No sooner had he crouched down than he found himself face-to-face with her stiletto-clad feet.
Cope?
He’d be lucky to get back on his feet and keep his surging erection hidden.
Christ, but her ankles were hot, their delicate curves raising elegantly from shoes whose heels evoked desires so carnal and fierce they brought him to his knees.
And there he was, dropping forward, knees pressing into the hard floor as he began wiping at the puddle. It would be funny if he wasn’t doing his damnedest to stay on task, trying not to get distracted by the shimmer coming off her legs, or the memory rampaging through his mind of how their stockinged lengths had felt beneath his palm. How it had felt to hook them over his hip and have her ride against his...
‘Are you trying to polish a hole in my floor?’
He looked up to find her looming over him, her eyes burning into his own.
Christ, he wanted to bury himself between her legs.
Hell, if they weren’t in her office perhaps delivering the news while driving her to climax would somehow take the edge off.
Yeah, real businesslike, that.
She was still looking at him, her eyes alive with some hidden thought, and he heard himself say, ‘I like to be thorough.’
She gave a delectable little hum and nodded, muttering something that sounded very much like, ‘Don’t I know it?’
‘What was that?’ he said, rocking onto his feet and tossing the dirty towels in the nearby wastebasket. His body was teetering dangerously close to the edge of reason.
‘Nothing,’ she blurted, her mood shifting so swiftly he wondered if he’d imagined her words.
It doesn’t matter. Tell her. Now.
‘Look, I—’
They both said it in unison.
‘Jinx.’ She gave him a smile that screamed regret. ‘I’m flattered, I really am, that you’ve tracked me down and gone to all this trouble—it’s lovely, it really is, and last night... Well, last night was probably the best—’
She was rambling. He knew it and she knew it, judging by the flush creeping up the exposed skin of her chest.
He tore his eyes upwards, forcing himself to look into her eyes as he cut her off. ‘I’m not here because of that.’
She frowned. ‘You’re not?’
‘Not entirely.’
Hell, just get it out. You’ve dealt with hostile takeovers better than this.
‘I mean, I’m not here for what you think.’
Her brow furrowed further. Her genuine confusion was breaking him.
‘Okay...’ She threw her dirty paper towelling away, then returned her arms to her middle. ‘So why are you here?’
He thrust his hand through his hair. The guilt, the alien sense of unease, the fear of hurting her—all made it impossible to think straight. He’d planned it out on the journey over, prepared his words, perfected his apology, but it all evaded him now that she was standing before him, waiting...
‘Right.’ The word was more for himself than her, as his hands came up in a definitive gesture that said Let’s do this. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you what I need to, so I’m just going to come out and say it. But before I do you have to understand that when we met I had no idea who you were.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Well, why would you?’
‘Because the business I told you I was in town for...’