'So what's your answer?' he questioned softly.
'You'll give me a free hand?' she verified.
'Free as you like, sweetheart,' he agreed, but once again his body began to ache.
CHAPTER TEN
JAY'S motorbike zipped through the heavy late-morning traffic, the rain buffeting against him, the thunder-laden clouds matching his mood of expectation and anticipation.
She was there, in his office, putting into practice his crazy idea. He knew this because he had already received a phone call from Andy, asking did Jay know that the dishy broad had arrived bearing enough paint to cover the front of Buckingham Palace?
The unspoken question had been why Jay had not bothered mentioning it to his right-hand man. Maybe that was a classic case of denial-of not wanting to admit what he found hard to admit to himself.
He had let a woman onto his territory. Not just any woman, either, but a woman he had had sex with! For the first time in his life he had allowed desire to blind him to sense.
And he had no one to blame but himself.
He had done some work at home in order to be out of the way when she arrived-he hadn't felt quite ready to lay on the red carpet treatment for her himself-and by the time he'd parked the bike and removed his helmet and made his way upstairs he could hear Andy chatting.
Andy-chatting?
The two men had been SEALS together. They had trained and fought side-by-side, seen the very worst of life and made light of it afterwards. They had wreaked havoc behind enemy lines and then left without a trace. Jay had spent much of his adult life with the tough ex-commando, but he had never once heard him chatting like that.
But then she was, he realised suddenly, very easy to talk to.
He walked into the office to be greeted by the sight of a pert bottom leaning over the desk and pointing out something on a chart to Andy, who had clearly never heard the expression eating-out-of-her-hand.
'Well, hello,' Jay said softly.
Andy stopped mid-sentence, and Keri stopped what she was doing, and they both turned round-Andy jumping back from the paint chart as if it had been alive. For a big man, he could certainly move fast!
Jay stood there, his helmet under one arm, the thumb of his other hand hooked into a loop on his trousers, his stance both watchful and territorial, like some latter-day cowboy. Did he do it deliberately? she wondered. Decide just what would be the number-one female fantasy and then become its very personification?
He was dressed completely in soft black leather. Leather trousers which clung to the long, lean shafts of his legs and a close-fitting leather jacket. With his black hair and shadowed jaw, the only colour relief came in the grey-green glitter of colour from between the thick forest of eyelashes.
'Good morning, Jay,' she said brightly. 'Though not a very nice one, is it?
He groaned. 'You're not going to be cheerful in the mornings, are you?'
'Probably by your standards, yes,' she said innocently, and saw Andy fail to hide a smile. 'I've tried a few patches of paint on the walls of your office-like to have a look at them?'
Surprisingly, his mood had started to lift by a fraction-but then she sure beat Andy on the decorative front. Paint-splattered baggy denim dungarees were proving far more appealing than they should have done-but then he knew only too well what lay beneath.
'I guess so,' he growled, and began to walk towards his office. 'Come on through. Coffee, please, Andy.'
'Sure.'
Keri dawdled for a minute, turned to Andy, and smiled. 'Thanks for all your help.'
His eyes crinkled at the corners. 'My pleasure, ma'am.'
Andy was very definitely American-where Jay only had the hint of a drawl, his was the real thing. They'd been in the SEALs together, so he'd told her. He had bright blue eyes and hair the colour of shadowed corn, and the oddly gentle manner which big men sometimes had.
'Keri!' called Jay's voice impatiently. 'Are you coming in here or not?'
'Demanding, isn't he?' she murmured, half to herself, as she went into the inner sanctum. She had been busy preparing the room before she started painting, though not as busy as she might have expected. Most rooms had some degree of clutter and personal effects, but Jay's had precisely none. No photos. No cute paperweights. No pictures on the walls. There wasn't even a dying pot plant as so often seen in the work-places of lone men. Nothing. A functional room for a functional man.
Jay was standing in the middle of the room, staring incredulously at the wall next to the window which had a splodge of colour on it-a bright, vibrant red.
He turned around, seeing her dark eyes widened in expectation, like a little girl who had spent all night making a gift for the teacher.
'Is this some kind of joke?' he questioned, in a strangled kind of voice.
'You don't like red?'
'I don't like sitting in a room which looks like someone has been flinging ketchup at the walls.'
'It isn't finished yet,' she said helpfully.
Silently, he counted to ten. 'I may not be Van Gogh, Keri, but I'd kind of worked that out for myself. It's not the lack of application I'm objecting to-it's the damn colour!'
'What's wrong with red? The sky outside is blue, the paintwork white and, given your dual nationality, I thought it would conjure up images of both the British and American flags!'
He looked at her. 'Are you trying to be funny?'
'No.' She shook her head. 'Honestly, Jay-I think it will look stunning-and you did tell me I had a free hand!'
'That's because I thought you were just going to brighten it up with the same colour.'
'And what? Paint it magnolia? Although it was difficult to make out just what colour it was under the layers of grime-which I am going to have to scrub before I can start.' She gave an exaggerated shudder. 'Places of work should be inspirational, and you won't get much if you're sitting surrounded by a colour which looks like the inside of a milk bottle. Trust me-it will look fine by the time I've finished.'
There was silence for a moment. If he wanted inspiration he wasn't going to start looking for it in his office! Was now the time to enlighten her that places of work were supposed to be just that? And how come they sounded like a pair of newlyweds sparring over the décor for their first home?
'And if it doesn't?'
She heard the dangerous note in his voice. 'Then I'll paint it back exactly the colour it was!' And saw the dangerous look in his eyes. He really could be a Big, Bad Wolf.
While she had been chatting she had learnt just how successful the company was. It seemed that Jay was a very wealthy man. Yet, oddly enough, that didn't change her feelings for him one jot. She had been ensnared by him when she'd thought he had very little-so what difference did it make that he actually had a great deal?
He was still looking at her in a way designed to make the steadiest hand drip paint all over the floor, and that was hardly the best way to begin. 'Maybe I'd better begin on the outside office,' she said thoughtfully.
Jay didn't know which was more infuriating-the fact that Keri was innocently painting in the next door office, or the fact that Andy kept whistling. Tunelessly. He hadn't heard him whistle like that for a long time.
He kept out of the way until lunchtime and then stole silently into the outer office. To his surprise, almost one large wall had already been painted blue-the same colour as the sea when you started to go really deep. It was a beautiful colour, but not one he would have considered putting on a wall.
Keri was sitting perched on the desk, with a blob of paint on her nose and Andy looking up at her like a lost puppy dog who had just found its owner. A muscle flickered in Jay's cheek as some inexplicable irritation flared.
'Aren't you going out for sandwiches?' he questioned tersely.
Andy glanced at his watch in surprise and levered his long frame out of the chair. 'Is that the time?' He turned to Keri. 'And what would you like, princess?'
Jay gave a tight smile. Princess?
'Oh, don't bother about me,' said Keri quickly. 'I don't normally bother with lunch.'
'She'll have the same as me,' said Jay firmly, and met her eyes. 'There's no way you're starving yourself-understand? You're not standing around having your photo taken now, Keri-this is real work, and I certainly don't want you fainting on the job.'
She felt pretty faint as it was, and that had nothing to do with real work. Now that Jay had peeled off his leather jacket he was treating her to the sight of a black T-shirt clinging to all the right places. Keri swallowed. Maybe a sandwich wasn't such a bad idea after all. Might send the blood rushing to her head and her stomach instead of all the wrong places. 'Thanks. Sounds good.'