Authors: Ginna Gray
Erin knew that her twin liked the stability and security of a nine-to-five job, but she found the routine stifling. More than once, as she struggled with the mundane tasks, she thanked her lucky stars that as a translator she had the freedom and independence to work at a variety of jobs all over the world.
It took Erin almost an hour to finish that first letter. She wrestled with the strange wording in the manual for almost ten minutes before she was able to boot the machine, and, all the while she was typing, the blasted thing kept beeping at her, making her so nervous she wanted to scream. Once she had the letter typed, it took another thirty minutes to figure out how to print it out. Then, when she took it in to Max he hit the roof because it wasn't printed on letterhead stationery.
"Good grief, Elise, how could you do something so dumb?" he demanded.
It was almost more than Erin's frazzled nerves could take. "All right, so I made a mistake," she snapped right back. "You don't have to yell." In a very un-Elise-like manner, she snatched the letter from his hand and stomped out to do it over, leaving Max gaping at her as though she'd suddenly sprouted another head.
❧
Max couldn't believe his eyes. The second letter Elise produced had three typos, the style was off and it was printed crooked on the wrong paper. He couldn't understand it. For six months his secretary had performed her job as efficiently as a machine, and now, all at once, she was hopelessly inept.
What on earth was wrong with the woman? From the moment she arrived she had made one mistake after another. She'd jammed the copy machine, mislaid important papers and bungled half the calls—once disconnecting an important South American supplier. Her typing was atrocious, and she acted as though the filing system were a complete mystery. And when he'd dictated this latest letter he'd had to stop after every sentence to let her catch up.
Puzzled, Max stood and walked to the door that separated his office from Elise's. Folding his arms over his chest, he propped his shoulder against the door jamb and studied her.
She sat hunched over the computer keyboard, staring at the monitor, frowning and nibbling the tip of her index finger. There was something different about her. Partly it was her clothes. It was unlike Elise to wear bright colors or anything quite so trendy. Yet there was more to it than that. But what?
The computer beeped, and she muttered a colorful oath and raked a hand through her hair.
Max's brows rose. In the six months Elise had worked for him he'd never heard her utter a curse word or seen her even mildly flustered. And, he thought, grinning as his attention focused on the tousled red curls, he had never seen her with a hair out of place before.
She had removed her jacket, and Max's gaze was drawn to the tiny birthmark on the back of her shoulder, visible just above the scooped neckline of her tank top. It resembled a misshapened heart and was about the size of a small button.
Slowly, Max straightened away from the door, his eyes growing wide, then narrowing. And it hadn't been there just last week!
When the computer beeped again Erin gave a frustrated growl, flounced out of the chair and stalked across the room to the credenza that held the coffeepot. Max stared after her in astonishment. Why, that little devil. That's not Elise. That's her twin!
You dope
, he scolded himself.
You should have known when she called you by your first name. Elise was such a stickler for protocol she never would have done that—at least, not during working hours.
It explained everything: the new look, those flashes of temper, her ineptitude...and most of all, the sudden strong attraction he'd been feeling all afternoon.
Though Elise was beautiful, not once had she aroused in him any feeling stronger than admiration—until today.
He had thought he was losing his mind. All afternoon he'd been aware of her. The slightest accidental touch or whiff of her perfume had sent his senses reeling and made his body throb. And every time he'd looked into those flashing brown eyes or watched her toss that tousled mop of curls and march from the room in a huff he'd experienced an almost uncontrollable desire to grab her and kiss that adorable, impudent mouth until she melted in his arms.
It was strange. The two women were identical in looks, yet there were subtle differences. Elise's was the soft, lustrous beauty of a pearl, but her sister possessed the flash and fire, the sparkle of a diamond. It was there in the directness of those snapping brown eyes, the defiant lift of her chin and the proud carriage of that slender body.
What was it Elise called her? Her adventuresome twin? It fit
, Max thought as he watched her fill a Styrofoam cup with coffee. She fairly crackled with vibrant energy, audacious zestfulness. It was probably just his imagination, he knew, but even her hair seemed redder than Elise's.
Max grinned. Oh
, yes. She was a bold little minx, all right, and probably the one who'd hatched this scheme. No doubt she and her sister had been pulling this switch on unsuspecting males since they were in their teens
, he thought, amused and annoyed all at the same time.
Narrowly eyeing Erin's slender form, Max started across the room, his grin growing wider.
Well, sweetheart, it's time someone taught you a lesson. And I'm just the man to do it.
A pair of hard, masculine arms slid around Erin's waist. She jumped and let out a squawk, dropping the packet of sweetener she had been about to put in her coffee.
Her heart seemed to jump into her throat. She grabbed the broad wrists that crossed at her waist, but then she stiffened and froze, her eyes widening as she felt the moist caress of lips nuzzling the side of her neck.
"Relax, sweetheart. It's just me."
The murmured words were followed by a lazy chuckle, and Erin's jaw dropped. "M-Max?"
"Mmm?"
His teeth nipped with gentle savagery, and Erin sucked in her breath. "Max, wh—" she stopped to clear her throat "—what are you doing?"
"Lovin' my woman. What did you think?"
"But—"
"Relax, sweetheart. It's past quitting time, so we can drop the boss/secretary routine."
Erin grappled with the implication behind that statement, her mind reeling. Good Lord, she thought with a trace of panic. Elise's romance with Max had progressed a lot further than her letters had indicated. She hadn't bargained on this.
He batted her earlobe with his tongue, then traced a wet circle on the sensitive skin behind it. Erin's breathing grew shallow, and her eyes drifted shut. Unconsciously, her fingers tightened around his wrists. "But.. .someone might come in," she protested feebly.
