CHAPTER FIVE
‘WHATDOYOUMEAN,no? You haven’t heard the deal yet!’ Jack stared at Katherine Medford, not sure whether to be frustrated or amused by the stubborn scowl on her expressive face. Although both reactions were preferable to the fierce tug of need she caused simply by breathing—which was starting to annoy him.
‘I don’t have to listen to the deal. Have you gone completely insane? I don’t want to be any man’s mistress but, even if I was going to do something as demeaning as that, it definitely would not be with you.’
Jack let out a gruff laugh, releasing the tension in his ribs. Katherine Medford really did look spectacular when she was mad, and she was practically frothing at the mouth now. He needed to get a grip on the effect she had on him. He’d never found argumentative women a turn-on before, but there was something about Katherine’s spitfire qualities that fascinated him.
Go figure.
This fascination was purely sexual, though—for both of them—which surely made her even more perfect for the position he was proposing. A lot more perfect than her sister, anyway.
‘Why not me?’ he asked.
He had expected pushback and had been more than ready to counter it—after all, that was what negotiations were for. And he happened to be good at them. But her vehement rejection of his proposal was a little over the top, even for her.
‘Because you’re...’ she spluttered, her cheeks suffused with that becoming blush which made the freckles across her nose glow. Something he’d noticed earlier when he had been lying in her bed, far too aware of her naked curves silhouetted against the window through her old T-shirt.
‘Because you’re you,’ she said, as if that was supposed to mean something. ‘Plus you were engaged to my sister about ten minutes ago. And I don’t even like you.’
She leant against the kitchen counter where he’d found her after putting on his clothes. The trousers were trashed and the shirt hopelessly wrinkled, but at least both garments were dry.
His lips quirked. ‘I’d say we just proved upstairs you like me well enough,’ he said.
‘I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about everything else.’
‘Such as?’ Jack asked. This ought to be good. Was she a hopeless romantic? Under that guise of pragmatism and practicality? He had to admit he was a little disappointed. But he could work with that if he had too.
Perhaps it was pride, or perhaps it was the sexual obsession that hadn’t faded despite their no-holds-barred antics upstairs—but whatever it was, he did not plan to take no for an answer.
She folded her arms, making those generous breasts plump up underneath her T-shirt.
‘Such as shared goals, trust, enjoying each other’s company,’ she spat out, her brows puckering. ‘Oh, and how about the biggie? Actually knowing more about you than I could find out in a few hours of searching online or ten minutes spent in bed with you? Such as that, maybe.’
So not a hopeless romantic, then. Thank God. Trying to persuade Bea they actually had a future together had always made him feel vaguely uneasy. At least with Katherine he could dispense with any semblance of hearts and flowers. He had decided that marriage wasn’t necessary—Smyth-Brown’s board could go hang on that one. He’d find another way to appease them long enough to get his hands on the stock he needed for a controlling interest. But having Katherine as his convenient date wouldn’t hurt in that regard when he got her to London. She was still the daughter of a lord, albeit an estranged one.
‘You spent hours searching for information about me online?’ Jack asked, starting to enjoy her indignation when her glare intensified. ‘I’m flattered,’ he mocked, pressing a hand to his heart, even though the truth was he wasn’t lying entirely. He’d have preferred her not to have unearthed information he had directed his legal team to have removed but, now she had, perhaps he could use it.
‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘I was curious, that was all. I’m not any more.’
‘Are you sure about that, Red?’ He snagged her wrist, forcing her to unfold her arms. And felt her satisfying shudder.
She tried to tug free. He held on.
‘You really don’t want to hear me out?’ he coaxed. ‘Find out what I’m offering in return for your cooperation? You’re in a much better bargaining position than you think.’ Especially now he knew how much he enjoyed having her in his bed.
Getting this hunger out of his system, out of both their systems, wasn’t going to be as easy as he had originally assumed. But, then again, their explosive chemistry would be a good way to enjoy their time together as he finalised the Smyth-Brown takeover and ripped the company Daniel Smyth’s family had built over generations to shreds.
While he wouldn’t normally have given his opponent a heads-up on how much he wanted to finalise a deal—after all, that was the biggest no-no when it came to deal-making—he could be generous with Katherine to have her where he wanted her.
‘I don’t care about the details. I don’t want to live with you, I don’t even want to date you, plus my life and my business are in Wales. It’s completely absurd.’
‘Is it?’ He glanced at the gleaming kitchen equipment he knew she’d gone into considerable debt to finance. One of the biggest mistakes of fledging businesses was to be overexposed to debt in the first year. But her rookie mistake was his gain. He’d spent twenty minutes upstairs rereading the detective’s report on the financial situation of Cariad Cakes Etc and he was more than ready now to go in for the kill.
‘How about if I told you in return for your being at my beck and call for—let’s say, six months...’ that should be more than long enough to get this frustrating, insistent fascination out of his system. ‘...I would give you a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of investment for your business over the next year for a ten percent share of the profits? And a ten-thousand-pound capital injection to cover your current debts.’
Her mouth dropped open, the bright, unguarded hope in her eyes making the slithers of gold in the emerald green glimmer. His chest tightened, surprising him. After all, he never got sentimental about business, and this would be—essentially—a business proposition. But even so he felt oddly deflated when the glimmer dimmed almost instantly.
‘Exactly how co-operative are you expecting me to be?’ Katie demanded, the brittle, defensive edge making Jack wonder about the young girl who had been forced to leave home to escape her father’s influence.
He’d only met Henry Medford a handful of times, and he hadn’t liked him—the man was an arrogant blowhard whose conservative investment strategy lacked vision and originality, and he had sensed that Bea was, if not scared of her father, then certainly determined to stay on the right side of him. While he didn’t do sentiment, it was Bea’s tentative attitude to her father which had persuaded him not to pull the Medford loan after their break-up.
He didn’t sense fear from Katherine, but he could see her fierce determination to avoid the influence of any man would have to be overcome. Or at the very least managed.
‘As I said, there will be some social requirements. I prefer to date women who elevate my social standing in ways money alone cannot.’
Not entirely true. He didn’t give a damn about his social standing normally. But right now dating her would be useful in his quest not to scare off the Smyth-Brown board with what an inside source had told him was their concern about his ‘lower-class background’.