Not safe. He was definitely not safe.
Think about your job. Are you going to let fear take over again? If that’s what this feeling is?
So she put out her hand. “Mr. Fielding,” she said, bracing herself for the jolt, which came right on schedule. Maybe it had been too long since she’d had human contact.
Male contact.
Oh, help.
“Ms. Hunter,” he said, his hand still in hers. He wasn’t smiling at her and didn’t seem to feel the need to break eye contact.
And this close, she caught a hint of his cologne. Gloria was right, she thought faintly. He does smell like a forest.
Ellen caved first, turning her head away toward her office. “Won’t you come through?” Penny wasn’t the only one who could roll out the banalities.
This time when he went through the door, she made sure to stand well back, but once inside he took up far too much space in the small office. “Do sit down,” she said, sounding like her mother, and only when he was seated, making her guest chair look small and flimsy, did she come around to sit behind her desk.
“So,” she said, moving her mouse pad a little farther in front of her, “was there something else you wanted to know about our proposal?”
“No,” he said. The hard stare without the smile was more disturbing than the hundred-kilowatt attack. She surreptitiously pushed a pen and pencil to join the mouse pad. “I want to take you to the Queen’s Ball.”
“What?” She’d been right? “No,” she said instinctively. Then, because she thought she might be going mad, she said, “What?” again.
One side of his mouth quirked up. “I was hoping you would allow me to take you to the Queen’s Ball.”
The language may have been more flowery but it was no more comprehensible. Her cheeks at Defcon 3, her answer was firm. “Of course you can’t,” she said. No matter what tiny part of her trembled with a “yes.”
“Why ‘of course’?” He didn’t look concerned, just curious. He was resting one wrist on her desk, tapping the wood with a finger while he watched her.
He’s so damn cocky; he must do this every flipping day. She came out of the trance and began to get angry. She was just another woman, just another chance to get his jollies.
But she couldn’t show him this. Casting about among all the reasons she could not, would not go anywhere with him, she hit upon the safest one. “You’re a client.”
“Not yet. And anyway, that would be Lucía, not me.”
His tie was loosened, and his top button was undone. If she cared to look, she’d see the slow pulse of his heart at the hollow of his throat. Don’t look.
“It amounts to the same thing.” She took another pen out of the holder and held it in front of her as if it were imperative she write down their conversation.
“I hate to tell you, but if you’re leaving in four months, Lucía probably won’t use the hotel.”
“Oh.” Now she was getting it. Her anger flamed higher. “So if I don’t agree to go out with you, we don’t get the account?” She’d half-risen from her chair without realizing.
“No!” His eyes widened, and finally he looked away from her for a second, giving a rueful laugh. “Jeez, you really don’t think much of me, do you?”
So he had noticed. Way to piss off a potential client, Ellen. But then, if he wasn’t a potential client, why the hell was he here?
She sat down, tried something else. “And I’m working at the ball. It’s not a social occasion for me.”
“I understand,” he said. “I guess what I really want is to get to know you before then, take you out for dinner this weekend. Then at the ball I can just sit back and watch you work.”
He could do that without going as her date, but she was more incensed by his easy assumption that one dinner would make her desperate to be in his presence again. To touch him again...
God, this was infuriating! She was so confused around him she didn’t know what to say. But the easiest emotion to bring to the surface was anger. So with a voice that trembled more than she’d like, but held on to some of the cold disdain she’d worked so hard for, she said, “The answer is still no. To dinner and the ball.” Then, because she couldn’t ignore her upbringing altogether, she added, stiffly, “Thank you.”
She had now arranged three pens, a pencil, a stapler, and her tape dispenser in front of her. Kane’s eyes dropped to them, her pathetic instinctive shield. “Okay,” he said. Then, “I apologize.”
“What?” He’d left her gaping again. It wasn’t just his looks that left her feeling so off-kilter around him.
