Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue
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‘You’ve got yourself quite a crowd here,’ he said, loud enough everyone could hear.
The cameras and the desperate hush of a dozen journalists reminded her why that was. She gathered her straying wits, tilted her chin downward, batted her eyelashes for all she was worth and, with a cheery smile said, ‘Haven’t I just?’
The crowd murmured appreciatively. But that wasn’t the thing that made her cheeks feel warm, her belly feel tumbly, and her knees feel as weak as if she’d been standing there for days. That was purely due to the fresh, devilish glint in Dylan Kelly’s baby blues.
She stood straighter, accidentally jerking her arms and twinging her shoulder, which created a fresh batch of friction at her itchy wrists. Wynnie sucked in a breath to keep from wincing. She kept it all together admirably, promising herself an extra twenty minutes of meditation on the yoga mat when she got home, as she said, ‘The handcuffs brought them out. But it’s what I have to say that’s keeping them here.’
‘And what’s that?’
Research and appearances backed up the notion that he wasn’t a silly man, but he’d just made a silly move. The first rule in shaping public opinion was never to ask a question you didn’t know the answer to.
Buoyed anew, she said, ‘Since you asked, not a moment before you graced us with your presence, we all agreed that you have been acting terribly irresponsibly, and that it’s time you pulled up your socks.’
Before she had the chance to provide some beautiful sound bites dripping with the kinds of statistics newspapers loved, Dylan Kelly grabbed a hunk of suit leg, lifted it high to show off a jet-black sock and enough tanned, muscular, manly calf to create a tidal wave of trembling through the predominantly female crowd.
Okay, so he wasn’t at all silly. He was very, very good. Who knew naked male calf could trump handcuffs?
Dylan took the attention and ran with it, on the face of it focusing back on her, but she knew his words were for everyone else. ‘You oughtn’t to believe all you read in the glossy pages. I’m not all bad. My mother taught me always to wear clean socks, and the hideous memory of my father trying to teach me about the birds and the bees when I was twelve years old scared the bejesus out of me so much it made me the most…responsible man on the planet.’
He might as well have pulled a concertina row of condoms from his pocket as he said it, for the feminine trembling turned to almost feverish laughter as the lot of them got lost in thoughts of Dylan’s underwear and what it might be like to be the one with whom he might one day act altogether irresponsibly.
The men in the crowd were no better. She could read them as easily as if they wore flashing signs on their foreheads. They wanted to buy him a beer, and live vicariously through him for as long as he’d let them near.
Unless she pulled a shoe-sale sign and a Playboy bunny from somewhere her hands could still reach she might lose them all for good. It was time her press conference was brought to a close.
‘Mr Kelly,’ she said, using her outside voice. ‘I concede that your socks are indeed…up. And since my points have obviously fluttered over your head, perhaps I need to be clearer about what I want.’
The crowd quieted and Dylan Kelly slowly lowered the leg of his trousers. Again when he looked at her she felt as if he were looking deep inside her. Testing her mettle? Hoping the force of his gaze might make her explode into a pile of ashes? Or was he after something beyond her comprehension?
The ability to stick one’s hands on one’s hips was underrated. As was the ability to cross one’s arms. She could only stand there, torso thrust in his direction, staring back.
His voice dropped until it was so low it felt vaguely threatening. ‘Tell me, then, what it is that you want from me.’
‘I want you to take the same duty of care with your business practices, in the example you set for your employees and clients with regards to your impact on the environment, as you do your choice of footwear. I want your company to do its part and reduce its prodigious impact on the environment.’
He slid his feet shoulder-width apart, his toes pointing directly at her. ‘Honey, I’m not sure what you think we do in there but we sit at computers and wangle phones. Not so much rainforest felling as you might believe.’
‘You might not be the ones swinging the axes, but, by not being as green as you can be, you may as well be.’
