Tempting Aquisitions (3 page)

Nathan Cooper was giving off more than enough heat to keep her warm.

“This is much better. We can discuss things in a far more civilized manner.”

“If by
things
you mean your intention to pillage my company, I’m going to have to insist we talk about something else. I’m not discussing McBride Media without including my legal counsel.”

As if she’d said the words that let the genie out of the bottle, Nathan leaned forward, his shoulders again drawing her gaze. “That’s fine with me. I’ve no doubt we can discuss some far more interesting things than business.”

Yet again, she was struck by how easily he maneuvered her.

Although she hadn’t dated anyone seriously in quite some time, she’d always been able to hold her own. She appreciated the company of men, but she’d never felt this off-kilter. This off her game. Nathan Cooper unsettled her and she was damned if she could figure out why.

“You’re quite the smooth talker. I hope you understand that neither my sisters nor I will capitulate easily. McBride Media is our heritage. It’s in our blood, and it’s far more than just a job for any of us.” She took a sip of the wine, the rich flavor smooth and even on her tongue. “Can you say the same?”

…

Could he say the same?

Nathan swirled his wine, the heat of the fire growing uncomfortable along his right side.

Did he feel something deeper, more heartfelt, for how he spent his days beyond this all-consuming urge to conquer? She wasn’t so far off when she used the word
pillage
. Maybe that was the only thing in
his
blood. The ruthless need to overpower, to grind his enemies into the ground.

Keira McBride seemed like anything but the enemy.

Casually, he removed his tuxedo jacket, but it did little good. The heat of her gaze consumed him. And he was enjoying the sensation more than he’d thought possible. What was it about her? She was beautiful, yes, but it was more than that. Something in her called to him on a far more elemental level. He was a man who enjoyed women. Enjoyed sharing his time with them. But something about Keira made him think of more than sharing a few dinners and his bed afterward.

More?

A distinctly uncomfortable knot settled in his gut. He might be West Harrison’s illegitimate son, but he was his son all the same.

And his genes didn’t do
more
.

His mother had learned that the hard way. He’d seen how she suffered and he’d sworn he would never mislead a woman the same way.

“You’re making this far more personal than it needs to be, Keira.” He savored the feel of her name on his tongue. “I don’t take over companies for personal reasons.”

“Yes, but McBride Media is personal to me.” A surprising blend of anguish and determination painted her features in harsh lines. “And it’s personal to my sisters.”

“It’s a business, nothing more. Add on what I’m proposing to buy the company for and the three of you are poised to be very wealthy women.”

“McBride is about so much more than profit. Have you even read any of our magazines?” She leaned forward, those harsh lines changing as he saw the pride pour forth from her animated face. “Do you know we award scholarships every year to inner-city children who otherwise would have no way of going to college? That we contribute five percent of our profits to major health care initiatives like cancer, diabetes, and heart disease? Do you also know that several of our journalism pieces have been responsible for moving legislation through Congress to better insurance coverage or to give those without a voice public recognition. My grandfather’s legacy was that he believed in giving back, and my sisters and I take that same commitment very seriously.”

Nathan was surprised by her impassioned plea, but he refused to be taken off course. Lots of companies did noble things—hell, his own company gave money to charity—and it didn’t make him any less noble to want to take the company apart.

“Corporate charity is an expectation in this day and age.”

“I’m well aware of that. But through our editorial mission we also have a chance to shape public perception for good.” Keira hesitated for a moment—he saw the brief flash of indecisiveness in her gaze—before she shifted gears. “Your business interests have never been in the media community. It’s also common knowledge you purposely chose not to get involved in your father’s business. So why now? Why us?”

His stomach twisted at the mention of his father. West Harrison
had
offered him a job years ago. A job he’d thrown—with deliberate scorn—back in the son of a bitch’s face.

