before she succumbed any more to his passion. If that happened, considering the last time she’d been intimate with someone, he could drag her to the floor and she wouldn’t put up much of a fuss. In fact she might be the one dragging him first.
She had no idea just how long they’d been kissing or how long they would have continued had the intercom on her desk not buzzed, and if their secretary, Priscilla Gaines, hadn’t chosen that moment to say, “Ms. Madaris wanted me to remind you of the meeting this morning, Ms. Di Meglio.”
Sam drew in a deep breath as Blade reluctantly let go of her lips. “Bad timing, wouldn’t you say?” he whispered, straightening his physique and taking a step backward.
She exhaled, still wondering what the hell had happened. She shook her head, sending a mass of curly locks flying around her shoulders as if that would help screw her head back on, not only right but tight. She knew at that moment that this man was dangerous to any woman. He was smooth and lethal all rolled into one. She wondered how many hearts he’d already broken and how many more he would be breaking. Maybe not intentionally, but with total disregard for the fact that although he might not fall in love with a woman, some would ultimately fall in love with him and painfully watch as he swaggered out of their life without even a backward glance.
“I’d better leave and let you get back to work now,” he said, smiling as if coming to her office and kissing her senseless first thing in the morning was an everyday occurrence. “I’ll be returning to Houston later today, but I plan to come back to Oklahoma City in about three weeks.”
She frowned. “Why?”
His smile widened. “The Mosley Building, or have you forgotten?”
She had forgotten, sort of. “Why do you need to come back? I thought your construction crew would be taking over now that things have been finalized.”
He chuckled as he smooth out his jacket. “Not yet. As chief engineer, I’m hands-on from start to finish. That means you’ll be seeing a lot of me for at least the next six months or more.”
Her entire body stiffened when she remembered his spiel at dinner last night. For Pete’s sake, she didn’t want to see any more of him. Less of him would serve her nicely. She had let her guard down with him today, and judging from the smirk on his face, he evidently assumed he’d gotten the upper hand. “I don’t want to see more of you, Blade.”
The smile that appeared on his face at that moment would have been priceless to any other woman. “You need to stop doing that, you know,” he said as he headed toward the door.
She crossed her arms over her chest again. “Doing what?”
He glanced back over his shoulder and paused long enough to reply, “Saying one thing when you mean another.”
She glared at him. “I mean what I say, Blade. You just can’t seem to get the message.”
He put his hand on the doorknob and angled his head to the side to look at her, a pose she found unnerving. “No, Sam. I read you loud and clear, and if you do mean what you say then you need to stop sending mixed signals. I’ll see you in three weeks.”
He opened the door and was gone.
Chapter 3
“So there you have it,” Peyton Mahoney said, as she threw her pencil in the middle of the conference table. “According to the photo lab, those pictures were doctored.”
A disgusted look appeared on Mac’s face. “So Clarissa Penton lied to us. Those are not pictures of her and Sidney Gresham in bed together.”
“Nope. So what do we do now?” Peyton asked.
“There’s only one thing left to do,” Mac replied, as she rubbed the back of her neck. “Get her on the phone and ask her to meet with us. We’ll let her know what we’ve found out and advise her to get someone else to represent her. We should also suggest that she drop the charges, and let her know what can happen if she doesn’t.”
Mac glanced over at Sam. “What do you think?”
Sam had been staring into space, but now looked across the table at her two friends. “The way I feel right now, I want to call her in and kick her you-know-what for wasting our time.”
Mac couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. She saw that Peyton was doing a better job than she was at holding back. Both of them were well aware that Sam was in a lousy mood and had been since Blade left. They were also aware that Sam and Blade had spent almost twenty minutes together in her office before he’d finally departed, and that was only after Priscilla had reminded Sam of their meeting. They had both noticed that although Sam had reapplied her lipstick, her lips were kiss-swollen nonetheless.
“I think,” Mac said, “that we go with option one—call her in and let her know we won’t be representing her in her sexual harassment case against Sidney Gresham.” She glanced at Sam again. “You might want to take a chill pill before she arrives, Di Meglio.”
Muttering something under her breath, Sam stood and walked over to the coffeepot to pour a cup. “I don’t need a chill pill. What I need is my head examined.”
“Um, Blade Madaris was that bad, Sam?” Peyton asked, grinning.
She turned around and stared at her friends for a long, steady moment before rolling her eyes to the ceiling. “No, he was that good,” she said in a disgusted tone. “Damn it.”
From the stares and arched eyebrows, she immediately knew what Mac and Peyton assumed. “For crying out loud, stop staring at me like I don’t have any panties on. We didn’t go that far. Jeez. He was only in my office for twenty minutes. It was only a kiss.”
Peyton stood as she gathered her folders. “Hey, a woman and her man can do a lot in twenty minutes. And please don’t ask me how I know.”
Since Peyton was the argumentative type and no one was in the mood for a debate this early in the morning, they didn’t say anything as she left the room. As soon as the door closed behind her Sam felt Mac’s eyes shift to her.
“Sam, if Blade is making a nuisance of himself and is harassing you, I can have Luke talk to him.”
Sam waved off her words as she returned to her seat. “It’s not that serious, Mac. He’s not harassing me. There’s a difference between a man openly pursuing a woman and when he’s harassing her.”
“And usually the difference is the attitude of the woman,” Mac pointed out. “Do you or don’t you want to be involved with Blade?”
“No, I don’t and I’ve told him that. But of course he thinks he can change my mind. I think he sees me as some kind of conquest. I’m the one woman not falling at his feet, not eagerly crawling between his sheets. He wouldn’t be a true-blue player if he didn’t get the woman who rejects his advances, namely me.”
She leaned back in her chair, stared into her coffee and then added, “He thinks I’m being defensive, whatever that means. And I didn’t help matters this morning by letting him kiss me.”
“Mmm, sounds interesting.”
Sam looked at her friend. “Damn it, Mac, it was better than interesting.
