Comfort zone? He hadn’t felt remotely comfortable since he’d set eyes on her again weeks ago.
Luke eyed her long legs in those sexy boots and felt his groin twitch. Dammit! He didn’t like not being able to control his physical reaction to this woman, the fact that he thought about her far too often. And he especially didn’t like the fact that she could talk so coolly about business when he was imagining her naked except for those boots, at the mercy of his touch...
‘If I agree to hire you, and by doing so agree to any and all of your proposals,’ he said in a voice that most of his staff and friends would recognise as non-negotiable, ‘then I have a couple of conditions of my own.’
‘Okay—what?’
‘You work on the campaign. No passing it off to your flunkies.’
‘Understood. I had no intention of doing that anyway.’
‘And I want St Sylve to have your undivided attention. You move to St Sylve for however long it takes to get this wrapped up. Get out of your comfort zone.’
He saw the look of shock that flicked across her face. ‘That’s not practical, Luke. I have a business to run.’
‘Skype, e-mail and phone. We live in the twenty-first century, Jess. Besides, Ally looks competent enough to take the reins.’
‘She is, but—’
‘And you also organise the networking. I don’t have the time or the inclination and I have even less enthusiasm. And you accompany me to all these functions. If I have to do it, then so do you,’ Luke told her.
‘So, are you saying I’ve got the job?’
‘Yep.’
Of course she had the job—was she mad? Hers was above and beyond the most exciting presentation of them all, and while the others wouldn’t need his time, presence or input, they wouldn’t have the effect Jess’s would.
‘Uh...good,’ Jess said in a strangled voice. ‘But I don’t know if I’m going to manage living in Franschoek. I have a life, apart from my business, in Sandton.’
Luke shook his head. No, she didn’t. She was as much a workaholic as him. ‘Stop hedging. And you’re not staying in Franschoek—you’re staying at St Sylve.’
Jess thrust out her stubborn chin. ‘I won’t feel comfortable staying with you, in your house.’
‘Why not?’
Jess rolled her eyes. ‘Are you really going to be all coy and not acknowledge the...’
Luke lifted his eyebrows when she stuttered to a stop. ‘Lust? Heat? Passion?’ he suggested.
‘Heat...stick to heat,’ Jess suggested, her eyes everywhere but meeting his.
Luke grinned internally; it amazed him that she could be so businesslike about—well, business, but get so flustered when talking about their mutual attraction.
‘Now who’s being coy?’ Luke muttered. ‘Okay, you can stay in any one of the six bedrooms at the manor house.’
Luke stepped closer—so close he could almost feel her breasts against his chest, smell the citrus in her hair. Those amazingly long lashes fluttered and lifted and he felt the zing of attraction arc between them. In that age-old subconscious display of attraction her mouth opened, and he nearly lost control when he saw the tip of her pink tongue flicker at the corner of her mouth. Stuff the marketing strategy and St Sylve. Stuff the world...Jess was here and he wanted her.
Her body, not her mind...
Luke jerked his head up and quietly cursed. And what was he doing? Acting on what was happening in his pants. Catch a clue, Savage. He wasn’t fifteen any more, or even twenty, but he was still listening to his libido. He’d realised a while back that it was a very bad judge of character, time and situation, and it had the ability to lead him into deep trouble.
Luke stepped away from Jess, but couldn’t resist tucking a long, straight strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Don’t disappoint me, Jess.’
‘I don’t intend to,’ she replied in her husky, take-me-to-bed voice.
Jess finally looked him in the eye and he couldn’t help himself; his thumb drifted across her bottom lip. ‘You have the most kissable mouth I’ve ever seen.’
He saw sense and sensibility flow back into Jess’s eyes—her mental retreat. A cool, polite mask dropped into place.
‘Not a good idea, Luke. Any physical intimacy could blow up in our faces.’
‘We should be smart enough to separate the two.’
Her shoulders came up and her spine stiffened at his challenge. ‘Theoretically I’m smart enough—anybody is smart enough—to solve string theory, but that doesn’t mean I can. Or will.’
‘We have unfinished business, Jessica. You know it and I know it; we both want to finish what we started eight years ago.’ Luke moved the backs of his fingers down her cheek.