Scandalizing the CEO (4 page)

She realized then that there was no way she would turn him away. He was the first man to look at her since she’d lost all her weight and made her feel like she was a woman.

“Have I come up lacking?” he asked.

“No, Steven, you haven’t,” she said.

“I like the sound of my name on your lips,” he said.

“Really? Why?”

His thumb moved lower on her face caressing her lower lip as he stared down at her. She was glad she’d left the light on in the living room because it cast a soft glow in the foyer.

“Your voice softens when you use my name. Otherwise, you’re all business,” he said.

In the quiet of her foyer she felt safe admitting the truth to him. “My job is my life.”

He arched one eyebrow at her. “The same has been said of me.”

“And is it true?”

He shrugged. “Many believe it is. But I have other interests.”

“Like what?” she asked, hoping to learn something that she hadn’t read online or in a magazine. Steven Devonshire raised privacy to an altogether new level.

“Skydiving.”

That took her completely by surprise. Skydiving was a risky venture, despite the safety measures taken by everyone who participated in the sport. By the same token, she could see the appeal in the sport for Steven. He thrived on risk and excitement.

No one else would have taken on the challenge of Raleighvale China the way he had, she mused. But that was part of his personality. Ainsley knew he liked the challenge of knowing everyone expected him to fail and then shocking the hell out of them. She had first picked up on that when she’d interviewed him years ago.

“What about you, Ms. Editor-in-Chief? What do you do for fun?”

“Read,” she said.

“Reading? That’s not doing something, Ainsley,” he said.

She shook her head. “You’re wrong. I’ve lived adventures you’ve never dreamed of through the pages of my books. I’ve been places that I wouldn’t be brave enough to travel to.”

“Where?” he asked, still stroking his thumb over her face.

“Somalia. I read a book by a man who’d grown up there
and dealt with the violence and danger to the people still living there.”

“I’d have to agree that Somalia is dangerous. Any other place you’re interested in going to? Any place you haven’t been?”

She shrugged. “Well…I haven’t been to Ibiza but have a trip planned there for this summer. I did go to Madrid last summer.”

He laughed. “Everyone goes there to vacation. That hardly sounds daring.”

“I went to see a bullfight,” she said.

“What did you like about it?”

“The pageantry, the excitement. We did a cover story about six months ago…actually it will be on the stands this month. It was about two brothers who were matadors—fifth-generation matadors. These men are rock stars in Spain.

“Does that sound ridiculous?” she asked.

“Not at all. It makes you sound like a very interesting woman. A woman whom I’m very glad to have gotten to know a little better tonight. How long have you been in the UK?” he asked.

“Almost three years,” she said.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

She struggled now. Outright lying to him might come back to bite her later, but that previous encounter had scared her and shaped her into the woman she was today and she couldn’t regret that.

“For my job.”

“That’s pretty daring,” he said. “Leaving behind your home and your family to come to another country.”

The way he said it made her feel special. As if she were unique to him. And looking into his dark eyes she felt like
he was seeing her. Not just her body or her position at the magazine. The fact that Steven liked her for herself—that seduced her more than anything else.

S
teven leaned forward and kissed her. It was a soft kiss that felt like it went on for days. He didn’t touch her anywhere but where their mouths met. She felt as if they had all the time in the world, that there were only the two of them and this moment, which would never end.

She kept her eyes open at first because she wanted to see him. His eyes were closed and she felt the intensity in him. But this time it was focused all on her. She closed her own eyes because she didn’t want to see his vulnerability. But even as she did so, she couldn’t help but feel her heart melt a little. No matter how intense or driven Steven seemed, he still had some vulnerabilities.

Soon she didn’t think about anything but the kiss. The way his mouth felt against hers. The taste of him, which was just right. She wanted to experience everything she could of Steven. She wanted to know so much more than
the taste of his mouth on hers. She wanted to feel his hands around her waist again. To have him pull her closer.

He lifted his head up and she took a moment to compose herself before she opened her eyes. She didn’t want to be any more vulnerable to him than she already was and she certainly didn’t want him to glimpse her vulnerability.

She rested her head against the wall and opened her eyes. He was staring down at her, those hawklike eyes assessing her.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“That no other woman has ever tasted as good as you,” he said.

She felt overwhelmed by this comment. They were traveling the same path in so many ways. This man—Steven Devonshire—could be more to her than a date…“I was thinking the same thing.”

“That I kiss like a woman?” he asked.

She laughed and the intensity of the moment was broken. She knew it was for the best because it showed her exactly where Steven was in his thinking. And it kept her from thinking that this was more than it was.

They’d had dinner and now he was trying to score. At the end of the day she had to remember that this was Steven Devonshire, the man who’d left her in ruins. He was more dangerous to her than a seven-layer chocolate cake, because she could exercise off the effects of a choco-binge but she couldn’t fix her battered emotions nearly as easily.

