by the belt loops of her jeans and tugged her upright before she took out some passer-by.
As Hannah continued to giggle Wynnie took a deep breath, drinking in the aroma of beer and lemon-scented banksias filling big earthenware pots around the floor. It was a deeply Australian smell, and, after many years living abroad, it was unexpectedly comforting. As were the last vestiges of Brisbane spring sunshine pouring through massive skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows.
The labours of her day finally began to ease away.
Wynnie glanced down the bar. ‘I’m not sure if a nickel overdose can make a person thirsty but I am dying for another drink.’
Problem was, since she was on cortisone for her red wrists, she had to stick with pineapple juice,