"I think I'd have more luck changing the direction of the Santa Ana winds," she said.
"Have dinner with me and we can find out," he said.
"Would you be willing to discuss Playtone Games being a silent partner in Infinity?"
He laughed. "Not happening."
"Then neither is dinner." No matter how much he cajoled she needed distance and a chance to really think before she just jumped back into something foolish with him.
"We have to work together, so I don't think us spending time together outside the office would be wise," she said at last. She used to be more impulsive, but wasn't anymore. Her one-night stand with this man had reminded her there were consequences for acting without thinking.
"The Cari I know doesn't make decisions with only her head."
"I've changed," she said bluntly. Maybe if she hadn't fallen for his smooth-talking ways and blunt sexuality … What?
"I like it," he said slickly.
Cari knew she had to face facts that the man she'd had a one-night stand with was back in town. And it was becoming abundantly clear that a corporate takeover was the least of her problems. She was going to have to tell him about her son … his son.
Their son.
And she had no idea how to do that.
* * *
Cari had changed. That was easy to see even for a guy who'd spent only one night in her company. Dec knew things between them had always seemed complicated. Never more so than now. Their families were hated enemies of each other and his cousin, Keller Montrose, the CEO of Playtone Games, wasn't going to be happy unless Infinity was completely broken apart so that nothing of Gregory Chandler's legacy remained.
And this pretty blonde woman standing before him was going to be nothing more than collateral damage.
Dec had never been able to see her as his hated enemy. From the first moment he'd laid eyes on her he'd wanted to know more about her-and not so he could figure out how to use that information to take over her company.
Being adopted, Dec never truly felt like a real Montrose and was always striving to prove he was as loyal as both Kell and their other cousin, Allan McKinney.
Being back in California, conveniently with Cari, seemed his chance to do his job and continue to prove his worth to the Montrose family, as well as hopefully reconnect with the woman he hadn't been able to forget. With her thick blond hair that fell in smooth waves past her shoulders and her pretty cornflower-blue eyes, she'd haunted him. He couldn't forget the way she'd looked up at him as he'd held her in his arms.
Now that he had the chance to get a proper look at her, he could see the year and a half they'd been apart had added a quiet confidence to her. He started at her tiny feet in those pretty brown two-inch heels and moved upward. Her ankles were still trim, but her calves seemed more muscular. The hem of her skirt kept him from seeing any more of her legs but her hips seemed fuller … more pronounced. Her waist was still impossibly small, he noted, as the button on her jacket flaunted. Her breasts-whoa, they were a lot larger. She'd been slim and small but she was much-
"Eyes up here, buddy," she said, pointing to her baby blues.
He shrugged and then smiled at her. "I can see that you have changed a lot in the past year. Your figure is much fuller than before, but I like that."
He walked toward her with a long, languid stride and she backed up until there was nowhere for her to go. She put her hand up to stop him, keeping him an arm's length away. He stood there, staring down into her eyes, and had to admit there was something different about her. It was in her eyes. She watched him more closely than she had before.
She looked tired and he thought, well, duh, Playtone had finally gotten the upper hand on Infinity Games and she was more than likely worried about her job.
He backed away from her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to come on too strong. I'm sure losing your company to us was a shock."
"That's a bit of an understatement."
He smiled at the way she said it. "I'm a little jet-lagged still."
"Jet-lagged? I wasn't aware that there was a time zone between the Infinity Games campus and the Playtone offices," she said.
She gave up nothing. And he wondered how he could have missed this side to Cari eighteen months ago. But then he'd been in full-on lust and it was safe to say his brain hadn't been controlling him.
"I've been in Australia for a little over a year managing our takeover of Kanga Games."
"You let them keep their corporate identity," she said.
"They didn't screw our grandfather over."
"My sisters and I didn't either. We've always dealt with you and your cousins fairly."
"I'm afraid that doesn't matter when it comes to revenge," he said.
"Surely profit matters."
"It does."
She nodded and moved back to her chair. He sat down and so did she. She steepled her fingers together and he noticed she wore a ring on her right hand now that she hadn't before. It was a platinum band of hearts with a row of diamonds in the center. It seemed the kind of ring a lover would have given her. Was she involved with someone now?
Maybe that was where her new confidence stemmed from. She had a lover now. Well, he could be happy for her. Even though he regretted that he might not ever get to kiss her again.
"When did you get back from Australia?" she asked as she toyed with the ring. Those little gestures seemed to indicate her nervousness, though the rest of her body language didn't support that.
"Saturday, but I'm still adjusting. And seeing you again surprised me," he admitted, reaching for his briefcase, which he'd stowed next to his chair, and putting it on the table. He had his computer and the files he'd already started studying on the takeover.
"How did it surprise you? I knew you'd be here this morning," she said. "Didn't you know it would be me?"
"Yes, Emma informed me via email," he said. He wasn't about to tell her that he'd never expected to react so strongly to her presence. Not now. He'd thought since they'd slept together all the chemistry would be gone … but he'd been wrong.
The mystery of her body had been revealed to him. There wasn't an inch of it he didn't remember, though he realized now, with the flesh-and-blood woman standing before him, that those memories were a pale imitation of the real thing.
He wanted a chance to explore all of her curves and, more than that, he thought, to finally unlock the secrets she kept hidden deep inside. If he were busy dissecting her, maybe he would stop trying to get introspective in his own life.
In fact, the more he thought about it the more that Cari seemed the perfect distraction for whatever malaise had been affecting him lately.
He needed a distraction, and voilà, the universe had provided the one woman he'd hadn't been able to forget. He thought of his time frame for the takeover-six weeks. Surely that was long enough to satisfy his curiosity about her. Though being in the middle of a hostile takeover wasn't going to make seduction easy. In fact, if he were smart he'd forget about her personally and concentrate on business. But this was Cari, the woman whose image had haunted him throughout the past eighteen months, and now he wanted a chance to find out why. Was it just that he'd only had one night with her? Was there more between them?
"Then what's the problem?" she said with a half smile. She leaned boldly forward.
"There isn't a problem."
She stood up and put her hands on her hips. The movement pulled her suit jacket tight across her full breasts. She was a little bit flirty, which he liked. But also he sensed that it was a little forced this time.
"Are you sure? Doesn't it bother you that our families have been feuding forever?"
He'd like to say yes, but he suspected the problem was with him. He'd been traveling almost nonstop since he'd last seen her and he was a bit lonely for home. Not the Baglietto Bolaro yacht he kept at the yacht club in Marina del Rey that he'd christened Big Spender. Certainly not the Beverly Hills mansion that he'd inherited from his parents. He'd never had a place that he'd felt was home.
It had just started three months ago, that longing for something permanent. And he knew he had to get over it. It was out of character for him. Being adopted by the Montrose family was great, but being used as a pawn in his parents' messy divorce had taught him that he was meant to be alone. Then, at twenty-five, he'd lost his father in a freak skiing accident, and two years later his mother's liver had finally given out from all the drinks she'd used to medicate her life.