For His Eyes Only(20)

                As for her hair, she’d fastened it in a sleek twist that rested against the nape of her neck; it was a classically provocative style and his fingers, severely provoked, itched to pull the pins and send it tumbling around her face and shoulders.

                She’d stopped a teasing arm’s width from the ladder, looking up at him. Near enough for the honeyed scent of warm skin, something lemony, spicy, chocolatey to reach him but, maybe sensing the danger, not quite close enough to touch. Clearly her instincts were better honed than his because every beat of his pulse urged him to reach for her, pull her close enough to feel what she was doing to him...

                Forget the cake. Eating her, one luscious mouthful at a time, was the only thing on his mind.

                ‘Well?’ he snapped. Angry with her for disturbing him. No one was allowed to disturb him while he was working. Angry with himself for wanting to be disturbed. For the triumphant Yes! racketing through him at her unexpected appearance, despite the certainty that this was some devious scheme of Morgan’s—sending in the sex bomb to persuade him to drop his claim for damages.

                Tash ran her tongue over her teeth in an attempt to get some spit so that she could answer him. Lay out her offer like the professional she was.

                She was used to meeting powerful men and women but she was having a tough job remembering why she was in Darius Hadley’s studio. The concrete floor and walls made the space cold after the sun outside, but a trickle of sweat was running down between her breasts and an age-old instinct was telling her to shrug off her jacket, let her hair down, reach out and run her fingers up his denim-clad thigh, perched, tantalisingly, at eye level.

                ‘What do you want, Natasha Gordon?’

                She looked up and saw her feelings echoed in Darius Hadley’s shadowed features and for a moment it could have gone either way.

                She was saved by the crash of a pigeon landing on the skylight, startling them both out of the danger zone.

                ‘I don’t want anything from you, Mr Hadley,’ she said quickly. Could this be any more difficult? Bad enough that he thought she’d sabotaged the sale of his house without acting like a sex-starved nymphomaniac. ‘On the contrary. I’m going to do you a favour. I’m going to sell your house for you.’

                ‘Miss Gordon...’

                ‘I know.’ She held up her hand in a gesture of surrender. ‘Why would you trust me? After the debacle with your ad,’ she added, and then wished she hadn’t. Having found him, got through the door a darn sight more easily than she’d expected and survived that first intense encounter, reminding him why he should throw her out was not her brightest move.

                ‘Is there any hope that you’re not going to tell me?’ he asked.

                Phew... ‘Not a chance.’ She slipped the strap of her laptop bag from her shoulder and let it drop at her feet, anchoring herself in his space. Then she placed the glossy white cakebox on his workbench alongside his neatly laid-out tools—most of which appeared to be lethal weapons. Most, but not all. She picked up a long curved rib bone.

                ‘That belonged to the last person who annoyed me,’ he said, finally stepping off the ladder.

                ‘Really?’ Apparently there was a sense of humour lurking beneath that scowl. Promising...

                ‘What did he do?’ she asked, looking up at the sculpture rearing above her, heart swelling within its ribcage as the horse leapt some unseen obstacle. From what she’d seen of his work on the Net, it appeared that visceral was something of a theme. ‘Did he throw you? Is this you getting your own back?’