looking at them.
His cheek dimpled and she knew she’d been caught staring. As he turned his head her chin shot skyward so that she might pretend to be taken with the facade of the skyscraper named after his equally daunting family.
She lifted her right hand to shield her eyes from the glare shooting off the glass panels of the top floors when pain bit her shoulder. She crumpled in on herself and let out a shocked squeal.
He noticed. This time there was no mistaking the flicker of a supporting arm in her direction. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
She grabbed the handle of a glass door leading inside, using her left hand. ‘Once you’re standing beside me in front of a bank of cameras, telling the people of Brisbane the ways in which you and your company have helped reduce your impact on the planet thanks to the help of the Clean Footprint Coalition, and admitting how easy it will be for every individual sitting there on their couch at home to follow suit, then I’ll be ecstatic. Until then, assume I’m about middling.’
She pulled open the door and, with her head held high, stalked through.
The thick glass wasn’t thick enough to shield her from the surge of laughter tumbling from Dylan’s beautiful lips. Or the ripple of awareness that lathered her entire body at the seriously sexy sound.
She frowned. He didn’t need to be declared a protected species. He needed a warning label stapled to his head. Beware: come within ten feet and your sexual appetite will exceed local limits.
A few more steps inside and Wynnie’s high heels clacked noisily to a halt as she tipped her head back, spun about and assimilated the Kelly Tower’s entryway.
Acres of golden marble floors were only made more stunning by the most intricate black marble inlays. Two-storey-high columns acting as sentinels to a long hallway leading away from the front doors were lit by reproduction antique gas lamps. Numerous arched windows a floor above let in streams of natural light. And a massive clock, twice her height, ticked away the minutes until the banking day was closed.
It was the most stunning space she had ever seen. And that was just the lobby.
The CFC think tank had been spot on. This place, this family were the right choice. If the businesses of Brisbane didn’t all secretly want to be them, if every single citizen didn’t want to do behind closed doors exactly as they did, then she might as well have stayed in Verona.
That would have kept her from spending the past glorious month hanging with Hannah, her closest friend in the whole world. It would have kept her from working for an organisation that rang her bells like no other on earth. It would have kept her tens of thousands of miles from the beautiful place she grew up rather than a few hours’ drive…
‘You can buy a postcard with this exact view from the newsstand on the corner,’ a deep voice rumbled from just behind her.
She turned to him, her legs twisted awkwardly and a hunk of hair caught in her eyelashes. As elegantly as humanly possible she disentangled herself. ‘Not necessary.’
‘Then would you care to accompany me upstairs?’ he asked.
Right. Yes. She might be inside his lair but the hard work had barely begun.
It was game on. His job was easy—all he had to say was ‘no’, over and over again. Hers was nearby impossible—all she had to do was get him to say ‘yes’.
She took a deep breath and followed Dylan into the large art-deco lift. Going with the catch-more-flies-with-honey theory of negotiation, she cocked a hip and smiled at his reflection. ‘Why do I get the feeling I’m not the first girl you’ve invited into your office for coffee?’
Though the rest of him could have been cut from the same marble as that in the lobby, a flicker of heat ignited in his eyes. They were his tell. The one sign that she had that maybe one day his ‘no’ might turn into a ‘yes’. Lucky for her, looking into them was no chore.
As long as she gave no tell of her own. She didn’t need him knowing that her need to get this job done right was as important to her as anything she’d ever done. Or that her body was as attuned to his as a weathercock channelling a coming storm.
Dylan took a seat behind his one of a kind, polished-oak desk, and waited for Eric to lay out a chai latte for his unexpected two-o’clock appointment and a sweet black for him. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves in preparation for whatever the hell else would be thrown at him this afternoon.
Eric moved to the doorway, half terrified and half smitten with the creature ambling about the office. His eyes begged Dylan to let him back in. But this was one meeting he was doing all on his lonesome. Dylan shook his head once and the door closed with a pathetic click.
‘What happened to Jerry?’ Dylan asked as he waved a hand at the couch on the opposite side of his desk.
Wynnie remained standing as she picked up her mug and blew cool air across the top. ‘Jerry who?’
He tried dragging his eyes away from the small round hole formed between her full lips, but then realised he might as well get his enjoyment from this unfortunate meeting where he could. ‘Your predecessor at the CFC.’
‘Oh. He doesn’t work there anymore, and now I do.’
Dylan’s cheek twitched, and not for the first time that day.
Meeting Wynnie Devereaux in the flesh had done nothing to temper the fact that at first glance she’d seemed just the kind of woman he would normally like to sink his teeth into after a long day at work—pocket-sized, hot-blooded, skin like fresh cream.
Half an hour in her presence had told him she was also just about the most infuriating creature he’d ever met. She was a lobbyist, of all the rotten things—a professional charmer who’d chosen his family to lure to her cause. She had to be new in town or she would have known better than to come gunning for him.
Still, for one tiny moment out there in the forecourt, something in those absorbing brown eyes had yet again charmed him. And as that chink in his usually rock-hard armour lay exposed she’d been able to confound him, twist his words and finally outfox him at his own game. All that with both hands strapped behind her back.
His gaze meandered away from her lips to her small hands. Both of her wrists were so pink and painfully chaffed that his own itched and stung in empathy. And the instinct to soothe the hurt, to make it his own, slammed him from nowhere once more. Only this time he managed to catch himself in time before, like a sucker, he asked her if she was okay.
He shifted on his seat. Every part of him uncomfortable, some for different reasons than others. ‘If you’re hoping to find where I keep the busts of the baby seal cubs I club for fun, they’re in my home office.’
Her mouth curved into a smile. ‘Right by the barrels of crude oil you spill into the river at night just for kicks.’
‘You have done your research. So, where were you before the CFC?’
That had her eyes sliding back to his. Despite himself he searched their depths for the singular vulnerability that kept grabbing him through the middle. Now all he saw was the rush and fire of fierce intelligence. Unfortunately it didn’t serve to squash the attraction nipping at his skin.
She