“Still want that drink?” she asked, not sure she wanted him to stay.

He shook his head. “I think I should be going.”

She did, too. She ducked out from under his arms. She opened her front door, leaning back against it. The chill of the night air swept into her warm little house.

She shivered as she waited for Steven to leave. He turned and crossed the threshold. His car was parked at the curb, in front of her very old and very temperamental MG. But she loved that car despite its problems.

“Will you have dinner with me again?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “But I’m flying to New York tomorrow for a meeting with the team for our American magazine.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Four days,” she said. “But I won’t be able to function until six days. Jet lag slows me down.”

“Then we’ll have dinner six days from now…that’s next Monday. I’ll pick you up here at home.”

Ainsley realized that Steven was used to giving orders. “Do people always do what you say?”

“Most times,” he admitted.

“You can pick me up at my office. I’m not going to be home in time for a dinner date.”

“Very well. My assistant will call your office tomorrow to get all your contact information—e-mail address and so on. That way I can be in touch with you when you’re in the States.”

“What would you need to talk to me about?”

“The story, of course,” he said.

“I have assigned a writer to the story and my boss wants the U.S. magazine to run the article as well. So we might actually have two writers working on this.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said.

She stood there until he got in his car and drove away. She stepped inside and closed the door, fastened the lock and leaned back against the door.

Steven Devonshire had kissed her.

She shouldn’t put too much emphasis on it. It was
nothing more than a kiss from a man. A man she found interesting…oh, heck, who was she kidding? Steven had been the man that she’d been obsessed with for five long years.

After his comment and the massively embarrassing debacle at the
Business Journal,
she’d had no choice but to start over—and she had. Now she was focused on work and on herself. And her little habit of following Steven—almost cyber stalking him—had to stop. She’d kept tabs on him, hoping that someday their paths would cross again and she’d come out the victor. But tonight had shown her that she still had weaknesses as far as he was concerned.

No matter how much she’d read about him, she was just starting to realize that she didn’t know everything about the man. The stuff she’d read barely scratched the surface of him. Words like
intense
conjured an image of a certain kind of man and Steven was so much more in real life.

And he’d kissed her.

“Stop building dreams,” she warned herself. She walked through her house, kicking off her heels as she went along. Her mother hated that habit, but Ainsley always left a trail of shoes near her front door.

In her tiny kitchen, she opened her liquor cabinet, poured herself a splash of cognac and drank it. This was nothing.

She had her career and it was on track. She wasn’t about to let Steven derail her. It would be so easy to just give in to her own desires and start thinking in terms of a real relationship with him, but she couldn’t forget that behind that charming facade he was a pit bull.

Later on as she lay in her own bed staring at the ceiling, sleep eluded her. Instead, all she could think about was that she should have taken his hand and led him back
to her bed. She should never have let him walk out her front door. Because she knew tomorrow she was going to start doubting that a man as handsome and sexy as Steven Devonshire could really want a girl like her.

Two days later Steven found himself in an odd predicament. He was in the middle of a meeting with the Everest Mega Store team at the Leicester Square location when he caught a glimpse of a woman on the retail floor who looked like Ainsley. He knew Ainsley was in New York and it couldn’t be her, but he watched the woman for a minute just to make sure it wasn’t her.

She was an obsession for him. He should have bedded her the first night they were together. Instead, he had waited because he wanted to unravel her secrets. Now he was thinking, secrets be damned. He wanted her out of his mind so he could get back to normal.

He wasn’t the type of man to spend too much time thinking about a woman—any woman. But with Ainsley on his mind all the time he was starting to believe that something dangerous was happening to him.

“Mr. Devonshire?”

His secretary stood in the doorway. The woman was proving to be a good fit here.

“There is a woman downstairs asking for you,” Marta said.

Was it Ainsley? He would be very surprised if it was. But if this attraction he felt was two-way, maybe she had come back early.

“Did she give a name?”

“Dinah…I can’t recall her last name, sir.”

Dinah. That was what came of letting a woman
preoccupy his mind. “I’ll be downstairs and then back at the office. Can you finish up here, Marta?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take your lunch and then be back by two.”

He walked out of the office. Dinah, his executive vice president, waited in the middle of the retail floor where a display of classic 1970s musicians was displayed. There was a full-sized cardboard cutout of Tiffany Malone—Henry’s mother.

An earthy sexuality suffused her stare. Her hair was tousled and she wore a pair of skintight, faded denim jeans and a flowing top. It was a classic seventies photo, but Henry’s mother made it so much more. She looked iconic standing there.

He wondered how Malcolm could have been attracted to his mother after being with someone so overtly sexual. His mum exuded none of that. She was smart and classically beautiful, but compared to Tiffany Malone…she would definitely come in second.

