of obvious wealth and influence. They’d have what he wanted. “A cup of hot chocolate if you have it,” he said.
“Of course,” the young woman said. She moved from behind her desk with a click of her impressively high heels against the marble and disappeared down the hallway.
Seven shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled to the wide windows. Miami lay spread out before him, bright and glittering with its ribbons of roads, high-rise buildings and the gilded waters of Biscayne Bay. It was no Jamaica, but he looked forward to making a home here.
The sound of shoes on the marble drew his attention from the view. Two men, both middle-aged, with gray hair at their temples, one Latin and the other white, emerged from a long hallway, talking quietly. They looked up at him as they passed, nodding in quiet acknowledgment, although the white one, taller and in a more expensive suit, gave a narrow-eyed glance at Seven’s jeans and T-shirt. Seven, used to the contempt of corporate types, at least until they realized how much money he made, let the man’s cool-eyed stare roll off his back like bathwater.
He returned his attention to the view outside the window.
“Here you are.” The pale islander returned, holding a steaming mug in both hands. She smiled, then gestured toward the long hallway the men had come from. Seven gazed longingly at the cup in her hands. “Ms. Hughes will see you now. Follow me.”
She went ahead of him, long legs beautiful and eye-catching under the black skirt. At the third frosted-glass door, she stopped and knocked briefly.
“Come.” A voice came faintly from behind the slightly open door.
The young woman opened the door for him and waved him inside, simultaneously handing him the hot cocoa and gesturing toward one of the leather seats in front of the desk. Her duty fulfilled, she left.
Only a brief view of the office registered: ceiling-high windows, a wide glass desk, a figure rising from behind the desk with a hand outstretched. The woman behind the desk wore gray slacks and a white blouse with a heavy white bow at her throat. Her hair, straightened and parted down the middle, was tucked behind her ears. The usual banker type. Boring and barely attractive. But something about her pricked Seven’s memory.
“I’m Bailey Hughes. It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the woman said.
Seven’s hand rose automatically to meet hers even as his mind registered the familiar lines of her face, her sharp blade of a body, which had drawn his attention before.
“Have we met?” he asked, shaking her hand.
Her mouthed twisted briefly in a smile. “No, we haven’t. At least not formally.” She drew her hand back. “And I still don’t know your name.” She looked up at him, challenge in the arch of her eyebrow.
He grinned. “Seven Carmichael.”
“As I said before, a pleasure.”
“Likewise,” Seven said.
He watched her carefully, the gazellelike grace of her body, the challenging toss of her head, the long neck. Suddenly, he remembered the sound of laughter around her, the splash of bodies hitting the water. Marcus’s party. Last night. The woman who had taunted him from the back lawn.
“Damn. It’s you.”
She laughed softly, dismissively, and drew back even more to stalk away from him—secretive smile, long legs, a fake banker’s demeanor—to sit once more on the other side of her desk. In that moment, he saw that it was a mask she wore, something she pulled down to hide the vicious beauty he’d seen last night. And he was intrigued.
“Marcus told me you need help with asset management,” she said with a cool smile. “What is it that I can do for you, Mr. Carmichael?”
He sat in the leather armchair across from her desk, with the warmth of the hot chocolate sinking into his palms, the drink nearly forgotten as he focused on something he wanted more. Seven grinned.
Chapter 2
Standing in her office was the most beautiful man Bailey had ever seen. Brown skin. A sinner’s mouth. A muscled body under a loose white T-shirt and designer jeans. From the top of his sharply barbered head to the tips of the square-toed leather shoes peeking out from under his jeans, he was absolutely perfect.
Bailey gripped his hand firmly and bit her cheek at the tingle that ran through her arm, the jolt of attraction.
“Have we met?” he asked. His voice was deep, rough, with a hint of an accent. He smiled then and his teeth were like a bright light against his deep golden skin.
Bailey said something in reply but she didn’t know what. This man was magnetic. She stepped away from him and put the shield of her desk between them, sinking into her chair with relief. What was wrong with her? She’d seen other attractive men before.
He arranged his lean length in the chair directly across from her and sipped the hot chocolate the receptionist, Celeste, had given him before she left. He stretched out his long legs before him, his gaze attentive, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. Damn, he was fine!
“Marcus told me you need help with asset management.” Bailey leaned forward on her desk, hands clasped. “What is it that I can do for you, Mr. Carmichael?”
Despite his attentive gaze, Seven Carmichael looked as if he wanted to talk about anything but the reason he was in her office. He took a leisurely sip from his mug, still watching her. Bailey remembered him, too. How could she forget?
Last night at Marcus’s party, she had been bored out of her mind, regretting her hasty decision to leave home for the questionable pleasures of whatever Marcus had to offer. But at home, she had felt pent up, confined by her relentless pursuit for partnership at the firm. Despite it being a weekend, she’d worked twelve hours that day alone. After only an hour at the party, she’d walked out to the dock of the mansion to get a glimpse of the bay and calm her mind before heading back to the soothing solitude of her Miami Beach condo.
The man on the deck of Marcus’s pretentious little boat had appeared overhead like a dream to the soundtrack of Janelle Monáe’s “Tightrope.” She’d never been one for wild behavior, but frustration at having to present herself as perfectly square partnership material and as a relentless worker bee had caused another side of her emerge in that moment. So Bailey had called out to him, flirted with him in a way that she wouldn’t normally have, especially if she’d known she was going to see him again.
“I want to reallocate some funds and set up local accounts,” Seven said. “But that’s not very important now.” He chuckled, white teeth flashing against his toffee skin. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
“Yes, very. Especially when you run in Marcus’s circles,” she said.
Her friendship with Marcus was good for business but hell on her personal life. He’d referred enough big-money clients her way that she’d be a fool to alienate him. At the same time, all the men she’d met through him, at least the ones she’d found attractive, turned out to be assholes, criminals or both. She clenched her teeth to keep the smile on her face.
“I just met him a couple of weeks ago.” Seven sat back in the chair and sipped from the black mug with the firm’s monogram on it, his amused and interested
