she said, dragging her eyes north. ‘Some weather we’re having, don’t you think?’
His cheek twitched. And he ambled to a halt—close enough that she could all but feel the choleric steam rising from his broad shoulders, but far enough away that every camera on site had access to his captivating face.
He looked away for a moment, and she let go of a lungful of stale breath. He glanced briefly at her high heels, and she figured he planned to keep out of kicking distance. It was the move of a man who’d been in danger of being castrated before. Her confidence came back in a whoosh.
Until he moved closer still. Close enough she could see the rasp of stubble glinting on his cheeks, a loose thread poking out of one of his shirt buttons, the shadow of impressive muscle along his upper arms.
Her nostrils flared as she sucked in oxygen, and the immediate intense physical reaction stunned the hell out of her.
‘You’ve got yourself quite a crowd here,’ he said, loud enough everyone could hear.
The cameras and the desperate hush of a dozen journalists reminded her why that was. She gathered her straying wits, tilted her chin downward, batted her eyelashes for all she was worth and, with a cheery smile said, ‘Haven’t I just?’
The crowd murmured appreciatively. But that wasn’t the thing that made her cheeks feel warm, her belly feel tumbly, and her knees feel as weak as if she’d been standing there for days. That was purely due to the fresh, devilish glint in Dylan Kelly’s baby blues.
She stood straighter, accidentally jerking her arms and twinging her shoulder, which created a fresh batch of friction at her itchy wrists. Wynnie sucked in a breath to keep from wincing. She kept it all together admirably, promising herself an extra twenty minutes of meditation on the yoga mat when she got home, as she said, ‘The handcuffs brought them out. But it’s what I have to say that’s keeping them here.’
‘And what’s that?’
Research and appearances backed up the notion that he wasn’t a silly man, but he’d just made a silly move. The first rule in shaping public opinion was never to ask a question you didn’t know the answer to.
Buoyed anew, she said, ‘Since you asked, not a moment before you graced us with your presence, we all agreed that you have been acting terribly irresponsibly, and that it’s time you pulled up your socks.’
Before she had the chance to provide some beautiful sound bites dripping with the kinds of statistics newspapers loved, Dylan Kelly grabbed a hunk of suit leg, lifted it high to show off a jet-black sock and enough tanned, muscular, manly calf to create a tidal wave of trembling through the predominantly female crowd.
Okay, so he wasn’t at all silly. He was very, very good. Who knew naked male calf could trump handcuffs?
Dylan took the attention and ran with it, on the face of it focusing back on her, but she knew his words were for everyone else. ‘You oughtn’t to believe all you read in the glossy pages. I’m not all bad. My mother taught me always to wear clean socks, and the hideous memory of my father trying to teach me about the birds and the bees when I was twelve years old scared the bejesus out of me so much it made me the most…responsible man on the planet.’
He might as well have pulled a concertina row of condoms from his pocket as he said it, for the feminine trembling turned to almost feverish laughter as the lot of them got lost in thoughts of Dylan’s underwear and what it might be like to be the one with whom he might one day act altogether irresponsibly.
The men in the crowd were no better. She could read them as easily as if they wore flashing signs on their foreheads. They wanted to buy him a beer, and live vicariously through him for as long as he’d let them near.
Unless she pulled a shoe-sale sign and a Playboy bunny from somewhere her hands could still reach she might lose them all for good. It was time her press conference was brought to a close.
‘Mr Kelly,’ she said, using her outside voice. ‘I concede that your socks are indeed…up. And since my points have obviously fluttered over your head, perhaps I need to be clearer about what I want.’
The crowd quieted and Dylan Kelly slowly lowered the leg of his trousers. Again when he looked at her she felt as if he were looking deep inside her. Testing her mettle? Hoping the force of his gaze might make her explode into a pile of ashes? Or was he after something beyond her comprehension?
The ability to stick one’s hands on one’s hips was underrated. As was the ability to cross one’s arms. She could only stand there, torso thrust in his direction, staring back.
His voice dropped until it was so low it felt vaguely threatening. ‘Tell me, then, what it is that you want from me.’
‘I want you to take the same duty of care with your business practices, in the example you set for your employees and clients with regards to your impact on the environment, as you do your choice of footwear. I want your company to do its part and reduce its prodigious impact on the environment.’
He slid his feet shoulder-width apart, his toes pointing directly at her. ‘Honey, I’m not sure what you think we do in there but we sit at computers and wangle phones. Not so much rainforest felling as you might believe.’
‘You might not be the ones swinging the axes, but, by not being as green as you can be, you may as well be.’
While he looked as though he was imagining ways in which he might surreptitiously have her removed from the face of the earth, she kept her eyes locked on his and was as earnest as she could be when she said, ‘Just hear me out. I promise you’ll sleep better at night.’
Dylan’s eyes narrowed. For a moment she thought she might have pierced his hard shell, until his exquisitely carved cheek lifted into a smile. ‘I sleep just fine.’
And she believed him, to the point of imagining a man splayed out on a king-sized bed, expensive sheets barely covering his naked body as he slept the sleep of the completely satiated. Okay, not a man. This man. That body right now unfairly confined by the convention that city financiers wear suits.
She blinked, and her lashes stuck to her hot cheeks reminding her she’d been standing in the sun for half an hour, strapped to a sharp, uncomfortable, metal statue. ‘Come on. What do you say? Don’t you want your family name to stand for something great?’
Finally, something she said worked. The chiselled jaw turned to rock. The blue eyes completely lost the roguish glint. His faint aura of exasperation evaporated. And right before her eyes the man grew into his suit.
Debonair and cheeky, he was mouth-watering. Focused and switched on he might, she feared and hoped, be the most exceptional devil this angel was yet to meet.
His blue eyes locked hard and fast onto hers, pinning her to the spot with more power than the manacles binding her hands ever could. Her skin flushed, her heart rate doubled, her stomach clenched and released as though readying her to fight or fly.
His voice was rough, but loud enough for every microphone to pick it up as he said, ‘Both KInG and the Kelly family invest millions every year in environmental causes such as renewable energy research and reforestation. More than any other company in this state.’
‘That’s excellent. Truly. But money isn’t everything,’ she shot back, holding his gaze, feeling the cameras zoom in tight. ‘Action is the marker of a man, and the actions within that building beside us in the last year have added up to the waste of more than forty thousand disposable paper cups a month, more water usage than the whole of the suburb I live in, and enough paper waste to fell hectares of old forest. What I want from you is the promise that you are going to become the solution rather than being the problem.’
When the devil in the dark suit didn’t come back with an instant response her heart thundered with the thrill of a battle won, with the knowledge that the cameras had their sound bite. And if Dylan Kelly, VP Media Relations, was worth his salt he knew in that moment there was no way that