Chapter 1
“Good morning, Dr. Torrence.”
“Good morning, Dr. Moore.”
Kris smiled fully as she strolled into the faculty lounge, her good mood evident. She was dressed in a conservative navy business skirt that ended at the knee, a white cotton shirt that was buttoned all the way to the top, and her mass of dark red curls was secured in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Completing her usual ensemble was a pair of black spectacles perched at the tip of her nose.
Clearly, she felt better than she looked. But then she’d never placed much importance in fashion anyway.
Kris inclined her head to Dr. Moore as she strutted by him, feeling as though she was on cloud nine. She just prayed nobody in the anthropology department figured out why she was in such good spirits. She could hardly believe it herself.
“How are you doing today?” she asked conversationally. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
I was busy packing my bags for my trip to Hotel Atlantis!
“Has anything happened around here I should know about?”
Dr. Moore nodded, his pompous tone as annoying as it had ever been. “Quite a bit actually…”
She listened to her colleague’s rather long-winded answer with half an ear as she poured herself a cup of what most people would call beans and water, but what the university called, or tried to pass off as at any rate, coffee.
Kris ignored Dr. Moore as she sipped from the steamy mug of cheap quasi-Columbian brew, and reflected back on the conversation she’d had with Sheri Carucci last week.
“After meeting with you, John felt that you were perfect for the position, doll. He’d like to have you work the five-day island excursion slated to start one week from today. Or is that too soon?”
“N-No,” Kris had stammered out, her heart thumping madly against her chest. She hadn’t used up a single day of vacation time this year so she knew she had the days coming to her. “He…he actually thought I’d fit in there?” she asked hesitantly, not certain as to whether or not she’d heard her correctly. Or that Madame Throaty Voice had heard John Calder correctly.
Sheri chuckled, a grin in her voice. “You sound surprised.”
“I am surprised,” she said in a bewildered monotone, her jaw slack.
“Well don’t be,” Sheri replied. “Besides, these rich guys really go for the innocent, good-girl look.”
Her bemusement vanished as her teeth gritted. “I am not,” Kris said distinctly, each word precise, “innocent. Nor am I a good girl.” She slashed her hand through the air for emphasis, though Sheri couldn’t see that.
“Uh huh.”
Kris sighed. “Okay maybe I look that way.” She sighed again. “Okay maybe I am that way. But please believe me when I say I don’t want to be that way.”
“Hmm,” Sheri said noncommittally, her tone amused. “Why do I get the feeling you don’t want this job for the money, doll?”
When Kris said nothing, merely sat quietly on the other end of the connection worrying her lip as she wondered if she’d inadvertently given her ulterior motives away, Sheri chuckled again.
“It’s okay. Your secret is safe with me. Hey! If rich men can come here seeking their every pleasure, then why can’t we women?”
Kris found herself smiling into the receiver. And immediately taking a liking to one Madame Throaty Voice. “Why indeed,” she murmured.
And so the charter flight to Atlantis Island had been booked. For tonight.
She gulped.
“Oh,” Dr. Moore continued, breaking her out of her reverie, “I almost forgot to mention that Mr. McKenna is in your office.” He shook his head, perturbed. “He’s waiting to speak to you,” he said disdainfully as he adjusted his tie.
Kris frowned at Dr. Moore. “Mr. McKenna? As in Jack McKenna?” She sighed as she looked at her colleague, for once sharing in Dr. Moore’s less than hospitable mood. He was the last person she wanted to see today, especially considering how frazzled her nerves were from the impending journey to Hotel Atlantis tonight. “Oh no, not him again.”
“Afraid so.”
“What does he want this time?” she asked resignedly, realizing as she did that if Jack McKenna wanted to speak to her she had little choice but to acquiesce. As the owner of the multimillion-dollar construction company that had built half the high rises in downtown San Francisco, and as a corporate financier of the university’s anthropology department in particular, Jack McKenna was allowed to get away with more than most. A fact that irritated Kris enough to make her teeth grind together from merely looking at the big bruiser.
“Why don’t you ask him yourself,” a dark voice growled from behind her.
Kris whipped around, almost spilling her coffee at her surprise as she did so. She hesitantly glanced toward Dr. Moore who was clearing his throat uncomfortably while nervously readjusted his tie.
Her chin went up determinedly as she returned her gaze to Jack McKenna. She met the calculating dark eyes of her nemesis dead-on, refusing to be intimidated by him and his bullying ways. Her eyes narrowed as she considered him, sizing him up as one would an opponent in the boxing ring.
One dark eyebrow rose bemusedly, a never-before-seen grin tugging at one corner of his mouth.
Kris grunted.
Jack McKenna was handsome enough, she supposed. For a big bruiser type anyway. He was a tall man—probably stood around 6 foot four—and at forty-two years of age was still as thick with muscle as any pro-football linebacker. His hair was short and dark and given to the slightest hint of curl, his big body bronze with tan.
She knew that he had worked his way up through the ranks of the construction company he now owned, having started at the bottom as a laborer. She could surmise from the heavy musculature of his body that he probably hadn’t given up his former trade altogether when he’d bought out his uncle and taken over McKenna Construction, for he had the strong and powerful look of a man who was accustomed to heavy laboring.
