else furniture-wise.
Quinn blinked; he was looking at a leather fetishist’s dream. Males, mostly a few years younger than himself—mid to late twenties, he estimated—filled the available chairs. They were all clad in a similar fashion to himself—black leather from head to toe.
As he was surveying the surreal biker reunion scene in front of him, a door just to his left opened and he turned to see a short female figure dressed in a garish combination of lime green and cerise emerge, carrying a clipboard.
‘Who’s first?’ The black leather rose en masse in response to her slightly bored query.
Apparently oblivious to the sudden rise in testosterone levels and anxiety, she ignored all the figures trying desperately hard to be rampantly male and turned instead to the one conveniently closest—ironically he was the only person present not trying to catch her attention.
‘You! You’ll do…’ Her eyes travelled up the six-foot-five frame, getting wider and wider the more she saw. She paused, blinking in bemused fashion when she eventually encountered the greenest pair of eyes she’d ever seen. Long, curly ebony lashes any woman would have traded her soul for and equally dark, well-defined brows were suitable accessories for these truly spectacular orbs.
Sophie had seen it all but even she couldn’t repress a tiny sigh of feminine appreciation. He might not be trying, but this guy was succeeding fairly dramatically on the rampant male front!
Her eyes eagerly slid over the strong, hawkish nose that bisected the hunk’s lean features and dropped to the wide firm line of a sensationally sexy mouth. A slow grin spread across her features.
‘You’ll do very well indeed,’ she told him with a throaty chuckle.
Quinn, aware of a battery of resentful eyes on his back, found himself being bundled by the tiny figure through the door and into the connecting room.
In contrast to his colourful escort the elegant female behind the desk was clad totally in black. She looked at Quinn for a full thirty seconds before smiling—he had the distinct impression her facial muscles didn’t get a whole lot of practice with this procedure.
She rose to her feet. ‘Anna Semple.’ Instead of extending her hand as Quinn had expected, she walked around him, head on one side in a bird-like attitude—he found himself thinking ‘vulture’ at this point. ‘And who might you be?’ Anna asked, somewhat taken aback to discover that, instead of looking eager to please, this candidate was glancing at his wrist-watch.
‘Quinn Tyler.’ He couldn’t decide whether he was amused or irritated by the treatment.
‘I haven’t got a Quinn Tyler down here,’ her colourful companion revealed, consulting her list.
‘No matter.’ His interrogator frowned as though his name was tugging at her memory. ‘These don’t look like props.’ She ran a hand lightly over the sleeve of his well-worn leather jacket and gave another vulpine smile.
‘They’re not.’
‘And have you done much of this sort of work, Quinn Tyler…?’
Time to ditch the subterfuge and move on to his main objective. ‘Actually I think there’s been some sort of…’ He edged surreptitiously towards the door.
‘Who sent you?’
‘Nobody sent me.’
‘Initiative! I like that, don’t I, Sophie? But you have an agent?’ If he didn’t this opened all sorts of interesting possibilities—such as an exclusive contract. Now wouldn’t that be nice? Very nice, she decided, trying and failing to discover any flaws in the hunk. Forget the leather spread—this guy could front their ‘new season—new man’ feature that was to run for three consecutive issues, she thought excitedly.
Quinn was a patient man, but even he had his limitations. He’d seen farmers giving prospective purchases at a livestock market a more subtle survey than this female was giving him! Any minute now he was convinced she’d ask him to show her his teeth! He was almost right…
‘Take off your shirt and jacket, will you?’ Anna requested, casually retaking her seat.
Quinn’s eyes widened as it dawned on him she was deadly serious. And I thought my job called for personal sacrifices! he thought.
‘Is that all?’
The younger woman looked startled by his response, but the irony sailed right over the older female’s head.
‘Yes, that’ll be sufficient.’
Anna flicked her female companion an amused look as the big man remained immobile. ‘Not shy, are you?’ she taunted indulgently.
‘Not shy, no,’ Quinn replied honestly. Just a bit particular about who I take my clothes off for. The thought of removing his clothes focused his mind forcefully on his original objective—Rowena.
Now, if she’d asked him his response would have been quite different. With reluctance he dragged his mind clear of the various stimulating scenarios it had immediately conjured up along this theme.
He was just about to break the news that, whatever they had in mind, he wasn’t available when the door behind him opened a crack, and the sound of voices drifted in—one at least he identified instantly.
‘Have I got the go-ahead on the ‘‘Having It All’’ feature, Rowena?’ Sylvia Morrow urgently hailed her editor who, oblivious to the admiring male eyes lining the wall, was taking a short cut through to her top floor office. She’d worked hard for that office.
Rowena was a tall, beautiful young woman with typical English-rose colouring, classical features, natural ash-blonde hair and a shapely but slender body. She was not unaware of the impact her looks made on people, but she felt on balance that these attributes had been more of a hindrance than a help in her single-minded efforts to gain the right to call that office on the top floor her own.
The job of editor that went with the luxury office was still new enough to seem unreal. It was the goal she’d been working towards ever since she’d left university with a first-class honours degree, no experience, no money and boundless ambition.
Now she was there—she had it all! Funny, she’d expected success to feel quite different. The route to the top hadn’t been easy—people had said she was too young and some still were saying it—but she was proving them wrong.
The vague feeling of anticlimax was, she supposed, to be expected. Perhaps if her personal life wasn’t such a mess she could have enjoyed her moment of glory, but ironically she’d never felt more confused or unhappy in her life. And whose fault was that? Quinn Tyler’s.
She conveniently ignored the inescapable fact that she herself was at least fifty per cent to blame for her present predicament.
‘Are you all right, Rowena?’ Sylvia’s concerned glance slipped from the haunted expression on her boss’s pale face to the slim hand pressed against her enviably flat belly.
They had both been at the glitzy party of yet another new perfume launch the previous evening, the food and drink had flowed freely and Sylvia, who was congenitally incapable of refusing freebies, had woken feeling a trifle delicate that morning.
