The three partners in Score Property swaggered in looking sweaty, muscled, and positively delicious. Doors that had been closed a moment ago inched ajar, covetous eyes peeking through the gaps. The testosterone pumping from the men, dressed in tanks and shorts that showcased smooth, sunbaked skin, tangoed with the sudden influx of female pheromones. Between accounting, publicity, and admin, eight women worked at Score Property, and all of them would have happily worked for free. The fringe benefits were so damn good.
“Serena, don’t you have nothin’ better to do than sit here gossiping with your coworkers?” Mr. Cross asked in an indulgent tone. “I know I assigned you to making travel arrangements for my trip to L.A., and that ain’t happening as long as you’re here bothering Emma.”
“Sorry, Flynn,” Serena said, not sounding sorry at all. “We were just talking about our weekends. I went dancing.” She managed to infuse a whole lot of sex into the word “dancing,” never mind that Mr. Cross was very happily engaged.
He chuckled. “I bet you did, you minx. You can tell me all about it later over coffee.”
With a lusty giggle and a knowing wink at Emma, Serena slid off Emma’s desk and headed toward Mr. Cross’s office suite. Sixty seconds later, doors had closed and the workday had begun as everyone moved to their starting positions. Everyone, that is, except…
“Ms. Strickland, did you pick up my dry cleaning?”
Of course, she’d known he was standing there. Her body had a weird radar that knew where he was at all times, and as everyone else had scattered, she’d ducked her head and waited for him to head into his office.
But the footsteps never came.
The door did not open.
Instead, the scent of him—a clean, male sweat—assaulted her nostrils.
She looked up and met the cool gaze of Broderick Kane III. The sensitive flesh between her thighs heated, clenched, and gave a little sigh of frustration. It was bad enough he usually looked like sex on pin-striped legs when he was wearing a suit; the days he and his partners did their workouts were a particular brand of torture.
Making little or no effort with his appearance, he walked around in an abstracted haze that should not have appealed to her in any way. She usually liked built, tatted, dangerous men, not the lean, rangy type. Oh, there was muscle there, ropy cords of it rippling through his forearms and impressive thighs, but she suspected he hadn’t worked for it, not really. More like bought them at the gym on the first floor.
Not handsome in the classical sense, he radiated something more compelling. On the day the goddess was giving out the hawt, Brody Kane received an extra helping of sensuality instead of pretty boy. His lips were too full, even when sealed together in their customary grim disapproval. Mahogany hair flopped over his right eyebrow in a way that screamed, “I need a cut but I’m too distracted (making money) to care.”
But his most attractive feature was his eyes. Silver gray like moonlight over a calm stretch of water. Eyes that could cut you to pieces and rebuild you with a single look. To add sexy insult to hot injury, he wore glasses.
Yep, total dweeb.
He also happened to be the brains of Score Property, the numbers guy, and wealthier than sin. The money he spent on suits in a year would have paid off all her debts—all of Daisy’s debts—and left a little to spare for those business classes Emma needed to complete her degree.
“Ms. Strickland?”
She blinked back to the reality of her day job and drew deep for that other woman—Goody-Two-Sensible-Shoes Ms. Strickland. The fraud.
“Dry cleaning’s hanging in your closet, Mr. Kane. I’ve also set up the tea service in the kitchen and will bring it in when—”
“The tea service?” The sexy hair flop ruffled ever so slightly with his querying eyebrow.
“Today’s ten o’clock with the union Jack Consortium on the Crown Point development. Last time Mr. Smythe-Osborne was here, we didn’t have the oolong leaves he requested, but I made sure to get them from the Coffee & Tea Exchange on Broadway. We can’t afford to give him any reason to not choose Score Property to be his stateside partner for the project.”
Mr. Kane stared as if she were speaking in Farsi, then slowly shook his head. “Ms. Strickland, whatever would I do without you?”
“Get the oolong yourself, Mr. Kane?”
The corner of his mouth hitched imperceptibly. Stop the Facebook updates—was that amusement? The man tended toward automaton around the office and never showed signs of enjoyment. Broody Brody, the girls called him.
