His Instant Heir(2)

"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.