Page 12 of Baby Perfection

“Probably,” he admitted. Definitely.

“You can’t seriously expect me to strip down—”

“Expect? No. Hope?” He invaded the final few inches between them and caught the flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat, heard the swift give-and-take of her breath. “Oh, yeah.”

“I work for you. And this doesn’t just blur the lines. It steps way over them.”

He reached for her, hooked one of the curls that had taunted him all evening and allowed it to twine around his finger. It clung to him, silken soft and utterly female. He’d watched Moretti do just that and it had taken every ounce of his self-possession not to deck the bastard. Lucius shook his head in anattempt to clear it. He didn’t understand what was happening to him, couldn’t make any sense out of the strength of his reaction. Angie had worked for him over the past eighteen months and not once in all that time had he ever felt the urge to connect with her on a personal level. To take her into his arms and discover whether that sexy, impudent mouth tasted as good as it looked.

Okay, once.

Nearly a year after he’d hired her, they’d been slogging through the day. It had been an unusually rough one despite the fact that Seattle sparkled beneath a crystalline sky while Mt. Rainier loomed in the distance, putting its stamp of approval on this brief slice of perfection. The September air contained the cool and crisp hint of autumn’s cusp, filled with the tantalizing whispers of approaching apple and beer festivals.

But for Lucius, the day would have been better drowned beneath a torrent of wintry rain, slashing the windows at his back and driving an early darkness into his office. Lisa had just given birth to Geoff’s son and the ecstatic father had raved endlessly about his newborn son and exhausted, valiant wife. Lucius sat quietly, striving to appear both excited for his best friend and interested in details he’d have just as soon known nothing about. Geoff must have talked for hours before Lucius finally sent him on his way, insisting he take the next couple of weeks off to be with his new family. And all the while guilt rode him, lashing him. He hadn’t given his friend the time off out of generosity. Hell, no. He’d done it for himself, selfish bastard that he was.

He hadn’t wanted to hear another word about how happy Geoff and Lisa were. Or the minute by minute, second by second details of her pregnancy and childbirth. Lisa had been wrong about one thing. It hadn’t taken fifty years of wedded bliss tomake him choke on their apparent happiness, but only a short nine months.

The instant Geoff left, delirious at his good fortune, Angie slipped into the room. One look at his face sent her straight to the wet bar where she poured him a stiff drink. Whether she’d heard about his involvement with Lisa through the office grapevine, or used her own deductive skills to reason it out during that first year of her employment, it was clear she knew. Knew, and set out to focus his attention on anything and everything other than Geoff and Lisa.

They worked long into the night, ordering takeout before digging into his latest rehab project. When he finally surfaced, he discovered Angie sacked out on the couch of his sitting area on the far side of his office. As always, she wore one of her godawful suits, this one in a muddy brown. At some point she’d stripped away her jacket, the simple taupe silk shell beneath escaping her waistband and draping across the sweetly subtle curves of her breasts. The skirt had rucked upward, showcasing a gorgeous set of mile-high legs. And the hair that she always pulled away from her face in a tidy knot had loosened, spilling down her shoulders in streaks of bronze and chestnut and a pale sandy brown.

For the first time, he saw Angie as a woman.

He must have made some sound. Or perhaps the undiluted concentration of his gaze alerted her on some primal level. Her lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes, the brilliant aquamarine muted with sleep, darker and more intense than normal.

Until now, Angie had always been one of the most professional women he’d ever known. He could create an endless list of her virtues—all perfect for a top-notch PA—and probably never hit all of her many attributes. But for the first time, he saw the woman behind the employee, a woman who possessed a softness and vulnerability he’d never noticed before. Her breathing sharpened, the semitransparent flow of silk sliding and caressing her breasts with each rise and fall. For endless seconds they simply stared at each other, while a sharp, visceral awareness tugged at his gut.

Everything within him, everything that made him both a man and a predator, urged him to act. To take. To conquer. To possess. And all the while the thin veneer of civilized behavior, of propriety, kept him frozen in his chair, wanting without responding. Instinct warred with rationality. Teetered. If he went to her, pulled her into his arms, she wouldn’t resist. Somehow he knew it with the sort of absolute certainty he’d perfected over his years as a businessman, his ability to assess any given situation with split-second certainty honed to a dagger’s edge.

“Lucius?” His name, in a hesitant, hauntingly feminine whisper, slipped across the darkened room. Eve’s call to Adam.

He clenched his teeth. “Go home. You’re exhausted.”

She continued to stare at him with eyes of want and he could practically see the apple cupped in her hands. “What about the prospectus?”

“It’ll be here in the morning.” He stood, snatched up her suit jacket and tossed it to her. “I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen the impeccable Ms. Colter wrinkled and out of sorts.”

As he’d hoped, the comment snapped her to attention. Catching the jacket midair, she erupted from the couch with a gasp of dismay. If hunger for a fast, juicy bite of that apple weren’t still dogging him, he’d have found the way she yanked her skirt into position, tucked in her blouse and jammed herarms into her jacket downright amusing. Trembling fingers attempted to shove buttons through holes. The fact that they were the wrong buttons in the wrong holes only added to her appealing vulnerability. Thrusting her hair out of her face, that long tumble of autumn browns, she made a beeline for the door, turning at the last minute.

She cloaked herself in painful dignity, but it was far too late. He’d seen what she buried beneath. Seen. Been tempted. Hungered. The serpent had invaded Eden and left its mark. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the usual time.”

“No, you won’t.”

He’d rattled her and he couldn’t help taking pleasure in it. “I’m sorry?” she asked uncertainly.

“I’m meeting with Dolchester, remember? I won’t be in until after lunch.”

“Of course. I’ll…I’ll just leave now.”

He nodded, allowing the apple to roll away, untasted. “Good night, Angie.”

“Good night, Lucius,” she murmured.

The initial spark of desire he felt then didn’t come close to the roar of need cascading through him now. He didn’t just want a taste of the apple, he wanted to consume every last, juicy bite in great ravenous gulps. His body continued to hold hers trapped against the kitchen counter and she gave a slight shimmying twist that threatened to drive him insane.

“Don’t,” he warned. “By all that’s holy, don’t.”

She stilled, the cadence of her breath soft and desperate. He should let her go. He should leave. He should walk away nowbefore they did something they’d both regret. But he couldn’t walk away any more than he could stop his heart from beating.

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