“Of course,” Grace said, her mouth agape and a sudden bloom on her cheeks.
* * * * * * * * *
As Carly stared at Quint, a knot formed in her throat. Well dammit wasn’t this just a fine ending to the whole mess. She had intended to wring an apology out of Quint. Instead he turned superhero and blew her socks off as he ordered a check for thirty-five grand for the use of Grace’s design work. Then he handed the phone to Grace and asked her to relay her address to his executive assistant, Sheila.
He turned to Carly and just looked at her, straight into her eyes, challenging, demanding, firm. Oh, how she wished he wasn’t sitting right next to her.
His muscular body blocked her in and the see-I’m-not-such-an-asshole stare turned her bones to mush.
“Thank you,” Grace said drawing her attention away from Quint. Grace handed his phone back. She nodded several times. “Thank you for that, Mr. Barron.”
“You did a tremendous amount of work,” he said, gaining his feet. “This is nothing more than you deserve.” He turned to Carly and smiled. “You did right to bring me here. I misjudged things.”
Carly smiled as well. What she felt like doing was throwing her arms around him, but that so wasn’t going to happen.
She slid off her stool and passed in front of him to give Grace a hug instead. She kissed her cheek. “How about we get drunk together real soon?”
Grace laughed. “Love you.”
Carly headed toward the door and moved quickly from the house. She knew Grace. Her friend didn’t show her emotions very often, but there had been the smallest catch in her voice and shimmer in her eyes that spoke more gratitude than she wanted known.
“You did the right thing,” she said to Quint as she lowered herself into his car. She waited for him to get in before she continued, “That woman never complains about anything. She does well with her business, but her medical bills... Anyway,” she turned to him as he fired up the air conditioning. She settled a hand on his arm and squeezed. “I mean it, Quint. Thank you.”
“You were right to call me on it.”
“Damn straight I was, but you know none of this would have been necessary if you’d talked the situation over with me first.”
“I was just doing what I always do—taking care of business.”
“Yeah, yeah. We both know you want to be the lead horse, but you need to communicate with me. It was your idea to bring me in as an associate so unless you want me climbing all over you—” His gaze shot to hers. She lifted a hand and added, “Okay, bad choice of words. Let me rephrase. If you want the best results and the smoothest flow to this whole project, let me in on your decisions first.”
He chuckled as he backed out of the drive. “Fine. We’ll try it your way.”
He drove back to his hotel. When he turned off the engine, he said, “Come inside for minute. I have the file on the Napa guests ready for you.”
“Sure.”
Carly hopped out but when she glanced back at Quint she saw that he’d glued his gaze to her backside and that a smile had started taking hold of his lips.
“You’d better not be thinking about that thong you shredded.”
He lifted his gaze to her. “Oh, I’m thinking about more than that poor little scrap of ruined lace.”
The rumbling sound of his deep resonant voice sent a shiver through her. Her mouth popped open just so she could breathe.
He walked past her and slid the card-key into the slot.
He opened the door and held it wide, “Come in,” he said in that friendly way of his, just like the spider to the fly.
Quint narrowed his gaze as Carly crossed the threshold. He breathed in and caught her flowery ocean scent, one of her red canyon surprises. He knew Sedona had been submerged four times in ancient seas. He’d learned that on her tour. He’d like to be submerged in her four times right now.
He almost dipped down just to get his face against her neck, to catch all that heady scent.
He smiled down at her instead, but she sidled away from him, a beautiful brown-eyed doe all too aware of a predator nearby.
His brain skimmed low, diving beneath his rational processes. The hum of his desire for her buzzed in his ears. He tried to look away, but couldn’t.
Entering his suite, he’d had a game plan, but right now his body kept calling out new scrimmage plays. He needed to keep Carly on a slow burn. He knew that. Yet all he could think as he tracked her movements was how much he wanted to maneuver her into the bedroom.
