The Millionaire Affair(16)

 

"I couldn't be more tired if I tried," she answered honestly. Your turn,  mister. "Did you reimage the best potato chip in the world?"

He grunted. A definitive no.

"Probably too much to hope that you'd get it done in a week, right?" she  guessed. She had no idea how long these sorts of things took, or how  long it took for a brand switch to go from concept to completion.

He sipped his scotch. Licked his lips. Remained silent.

Okay. She'd go for the direct route. "You wanna talk about it?"

He slipped his finger and thumb under his glasses and rubbed the bridge  of his nose. "You don't want to hear about it," he blew out on a sigh.

She should respect that he didn't want to talk about it. But she  couldn't imagine who else he had to talk to. As the boss, he couldn't  let his employees know he had doubts. And while she couldn't be sure, it  was a safe bet that Lissa and Landon hadn't exactly lent their ears to  one another.

That left …  well …  that left her.

"How do you know I don't want to hear about it?" She'd love to hear him  talk about anything. Love to just sit here and listen to his deep voice  interrupted every so often by a sip of scotch.

He dropped his hand and peered into his glass. He was silent for so  long, she'd begun feeling guilty for backing him into a corner. He  surprised her by speaking.

"You want to hear me rant about how I have a team of imbeciles assigned  to the most important account of my career?" he said, eyes on his glass.  "Tell you how, no matter which way I attempt to steer them, they mutiny  and run us into the nearest iceberg? Or maybe you'd like to hear about  how I stomped into the boardroom like a lunatic and demanded we  reconvene tomorrow morning?"

"On a Saturday?"

He sent her a dry look.

She returned it with a weak smile. "Sorry."

He let out a sigh. "And I know you don't want to hear how I realized on  my way home tonight that I'm placing blame where it doesn't belong.  Railing on the best designers in the business because I am the one who's  hit a creative block." His lips pressed together, then he spoke, almost  talking to himself now. "Every direction I try to take the design, it  runs me ashore."

"That's a lot of boat references," she quipped.

He squinted at the buildings in the distance, his lips tipping into more  of a sneer than a smile. A light winked out, then another. "I can't  believe I admitted that," he muttered quietly.

Kimber had given up on getting things one hundred percent right one  hundred percent of the time. Hell, she was lucky to get things half  right a third of the time. "You still suffer the delusion you're not  allowed to make mistakes, don't you?"

He met her eyes and uttered a stern, "Yes."

She grinned. He was kidding. She was starting to pick up on his dry  sense of humor. "When I find my brain in the way"-she paused to roll her  eyes-"which doesn't happen all that often, I go with what feels right."

"What feels right." He repeated her words like she'd spoken them in a foreign tongue.

"Yes. You do have feelings, don't you?"

He answered with a bland blink. He wasn't Mr. Control all the time.  Regardless of what he wanted people to think, she knew better. He wasn't  who he pretended to be on the outside. The buttoned-up-and-down CEO who  rarely let go. The rigid, disciplined man who checked his and Lissa's  relationship off like a task on his to-do list. He could hide at work,  even in public, but not in his home.

She'd seen him interact with Lyon enough to see the man practically melt  in the presence of his only nephew. As if there'd been any doubt  considering the piles of Lego sets and game boards he'd overstocked the  boy's bedroom with. And, on a very personal level, she had seen the heat  in Landon's eyes when he looked at her. Had felt the very real  attraction between them last night. That hadn't been a mirage.

"Don't you ever go with your gut?" she pressed when he remained silent.  She couldn't help herself. She wanted to talk to him. Especially after  his out-of-character monologue. She was right. He did need someone to  unload on.

One thick, dark blond brow rose. "My gut."

He'd gone back to echoing her every question rather than answer.  Avoidance. Well, she was no longer in the mood to let him off the hook.  "Yes. Don't you ever use something other than your big, thinky brain?"

The brow went higher, along with one corner of his mouth. "Did you just use the word ‘thinky'?"         