Even now, the memory burned in his gut. His father’s smug face, so convinced he was doing his bastard son a favor by offering him a position at one of his magazines. It had been a joke of a job, a figurehead position. All the while his brother, Booth—West’s legitimate heir—was being groomed for the head of MediaCorp. Ignoring the usual scorn that tinged the back of his throat with a cold, metallic taste when he thought of his half brother, Nathan focused on her question.

Keep the emotion out of it, Cooper. The way you always do.

“Just because I haven’t been focused on the media industry up until now doesn’t mean anything. I’ve built my business on opportunity. Your company has presented an opportunity, nothing more.”

She continued pressing her point, as if unwilling to drop the one thin thread she was clinging to. “It’s not that simple. You want something and I’d like to know what it is.”

“Despite our attempt to complicate them, most things are actually quite easy. Straightforward. Surprisingly uncomplicated.”

Frustrated with the focus on his possible motivations, he shifted gears. Leaning in toward her, his lips a breath away from hers, he whispered, “Speaking of things that are simple, you are right about one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“There
is
something I want.”

With determined movements, he took the glass from her hand and laid it on the small cocktail table next to their chairs. His focus unwavering, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. The rich tang of wine on her lips met his taste buds first before being quickly replaced with a taste that was uniquely Keira. She filled his palate with the most exceptional flavor, something indescribably fresh, like ripe summer cherries.

Hungry for more, his tongue sought entrance to her mouth and she tentatively opened for him, her hesitancy evident in the cautious grip she had on his shoulders as she leaned into him. Pressing the temporary advantage, he pulled her closer, one hand settling on her back as the other fit at the nape of her neck. Time spun out between them as if in slow motion, the world around them fading away as his entire existence focused on this moment.

With this woman.

A soft mewl sounded in her throat and he responded in kind, deepening the kiss. Their lips met, again and again, her lush sweetness reminding him once more of ripe fruit and the heated air of summer. He swept his tongue against hers, suddenly desperate for more of that taste—more of the flavor that was uniquely
her
—and he felt his control of the situation rapidly fleeing.

Something inside of him shifted as he dragged himself away from her.

What was this? And why was it suddenly impossible to see anything but her?

…

Keira wanted to fight the rising sensations, knew she should fight them, but she’d be damned if she could even tear her gaze from his lips.

“Why? H-How?” She sputtered to come up with some coherent thought when all she wanted to do was kiss him again. “Why did you do that?”

“
We
did that.” His voice was calm as he reached for her wineglass and handed it to her, their fingers brushing. The moment was fleeting, but she could have sworn his hand trembled oh so slightly, and she took some comfort in the fact that he wasn’t completely unaffected by their kiss.

He took a sip from his own glass. “It’s just like I said. It’s simple.”

Simple? It was anything but. “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means there’s something between us. Something very good. There’s no reason not to act on it. We’re healthy, single adults.”

“At war with each other.”

“One doesn’t have to affect the other.”

She resisted the urge to gasp, instead channeling the sudden charge of anger to focus her wayward thoughts. The man might be able to kiss like a pro, but he wasn’t about to use it—or her—to railroad her company. “There is no
one
. Or other, for that matter.”

“What’s the phrase?” He swirled the wine in his glass, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Make love, not war?”

“Seeing as how I’m not a peace-loving hippie or a woman who goes down without a fight, I don’t see how it applies.”

“We want each other. That’s enough.”

“I’m not a woman who makes it a habit of sleeping with my enemies.”

“Who do you make it a habit to sleep with?” The question was deceptively casual, but she didn’t miss the glaze of male possession that marked his features. The lines in his forehead stood out in sharp relief to his narrowed eyebrows, and his fingers dug into his thighs, turning the tips white.

“This conversation is over.” Reaching for her evening clutch, she stood. “I’ll see myself out. As you mentioned, my apartment is right around the corner.”

“I’ll walk you.”

“There’s no need.”

“You’re not walking home by yourself.”

“I’m awed by your sudden streak of chivalry, Nathan. Especially since, if I just interpreted the subtext of your last several comments appropriately, you seem to think it’s a no-brainer that I’d fall into your bed while you attempt to take over my company.”

