Gray Quinn's Baby(5)

       
           



       

'You make it hard to refuse,' he admitted, slanting a smoky grey-green stare her way.

Impossible, hopefully. Having tasted danger, she wanted more. 'So?' she  pressed. Pulling out the house keys, she dangled them in front of him.

'I have to get back.'

Of course he did. 'Another time,' she said brightly, swallowing down her  disappointment. 'You've done more than enough for me already. Goodness  knows how far you've come out of your way.'

'Not far.'

Tess would be furious with her; she didn't even know his name. But she  couldn't hold him here while she cross-questioned him without inviting  further humiliation. 'It's been good meeting you.'

'And you.' He grinned.

By the time she had lifted her hand to wave him off, he'd gone.





CHAPTER FOUR




WHY did her house seem so quiet and empty, when it never had before?

Because of the biker, Magenta concluded. With his larger than life  personality, he didn't even need to speak to command attention; he just  had to be.

Having changed her clothes, and kicked off her shoes with relief, she  picked the mail up and headed for the kitchen. The phone stopped her  dead. She picked it up.

'Magenta Steele?' The voice was crisp, deep and very masculine. 'Gray Quinn here.'

Magenta's heart rolled over. 'Gray … '

'Most people call me Quinn.' There was a hint of a smile in the voice,  but not enough to reassure. 'I'm in the office tying up some loose ends.  I'd like to see you for a discussion on your position going forward  with the company first thing tomorrow morning.'

'But my father said-'

'Your father doesn't head up Steele Design now. I do. Nine o'clock okay with you?'

'Of course … ' A chill ran through her. Quinn might be a sexy charmer,  according to office gossip, but she'd just encountered the Genghis Khan  side of him.

'I'll see you tomorrow, Magenta-nine o'clock sharp.'

And it wasn't a suggestion but an order, Magenta gathered as the line cut.

Coffee was needed. The temptation to go straight back to the office to  gauge the effect Quinn was having on everyone else was almost impossible  to resist. She was worried about her colleagues and felt uncomfortable  leaving them.

Plus she had work she could do better at the office, she persuaded  herself, and if she got through enough of it her team could have more  time off for Christmas shopping. She would get Tess to ring her when the  coast was clear.

Now the decision was made, she was all fired up. Forget taking a subtle  approach where Quinn was concerned; if she waited until he was bedded  in, as her father had suggested, it might be too late to save her  friends' jobs. Abandoning the idea of coffee, she ran upstairs to take a  shower and freshen up.

Now new doubts set in. Even if Tess rung her when Quinn left the office,  there was still the possibility he might return and find her there. The  thought of meeting him filled Magenta with excitement, but it also  filled her with the type of self-doubt that had always plagued her where  men were concerned. She would need a lot more than a freshen-up before  she ran into Quinn-a full-body overhaul was called for.

Guided by the horribly honest mirrors in her bathroom, it soon became  apparent that she was up against the clock in more ways than one. She  would just have to make whatever repairs she could in the short time  available.

Collecting up the sixties products she had been hoarding to fuel her  imagination for the campaign, she rested the plastic crate on top of the  linen basket and started rummaging inside. A queen-sized razor; not a  bad place to start.

And what was this? Myriad sparkles of dewy fragrance will embrace your body in a haze of desire at just the touch of a button …

A love potion? Well, she could certainly do with some of that.

But after her shower, she decided, stepping beneath the steaming spray.

She had a whole range of retro products in the shower too. She had  definitely been infected by the sixties bug. Magenta smiled wryly as she  soaped down and thought about Quinn. What would he be like?

That was the only excuse her imagination needed to go crazy. There was  only one thing that could make this self-indulgent shower any better,  and that was sharing it with Quinn-not that she would; not in the real  world. She was better off sticking to work and researching the sixties.

'Soap-on-a-rope, come here to me,' Magenta crooned, capturing the  hippopotamus-shaped soap currently swinging on a cord from her shower  head.

