Scandalizing the CEO (3 page)

She nodded. “I’d heard you took over the company from your grandfather.”

“Indeed. I was looking for something to do after college.”

“Did you bum around Europe?” she asked. She couldn’t see that. Steven didn’t seem like the type of man who would be able to just drift.

“No. I spent a few years mining in Staffordshire learning about Raleighvale. When Grandfather wanted to retire, I jumped at the challenge it represented.”

She thought about that. About what it said about Steven that he was the kind of man who could take a few years to do mining. That was tough work. Not the kind of job she would have expected Malcolm Devonshire’s son to do.

“What did Malcolm say about that?” she asked.

“I have no idea. I didn’t ask him.”

She nodded. Her father hadn’t wanted her to move to New York when she’d taken her first magazine job, and when she’d moved to London, he’d been upset as well. But her parents never hesitated to say what was on their mind. In the end they’d understood that she needed her career. Her mother was always asking if a man had broken her heart and Ainsley always changed the subject. Because
Steven had broken her heart, but not in a romantic way. He’d done it on a much bigger scale and it had completely changed the woman she had been.

They were small-town folks—mail carriers. Well, her mum now worked mostly at the counter in the local post office. A small branch where she knew just about everyone’s name who came in there.

“I guess that’s a good thing,” she said.

He signaled the waiter and asked for the check. She took her platinum card from her wallet, intending to split the check, but he gave her a look that made her pull it back.

“This isn’t a date,” she said.

“Who said?”

Steven found that behind the slim-fitting clothes and the underlying sexuality of her Betty Page look, Ainsley was a very interesting woman. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to spend all night talking to her and listening to the way she spoke. He liked her insights and the way she looked at him. For once, he felt as if he were a hollow shell of a man. A man who had only one dimension: business.

But with Ainsley…well, she made him wonder if he had been wrong to keep such a distance between himself and others.

Or maybe this was just the first blush of attraction—that potent combination of lust and intrigue. She was a mystery to him. A woman unlike others he’d met and seduced.

In her there was a sort of innocence—she seemed to be unaware of her appeal to the opposite sex. Men stared at her as she preceded him out of the restaurant, but she ignored their looks. He glared at one man who stared too long and then put his hand on the small of her back.

She was with him. He was glad that he’d thought to bargain for her magazine to do the articles on him and Henry and Geoff because he wanted to have a reason to keep in touch with her.

He was going to ask her out again—that was a given. He needed to have her in his bed. He wanted to see if her mysteries would be solved by making love. He’d found in the past that the appeal of a lot of the women he’d dated vanished after he’d bedded them.

That wouldn’t be the same with Ainsley. And yet a part of him believed that it would be. That she’d be like every other relationship in his life. He was used to expecting nothing from them.

“Why are you helping me walk out of the restaurant?” she asked.

“So every man in the place knows that you are with me.”

“Am I with you, Steven?”

“Yes, you are.”

“Just for tonight?”

“No. I want to have you by my side again. I have to go to a reception for my mother next Tuesday evening at Oxford. Would you like to accompany me?”

They stepped out into the March evening. It was damp and chilly and Ainsley shivered. If they had a different kind of relationship, he would have wrapped his arm around her. But then, he thought, to hell with that. He put his arm over her shoulder and drew her against the curve of his body.

She shuddered and looked up at him.

He read the same desire in her expression that he’d been battling all night. Her deep violet eyes revealed that she was thinking of him as a man—not an interviewee—and he knew that he’d do anything to keep that interest alive.

With the gentle pressure of his arm on her shoulder, he steered her down the street to where he’d parked his car. When they got to his car, she stopped and turned, trapped between his body and his vehicle.

“What do you want from me?” she asked. Her voice was soft and low. There was none of the confident executive that he’d first met in the Everest Mega Store this afternoon. Instead, there was a woman who showed him a hint of vulnerability. And that touched him.

He brushed the softer emotions aside—he didn’t like them. He touched the rounded apples of her cheeks, ran his finger over that arch down toward her ear. “Right now I want a kiss.”

“Just one?” she asked. She licked her lips, a slow sensual movement of her tongue that made him groan inside. Her tongue was delicate and pink and he wanted to feel it on his skin. He wanted her to taste him the same way. And he needed to taste her in return.