While he looked as though he was imagining ways in which he might surreptitiously have her removed from the face of the earth, she kept her eyes locked on his and was as earnest as she could be when she said, ‘Just hear me out. I promise you’ll sleep better at night.’
Dylan’s eyes narrowed. For a moment she thought she might have pierced his hard shell, until his exquisitely carved cheek lifted into a smile. ‘I sleep just fine.’
And she believed him, to the point of imagining a man splayed out on a king-sized bed, expensive sheets barely covering his naked body as he slept the sleep of the completely satiated. Okay, not a man. This man. That body right now unfairly confined by the convention that city financiers wear suits.
She blinked, and her lashes stuck to her hot cheeks reminding her she’d been standing in the sun for half an hour, strapped to a sharp, uncomfortable, metal statue. ‘Come on. What do you say? Don’t you want your family name to stand for something great?’
Finally, something she said worked. The chiselled jaw turned to rock. The blue eyes completely lost the roguish glint. His faint aura of exasperation evaporated. And right before her eyes the man grew into his suit.
Debonair and cheeky, he was mouth-watering. Focused and switched on he might, she feared and hoped, be the most exceptional devil this angel was yet to meet.
His blue eyes locked hard and fast onto hers, pinning her to the spot with more power than the manacles binding her hands ever could. Her skin flushed, her heart rate doubled, her stomach clenched and released as though readying her to fight or fly.
His voice was rough, but loud enough for every microphone to pick it up as he said, ‘Both KInG and the Kelly family invest millions every year in environmental causes such as renewable energy research and reforestation. More than any other company in this state.’
‘That’s excellent. Truly. But money isn’t everything,’ she shot back, holding his gaze, feeling the cameras zoom in tight. ‘Action is the marker of a man, and the actions within that building beside us in the last year have added up to the waste of more than forty thousand disposable paper cups a month, more water usage than the whole of the suburb I live in, and enough paper waste to fell hectares of old forest. What I want from you is the promise that you are going to become the solution rather than being the problem.’
When the devil in the dark suit didn’t come back with an instant response her heart thundered with the thrill of a battle won, with the knowledge that the cameras had their sound bite. And if Dylan Kelly, VP Media Relations, was worth his salt he knew in that moment there was no way that he could just walk away.
‘So what do ya say?’ she said, bringing her voice back down to a more intimate level, loosening her grip, relaxing her stance and slipping on a warm, friendly and just a little bit flirty smile. ‘Invite me in for a coffee and a chat and I’ll spend tomorrow bugging someone else.’
She felt the whole forecourt hold its collective breath as they awaited his next move.
When it finally came, Wynnie was again glad of her shackles, uncomfortable as they had become, as this time when those blindingly blue eyes met hers they were filled with such self-possession, such provocation, such blatant reined-in heat her knees all but buckled beneath her.
‘You want to come up to my place for coffee?’ he asked, his voice like silk and melted dark chocolate and all things decadent and delectable and too slippery to hold on to. ‘Now why didn’t you just say so in the first place?’
CHAPTER TWO
AS THOUGH Dylan Kelly had a magic button in the pocket of his trousers, Security arrived at that moment to discreetly move the onlookers away. The city workers and tourists had had their free lunchtime show. The press had their story. Wynnie’s awareness campaign was off to a flying start. Everyone was happy.
Everyone except Dylan, who was staring at her as if she were a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
‘That was a cheap trick you just pulled,’ he growled quietly enough that only she could hear.
Wynnie shook her hair out of her face. Now the crowd had dispersed, the breeze whipping up George Street was swirling around her like a maelstrom. ‘I prefer fearless, indomitable and inventive.’
‘In the end it will be they who decide one way or the other.’ He motioned with a slight tilt of his head to the row of news vans on the sidewalk.
‘Lucky for me,’ she said with a smile.
‘Mmm. Lucky for you.’ He glanced at his watch, then back at her. ‘So did you want to conduct your bogus meeting out here or were you planning on staying here for the night?’
