Название: A Baby For The Boss
Автор: Maureen Child
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Контркультура
Серия: Mills & Boon Desire
isbn: 9781474038355
isbn:
She plopped onto the bed and stared up at him. “What?”
“Hank Snyder?” Mike jumped out of bed and stood staring down at her with a wild, dark gleam in his eyes, sharp as a knife blade. With the morning light streaming in through the window behind him, he looked like a naked avenging angel.
The haze in her mind was clearing and a cold, sinking sensation opened in the pit of her stomach. Slowly, she sat up and tugged the blankets over her breasts. Pushing one hand through her hair, she shoved blond curls out of her eyes and met his hard gaze with a look of confusion. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Do you know my uncle?”
He snorted. “Wow. That’s really good. The little hint of innocence in your voice? Nice touch.”
Completely confused now, she shook her head. People should not be expected to be coherent in the morning before several cups of coffee. “Innocence? What?”
“Oh, drop it,” Mike snapped and stalked across the room to snatch up his clothes. He dragged them on as he talked, flicking her quick, icy glances. “Gotta say, you were good.”
“What are you talking about?” The sheet where he’d been lying only a moment ago was rapidly cooling and she shivered in response. “Good at what? You’re not making sense.”
“Sure. You’re confused.” Mike nodded. “You know, I bought the whole act last night, but trying to keep it up now, when I know who you are, is only pissing me off.”
She didn’t have the first clue what he was so angry about, but her own temper was beginning to boil in self-defense. How could they have gone from lovemaking, to snuggling, to spitting ice at each other all in the blink of an eye?
“Will you just tell me what’s going on?”
“What I don’t get is how you knew I’d be in the bar last night.” He pulled his long-sleeved white shirt on and buttoned it with an almost eerie calm that belied the fury in his voice and eyes.
“I didn’t know—heck, I didn’t even know I was going to be in the bar last night until just before I went in.”
“Sure. Your uncle,” Mike said, nodding. “He had to have planned all this for you anyway.”
“What does Uncle Hank have to do with us?”
He laughed but there was no charm or humor in it. “Everything, sweetheart, and we both know it. Snyder Arts has been trying to get us to incorporate their programs into our games for the past year and a half.” His gaze dropped to her chest, then lifted to her eyes again. “Looks like Ol’ Hank finally decided to pull out the big guns.”
Every word Mike said echoed weirdly in her mind until at last, Jenny understood what he meant. What he was accusing her of. Anger leaped into a full boil in the pit of her stomach. Her heart pounded crazily and she felt as if she couldn’t catch her breath. Her mind racing, Jenny practically leaped out of bed, preferring to meet her accuser on her feet. She held the blanket up in front of her like a shield that could somehow protect her from the ice in his eyes.
“You think my uncle sent me here to have sex with you?” God, she could barely force the words past her tight throat. “So I could convince you to use his arts program?”
“That about sums it up,” Mike said flatly.
Jenny’s brain burned. She was torn between insult, fury and complete humiliation. Instantly, images of the night before streamed through her mind like a movie on fast-forward. She saw him, over her, staring into her eyes as his body claimed hers. She saw herself, straddling him, taking him deep inside her. And she felt in that flash of heat the pleasure, the sense of completion his every touch caused. Then the mind movie ended abruptly, and she was here, in this sunlit room, staring at a stranger who now knew her body intimately, but her heart and soul not at all.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she asked, voice trembling.
“Mike Ryan.”
She staggered at the name. Mike Ryan. One of the owners of Celtic Knot. Jenny knew their work, knew the art and graphic design that went into every one of their games. She’d admired them for years, had hoped to one day work for them—which wouldn’t happen now. Not only did he clearly think she was a spy—and oh yes, a whore—but she couldn’t imagine herself working for a man who made snap decisions with zero thought behind them.
“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding as if he’d just had every one of his suspicions verified. “So you do know me.”
“Now,” she said. “I didn’t last night. Not when I met you. Not when we…” She pushed one hand through her hair and kept clutching the blanket with the other. Best not to think about everything they’d done because she’d do something completely stupid like blush, for heaven’s sake. With her fair skin, the moment she was embarrassed, her cheeks lit up like a red light at an intersection.
“And I’m supposed to take your word for that,” he said.
Her gaze sharpened and narrowed on him. “It seems you don’t need anything but your own suspicions to make up your mind. You’ve already decided who and what I am, why should I argue with you over it?”
“You know, playing the outraged innocent isn’t nearly as convincing as the seductress I met last night.”
She sucked in a gulp of air and fed the flames burning in her belly. “You arrogant, conceited, smug bastard.”
One dark eyebrow winged up and a look of pure male amusement tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Doing better now. The outrage almost looks real.”
Her heart pounded so hard in her chest it was a wonder he couldn’t hear it. She half expected her heart to crash right through her rib cage. “This isn’t an act, you jackass. Think about it. I didn’t seduce you. You approached me in the bar. And nobody forced you into my bed. As I remember it you came willingly enough.”
“Several times,” he said, playing on her words just to irritate her further.
It worked.
“That’s it. I don’t have to listen to any more of your paranoid ramblings. Get out of my room.” She swung one hand toward the door and stabbed the air with her index finger.
He grabbed his black jacket off a nearby chair and shrugged it on. “Oh, I’m going. No worries there. I wouldn’t stay if you begged me to.”
“That’s not gonna happen.”
He snorted again, a particularly annoying, insulting sound. Striding across the room to the door, he stopped before he opened it and looked back over his shoulder at her. “Tell your uncle I said nice try, but no cigar. Celtic Knot won’t be doing a deal with him no matter how many attractive nieces he tosses into my bed.”
Jenny picked up a wineglass from the room service tray they’d shared the night before and hurled it at him. He was through the door and out before the glass shattered against the wood to lie in splinters on the floor.
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