busied himself cranking up his favorite hip-hop station on the satellite radio so she wouldn’t see him fidgeting.
It didn’t take long for Shondra to get into sync with the car and gingerly maneuver through the downtown streets. She looked over at him as the speakers started vibrating from the thundering bass. “You’re not playing that for my benefit, are you?”
Connor’s brow wrinkled in confusion before he felt the back of his neck start to burn with embarrassment. She thought he was playing a rap song because she was black.
“No, not at all. This is what I normally listen to.” Anxious to prove it, he dug a few CD cases out of the glove compartment. “See. Ludicrous, Chris Brown…Snoop….”
She shrugged indifferently. “Okay. Do you have any Rascal Flatts or Faith Hill?”
He grimaced. “Country music?”
She laughed. “Of course. It’s my favorite.”
He studied her profile. “Really? Don’t you like hip-hop?”
She shook her head. “Not that much. Don’t you like country?”
“Not at all.”
Shondra shot him an incredulous look. “How can you be a born-and-bred Texan without liking country music?”
“Very easily. And I could ask you the same thing. Seventy percent of popular music is hip-hop. What’s not to like?”
“Seventy percent? You made that up.”
He shrugged. “So, it sounds true, doesn’t it?”
She laughed and they agreed to compromise by switching to an 80s station. Cindy Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” started playing, and Shondra bounced in her seat and started singing along.
Once they drove out of town, Shondra really opened the car up.
A wild giggle burbled out of her throat and Connor was fully captivated. He laughed along with her, getting an extra rush from watching her experience the Bugatti’s power for the first time.
So Shondra had a wild streak. He liked that a lot.
Shondra pulled Connor’s car to a screeching halt in her driveway and turned off the engine. “That was amazing. Thanks for letting me drive.”
“No problem. Once I was sure you weren’t going to kill us, it was really fun. Especially watching you sing at the top of your lungs while doing one-eighty.”
Shondra’s eyes went wide. “I did not drive that fast.”
“Yes, you did. But don’t feel bad. In a Bugatti one-eighty is like sixty. It’s such a smooth transition you don’t even feel it.”
She clutched a hand to her racing heart. “I’m lucky we didn’t get arrested.”
His wicked grin flashed. “That’s the thrill of it, isn’t it?”
Together they walked up her driveway, Shondra’s blood still sizzling from the adrenaline rush. Connor had all the makings of a billionaire playboy. Just the type she’d carefully avoided all her life.
She was starting to wonder why. Billionaire boys had billionaire toys that were really fun to play with. But could she afford to play in Connor’s sandbox?
They stopped in front of her door and Shondra looked up from finding her keys to thank him for the evening. Before she could get any words out of her mouth, he was pulling her close.
The next thing she knew, she was flattened against his chest and his soft, firm lips were on hers.
A flash of hunger shot through her in his strong, purposeful embrace. Shondra gave herself a moment to enjoy his kiss—soft and heated with just the tiniest flick of tongue—before she pulled away, breathless.
“Connor,” she said when she finally regained her voice. “Thank you for dinner and a really fun evening. But as much as I’d like to continue where we just left off, I really don’t think it’s wise for us to get involved. After all, you’re my boss.”
Her throat ached a bit as she said the words, and part of her wished she could take them back as soon as she’d said them.
He eyed her with his heavy-lidded gaze for a moment, clearly trying to push through his desire to process her words.
Finally, Connor straightened his collar. “Of course, you’re right. It wouldn’t be wise.”
They said good-night and Shondra let herself into her condo. She’d narrowly escaped temptation. As she slipped out of her shoes and padded toward her room, she admitted that Connor might not be so easy to resist in the future.
Shondra started to push open her bedroom door and stopped in her tracks. Something was bothering her.
Connor had said he agreed they shouldn’t get involved, but those wicked blue eyes had been sending a different message.
Something along the lines of…I like a challenge.
Chapter 3
Shondra sat in her office poring over contracts until she thought her eyes would cross. As was typical with a new position, she’d had back-to-back meetings all morning, introducing herself to other department heads and making sure they were all up to speed with her agenda. That had left Shondra with only her lunch hour for research.
After an unsettling weekend, during which she’d spent too much time pushing Connor out of her mind, Shondra had shown up this morning a woman on a mission. In addition to her normal workload, Shondra’s side investigation should have kept her far too occupied for lustful thoughts.
Her first order of business had been to find out how to track down the main switchboard’s call list. There had to be a way to discover which extension her father had been transferred to, as well as the outgoing calls from each extension. Of course, getting what she needed on the first try would have been too much to ask. None of the employees’ extensions matched with her father’s phone log or the anonymous caller. But the numbers were registered to the company, so they might belong to an empty office or an old mobile phone.
Forced to take a more in-depth investigative approach, Shondra decided to search for any business dealings that tracked back to Harmon Braddock. That basically amounted to looking through files to see if her father’s name came up.
A computer search of the company files revealed that a lot of what she wanted was either password protected or on coded hard drives.
Once again, she found herself butting up against a wall. It was painfully clear that security and confidentiality were a high priority within the company.
That meant she was going to have to go about finding facts the hard way. Shondra had immediate access to several contractor and client contracts so she decided to start there. Hopefully, she’d find some mention of a business relationship between Harmon Braddock and Stewart Industries.
That wouldn’t clear up whether or not her