Wynnie twisted to get her hands to the tight back pocket of her capri pants, which had been ideal for the Verona autumn she had left behind, but in the warm Brisbane spring sunshine they stuck to her like a wetsuit. ‘Oh, no. I’m done. Horizontal is my much preferred method. Of sleeping,’ she added far too late for comfort.
She glanced up to find him thankfully preoccupied enough to have missed her little Freudian slip. Unfortunately he was preoccupied with the twisting and turning of her hips.
His voice was deep, his jaw tight, when he said, ‘I could have had you arrested, you know. This is private property.’
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘The globe belongs to none of us.’
He’d moved closer, having seemingly reconciled himself to the fact that she wanted to get out of the handcuffs as much as he wanted her to, and that her shoes were made for looks and functionality, not for use as a secret weapon. Without the clamour of the crowd making the square smell like a fish-market, she caught a waft of his aftershave—clean, dark, expensive. Suddenly she felt very, very thirsty.
Despite his focus, she twisted some more. Her shoulder twinged but better that than have to keep trying to appear professional while cuffed to the statue, and while the touch of his eyes made her skin scorch beneath her clothes.
Her fingers made it to the bottom of the tight coin pocket to find it was empty. Her heart leapt into her throat until she remembered she’d put the tiny key inside the breast pocket of her shirt at the last minute.
Naturally when she tried to reach it, she couldn’t. She stood on tiptoes, looking for Hannah, knowing it was a lost cause. She would have been back at the office the minute lunch hour was up.
Wynnie closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath and said, ‘Would you do me a favour?’
Dylan’s deep voice rolled over her. ‘You certainly aren’t backwards about asking for what you want, I’ll give you that.’
‘I need you to get the key for my cuffs.’
After a long, slow pause he said, ‘The key?’
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. ‘It’s in my top right breast pocket. I can’t reach it. So unless you do want me to become a permanent fixture—’
The rest of her words dried up in her throat and her eyes sprang open.
It seemed she hadn’t had to ask twice. Dylan’s hand was already sliding into the pocket, his fingertips brushing against the soft cotton over her bra; just slowly enough to make a ripple of goose bumps leap up all over her body, and just fast enough she couldn’t accuse him of taking advantage.
All too soon he held up the key. ‘This the one you’re after?’
She hoped to God it was. If he made another foray in there she didn’t know what she might do.
She nodded and looked up into his eyes. Up close they were the colour of the sky back home, the unspoilt wilds of country Nimbin—the kind of wide-open blue found only in the most untouched places on earth. But the colour was the only virtuous thing about them. Barely checked exasperation boiled just below the surface.
She lifted her hand to take the key, was reminded why he had it in the first place, then gritted her teeth as she twisted so that she could expose her wrists, and her back view, to him instead.
This time he managed to have her unlocked without touching her at all. Not even a whisper, an accidental grope, a playful pat. She actually felt disappointed.
When God was handing out the mechanism for knowing who a girl could safely lean on, Wynnie had so-o-o missed out. If there was ever a man in her vicinity who was about to act against her own interests, that was the one she was drawn to.
She shook her head and vowed to ask Hannah to set her up on some sort of blind date and fast. Or maybe just a night out dancing at some dark, hazy club. Or she could take up running. Not as though she’d ever lifted a foot in purposeful exercise in her life, but there was no time like the present to begin! If she didn’t manage to release some of the sexual tension this man had summoned, she was going to make a hash of everything.
She slid the cuffs from her right wrist, sucking in a short sharp breath as the pain of their release grew worse than the dull ache of the wearing of them.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, and she looked up in surprise.
For the briefest moment she thought she saw actual concern flicker within his gaze. She blinked and it was gone. She hid the cuffs and her red wrists behind her. ‘I’m fine. Now how about that coffee?’
‘First things first,’ he said, rocking forwards on his heels until her personal space became his personal space. His dark scent became her oxygen. His natural heat her reason for getting up that morning.
