reason.
‘Easy to mistake for fluff in a dark corner,’ she added.
‘There is no fluff in any corner of this apartment,’ the woman declared indignantly.
‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean…’ Then, ‘I’m sure Mr Mallory will explain.’
‘Mr Mallory?’ Mrs Figgis blanched. ‘He’s still here?’ So she wasn’t the only one who’d been caught out. ‘He should have left hours ago.’
‘Really?’ she said. Oh, listen to her to pretending not to know! She was shocked at just how convincing she sounded. ‘Well, it’s still early.’ If you were a multi-millionaire businessman who’d just had a hard night with a girl who wore black silk stockings. ‘Actually, I think he might appreciate coffee. And he did mention something about scrambled eggs…’
She didn’t hang around to see whether Mrs Figgis considered it any part of her duties to make coffee rather than drink it. Instead, she headed swiftly in the direction of the French windows, legging it across the formerly immaculate raked gravel of Richard Mallory’s roof garden before scrambling through Her Ladyship’s now less than pristine hedge.
She didn’t stop until she was safely inside, with her own French windows shut firmly against the outside world.
Only then did she lean back against them and let out a huge groan.
Rich Mallory straightened under the shower, letting the hot water ease the knots in his shoulders, the ache from the back of his neck. These all-night sessions took it out of him. They were a young man’s game.
Then he grinned.
Okay, he was well past the downhill marker of thirty, but he could still teach the whizkids who worked for him a thing or two, even if he did need a massage to straighten out the kinks next morning.
Maybe he should have lived up—or was that down?—to his reputation and taken up the offer in Ginny Lautour’s disturbing eyes. They were curiously at odds with her clothes, her mousy, not quite blonde hair caught back in a kid’s scrunchy adorned with a velvet duck-billed platypus; he knew it was a duck-billed platypus because he’d been handbagged by his five-year-old niece into buying her one just like it.
But there was nothing childlike about her eyes. A curious mixture of grey and green and slightly slanted beneath finely marked brows, they were intense, witch’s eyes…
His grin faded as he shook his head, flipped the jet to cold and stood beneath it while he counted slowly to twenty. Only then did he reach for his robe, towelling his hair as he padded back to his bedroom, trailing wet footprints across the pale carpet.
Orange juice. Coffee. Eggs. In that order. He’d been wise to pass on the side order of sex. Not that he hadn’t been tempted. Beneath the shapeless clothes, Ginny Lautour’s body had hinted at the kind of curves that invited a man’s hand to linger. And her eyes had invited a lot more than that. But he wasn’t ready to be bewitched just yet.
He’d beaten off several attempts to break through his security cordon, steal the latest software his company had developed which was now going through the rigorous testing phase. He’d hoped that they, whoever they were, had given up. Apparently not.
But he was smiling again as he picked up a phone, hitting the fast dial to his Chief Software Engineer as he headed downstairs in the direction of the kitchen. Despite the fact that she had been lying through her pretty teeth—not even the most athletic hamster could have got into that drawer—he’d enjoyed watching Ginny getting into deeper and deeper water as she had tried to extricate herself from an impossible situation.
For a girl in the industrial espionage business she had a quite remarkable propensity to blush. It gave her a look of total innocence that was so completely at odds with the hot look in her eyes that a man might just be fooled into believing it.
Maybe he’d be a little less relaxed about it if there’d been anything of any value in his apartment for her to steal. As it was, he was rather looking forward to her next move.
‘Marcus.’ He jerked his mind back to more immediate concerns as his call was picked up. ‘I’ve finally cracked the problem we’ve been having.’
Then, as the spiral turned inward so that he was facing into the vast expanse of his living room, he saw the open bottle of champagne standing on the sofa table and belatedly remembered the luscious redhead he’d taken to the retirement party he’d thrown for one of his senior staff.
‘I’ll be with you in half an hour to bring the team up to speed,’ he said, not waiting for an answer before he disconnected.
Well, that explained the earring. It was Lilianne’s. She must have taken him at his word when he had told her that he’d just be five minutes, invited her to make herself comfortable.
How long had she lain in his bed, waiting for him to join her? How long before she’d stormed out in a huff? Even he could see that it would have to be a huff. At the very least.
Long enough to write him a note and tie it to the neck of the champagne bottle with one of her stockings, anyway. Presumably to emphasize what he’d missed.
He sighed. She’d been playing kiss-chase with him for weeks and he’d be lying if he denied that he’d enjoyed the game. Hard to get was so rare these days. He wasn’t fooled, of course. He understood the game too well for that. She believed the longer she held out, the greater would be her victory.
Not that he was objecting.
He’d been looking forward to the promised pay off. Which would have been last night if he hadn’t suddenly caught a glimpse of the answer to a problem that had been giving his entire development team a headache for the last couple of weeks. He checked his wristwatch. The best part of ten hours ago.
He tugged at the stocking, caught a hint of the musky scent she’d been wearing. He really needed to concentrate on one thing at a time, he decided, as the napkin fell into the melted ice.
Work—nine-till-five. Personal life—
Forget it. Work was his life.
He shrugged, picked up the napkin. Her note was short and to the point.
LOSER.
Succinct. To the point. No wasted words. He admired brevity in a woman.
However, there was still the earring found by his uninvited caller. An earring not meant to be found by a casual glance. It suggested that she’d given herself a chance to call him—after sufficient time had elapsed for him to understand that she was seriously annoyed—and offer him the opportunity to tease her into forgiving him. Resume the chase.
And he grinned.
Then, as the scent of coffee brewing reached him, his eyes narrowed. It seemed as if Ginny Lautour hadn’t been in as much of a hurry as she’d made out…
He left the note where it was and, tossing the stocking over the arm of the sofa, headed for the kitchen.
‘So, you decided to stay for breakfast after all—’
He came to an abrupt halt as he realised it was his cleaner—rather than his interesting