“Thanks for getting here so quickly,” he said to Dinah.

“Not a problem. You promised me a nice bonus, so I wanted to jump in and get started on this project of yours,” she said.

“Just the attitude I like. Let’s discuss the details back at my office.”

“Okay, but why did you have me meet you here?” she asked.

“I want you to take a look around. This is our best-performing store. What are they doing here that is different?”

“You want me to go to all the stores?”

“Not all of them, but most of them. I want to know
if it’s the location or if it’s the product. Should we have something different in each location? I mean in addition to the music.”

“Very well,” Dinah said. They walked the store. He and Dinah made notes on what they saw and then they went back to the office to discuss their findings.

Steven stayed late at the office and worked. It hadn’t taken him too long to realize he could easily beat both of his half brothers in this competition. He’d had the financials from the record label and the airline sent to his office. Dinah had e-mailed her recommendations for the North American operation based on the data they had.

Someone should go to New York, he thought. They needed to see the operation there to make sure that their recommendations could be implemented.

He picked up the phone and dialed Dinah’s number.

“Yes, boss?”

“How do you feel about a trip to New York?”

“Like you are a mind reader. I was composing an e-mail to that effect when you called. I’d like to take Harry from finance with me.”

They discussed the details of her trip and he thought of Ainsley in Manhattan. Steven was pleased with Dinah’s plan of action. She’d check in daily, but he didn’t like to micromanage unless things were going poorly. He hired the best people so he didn’t have to do their jobs for him.

It was midnight when he was ready to leave the office. And he took a moment to log in to his personal e-mail account. He wanted Ainsley. And he wanted her to be thinking of him.

He wanted to disturb her workday the way she had his. Because although he’d been focused on work, she’d been like a shadow in his mind making him wonder what her
day was like. It was five in the morning in Manhattan and he wanted her first thought to be of him and their date.

He composed an e-mail to her. Taking his time with his words because he wanted every moment between now and the time they were face-to-face again to be a slow seduction.

I can’t stop thinking about you. The feel of your lips under mine and the scent of your perfume lingers in the air around me. Be safe in New York.

Steven

He could have written more, but he preferred to be subtle. He’d learned early in life that small gestures often had a deeper impact that big, flashy ones.

He hit Send and left the office. The streets in the financial district weren’t busy and he made his way easily though the traffic, which was a good thing because he found himself thinking of Ainsley next to him in his car.

The scent of her perfume hung in the air; it was almost as if she were there. He shook his head, hoping to dislodge the thoughts of her and find his peace again.

Once he got home and undressed, he lay naked in his king-size bed and groaned. He remembered the feel of her curvy body against his and the taste of her mouth under his.

Ainsley had a hard time adjusting to the time change. She’d gone to bed at six p.m. yesterday and gotten up at five. She had a lot of meetings to attend and would be getting as much work done as possible.

Freddie had accompanied her, since he was her right-
hand man. They had always worked together as a team, and even though she was the boss that relationship—the closeness of it—had remained.

He kept odd hours, though, and she doubted he’d be awake now. So she called room service and ordered a pot of coffee and fiber cereal and fruit for breakfast. She wanted to order the New York cheesecake with strawberry sauce and in the old days she would have, but she forced out the word
muesli
and hung up before she could give in and order something fattening.

It was silly, but she was constantly battling with food. She had talked to her leader about it when she’d been on Weight Watchers full time and Marianne had suggested that she used food to cope with life.

Ainsley knew that was true. She’d been overweight most of her life and then at college, when she’d been on her own, she’d found comfort in doughnuts and carbs. Before she knew it, she was obese. That had helped with her studies. Had made it so much easier to focus on her education because most men weren’t in the least bit interested in her.

It had been almost three months since she’d been tempted by a sweet like the cheesecake. And she knew that it was because of Steven.

He was making her feel unsure of herself, and she had always combated those feelings with food. It didn’t help matters that she knew if she were fat he probably wouldn’t have even noticed her. Ugh, this was making her crazy—
he
was making her crazy.

When she closed her eyes, she could still see his face as he’d kissed her. And she wanted to be a girl worthy of his attention. She wanted him not to be disappointed in her. But she was afraid that wouldn’t be the case.

She had lost all her weight by dieting, not by exercising. So even though she was slim now, she still had parts that weren’t as fit and toned as those of someone who hit the gym every day, twice a day.

What if he saw her naked and changed his mind about her? What if…

She’d never been this wishy-washy. Any other man she would just walk away from. But this was Steven. The man she’d always wanted.

She wasn’t going to let her doubts feed her food obsession. She wasn’t going to let her doubts overwhelm her or let her miss the opportunity to be with him. She wasn’t going to let her doubts control her. If she’d done that, she’d still be sitting in her apartment in Chicago having never left school.