Not that she’d noticed or anything, she sniffed.
“You wanted to see me, Mr. McKenna?”
With Dr. Salazar on vacation until tomorrow that left Kris in the apparently pitiful position of being the most tenured, which meant she’d be the one obliged to hear Jack McKenna growl out his latest demands. Again.
Six months ago when Dr. Salazar had been on a dig in Mexico Jack McKenna had prowled around the department with his demands. Three months before that, when Dr. Salazar had been at a conference in Hawaii, he had come around growling again. If she didn’t know better, she’d start to wonder if the damn man didn’t wait for her boss to disappear just so he could growl at her in particular. But that was ludicrous to think, of course.
That black eyebrow rose again as he regarded her, a habit of his that always left her feeling decidedly irritated. It was as if he was sizing her up—and finding her lacking. But then a man like Jack McKenna, a wealthy man who’d dated just about every brainless bimbo in the Bay area, would look down his nose at a woman so average in appearance as herself. Physically she was his inferior and she knew it.
His dark gaze methodically roamed over her body, starting at her legs, working slowly up to her breasts and lingering, then climbing higher to her face. She felt a bit flustered when her nipples hardened at the tingling of sensual awareness that passed through her, but ignored the feeling and quickly pushed it aside.
Besides, she reminded herself as she raised one of her wine-red eyebrows and met his determined stare with a challenging one of her own, Jack McKenna was probably just trying to intimidate her. As always. Once a bully, always a bully.
It was ironic indeed that the very sort of man Kris wanted to experience submission with in bed was standing before her, yet she knew she’d never hand herself over to a man like this one in a trillion years. Not that the multimillionaire construction worker cum CEO had ever expressed any interest in doing so anyway, she thought grimly.
But if he had tried to take her to bed, she knew she would have said no. Not only because a messy affair could cause problems for her at the university, but also because Jack McKenna wasn’t the sort of man who would take dominance and submission as a mere sexual game. He was the type of arrogant male who would take it literally, expecting a woman to cater to him always, whether in the bedroom or out of it.
Definitely not her type.
Even if he was masculine sexuality personified.
“Hell yes I want to see you,” he growled. He jabbed a finger in the general direction of her office door. “Let’s go talk, lady.”
Or masculine idiocy personified, she thought with down-turned lips.
Kris frowned severely, even as she decided that she might as well get the royal summons over and done with. The faster she listened to his growling session, the faster the big bruiser would be gone. But, she decided, she would not speak privately with him until she set him straight on one score.
“My name is
Doctor
Torrence,” she said pointedly, sounding as pompous as Dr. Moore at that moment. “And if that is too long and too complicated of a name for your brain to absorb, then
Doctor
will suffice.” She inclined her head. “I did not, sir, spend eight years in college earning my Ph.D. to be talked down to as though I am an idiotic twit.”
He sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose as he seemingly gathered himself together. No doubt a delaying tactic to keep himself from snapping at her.
He glanced up, his jaw clenched, his dark eyes blazing into her green ones. “Look lady…”
She clucked her tongue, fascinated by the vein throbbing at his temple.
“
Doctor
Torrence…” he growled.
She smiled, then nodded. “You wanted to speak with me in private?” she asked sweetly. Too sweetly.
His nostrils flared as he narrowed his dark gaze at her. “Yes,” he hissed.
A hiss. She’d never heard him hiss before and found herself wondering what precisely it meant. Odd as it was, she was good at detecting Jack McKenna’s moods. Not that it took a Ph.D. in anthropology to do so for he only seemed to have two moods in total: surly and surlier.
Telling herself it didn’t matter, and that she had better things to do with her time than quarrel with an overgrown Neanderthal—such as prepare for her chartered flight tonight!—she waved a hand easterly and strolled toward her office door.
Her nemesis was quiet for the entire walk down the hallway, which Kris found distressingly odd for such a huge and generally loud man. She felt a queer premonition pass over her, that sort of bizarre jolt that makes the hair at the nape of one’s neck stir when you somehow become aware of the fact that you are being watched.
She stiffened. Jack McKenna doesn’t watch like a normal man does.
Jack McKenna studies. He calculates. He assesses.
He hunts.
She swallowed a bit roughly, wondering what it was precisely that he was hunting today. Kris didn’t fool herself for even a moment into thinking the big bruiser had all of a sudden become taken with her as a woman. On every occasion she’d been obliged to deal with him, and admittedly she’d seen to it that those occasions were few and far between, he had shown her nothing but hostility, disdain, and even, for whatever reason, resentment.
Perhaps he resented the fact that she was a woman with a Ph.D. Perhaps he resented the fact that she had red hair. Perhaps he resented the fact that her automobile of choice was a conservative, no frills Volvo. Perhaps he resented the fact that—
Bah! Who knows what his reasons were.
Where Jack McKenna was concerned, one could never be certain of anything. So basically you were best off not even trying to figure them out to begin with.
Kris closed the door behind him after he entered her small, modest office. Motioning for him to have a seat, she decided to ignore him when he merely grunted without sitting down. Sighing, she seated herself behind her desk and smiled as politely as she could. She folded her hands on the desk before her and met his gaze. “How can I help you, Mr. McKenna?”