With those full lips and her sexy smile…What would she taste like?

“To start,” he said.

He traced the line of her neck with his fingertip and along the hairline of her high ponytail where her hair met her skin. She shivered a little and licked her lips again. Then she leaned toward him, not close enough that their bodies brushed, but closer.

He kept his light touch on her face. Just taking his time. All the best things in life took time. He’d never gone for instant gratification, but this time he was tempted to. He made himself wait, though. Patience always paid off.

He traced the vee at the top of her blouse. Her breasts were large, full and he didn’t come close to touching them, but he wanted to. Instead, he contented himself with the
soft tender skin of her chest, that area exposed by her blouse.

Then he leaned toward her and she tipped her head back and went up on her toes. He looked down into her upturned face. Her eyes were half closed and he had that momentary surge of lust that always assailed him when he was close to tasting a new woman.

She put her hands on his shoulders as he hesitated, drawing out the moment, and lifted herself even higher so that he felt the brush of her warm breath against his mouth. But he pulled back.

He would decide when they had their first kiss. He would set the tone and the timbre of the embrace. And he wanted to make sure that Ainsley knew he was in charge.

Starting where he’d first touched her with his finger, he followed the same path with his lips, caressing his way with nibbling kisses to her ear.

He blew gently into her ear. “Do you want me?”

“Yes…”

“Good.”

T
here was nothing she could do but Steven’s bidding. She’d lost all sense of place and self as he touched her face. She knew that she’d do whatever he asked her to as long as he kept touching her. If only he’d kiss her. She wanted to feel that firm hard mouth against her own.

But he kept teasing her. When he bit her ear, she gasped his name and felt a bolt of pure desire go through her. Her breasts felt fuller, her blood raced through her veins and between her legs she felt moisture as her body readied itself for him.

Which was ridiculous—she wasn’t about to sleep with Steven Devonshire. Or was she? She might, she thought. Immediately, her mind focused on the potential conflict of interest created by the article. The writer would simply mention that she and Steven…what? Slept together? She
knew that would hurt the journalistic integrity of the piece, but the article was really more focused on the mothers.

Before she could ruminate on it any more, she felt his mouth on her neck. He ran a line of kisses down the length of her neck and then at the base she felt the warmth of his tongue. She shuddered again.

When she’d lost weight, she’d had a reawakening of herself as a woman, but the attention of men had been too much. Now she realized it was the wrong men who had been paying attention to her. Because in Steven’s embrace she felt that she was where she was meant to be.

He whispered hot, dark words against her skin, which just served to inflame her. She reached for his shoulders, tried to draw him closer to her, but he pulled back.

“Do not touch me until I tell you to,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I said so,” he said.

She dropped her hands to her sides, but had no idea what to do with them. Letting him touch her while she couldn’t touch him was exciting. She felt like this moment was all about her pleasure and all he’d done was kiss her. The wind blew down the street chilly and damp, and she realized they were standing on the side of the road.

Until that instant all she’d been focused on was his kiss. A kiss she still hadn’t tasted.

“Let’s get inside the car,” she said.

“Not until I get my kiss,” Steven said.

She started to argue but then felt his mouth against her collarbone. He’d brushed the fabric of her shirt out of his way, as he tasted her with short kisses. His mouth was warm and started a fire that raged all the way to her core.

She had the uncomfortable feeling that she might not
be able to deny him anything. His moved his mouth up the other side of her blouse and then at the base of her neck he suckled her. She shivered and moaned as an ache started at her center.

She couldn’t believe that he’d turned her into a mass of needing and wanting and she didn’t care. She wanted more of him. She reached up to touch him, but he lifted one eyebrow at her and she knew that if she touched him he’d stop. She moaned and put her hands back down beside her hips.

He smiled at her. “Good girl. You get a reward for that.”

She smiled back at him. “Do I get to choose it?”

He shook his head and brought his mouth down on hers. His kiss was as intense as she’d expected it to be. His mouth was hard on hers and demanded everything she had to give.

His hands circled her waist and drew her against his body. She felt the hard wall of his chest against her breasts and the hot pressure of his tongue as it penetrated her mouth. She shifted in his arms, trying to get closer to him, but she could only touch him where he let her.

