Page 58 of Second Time Around
“I have to ask you another question.” Greg sat forward. “If your friend doesn’t want the position, do you still plan to go forward with the project?”
Anger flashed hot. “Do you really think I would waste the company’s money on a product I didn’t believe in?”
“No.” Greg kept his eyes locked on Will. “But you’ve killed two other new proposals in the last six months, so I have to ask myself what makes this one special.”
“You agreed with me on rejecting those proposals.” Will kept his voice even, although he wanted to curse at Greg.
“I could see your heart wasn’t in them.”
“Ceres for Canines will move forward, no matter who is at the helm,” Will said, his voice ice-cold with fury.
Greg lifted a hand in surrender. “Don’t get pissy. I’m on board. Send me your friend’s contact info.”
Will picked up his cell phone and swiped Kyra’s phone number to Greg’s e-mail. “Try not to scare her away by being an asshole.”
Greg grinned. “If she’s gone out with you already, then nothing I can do will make it any worse.”
“Go find a spreadsheet to screw up,” Will said, but his anger was fading. He had to admit that he should have asked himself the same question.
Kyra slapped a lime on the bar’s cutting board and whacked it into paper-thin slices.
She shouldn’t have stayed all night, wrapped in the luxury of Will’s million-thread-count sheets and the even greater luxury of his large, powerful body. But he’d sapped her willpower with his mouth and his hands and, yes, his words. She’d let herself drift off to sleep and awakened only to make love again in the slant of early morning sunlight.
Now she had to live with the longing to do it again ... and again.
She cut a radius in each slice, laid them in a crystal dish, and slid it onto the counter.
“Thanks,” Bastian said, twisting a slice into a helix before impaling it on a stainless steel swizzle stick and dropping it into a rocks glass. “Didn’t get a chance to replenish the supply earlier.”
“No worries,” Kyra said. She saw a customer drain his martini to the dregs and strutted down the bar to get him a refill.
The men were all smiling at her tonight, and she knew it was because her body still glowed with deep sexual satisfaction. She felt more fluid in her movements, felt her hips swaying naturally, knew her skin was suffused with a sensual flush. If it brought in more tips, she didn’t have a problem with that.
What she did have a problem with was how she felt about Will. All the yearning of her college crush had returned with a vengeance, magnified by the reality of the man he’d become and the fact that she’d finally gotten her wish to make love with him.
She almost wished he’d been a disappointment in bed ... selfish or unimaginative or cold. But no, Will had to be as brilliant at sex as he was at everything else. And then he’d had the lack of consideration to send her texts at odd moments all day with quotations from various racy poems. So she had no chance of banishing him from her thoughts. Not to mention that she’d had to rack her brain to come up with answering quotes. Which had been a hell of a lot of fun.
He’d finished his barrage of seduction with an invitation to his place after she finished work. He would send his limo to pick her up at any hour. And he would be in it.
Yep, she hated him in a big way.
She put down a linen cloud napkin and placed the fresh martini on it. “Shaken, not stirred,” she said with a smile. Men were always flattered by the reference to James Bond. It made them feel dashing and dangerous.
“You have a license to kill,” the man said with a wink as he took a sip.
“Kyra! How wonderful to see you again!”
Startled by the vaguely familiar woman’s voice calling her name, Kyra pivoted to find Petra and Farr sliding onto bar chairs several feet away. Petra gave her a wide, friendly smile while Farr looked as though he would prefer not to be there. As soon as he met her gaze, hisexpression smoothed into one of affability, but she’d caught his discomfort. So it had been Petra’s idea to come. Unease rippled through Kyra.
“Petra. Farr.” It was strange to see the two of them in her environment instead of Will’s. “Is this your first time at Stratus?”
“Oh, no, I’ve been several times,” Petra said. “That’s why I think it would be the perfect venue for a fund-raiser. I’ve come to take another look at the facilities.”
The dress she wore made Kyra sigh with envy. Sheer cream fabric was embroidered with graceful, flowing branches in shades of pale pink. Three-quarter-length sleeves showed off Petra’s slim wrists, on one of which she wore a tiny gold watch that glittered with diamonds. Long, swinging earrings of polished pink coral hung on gold chains. Kyra flinched at the sheer gorgeousness of the woman.
“I have the pleasure of experiencing Stratus for the first time,” Farr said in his southern drawl. He looked very Wall Street in a tailored gray suit, a striped blue shirt with a white collar, and a red-and-blue striped tie. “Most impressive.”
“Wait until you taste my cocktails,” Kyra said with her well-rehearsed grin. “What would you like?”
