Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue. Ally Blake

his frustration reached its peak, her voice came to him like hot chocolate on a cold night. ‘Mr Kelly, I told you a small fib when I promised to bother someone else tomorrow. You’re it; the only company I even have on my radar. My every working hour has been and will be focused on bringing you home. So why not save us both some time, and a lot of aggravation and let my people come in here, strip you down to your bare essentials and build you back up again when it comes to energy consumption, consumables and waste? You’ll barely notice the cost and you will go to bed knowing the planet is breathing better for your minimal efforts.’

      ‘Why me?’ he asked, questioning not only her but whichever god he’d annoyed enough that day to bring this woman to his doorstep.

      ‘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.