Her powerlessness—to her own passion and to Steven’s control—was the headiest feeling she’d ever had. His mouth was delicious. His taste was addicting. She wanted so much more than this.

Everything in her called for her to be with him. She caught his lower lip in between her teeth as he drew his mouth back from hers. He moaned and then changed the embrace so that her lips were caught between his teeth. He sucked her lower lip deeper into his mouth.

One of his big hands moved up her back to the center,
right between her shoulder blades, and he held her with just that one hand and his mouth on hers.

She was completely his prisoner. Nothing mattered to her except that this moment didn’t end. That his mouth stayed on hers.

And that frightened her. This embrace scared her. She was successful because she didn’t let men or relationships of any kind interfere with her job. And that had always been easy for her, because no man she’d met had threatened that resolve.

Part of it she imagined was simply because no other man had felt right—the way that Steven did. He’d been the one to change her with that one overheard comment. And she’d realized that even though her parents had always told her they loved her and she was beautiful the way she was, that men saw that differently. That a chubby woman was almost invisible to most men—or rather to men like Steven.

She had to be careful, because the way she felt right now, she knew she could easily lose herself to him. In him. And the really scary part was that she wouldn’t mind. She drew back from him and he slowly released her mouth.

She put her fingers over her lower lip, which was still tingling. She wasn’t herself. This was surreal.

“That was…”

“Incredible?”

She shook her head. There was a lightness to his tone that she wanted to embrace but she sensed the steel underneath. “Intense.”

“Surely a woman like you has been well-kissed before.”

She started to shake her head but she didn’t want Steven to remember the chubby girl no man had been interested in.
That was part of her past, she thought. His kiss had made her vulnerable enough. She didn’t want to show him that kind of emotional vulnerability.

“Nothing like that,” she said at last. She couldn’t lie to him about that. She wasn’t a very sophisticated woman when it came to bedroom matters. She might be able to hold her own with temperamental photographers and celebrities, but with this man she couldn’t. And she wasn’t going to pretend that this was an everyday occurrence, even if that would have been better for her.

Ainsley sat quietly next to him as he drove through the city to her home. She lived in the posh neighborhood of Notting Hill. “What made you choose this area to live?”

She flushed and looked over at him. “The movie with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant. They made it look charming and quaint.”

“Is that how you decided to become a magazine editor? You saw someone in a movie doing it?”

She shrugged. “There are worse ways to find a job. What about you?”

“Not so fast. You didn’t tell me why you chose your profession.”

“You can park there on the street.” She pointed to a space halfway down the block.

He pulled into the spot and turned the car off, but he made no move to get out and neither did she. “Which movie was it?”

“
His Girl Friday.
Have you ever seen it?”

He hadn’t. He wasn’t much of a film buff. He’d spent his life out doing things. Trying to prove he was better than his ancestry, and most days he was sure he succeeded.

“No. What’s it about?”

“A newspaper editor—Cary Grant and his ex-wife and star reporter Rosalind Russell…it’s just great. They made working at a newspaper look like so much fun. I knew I wanted to be a reporter.”

“But you’re not,” he pointed out.

“Once I graduated I found a different path. But I would never have thought of writing for a living if not for that movie.”

She sparkled with passion when she talked about writing and he wondered why she’d given it up. He knew she’d said that the new job better suited her but he still couldn’t believe she’d give up her passion for money.

“How old were you when you made the decision to be a writer?”

“Twelve,” she said. “What about you? Did you decide early on that you wanted to rule the world?”

He laughed out loud at her wry question. “Pretty much from the womb I knew I wanted it all.”

“Do you think you’ve gotten it?” she asked.

He tipped his head to the side to study her. She asked questions that no one else ever had—except that one reporter. The frumpy, clumsy woman had little in common with Ainsley except for her eyes and her probing questions. He remembered the woman’s eyes…so similar to Ainsley’s.

“Not yet, but I’m close,” he said.

He tried to recall other details of the woman but he couldn’t see anything but those wide violet eyes. He took his keys from the ignition and got out of the car to come around and open her door.

One thing his mother had been a stickler about was manners in a man. She said that women liked to be treated with respect and that they always deserved it.

