‘Yeah, better,’ Garrett grumbled. ‘Now, if there’s nothing else, Don, we’re busy here. We’ve got plans to make.’
He cut the connection before Don could say goodbye.
When Kendra shot him a questioning gaze, he shrugged. ‘He’s hot for you.’
She nodded. ‘I got that from the email he sent to K. Ryde.’
Garrett sniggered. ‘That’s an interesting way to find out what a guy thinks about you, I guess. All you have to do is be two people.’
‘And you would know something about that, wouldn’t you, Garrett?’
‘Kendra.’ He reached out and took her hand and was relieved when she didn’t pull away. ‘I’m sorry I involved you in all of this. Nothing’s quite worked out like I’d planned.’
She offered him a smile and curled her fingers around his. ‘It never does, Garrett. That’s part of what made running the Ryde Agency so much fun.’
He held her gaze. ‘If it was so much fun, why did you sell it, the business I mean?’
The smile faded, and for a brief second the sadness in her eyes was deep enough to drown in. ‘All good things have to come to an end.’ She stood and headed toward the kitchen. ‘I need a Diet Pepsi,’ she called over her shoulder, once again her cheerful self. ‘And I’m starving. You?’
He sat for a second catching his breath, trying to figure out what had just happened. He never imagined when she waltzed into Wade Crittenden’s office at the Pneuma Building a few weeks ago, tossed her drink at him, then bitch-slapped him until his ears rang that she was so complex, so intriguing. Eventually, the rattling of pots and pans drew him to the kitchen. Well, actually, it was the woman rattling the pots and pans that drew him. At some point, he couldn’t remember exactly when, he had stopped pretending she didn’t draw him to her, stopped pretending he didn’t want to be close to her – as close as she would allow him to be. The knot in the pit of his stomach that had been there since the email arrived, since Kendra’s reaction to it, was a pretty good indication she wouldn’t allow that closeness easily.
‘Do you cook?’ she said without looking up from breaking eggs into a bowl. ‘I can just about scramble eggs without it becoming a disaster.’
‘I can do a decent bolognaise,’ he replied.
‘Ah yes, the one male recipe to impress the chicks.’
‘Shall I do it for you and we’ll see if it works?’
She laughed and began whisking the eggs briskly. ‘Gonna take more than a mean bolognaise to impress me, Garrett Thorne.’
‘Then what?’ Unable to resist any longer, he moved behind her and slid his arms around her waist. ‘What will impress you, Kendra Davis?’
She offered a little murmur of surprise and the whisk clattered on the side of the bowl, splattering egg over onto the countertop.
‘Garrett.’ She tried to wriggle free, but he held her, his lips brushing the flutter of her pulse in her throat. ‘Garrett, I work for you. We can’t do this. It’s already gotten us into trouble.’
‘No,’ he whispered against her neck, pushing aside her hair to nibble down to her shoulder, his other hand splayed flat and low on the rise and fall of her belly. ‘You work for Tess Delaney, and you’ve asked me to pretend I’m her lover, so let me play my part.’
‘But I’m not Tess.’ She wriggled to turn in his arms until she faced him, pressed to the counter by the weight of his body, which was already blatantly, shamelessly betraying how badly he wanted her. ‘I’m Kendra. And I don’t like you, and you don’t like me either, remember?’
‘Memory seems to be failing me at the moment,’ he said. Her breath was fast and sweet on his face, and the press of her breasts against him made him ache all over for more of Kendra Davis. He curled his fingers in her hair and drew her mouth close to his own. ‘Just tell me you don’t want me, Kendra, and I’ll stop.’ The last word was pressed firmly to her parted lips, then pushed in between with the tip of his tongue, greeted by her tongue and swallowed up by her own powerful need.
‘Garrett, you’re trouble,’ she sighed into his mouth. ‘So damn much trouble. I should have run away fast the second I realized who you were.’ Then she bit him on the chin, on the jaw, on the throat; bit him hard enough to elicit a gasp of surprise and a sting of pain that translated itself to pleasure down where his jeans rested tight around his fly.
With the flat of her hand on his chest, she pushed him back, but followed, still nipping and biting and teasing his mouth. She pushed him again and again until he half fell into the kitchen chair where she had been earlier when she’d had her panic attack. Once he was seated and gasping for air, she eased the hem of her dress up until he could see the dark cherry red of her panties, until she could get her legs far enough apart to straddle his lap.