Her toes curled and her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
‘I don’t make a habit of having coffee with a woman without at the very least getting a name.’ He held out a hand. ‘Dylan Kelly.’
Wynnie blinked, mentally slapped herself across the back of her head for letting her imagination run rampant, then took his hand, doing her best to ignore the frisson of heat that scooted up her arm as his fingers curled around hers. ‘Wynnie Devereaux.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘French?’
‘Australian.’
His eyebrows slowly flattened out, but the edge of his mouth kicked up into a half smile as he realised she had no intention of illuminating him further.
The truth was that Devereaux was the maiden name of a grandmother she’d never met, and her little brother, Felix, had never been able to pronounce her real name as a baby and had called her Wynnie from the time he could talk.
Felix. The whisper of his name in the back of her mind made her soul hurt, and reminded her how her patchy instinct on who to trust could go so terribly wrong.
Either way, she had no intention of talking to Dylan Kelly, or anyone else, about the existence of her brother. Or, for that matter, her real name.
‘Next,’ he said. Before I inflict you upon my place of business, he didn’t need to say. ‘Are you here on your own whim or as an ambassador for others like you?’
Wynnie raised an eyebrow at his snarky attitude. She then pulled a business card from the skinny travel purse looped beneath her shirt and hanging against her hip.
Her fingers brushed over the crystal and white-stone butterfly clip attached to the strap of her purse, and like the touchstone it was, it helped take the edge off her soaring adrenalin.
She handed her card over, a handcuff still dangling from that wrist.
The whisper of a half-smile tugged at Dylan’s mouth, and her body reacted the same way it had every time that happened. It stretched and unfolded and purred.
Which was insane. He’d made no bones about how unenthusiastic he was about the prospect of spending time with her. And he was a target, not some anonymous hot guy in a club who might, if she was very lucky, turn out to be an undemanding friend with benefits. But she couldn’t help herself. It was as though the laws of nature were having their way with her without her consent.
She whipped the cuffs behind her and unhooked them, shoving one end down the back of her trousers before they became more of a distraction. Or an apparent invitation.
He glanced at her for one long moment more before his eyes slid to her business card. His lip curled as he said, ‘You’re a lobbyist?’
‘Is that better or worse than whatever it was you were thinking I was before you saw the card?’
He tipped her business card into the palm of his hand and out of sight. And if she’d thought he’d filled out his suit before, now he stood so erect he looked as if he’d been sewn into the thing. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure.’
But at least he waved an arm in front of her, herding her towards the formidable Kelly Tower.
As Wynnie’s feet moved under her she realised she was kind of stunned. The spectacle had actually worked. Her employers, whose previous public persona was devout and dull, would come out of this appearing anything but. They would get prime-time news coverage, and she had gathered several leads with reporters who wanted follow-ups. She couldn’t have asked for more.
The fact that she was now heading inside enemy camp meant she was a few steps ahead of the game.
So naturally she had none of the meticulously prepared, Kelly-centric pamphlets loaded with detailed cost projections and time frames on hand to back her up. There was no room in her purse for more than a credit card and house key. And nothing else was going to fit down those trousers.
Well, she’d be fine. She’d just have to wing it. Having grown up with hippy parents in Nimbin, the flower-child capital of Australia, spouting green was what she had been born to do.
She snuck a glance sideways at her silent new acquaintance to find his profile was even more daunting than front-on. His thick, dark blond hair was being lightly and sexily ruffled by the breeze shooting around the building. Those stunning blue eyes were hooded beneath strong brows so that they looked to be peering down at the world via his perfectly carved nose. And then there were those lips.
She wondered which lucky girl out there was allowed to kiss them whenever she pleased. Was able to run her finger across their planes whenever the fancy took her. Was able to lean her chin on her palm and watch them as they talked, and smiled and laughed. Her own lips tingled just 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.