She glanced through the open door towards her bed, realising how tired  she was. The temptation was to just fall into bed after her shower and  dream about Quinn, put a face to that grainy back-view in the magazine …   Perhaps she'd wake up to discover she had a really big share-holding in  the business-power and some cards to play.                       
       
           



       

But that wasn't going to happen …

Turning her face up to the spray, Magenta knew she would have to take a  more conventional route by producing some of her best work and by  working her thermal socks off.

Turning the shower off, she grabbed a couple of towels and returned to  the bedroom, where a spear of inspiration struck. Why not go the whole  hog and dress in sixties clothes? Quite a few of her colleagues had  already adopted the fashions and the look, so why not join them?

They always banded together at this time of year and had such  fun-decorating the office, sneaking out for warm, full-fat mince pies  with thick globs of cream on top-and this year the sixties vibe was  adding a special frisson to the holiday celebrations.

She was drying her hair absent-mindedly with a towel as she started  flicking through her wardrobe. Like everyone else in the creative team,  she had been scouring the vintage shops for examples of sixties  clothing, and had struck gold with a form-fitting cream wool dress.  Sliding it off the hanger, she laid it on the bed.

Suppliers had rushed to offer samples of their retro products when  Magenta had let it be known that she would be running a high-profile  campaign, so she had plenty of accessories to choose from. Fortunately,  it hadn't been all mini-skirts and hot-pants in the sixties. There had  been the hippies in their flowing, get-em-off-quick clothes, the  shock-frock dolly-birds in mini-skirts, as well as a more elegant side  to the era. This was where Magenta felt comfortable-though it was the  underwear she was supposed to wear beneath these stylish clothes that  made her laugh. Break out of your little-girl body when you're feeling  in a big-girl mood, ran the legend on one pack of matching bra and  girdle.

Well, she wasn't a little girl, but she was definitely in a big-girl  mood, Magenta decided, conjuring up a vision of Quinn as she broke the  seal on the packaging.

It was almost impossible not to think about the new owner of the  business, Magenta realised, opening the towel she had wrapped around her  body to give her twenty-eight-year-old figure a critical review. She  was sitting on the bed facing the dressing-table mirror and she sat up  straight immediately. Would he like real women with real bellies, or  would his tastes run to something younger and slimmer? Not that she  could do much about it in the short time at her disposal. And why worry  when her naked body was in zero danger of becoming an issue between  them?

She picked up another pack and studied it. What do you wear under your action-wear? Action Underwear, of course …

But there wasn't going to be any action.

She put it down, picking up something called the Concentrate girdle.

Concentrate on what? Holding her stomach in the whole time?

I don't think so.

And she certainly didn't need the Little Fibber bra-one of the only  benefits of getting a little older and a little rounder, Magenta thought  dryly, tossing the formidable-looking steel-girder-style bra to one  side. Strange to think the so-called liberated women of the twenty-first  century made so little of her breasts. Breasts were never flaunted at  the office in case you were thought of as brainless, as if having  lactating glands in common with a cow meant you automatically shared the  same IQ. Perhaps that was the reason she had never worn form-fitting  clothes to the office before, though she doubted a man as focused on  business as Quinn appeared to be would even notice.

She hunted for some sheer tights in her drawer, only to discard them in  favour of stockings. Underpinnings were everything, an actress friend  had told her-those and shoes. If you didn't get that right, you stood no  chance of playing a period piece convincingly.

She picked up another box and quickly disposed of it with an unwelcome  shiver of arousal. Damsel in Undress was a definite no-no. The slightest  hint to a man like Quinn that she was adopting a compliant 'men rule'  mindset to go along with her sixties outfit, and she'd be in big  trouble. He'd already given her a flavour of his management style. Gray  Quinn definitely didn't need any encouragement. He was shaping up to be  the original alpha-male. No, this was one occasion when she would be  sixties on the outside and bang up to date in her head. But she would  consent to wear a provocative cone-shaped bra to achieve the authentic  hourglass shape-not forgetting control pants for the belly problem.