Going Too Far. Tori Carrington

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СКАЧАТЬ young woman looked down at her console then pushed a button, speaking so quietly Marie couldn’t make out her words.

      Great. She was probably calling security.

      “Marie.”

      Ian said her name like she was a long-lost friend just dropping in for a visit. A good friend. A friend he might be interested in being a little more…friendly with.

      Marie turned to where he stood behind her, then squinted at him as if he’d lost his marbles when she knew perfectly well it was her own marbles that were in question.

      Ian cleared his throat, thanked the suspicious receptionist, then motioned toward the doorway behind him. “What’s say we go to my office.”

      “Mmm.” Marie brushed past him, trying to ignore how good he looked, how in command, and how utterly sexy. She had no idea where his office was, but anyplace where she could speak to him in private was a good place in her book.

      Well, okay, anyplace large enough so that she wouldn’t have to smell the enticing scent of his skin and the subtle aroma of his cologne that reminded her of Albuquerque during the summer.

      “Here,” he said.

      She entered the first office to the left that Ian indicated, then stopped in front of a wide glass-topped desk with thick iron legs. Ian rounded the table, smoothing his tie down, and looking altogether too yummy when all Marie wanted to do was scream.

      “What a surprise,” Ian said.

      Surprise? There was absolutely nothing surprising about her being here. “Come on, Ian, admit it. You expected this visit.” Marie pointed a finger at him. “In fact, you’re probably wondering why I’m so late.”

      Ian’s black eyes held amusement and warned of the coming grin. Marie braced herself. Ian toying with her she could handle. Ian and a genuine grin made her wish she hadn’t put on panties this morning.

      “I didn’t know last night was going to go down the way it did,” he said, motioning for her to sit.

      She remained standing.

      He sat.

      As she suspected, she could see everything through the clear glass. The long bulk of his thighs. The way the fabric of his pants bunched at the crotch, hinting at what she already knew hid underneath.

      Her throat grew tight.

      “So why are you so late?”

      Marie lifted her gaze to his grinning face, then made a face of her own that had nothing to do with a grin and everything to do with the grimace Jena accused her of wearing all the time.

      But if ever there was a time to grimace…

      “I had an evidentiary hearing at eight. I couldn’t get here any earlier,” she said automatically, then wondered why she’d offered the information at all.

      Ian leaned back in the modern black leather and chrome chair and laced his hands together over his impossibly flat abdomen. “I figured it would take that or an act of God to keep you from showing up here first thing.”

      “Yes, well, if you hadn’t run out of my parents’ house in the middle of dessert last night I might have gotten some answers then.” Or if his home address had been listed in the phone book, but she wasn’t about to tell him she had gone so far as to call 411 in hopes of finding out where he lived. What she would have done with his address was better left a mystery unsolved. More than likely she would have headed over there, not only revealing she didn’t have a life beyond work and her family, but risking running into him with someone else.

      She narrowed her eyes. Was he seeing someone? The prospect made the hair on her arms stand on end. Though why, she didn’t even want to begin to guess.

      Ian slowly shook his dark head. “Come on, Marie. It doesn’t matter if I had spent the night at your parents’ house. I wouldn’t have broken attorney–client privilege. And I think you know that.”

      She leaned forward and rested her palms against the cool glass. “Attorney–client privilege my rear end, Ian. He’s my father. Family doesn’t count when it comes to something like this.”

      He casually shrugged. “Then ask your father.”

      She had. A dozen times. With no results.

      It was bad enough her family chose to view her law degree as so much artwork on the wall, believing one day she would come to her senses and see that a woman’s place was with a husband and kids. And forget that it was downright humiliating to find out that her father had hired Ian—Ian Kilborn, for God’s sake—as his attorney. When she’d finally gotten her father alone, as he was walking her to the door last night, he had nearly patted her hair and told her not to worry her pretty little head about it.

      Actually, he had done exactly that.

      Ugh.

      “Ian…” she said in warning.

      “Marie?” he responded, looking innocent.

      Only both of them knew that Ian Kilborn, either as a barracudalike defense attorney or the mouth-watering young man who had seduced her, was far from innocent.

      Which made her present situation all the more trying.

      She heaved a gusty sigh, walked one way and stared at the Chinese art on his wall, then the other and gazed at the black lacquer bookcase filled not with law books but crystal pieces, then stopped, tapping a finger against her lips. She wondered briefly how either of her friends would handle this situation.

      Jena McCade-Brodie no doubt would round the desk, straddle his chair and seduce the information right out of him.

      Dulcy Ferris-Landis would outwit every last detail from him without his being aware he’d said a word. Or, better yet, make it look like he’d offered up the information voluntarily.

      Neither approach emerged appealing or likely in Marie’s case. She didn’t have Jena’s oozing sexuality. And Dulcy…well, there was only one of her.

      So Marie fell back on the next best thing.

      “You know, Ian,” she said, slowly turning back to face him. Oh, sure, he might have seduced her, but a girl didn’t succumb to such talents without learning a thing or two. And since she’d done her share of thinking about the seduction she’d probably learned quite a bit. “There is, um, some interesting information that I might be able to share.”

      He must have caught on to the change in her demeanor because his chair snapped upright and his hands were no longer folded against his glorious abs. “I don’t see that anything you’d have to say could help your father’s case.”

      “No. No. You’re right about that.”

      She took a wicked kind of pleasure watching the grin vanish from his handsome face.

      Interesting that when he thought he was in control he looked like the cat that still held the mouse in his mouth. But now that she was threatening to turn the tables he looked more like the mouse. A devastatingly sexy mouse.

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