The Billionaire Bodyguard(20)

'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.'