How much better if he hadn’t slept with her that first night. Everything would be so different right now. He wouldn’t have her taste in his mouth or know the feel of her lips on his neck or what her body felt like when he thrust into her. All this information kept short-circuiting his brain. His lips parted and damn but he struggled to draw breath.
She moved in a circle taking in his office set-up, which made use of half the living room. He and electronics had been pals from the beginning. He always upgraded. He liked large screens, webcams and more than one of each. He always traveled with two laptops and a backup. He had a good-sized printer-copier-scanner-fax machine and a load of white paper. He had a stack of post-its. He had a large day-planner open on his desk.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, turning to him, her brows cresting high on her creamy kissable forehead. “Launching satellites?”
“I believe in technology and my IT guy can wire anything.”
“So this is how you manage an empire from a hotel room. You even have a row of clocks for time zones.”
“Of course.”
“Oh, of course.”
He liked that she had stilled in the center of his room. Carly had a restless kind of energy and when she stopped like that, something had her attention.
He wanted her attention. Now. All over him.
As she turned toward him, he reminded himself of his original purpose, to keep this seduction on a slow steady course so that when she came back to his bed, she’d stay put. He knew the precise point he wanted this initial encounter to climb to, but for some reason all his well-developed cognitive functions shut down.
He closed the distance between them and slid a hand around the nape of her neck. He ignored the orchestrated seduction he’d planned, tilted her back and said, “It’s damn good to see you again, Carly.” When her lips parted either because she wanted to throw a series of protests at him or because she couldn’t breathe, he didn’t hold back. He kissed her hard, sliding his tongue deep and with his free arm, drew her against him.
Plain and simple, what was left of his rational mind winked out. His body remembered her body and he wanted more of her. Now. It didn’t help him at all that she relaxed against him. He slid his hand over her buttocks and squeezed. A delicious moan flowed out of her throat and drifted over his tongue. He was hard and ready to go, but this was way too soon.
* * * * * * * * *
Where Quint was concerned, Carly had the self-control of a bug facing a bright glow of light. She flew straight in, damn the consequences.
More than anything she wished she hadn’t already slept with him. Even then, if they’d had just a simple, moderate one-night-stand in which he’d made love to her then left, that would have helped. Instead, he had spent the night and worked her body over and over again.
The simple truth? She wanted more. She ached for more.
Of course, it didn’t help at all that he’d been generous with Grace. That action alone fueled her desire to be right back where she was, stuck to his body like honey to bread. What would it take to put her on her back again?
Not much.
A jolt of adrenaline, however, accompanied this thought and her common sense returned. She drew back and took in a deep breath. She planted her hands on his broad, muscular chest. She looked into his oh-so-blue eyes. “I—” She couldn’t find the words. She hunted for them through her brain, but all she saw was the word
more
flashing on and off in a passionate neon red
.
“Yes?” His voice was deep and hoarse. His eyes had a wild, pained look. His hands settled on her arms in a tight grip, the kind of hold that felt desperate. Since her hips were planted against him, she could tell why.
Carly blinked and blinked. She forced her gaze away from the blue of his eyes. She looked at the tip of his nose instead but that still didn’t help much. She recalled kissing his nose. She had kissed him everywhere.
Pull yourself together. He’s Quint Barron. CEO Hunter Enterprises. Wants your winery and anything else he can get. Wake up. Now.
In slow stages, the passionate fog thinned out a little. He helped by just standing there, by not moving his hands anywhere else on her body, by not seeking her mouth again with his driving, probing, sexy tongue.
Stop thinking about that.
Okay. Okay.
She swallowed hard and after a long minute, brought the right words out of her oatmeal-filled brain and rushed them through her vocal chords. “You were going to give me the file on the Napa weekend. The guests? Right? So, I could start putting an itinerary together. Isn’t that what you were going to do?”
He leaned down, his eyes again at half-mast and she knew he meant to kiss her again. She had to look away. If she let him kiss her, she’d be lost. She looked at the floor, at his shoes. He wore very nice shoes. Gucci, maybe. What were her Timberlines doing staring at a pair of Gucci’s? It was all wrong.