     



 

Stubble had pressed through his sharpened jaw, making him look a tad  dangerous, even in half an Armani suit and designer tie. She had the  overwhelming urge to reach out and touch his cleft chin, maybe run a  fingertip along his lips. She'd longed to feel even the briefest brush  of his mouth last night, only to be thwarted by a parched six-year-old.  She wanted to shift her gaze to the monitor to see if Lyon still slept,  but knew that Landon would read her as clearly if she said All clear!  Let's make out.

"Which, by the way, is not a word," he added as she blinked out of her thoughts.

"You know what I mean." She leaned her shoulder against the back of the  sofa, moving a smidge closer to him. "Do you ever follow your heart?"

She watched her hand lift of its own volition and feather the silken  hair over his temple before resting her fingertips there and tapping  lightly. "Instead of your brain."



Landon stilled when she touched him. It was the softest, barely there  brush of her fingers, but it made his scalp tingle like a colony of ants  skittered across his skull. And his head wasn't the only part of him  tingling. So were parts in his southern hemisphere. Her head was cocked  just so, her shimmering green eyes bare of any makeup. All he wanted to  do was sift his hand into her fiery waves and taste that mouth.

Thinky brain be damned.

He settled for lifting a piece of her hair that'd been brushing his hand  since she'd turned to face him. As he rubbed the thick strands between  his fingers, he realized how intimate touching her like this was. They  faced each other, her fingers pressing gently against his temple, his  hand in her hair.

He swallowed thickly, remembering she'd spoken last. "No. I don't follow  my heart," he said, talking about two things simultaneously.

She pulled her hand away and studied him, her pink mouth sliding into an  adorable little pout. "Why not?" She looked like he'd just told her  unicorns weren't real. Like the Easter Bunny was a sham.

"Because it's not smart," he said, his voice gruffer than he'd intended.  "You cannot build a multimillion-dollar advertising business by ‘going  with your gut.' " And he sure as hell hadn't profited the one time in  his personal life he'd followed his heart. He'd been willing to change  his entire life for Rachel; had altered his future plans to support his  girlfriend and their unborn baby. And what had she done? Thrown him  away. Ridded herself of him, their future. Our baby.

He winced, pain slicing his heart. He hated reminders of that time in  his life. Hated how utterly out of control he'd been back then. How  powerless he was to stop an event Rachel had set in motion. Once he'd  grieved, once he'd had some distance and looked back at them in a  practical, pragmatic way, it was obvious how ill-fated he and Rachel had  been. But up close, he hadn't seen their imminent demise. Not at all.

Yes, his heart had been his worst enemy back then. Not Rachel's though;  she'd been thinking clearly. Had suffered no such qualms about walking  away from him, from college, from being a mother.

That was the only time in his life he'd ever allowed his heart to blind  his brain. And since the brain's sole job was to process information, it  seemed wise to use it instead of the organ that at best was unreliable,  and at worst, put a majority of the nation into an early grave.

His lips pulled into a frown. Kimber's arrival back into his life had  brought not only memories of first meeting her at his parents' house,  but had also stirred up the settled dust of his past. Well he preferred  to keep the past where it belonged. In the past. Not irritating his  every nerve ending.

"I always go with my brain," he said solidly.

She had folded her arms over her chest, jostling her breasts beneath her  top in a way that he noticed there was nothing harnessing them there.  No bra. God help him. She shuffled her shoulders and sent the small  mounds sliding along the material. He averted his eyes and took a drink  of his scotch, wondering if she had any idea she was doing it.

"I follow my heart," she contested.

Of course she did. He could read her like a large-print book. Could see  that she offered herself as a sacrifice when the situation called, could  see her need to belong. To fit. To be loved. Her desire for a whole and  complete family, likely because her parents had split up when she was  young.

Ideals he'd let go of a long, long time ago. He had a loving family-his  siblings, his father, his cousins, his nephew. They filled the empty  space in his heart that had once been earmarked for a family of his own.  They'd have to do. Because he wasn't going there. He couldn't.