"So what? Everyone here knows about us."
Erin swallowed hard and wondered just what everyone knew. "A-All the same, I don't think we should be doing this in the office."
Max chuckled again, but after another foray down her neck and shoulder he released her. "All right. You win. I'll save it for later, when we're alone."
Flustered, Erin turned and looked at him warily, and Max smiled. "Are you ready to go?"
"Go?"
"Yes. Have you forgotten? When I called yesterday we made plans to have dinner tonight." His eyes glinted as he reached up and ran his forefinger over her parted lips and added softly, "At my place."
The caressing words and his intimate touch shot through Erin like a jolt of electricity. She barely controlled the gasp that sprang to her lips.
Oh, Lord, now what do I do?
she wondered, gazing at the sensual expression on Max Delany's face.
Beneath drowsy, half-closed lids, those sexy blue eyes glittered with disturbing warmth, and the hint of a smile that played about his lips was filled with awareness and anticipation and supreme male confidence.
He was standing close—much too close. She could feel the heat from his body, smell his tantalizing clean male scent. Her skin still tingled where he had touched her.
Erin broke eye contact and stared at the cleft in Max's chin. "I, uh, I guess it slipped my mind," she replied with a wan smile, struggling to subdue the panicky sensation that fluttered in her chest. She risked a glance upward and quickly lowered her eyes again when she encountered that simmering gaze. "But... but maybe we should make it another time." She waved toward the desk and backed up a step. "I still have a lot of work to do."
Like distant thunder, Max's chuckle came rumbling up from his chest. Taking a firm grip on her shoulders, he turned her toward the door. "Nonsense. There's nothing there that won't wait until tomorrow."
"Oh, but—"
A quick kiss on her parted lips stopped her cold. Max's lips were warm and firm, and despite its brevity, the kiss was shockingly thorough.
When he raised his head, he grinned into her startled face. "Now get your purse, and let's go. I'm starving."
For what? Erin wondered uneasily as she was bundled out the door and down the hallway.
The young woman behind the desk looked up when they entered the reception area, a stunned look crossing her face at the sight of Max holding his secretary close against his side, his arm clamped around her waist.
"Good night, Peggy," he called to the gawking woman. "See you tomorrow." Max strode past the desk without even slowing down. The woman's dazed "Good night" followed them out the door.
In the parking lot he steered Erin toward a sleek silver Lincoln Continental.
"But what about my car?" she said, looking back over her shoulder at Elise's blue Chevy.
"What about it?"
"I can't just leave it here. Besides, if I take it, you won't have to drive me home later."
This time Max's grin was openly lecherous. "Who said anything about taking you home?"
Erin's heart did a little skip
. Good grief! Just how intimate a relationship did her sister have with this man?
Like a sleepwalker, she got into the car when Max held open the door, and she sat staring straight ahead as he circled around to the other side. Her mind racing, she glanced at him when he slid in behind the wheel, and her gaze zeroed in on the slight upward tilt of his lips.
How had this entire situation come to pass?
she wondered frantically. Elise simply wasn't the type for an affair. She'd never done anything so reckless. At eight she'd fallen in love with gangly, fourteen-year-old Tommy Holman and had worshiped him from that moment forward, but she'd still been a virgin bride when they married, fourteen years later. It was impossible to believe that her sister would fall into bed with a man she'd known a mere six months.
Even if he was a handsome devil,
Erin thought, eyeing Max's chiseled profile with a touch of resentment.
His concentration was on maneuvering the twisting mountain road, but at that moment, as though sensing her scrutiny, he shot her a lazy, come-hither glance and another of those devastating grins. In spite of herself, Erin felt her insides give a little flutter.
"What are you doing sitting way over there?" Without waiting for a reply, Max reached out, cupped his broad palm around the back of her neck and urged her closer.
Reluctantly, Erin scooted across the seat, since it was obvious that Max was accustomed to a display of affection from Elise.
He tucked her against his side, but his hand remained where it was, his fingers tunneling into her short curls and massaging the taut muscles in her neck. "There, that's better, isn't it?" he said with blatant self-satisfaction, darting her another caressing look that shimmered with promise and sent panic skittering through Erin.
"Hmm," she mumbled.
He released his hold on her neck and picked up her hand, placing it on his thigh, palm down, before gripping the steering wheel once again.
Staring straight ahead, Erin tried to will away the flush that suffused her body like a warm tide. From elbow to fingertips she could feel the heat and hardness of that muscled thigh beneath her arm, while all along her side her body was molded to his. The slight jostling motion of the car increased the intimate contact and sent a prickly sensation rippling over her skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake. The scrub-covered landscape flashed by largely unnoticed as Erin wondered, a bit desperately, how on earth she had gotten herself into such a fix and, even more important, how she was going to get herself out of it.
She didn't dare tell him the truth—not until she was positive he wasn't involved in whatever was going on.
Erin eyed Max out of the corner of her eye. He didn't seem dangerous—not in a criminal way. And it appeared he knew nothing about last night. Of course, he'd been out of town. It was possible that the others simply hadn't had time to fill him in.
Or perhaps they had,
Erin thought, her eyes narrowing. Maybe he was just playing a cat-and-mouse game, waiting to see what Elise knew and whether she'd confide in him.
Elise.
Her jaw tightened, and Erin shifted her gaze to the arid mountains in the distance. Her search for her sister was getting nowhere fast. Darn it, she had to find her! But how? Max Delany and Global Imports were her only leads.
The car hit a bump, jarring Erin even harder against Max, and her arm slipped off his leg and into the V of his crotch.