Maverick Millionaires. Joss Wood

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ she continued to save as she’d been doing, it would take another two years to gather what they were prepared to pay her in two months. This was a once-in-a-lifetime deal and she would be a moron to turn to it down. As she’d explained to Troy, there was just one little problem—she had to work with Mac, around Mac, on Mac. The chemistry between them hadn’t changed. She was as attracted to him as she had been at nineteen, possibly even more. Young Mac had been charismatic and sexy and charming but Mac-ten-years-on was a potent mix of power, strength and determination that turned her to jelly. Kade might be the Mavericks’ CEO, and Quinn was no pushover, but yesterday in this same room, Mac, despite his pain, was their undisputed leader. He had, thanks to his mental strength, pushed through pain and taken charge of the meeting.

      Mac was determined and had a will to win that was second to none. He was also a rule breaker and a risk taker and utterly bullheaded.

      Exactly the type of man she always avoided. They were fun and interesting and compelling, but they broke hearts left, right and center. Sometimes, as was the case with her father, they broke the same hearts over and over again.

      She was too smart to let that happen to her.

      Mac hated to take orders, but if she had any hope of fixing his arm, then he had to listen to her, do as she said when she said it. That would be a challenge. Mac, alpha male, was overly confident about his own abilities. She’d seen him in action; if he wanted to run a six-minute mile, he did it. If he wanted to improve the speed on his slap shot, he spent hours and hours on the ice until he was satisfied. If Mac wanted to fix his arm, he would work on it relentlessly. Except that muscles and injuries needed time to heal and, especially since his injury was so serious, he had to be careful. If he pushed the recovery process he could suffer irreversible damage and his career would be over. Permanently.

      Yet if he wasn’t healed in two months, the Mavericks, as Vancouver knew them, would be gone, and while she might have a brand-new shiny clinic, she might not have any clients if she couldn’t fix the great Mac McCaskill.

      Rock, meet hard place.

      “Rory.”

      Rory snapped her head up to see Mac standing in the doorway of the bathroom, wearing nothing more than a pair of designer denims and a deep scowl. His hair was wet and he’d wrapped a plastic bag around his arm to keep it dry. He hadn’t managed the buttons on his jeans and through the open flaps she could see the white fabric of his, thank goodness, underwear. His chest was damp and a continent wide, lightly covered in brown hair in a perfect T that tapered into a fine trail of hair that crossed those fabulous washboard abs.

      Sexy, almost-naked man in open blue jeans, Rory thought... I could so jump you right now.

      Mac tried to button his jeans with one hand and swore creatively. Very creatively, Rory thought. She’d never before heard that combination of words strung together.

      “Sorry,” Mac muttered when he lifted aggravated eyes to meet hers. “But I am so damn frustrated I could punch something.”

      Rory placed the folder on the table next to her and slowly stood up. “Want some help?”

      Mac looked at his watch and then scowled in the direction of the door. He looked as uncomfortable as she felt.

      “Kade was supposed to come and help me get dressed and drive me home...”

      “You’ve been discharged?”

      “Yeah. The more time I spend here, the better the chances are of the press finding me.” Mac lifted a muscled, tanned shoulder. “Besides, it’s just my arm, the rest of me works just fine.”

      And looks pretty good too. Okay, get a grip, Kydd. You’re a professional, remember? Try to act like one.

      She rocked on her heels. “So, do you want some help?”

      Mac looked at the door again and released a heavy sigh. “Yeah. Please.”

      Rory tried to keep her face blank as she reached for the flaps of his jeans. Just get it done, fast, she told herself, so she grabbed the first button and slotted it through its corresponding hole, brushing something that felt very masculine in the process, and not as soft as it should be. Keeping her head down, she moved on to button number two and repeated the action, very conscious of the growing bulge beneath her hands. She was flushed by the time she slotted in the last button, and she stepped back and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

      She would not acknowledge his halfway-there erection. It was a conditioned response and something he couldn’t help. Her hands were fiddling around his crotch; she could’ve been three hundred pounds with a mustache and he would’ve been turned on. It wasn’t personal.

      But damn, he was impressive... Ignore, ignore, ignore.

      “Whoever packed for you was an idiot. Elasticized track pants or shorts would’ve been a better option,” she stated, feeling hot from the inside out.

      Mac ignored her comment and reached out to hold a strand of her hair. “I loved your long hair but this style works for you too.”

      “Uh...” Her brain needed oxygen. She couldn’t think when he was so close, when she could smell the soap on his skin, could count every individual eyelash, see the different shades of dark blue in his eyes. What had he said? Something about her hair...

      “Thanks.”

      Mac pushed her hair behind her ear and his fingers brushed her skin, and Rory couldn’t help but shiver. This wasn’t good, she thought, taking a huge step backward. He was dangerous, working with him was dangerous...she shouldn’t do this. It was a train wreck waiting to happen.

      Clinic, house, practice, dream, her brain reminded her.

      Shay, Mac cheating, men are inherently faithless, her soul argued. Attraction leads to love and love leads to betrayal. Not happening.

      Rory jammed her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and nodded at Mac’s bare feet. “Shoes?”

      “Flip-flops,” Mac replied, walking over to the bed and picking up a royal blue, V-necked T-shirt. He pulled the opening over his head and managed to slide his uninjured arm through the corresponding opening. Then he looked at his injured, immobile arm and cursed again.

      “There’s an art to dressing yourself when you’re injured,” she told him. Idiot that she was, she got up close and personal with him again, but this time she tried to avoid touching him as she pulled the shirt up and over his head. Shaking it out, she found the sleeve to his injured arm and gently slid the shirt up and over so that it bunched around his shoulder. He ducked his head through the opening, shoved his other arm through and the fabric fell down his chest.

      It was wrong to hide such a work of art, Rory thought.

      “Thanks.”

      Rory looked up at him, her head barely scraping his shoulder. God, he was big, six foot three of solid, sexy man. “Anything else?”

      Mac shook his head. “No. I’m okay.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and gestured to the chair she’d been sitting on earlier. “Take a seat, we need to talk.”

      Rory wasn’t under any illusion that his quietly stated words were anything other than an order. Her spine straightened and her mouth tightened. Since there were, actually, СКАЧАТЬ