Hero(31)
Author: Samantha Young

Why did he have to be so beautiful?

“You’re early,” he complained.

He shifted uncomfortably and a wave of satisfaction rolled over me. So he wasn’t completely unaffected at the thought of being practically naked in a room alone with me. I decided to fan the flames. Very deliberately I let my eyes roam over him.

I wanted to lick him.

Yearning shot through me.

When my eyes returned to his I was gratified to find an answering heat in them.

“You’re early too.” My voice was husky from my wicked thoughts.

He caught my tone and his eyes dipped to my mouth.

Feeling smug, I gave him my back and very deliberately bent over his desk so I could place his latte by his computer. “Your coffee,” I said, feeling the heat of his gaze singeing my ass. Without looking back I stood away from the desk and headed toward the door.

“Alexa,” he said in warning.

I half turned, my eyes round with mock innocence. I couldn’t maintain it when I saw that he was aroused under his towel.

My lower belly flipped in response, followed by a burst of tingles between my legs.

“Quit it,” he demanded.

“I’m not doing anything. After all …” I grinned wickedly, my gaze dropping pointedly to his hard-on. “I’m out of your system, right?”

Caine shot me a filthy look but didn’t say anything. What could he say? Having successfully tormented him, I smirked and left him alone in his office. As soon as I closed the door behind me, I sank against it. My legs were trembling.

I had to get myself together.

That took me a while, considering that I spent the next thirty minutes fantasizing a different ending to that scene—it mostly consisted in Caine screwing me hard against his office door.

I wanted the two weeks’ notice to be over. Now.

Perhaps I should have walked out.

But then … then he’d know he had really gotten to me and I had to leave this situation behind with at least some of my pride intact.

“Alexa, come into my office, please,” Caine’s voice came over the speakerphone a few hours later. Maybe he was going to ask me to leave. That way I could get out of this without it looking like I was the one who had caved.

I sighed. I guessed that was wishful thinking, and as soon as I got inside his office I knew I was right.

“You want us to what?” I croaked in disbelief.

“Business trip,” he repeated impatiently. “Seattle. This Thursday. I wouldn’t normally go, but they’ve asked to speak to me in person. I need you with me.”

“Do you think the two of us going on a business trip together is wise?”

Caine replied with a cool look. “I’m not a teenager, Alexa. Whatever you think you might have won this morning, you’re wrong. No woman leads me around by my dick. I promise you I can manage to keep my hands off you if that’s what you’re asking.”

Why was I attracted to this jackass again?

I grimaced. He didn’t know it, but he’d just made it a whole lot easier for me to walk away from him at the end of the two weeks.

“Can you handle it?”

“Oh, trust me,” I said, “being around you right now is like a constant cold shower.”

His lips pinched with annoyance. “I’ve e-mailed you the details. I’ll need you to arrange flights and accommodation.”

“Done.” I walked out calmly and just as calmly settled back into my seat.

That was when the calmness left me.

Seattle? With Caine? In a hotel?

I’d either kill him or screw him again.

“Fuck.”

“Alexa, the speakerphone is on,” Caine’s amused voice sounded from my desk.

Oh, balls.

One of us was definitely not making it out of Seattle in one piece.

CHAPTER 12

Caine took it easy on me for the next few days. He didn’t have me running around doing crappy personal errands. It was his way of extending his hand in a truce and I offered him my hand in return by curbing my smart-ass responses to his requests.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t battling a kaleidoscope of butterflies swarming in my belly on Thursday morning. I’d barely slept and I was stumbling around my apartment trying to make sure I had everything I needed in my overnight bag.

I was just chugging a huge mug of coffee when I saw the black street car pull up outside my building. My mug clattered to the counter as I watched the driver open the back passenger door. Caine stepped out and stared up at the building with a pensive mien. I eyed him hungrily.

He hadn’t shaved in a few days and it looked good on him.

As did the four-thousand-dollar Savile Row suit he’d had commissioned along with a number of others while he was in London. It was a slim fit. It was stylish. It was pure class. And the man wearing it looked like pure class too. Sometimes, when he wasn’t being a jackass, he even was pure class.

I wrenched my gaze from his as he started making his way up the front stoop. My overnight bag was on the couch spilling open.

Toiletries. I needed my toiletries.

My doorbell rang and for one confused moment I stood there wondering how on earth Caine had gotten into the building. I hurried to the door and threw it open with the question on my face.

“Your neighbor let me in,” he explained immediately.

I frowned at my neighbor’s lack of thought to security. “You could be a serial killer.”

He shrugged and stepped forward, forcing me to move back to allow him inside. “I guess I don’t look like one.”

“It was Evelyn who let you in, right?” She was a single career woman much like myself except she was man-crazy and had a different one sneaking out of her apartment every weekend.

“Young, blond?”

I nodded in consternation. “She’s going to get me murdered in my sleep one of these days.”

Caine just nodded absentmindedly and strode into the center of the open living area. He gazed around, taking absolutely everything in.

“I’ll, uh … just be a moment.” I disappeared into the bathroom, grabbing my toiletries bag and my cell phone charger from the side of my bed. When I returned to the living room, Caine was standing in front of one of my windows. I stuffed my things into my overnight bag and zipped it up.

While I did this, Caine turned around, his eyes traveling up to the ceiling and down and then into the kitchen.

Bemused by his curiosity, I said, “What is it?”

He looked back at me. “This is where you live.”

I couldn’t work out his tone or what he meant by the statement, so I just sighed and grabbed my bag. “I’m ready to go.”