He’d often wondered if Malcolm’s betrayal with his other mistresses had wounded his mum deeply. She’d buried herself in her lab and in her research after his birth. Steven could think of no greater disrespect than finding out the man you were having an affair with was seeing two other women at the same time.

He opened her door and offered his hand. She took it, her fingers small and delicate in his bigger grasp. She turned in her seat, stretching her legs out the door first. They were slim and yet curvy, one of the first things he’d noticed about her. Once she had one foot on the sidewalk, she stepped out and stood next to him. He wanted her again. Wanted to kiss her once more, but he knew better than to move too quickly.

He wanted to savor every moment with her. To make this quasi-emotion he felt—one he knew was lust—last a little while longer before he went back to the dull, gray world he usually inhabited. The world where he just worked and concentrated on proving he was the best.

“I’ll see you to your door,” he said.

“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I think I can find it.”

“I insist.”

He put his hand on the small of her back again and nudged her toward her door. She tossed that high ponytail of hers as she looked back over her shoulder at him. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”

“Not unless I have to. Men who back down usually end up losing.”

“I don’t like to lose, either,” she said.

“If you want what I want, then we’ll both win.”

“Somehow I’m not sure I’ll know if I really want it or if your will has made me think I do,” she said.

Her words had been carefully chosen. She was trying to tell him that he overwhelmed her, or at least that was what he suspected.

“I’m not going to ask for anything you’re not ready for,” he said.

She studied him for a moment and he hoped she found whatever it was she was searching for. Hoped she didn’t see that emptiness he always tried to mask. That spot inside him where he suspected other people had their hearts but he just had a driving impulse to succeed.

“Would you like to come in for a drink?” she asked.

“I’d love to,” he walked behind her to her front door, keeping his hand on the small of her back the entire time.

Her waist was small and pronounced, her hips larger but not too big. He brought his other hand to her waist because he wanted to see what his hands looked like on her body. He really wanted to hold her like this when she was naked. To see the full curves of her bare derrière.

“What are you doing?”

“Imagining you naked,” he said.

She blushed and dropped her keys. She bent to pick them up and he moaned as the fabric of her skirt was pulled taut against her buttocks. He let his hands slide down her curves, skimming along the outside of her hips until he almost reached the hem of the skirt.

She stood up, put her key in the lock and opened the door. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we still have a business arrangement. A deal for me to publish feature articles about your family—we shouldn’t have a personal relationship on top of that.”

“We aren’t working together, Ainsley,” he said, stepping
over her threshold and forcing her to take a step back. He closed the door behind them and leaned forward to cage her against the wall.

“What we have is so much more than a business arrangement,” he said.

“Really?” she asked. “Because it seems to me that you’re the type of man who’ll only say that until you’ve been in my bed.”

Ainsley was seduced by everything about Steven. He was a charming dinner companion and he knew how to pay attention to a woman. He leaned in when she spoke, listened to her answers and then asked her questions that invited her to talk more deeply. It was something that no other man had done when she’d been out with him.

But this feeling was similar to ones he’d evoked in her before. And after those short few hours spent together talking, he’d left and ruined her life.

With this new body she knew that men found her attractive. It was silly to say but she still felt like the chubby girl who sat in the back of the classroom alone. She doubted that was going to change anytime soon.

Having Steven’s attention wasn’t going to make it easier. Yet she wanted him. She wanted to be the kind of sophisticated woman who could take him to her bed and have no regrets if he walked away in the morning.

But she wasn’t. He was so close to her that she could feel his body heat. His hands were on either side of the wall next to her head. He surrounded her.

She glanced up at him, trying once again to see something in his eyes that would tell her what kind of man he was. All night long she’d asked probing questions—used
her best reporter’s techniques from the old days—and she’d gotten nothing from him.

A few answers to a few questions, but nothing that she could hang her hat on.

“What is going on in that head of yours?” he asked. His tone so very British that she wanted to melt. She loved the accent, so different from her soft Southern twang.

“I’m trying to gauge the measure of the man before me.”

Steven didn’t move, but she felt as if he’d stepped closer to her. His left hand shifted slightly on the wall and he stroked her cheekbone with his thumb.

His touch was electric. She’d realized that earlier when he’d kissed her by his car. She was powerless against it. No man had ever touched her like that before. No man had ever made her feel…sexy.