She took a step back and again she was grateful his body didn’t follow. She forced herself to remember that he was a man on a mission, that he had said he would get her winery so help him, and that falling into his bed, which was only a few yards away in the other room, would be the height of foolishness. She reminded herself that she had a bad history with men of Quint’s ilk, ambitious men who made a habit of narrow, self-involved thinking.
“The file?” she reiterated. She looked up at him.
He nodded at her and kept on nodding. He scowled and nodded. He must have nodded a dozen times, maybe twenty. When he finally just shook his head, his eyes cleared and he turned away from her. He crossed to the desk, picked up a manila folder, then retraced his steps.
She grabbed the file and whirled on her heel. She moved fast, but he was faster and grabbed the door handle first. She thought he meant to trap her inside and she knew she wouldn’t be able to resist him. She knew her resistance wasn’t any bigger than the length of a cactus spine right now. But he didn’t attack her. Instead, he leaned close and whispered straight into her ear, “I meant what I said. It’s really good to see you again.”
She glanced at him, meeting his gaze. She wished she hadn’t because for just a moment she couldn’t remember why she was standing in front of him. What was this mesmerizing hold he had on her?
Thank God, he opened the door. She told her feet to get moving and be quick about it. She found herself on the sidewalk heading in the direction of her Acura. She made herself take deep breaths. She got in her car and drove at about ten miles an hour down the street until the car behind her honked…twice.
She hit the accelerator and the rest of the fog disappeared from her brain. Her thoughts formed a straight line. She checked the time. It was after seven now and the sun in early July finally began its descent into the west. She headed home.
* * * * * * * * *
Quint didn’t close the door for a long time. He stood staring at the tall buttes opposite, the ones that rose straight up to the Mogollon Rim. Carly had called it right that first day on the Rim, Sedona was a place of possibilities.
That kiss hadn’t quite gone as he had planned but he’d gotten the response he wanted. Carly had been into it, ready and willing. Even when he opened the door for her, he felt about ninety-nine percent certain that if he’d pressed her, she would have stayed.
But he wanted her to beg. He wanted her to be so caught in the spell of whatever this was between them, that she whispered
more
over his neck like she had that first night.
He frowned, thinking back to the meeting with Grace. He’d had some pretty bizarre thoughts about Carly and a rope, the idea that he wanted to know where she was and that he didn’t want other men even looking at her. The woman incited some insane thoughts. Unfortunately, they had a theme he recognized—possession, future, calling her
his woman
.
The whole thing pissed him off, that for some inexplicable reason Carly prompted caveman-like fantasies, and that his drive toward her tended to interfere with his clear-thinking about why he’d made Sedona his home-for-the-month in the first place.
He planted his hands on his hips.
Time to focus. And after that kiss in which he’d brought her a step closer to his current goal, well, time to celebrate a little.
He smiled. He loved the game, every aspect of it and what a treat this was that the game this time involved a woman he wanted in his bed more than any woman he’d ever known. He breathed in the clear, dry canyon air.
Life was good.
He just had one small matter of business to tend to before he settled at his desk and worked through the latest news on his various businesses and investments.
He turned into the room then closed the door. He crossed to the multiple phone lines, punched a button then pressed the number reserved for Sheila.
“Hey, Sheila. I just needed to know if Brad set up a PI to investigate Carly Grayson yet. If so, I’d like to know the status and if not, set Brad on this ASAP.”
She told him to hold. When she got back on the line she had good news. A PI had been contracted earlier that morning and should have a full report in hand in about three days.
“Excellent.” He hung up and pulled up his chair. He powered up his laptops and downloaded the e-mails from his chief operating officers. He began the grueling process of evaluating the latest activity at each of his companies. Tomorrow, he’d spend a good part of the day in webcam conferences.
Tomorrow night…Carly.
* * * * * * * * *