“Did you do that on your own time?”
“It was no trouble, really.”
He held her gaze long enough to make her skin itch and her stomach queasy. She knew what he saw: cheap, ugly suit; severe, dark brown hair; a woman no man like him would spare a second glance. Perhaps it bothered him that someone so displeasing to the eye required regular interaction.
“Do you own a cat?”
She swallowed, thinking about her cranky cat and his current location. “Yes, I do. A tabby.”
He reached out and plucked at the lapel of her ill-fitting, thrift-store suit, just above a tightening nipple. With those long, elegant fingers that had probably never seen a day’s hard work in their lives, he rubbed, sending to the ground one of the offensive cat hairs that tended to Velcro to her person. A barely discernible eyebrow lift pronounced his conclusion.
Crazy cat lady.
It rankled, but as she had taken great pains to present a certain image, regretting her success was pointless. These clothes were her secret identity, masking the super-zero underneath, keeping that bad girl in check. Better he saw her this way. An attraction to her boss was a distraction she could not afford, not when her life was a complete disaster-piece.
Turning to leave, he pulled on his sticky tank, which had molded to his impressive pectorals in a way old Emma would have been all over, but Ms. Strickland pretended not to notice. And then, just in case she’d missed how shredded those abs were, he used the hem to wipe his damp forehead.
Come. On.
By the time he’d dropped the tank, she had managed to pin an expression of bland disinterest on her face.
“I’d better take a shower, or Smythe what’s-his-face will have a whole other reason to be offended. Can you bring in the Crown Point file and have it on my desk for when I finish?”
She smiled and tried not to look overly smug about it. Failed miserably.
“Already done, Mr. Kane.”
Chapter Two
As Brody headed to the private bathroom in his office, Darth Vader’s theme boomed, meaning the one person he did not want to talk to was doing her daily check-in. Although tempted to send it to voicemail, he merely sighed and hit accept.
“Hey, shithead, try picking up once in a while.”
“Morning to you, too, sweet sister.”
“Sweet sister, my dick.” Liv muttered something incomprehensible, followed by a barked order to some poor unfortunate who wasn’t moving his ass fast enough with—Christ Jesus—a chocolate fountain. His sister ran a high-end catering business in Houston, a natural fit for the dictator tendencies she’d been cultivating since the cradle. She also happened to be getting married to a Daddy-approved Texas congressman in eight weeks, which meant she was even more impossible than usual.
“I’m surrounded by incompetence,” she said with the weary sigh of a baby CEO. “So, rumor has it you’re going to chicken out and not show your face at my nuptials.”
He rather enjoyed this game. “Well, actually I was thinking—”
“Brody Kane, before you go any further, remember this: if you bail on my wedding, I will hunt you down. Native American trackers, wolves, crossbows. Whatever it takes. I have at least three bridesmaids who’ve already offered to fuck you, four if you count the matron of honor who will happily give you a pity hand job in the church vestibule, never mind that her husband will be squeezed into the third pew. If I have to take Dad’s money to pay for my wedding, then you can suck it up and spend an evening with the family you despise.”
Brody grunted his annoyance. “I don’t despise all of them. You’re in the fair-to-middling range, and I offered to pay for the wedding myself. You didn’t have to take a dime of Papa Kane’s black cash.”
His sister snorted. “And let him get away with not paying a fortune to wash his hands of me? No way! That bastard needs to know he’s good for one thing and one thing only: swiping the plastic.” Her voice softened. “Look, I know it’s awkward, and seeing her—seeing them—is the last thing you want, but you can’t let them win.”
He had no idea how showing up at a Texas wedding extravaganza where his ex-fiancée and her new husband would be front and center came within even ten miles of a win. But he’d do anything for his baby sister.
“Of course I’m going to come—”
“Heh, I’ll make sure of it. Bridesmaids with loose morals, bro.”
Et tu, Olivia? “I don’t need you to set me up.”
“Right. Because according to Flynn you haven’t so much as looked at another woman in six months. He said he pops a new condom in your wallet every month but each month goes by and the rubber remains untouched. I can’t imagine not having sex for an entire six months…”