“It’s not an attempt, Keira. For your company or your bed.”

“You’ll have neither.”

He smiled slowly and saluted her with his wineglass. “I’ll have both and we both know it.”

Chapter Three

“What happened to you last night? One minute I see you at the hotel bar and the next time I glance over, you’re being escorted from the ballroom by Nathan Cooper.”

Keira glanced up from where she tapped away on her laptop, unable to stop the frown Mayson’s words evoked. “Nothing happened. Or not much, anyway.”

“Not much?” Mayson’s eyes widened as she beelined her way to the chair opposite Keira’s desk. “You have details?”

“No,” she said. Then she amended herself with a quiet, “Yeah, well, sort of.”

Mayson was already reaching for the phone at the edge of the desk. Before Keira could blink, Camryn’s voice shot out of the speaker. “What?”

“Get in here. Now.”

“Mayse?”

“Yeah. It’s me and I’m in Keira’s office. Just like we thought, something happened last night, and I’m about to get details.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Keira frowned at the phone but resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at it. She turned toward her youngest sister. “Why are you making such a production out of this?”

“Was there lip action?”

Keira pressed together those very lips Nathan had plundered and refrained from answering.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Mayson said with a triumphant smile.

“What was a yes?” Camryn demanded from the doorway. She crossed the room as quickly as Mayson had—a feat even more impressive in her killer heels they’d all been coveting for weeks—and settled herself next to her sister. “Okay. I want to hear all of it.”

“He wants to sleep with me.”

Camryn frowned. “Well, yeah, duh, he’s a man.” She shot a dark look at Mayson. “You dragged me away from my office for the obvious?”

“Your spreadsheets can wait, oh geeky one.” Mayson leaned forward, her expression rapt with interest. “Something happened last night.”

Keira knew it was impossible to resist in the face of her sisters’ eager expectations, so she simply let out with it. “We kissed.”

“Where?”

“At the Commons. Around the street from the apartment.”

Camryn’s interest was evident as she leaned forward, her posture a match for Mayson’s. “How’d that happen?”

“I don’t know, really.” That, at least, was the truth. One minute they were arguing their positions and the next she was in his arms, being kissed breathless. “It just sort of happened.”

A small sigh escaped Camryn’s lips. “That’s the best kind.”

“It’s idiotic, irresponsible, and inconvenient.”

“Which is also the best kind of kissing,” Mayson said.

Keira smiled, even as she searched for the right words. “It’s more than that. He wants the company. This isn’t a joke or some whispered rumor skating its way through the business press. He’s targeted us and he’s not going away.”

She saw it the moment the teasing lights went out of both her sisters’ eyes. Camryn was the first to speak. “If he thinks he can romance it out from underneath you, the jerk is in for a surprise.”

Although that seemed like the most obvious answer for his sudden, seductive interest—and one she’d spent half the night turning over in her mind—it didn’t fit. Didn’t feel right. Nathan Cooper might be a lot of things—ruthless sitting at the top of the heap—but his ardor hadn’t seemed faked. In fact, it had seemed as if it had sucker punched him as cleanly as it had her.

“It’s not that.” Keira shook her head, searching for the right words to describe what she was feeling. “I can’t explain it, but one was completely disconnected from the other.”

“I didn’t mean that nearly as harshly as it sounded,” Camryn said. “Because you’re completely wonderful. But what do you mean, disconnected?”

“He thinks he can have a fling with me and a go at the company. Like I’m somehow separate from McBride Media.”

“You are separate, K.” Mayson waved a hand among all three of them. “We all are. Just because our last name’s on the company doesn’t mean we’re not individuals. We’re women first.”

“Yes, but his blithe assumption he can have both is infuriating.”

“He’s a powerful man borne of a powerful man.” Before either of them could argue with Mayson’s point, she said, “Please understand, I’m not excusing it, but it is in his blood.”

