The Billionaire Bargain #3(17)
I stroked his hair gently, feeling yet more love bloom within my chest. How was it that each time I thought I couldn’t love this man more, I found there was yet room to grow? “Not one bit.” I hesitated, my hand stilling as my insecurities struck. “Do you?”
“Never,” he said, pressing a kiss against the swell of my breast as he found my hand and gripped it with reassuring warmth. “Never in a thousand years.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Good.”
He chuckled gently. “My sentiments exactly.”
Silence fell again, a little awkward, but not entirely uncomfortable. I found myself wishing we could stay like this forever, and not have to rise and deal with all the problems in the world.
But the world wouldn’t wait for us.
“It’s all right,” I started, at the same time Grant began to say: “If you’d like to talk about it—”
We stuttered off into nervous chuckles, and I caressed his lightly stubbled face.
“How about we talk about it when this is all over?” I suggested finally. “We can figure out what we’re doing here—what this is—after we’ve figured out what Portia’s up to.”
He reached up and covered my hand with his, caressing my fingers. “That works for me.”
? ? ?
The first step in what I was mentally calling Operation Snowplow—‘cause she was an ice queen, get it?—was to figure out what Portia was plotting. And what better place to look for clues than the castle of the ice queen herself—by which of course I meant her office at Devlin Media Corp headquarters.
Grant and I had managed to keep a low profile all the way into the building—it helped that we went through a service entrance, and it was the weekend—but we were stymied by the appearance of Portia’s secretary bustling down the hallway towards her office door, holding a steaming latte she must have picked up on her lunch break.
“Damn,” I muttered, frustrated, peering around the corner as the secretary fumbled with a set of keys. “If we’d just gotten here fifteen minutes earlier!”
“Don’t lose hope yet,” Grant said. He stretched, showing off the way his tight shirt clung to his abs, and grinned wickedly as he undid several buttons on his shirt. “I’ve always wanted to play a homme fatale.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be femme—” I started, but Grant was already sauntering down the hallway towards his prey.
The secretary looked up and her whole face filled with the expression of a deer in headlights, if headlights had ripped abs and a smile so charming your panties gave up and fell to the floor of their own volition.
“Why, fancy running into you here, Emily,” Grant purred, resting an arm against the wall next to her so that he could loom into her personal space and, by way of a bonus, block her view of the rest of the hall.
“Oh, um, er, hi,” she stammered. I could see her flushing red over his shoulder. “Ms. Smith’s not in, I didn’t know you had an appointment, I mean—”
“No appointment,” Grant murmured, his voice low and intimate. “But lately I’ve been taking a rather…personal…interest in these matters.”
The secretary blushed so hard I was amazed that there was any blood left for the rest of her body.
Grant ran his hand along her sleeve. “I like the way this feels,” he said. “So soft.” His hand lingered right on the collar, just where the fabric met her skin. “Your hair looks soft too.”
“I—I—I—” Emily the secretary stuttered like a faulty tape recorder.
Grant slid his arm around her shoulder, one finger playing with a ringlet of her hair. “It’s a pity Portia isn’t here, but it does give us some time alone—to discuss business, of course.”
“Of course,” Emily echoed, dazed.
Grant began to lead her down the hallway. “Perhaps we could discuss the matter over wine…I know a nice intimate restaurant not too far away…you can take a break, can’t you?”
“Intimate,” she whispered, gazing up into his eyes as though someone had written a winning lottery number there.
“Tell me, Emily,” Grant’s voice carried to me as they disappeared from sight, “do you believe in mixing business with pleasure?”
Meanwhile, around the corner, I was rolling my eyes so hard I almost sprained them. He was going to give that poor girl a heart attack. And if her choice of employment was any indication, she already had enough trouble in her life.
But there’d be time later for pitying those caught in the crosshairs of Grant’s charm.
Right now, it was time for a little good old-fashioned breaking and entering.
Sending up a little mental thank-you to my bad-influence high school boyfriend for teaching me how to pick locks—I should definitely send him a fruit basket or something, did they let you send fruit baskets to prison?—I pulled a bobby clip from my hair and had the lock jimmied in less than thirty seconds. That’s what you get for refusing to upgrade to the passcard system, Portia.
I began to rifle through the papers on her desk. There wasn’t much—a dry-cleaning bill, a routine memo from accounting, and projections for quarterly growth. I had to rifle very carefully, taking note of exactly which spot on the desk I lifted each paper from; Portia’s office was a fascist’s dream, neat to the point of insanity. Papers were crisp, mahogany and steel were polished, and personal effects were nonexistent.