“That’s an excellent point. Sally and I were going over the financials again this morning and he’s following every takeover trick in the book.” Camryn began ticking points off on her fingers. “Major stock purchase followed by an SEC filing, wooing our other major investors—even that salvo in the
Financial
Journal
had the distinct purpose of getting investors riled up. Nathan Cooper knows what he’s doing.”

“So why muddy that with attraction? He can’t be blind enough to think I’m not going to take this personally.” Keira dropped her head in her hands, the sheer stupidity of her actions the night before stabbing daggers at the base of her skull.

Mayson spoke first. “Maybe because he really is attracted to you.”

Keira turned over her sisters’ words long after they’d left to return to their offices. Mayson’s words, in particular, were more than apt. Nathan Cooper was a powerful man.

A powerful man who was no doubt very used to getting his way in all things.

With a sudden curiosity, she pulled up a search engine and typed in a few key words. An endless string of pages came up, all neatly catalogued around the life and times of West Harrison. She refined the query to consolidate a search for both West and Nathan and was still surprised to see more than one hundred pages of results.

When she clicked on the first one that seemed of interest, a gossip column popped up. This particular story dealt with a fund-raiser the previous spring for a children’s charity. Both father and son were attendees, and the columnist seemed almost gleeful that the two men hadn’t spoken.

Keira read through a few more stories, the underlying theme strangely consistent. Father and son kept up a cool facade of politeness with each other in public, but no one who was really looking missed the barely veiled disdain running between them. No wonder Nathan thought emotions could be separated as easily as flipping a switch. He clearly wasn’t raised with any. At least not by his father.

Keira’s thoughts drifted to the evening before, when she’d questioned him on his interest in pursuing a media company. He’d hidden it well and if she hadn’t been looking for it, she’d likely have missed it. But Nathan wasn’t unaffected by the mention of West Harrison. Those vivid blue eyes had dulled as their discussion turned to his father and his entire demeanor had stiffened, like a dog circling for battle.

Some scars are hard to hide no matter how hard we try
, she mused as she clicked on one more article of interest. As she scrolled through the article that covered pretty much the same ground as the others, her phone buzzed.

“Yes, Stacy.”

“The lobby just rang. A Mister Nathan Cooper would like to see you.”

The urge to send him away or pretend she wasn’t there was strong, but Keira knew it would only stave off the inevitable. “Thanks, Stacy. Send him up.”

Keira clicked out of the article and turned off the search program. If she needed any ammunition to wage war on Nathan, understanding his relationship with his father was surely at the heart of the matter.

The real question was how to use that to her advantage.

…

Nathan rode the sleek elevator to the upper echelons of the McBride empire. He hadn’t been surprised when the security guard in the lobby directed him to the top floor of the building. Where else would the princess of the empire live?

He’d debated coming in the first place, trying to think through the best way to keep her off guard, but in the end he’d decided the slight olive branch of coming into her territory was quickly outweighed by the surprise nature of the attack. He knew legal would get involved soon, per her promise the night before as much as from the fact that legal
always
got involved, but for the next few days it was still just the two of them.

Negotiating. For her company, of course. But it was negotiation for her bed where his interests were far more…urgent.

As the numbers continued to rise on the elevator’s digital panel, his anticipation rose as well. What was it about this woman? And why had she gripped him with this sudden madness that had her filling his thoughts and crowding out everything else?

Images of her naked and in his arms had kept him awake most of the night, warring with the heated remembrance of kissing her lush lips. Plundering her mouth and the rich, sweet wine taste of her. His body tightened at the mere thought of her, and he shifted his feet as the tension that had gripped him all night assailed him again. He needed to focus on the task at hand. Whatever fire had been stoked between them the evening before needed to stay firmly in the background. It was time to initiate phase two of his battle for her company. And this intense, consuming need for her couldn’t stand in the way of that.

He wouldn’t let it.

The elevator stopped on the fortieth floor and, satisfied he’d put this crazy attraction for her firmly in its place, he stepped into the plush inner sanctum of McBride Media. It was time to storm the castle.

After braving the speculative looks of her assistant as she took his coat and escorted him down the hall, he smiled to himself while running the gauntlet toward Keira’s office. Gazes rose over laptops as the various occupants of the offices he passed glanced up at him, recognition hitting each face in turn. Within moments, he knew the grapevine would be humming that the enemy had breached the inner sanctum.

She sat behind a sleek desk, the cherry wood fashioned into a table with uniquely angled legs that managed to give the piece a very contemporary yet classic look. Just like Keira. Other than a small stack of folders, a thin laptop, and a phone, the desk was neat. Elegant. Refined. Also just like Keira.

She rose and moved toward him, her hand extended and her polite smile firmly planted. As their hands met, he didn’t miss the wariness that peeked through the dark brown of her eyes. “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Cooper.”

“Thank you for making the time.”

She gave brief instructions to her assistant to bring in a coffee service before gesturing him to a chair opposite her desk. He didn’t miss the fact that she had a small meeting table across the room that she
didn’t
invite him to sit at. He admired the move and the business sense that went with it. A seat at that table would suggest they were equals. The two of them on opposite sides of her desk suggested she was in control.

For now
, he reassured himself.

Only for now.

Once settled in her chair, she folded her hands on the desktop and offered him a smile. It was bland and well-mannered, as if she could erase what had happened between them the night before if she simply shot enough politeness in his direction. “I have to admit, I’m surprised by your visit. I assumed the next steps would go through our lawyers.”

“I wanted to see you again. Get a feel for the company. Talk to you about what you see as McBride’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Keira waved her assistant in with the coffee and held her comments until the woman had again departed from the room after setting down two steaming mugs. “I can’t see how there would be any circumstance in which I’d give you information that would help you take over my company. In fact, I’m honestly surprised someone of your business experience would even suggest it.”

“I’m going to take over the company and I’d like to build on what you’ve already created. I think we got off to a poor start. I have no intention of letting go of you or your sisters once the deal is finalized. I need good people at the top and the three of you are more than adept.”

“Yes, we are.” She reached for her coffee, the same wary gaze she’d worn the evening before staring back at him.

“And you don’t believe I know that?”

“I don’t claim to know what you believe, Mr. Cooper.”

He couldn’t say what it was about her expression that chafed, but he didn’t find the same satisfaction he’d felt in deals past when an opponent had stared at him with a cautious and distrustful gaze. That expression in Keira’s warm chocolate-brown eyes was almost…embarrassing? And it wasn’t because she was a woman, he told himself. He couldn’t care less who sat across from him in a business negotiation. It was the deal that mattered.

Or it
had
always mattered. Before. So what was different now? And why did he see something else hovering in the depths of that mistrustful gaze?

Like pity.

Tamping down an unexpected tide of anger, Nathan reached for his mug, his movements deliberate.

“I think you’ve done some amazing things with the company. I have no intention of changing that.”

“I’m the group publisher. I run the organization. Surely in your vision of world domination, you don’t see my continuing in that role as a viable option.”

“Why not? I’m sure there are changes I’d like to make. Your decision, for example, to continue publishing
Home and Family
makes no sense.”

“It’s our flagship. And it’s far more profitable than the business and advertising presses would like to believe.”

He shrugged, unwilling to believe his intel on the company was flawed. “Then it’s a recent change.”

Her eyes went wide with mock innocence as she stared at him over the rim of her coffee cup. “Or maybe you need to admit you don’t know as much about the media business as you think you do.”

“Are you willing to bet your company on that, princess?”

“I’m not interested in betting anything. As I’ve tried to explain to you, McBride Media is not for sale.”

“You should have thought about that before you made the company public.”

“My father did that.”

Nathan immediately keyed in on the slight hitch in her voice as another few pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “And you’ve spent your life cleaning up Daddy’s mistakes, haven’t you?”

If he expected his words to crush her, he was in for some serious disappointment. Instead, her spine stiffened even further while her voice took on a harder edge as she skated dangerously close to the edge of well-mannered propriety.