Anna Cleary - Taken By The Maverick Millionaire

In one heart-stopping stride he was across the room to where she stood. ‘Here, give me that.’ He snatched the bag from her shoulder, and her alarmed internal organs all dropped back into their niches. ‘Which rag do you write for?’ he growled, making a ruthless search of the compartments. He found her phone and coolly slid it into his jacket pocket, then his lip curled in triumph as he pounced on her cassette recorder.

‘No, I don’t work for you,’ she rejoined, watching with some pleasure as his lean, smooth fingers rewound the tape and played it back without finding a whisper of illegal conversation. ‘I’m not guilty of churning out any of that cheap Russell trash, thank you. I write for a quality paper. The Clarion. ’

He gave a snort of cynical laughter. ‘Quality? The Clarion ?’ He put the recorder back in her purse and took out her pass. ‘What’s your excuse for not wearing this? I’d sack you for that alone if you worked for me.’

‘It spoiled the line of my jacket.’

‘What?’ His lip curled with such incredulous contempt that she was spurred to anger herself. A man like him would never know the challenges a woman faced fitting in with the society crowd.

He thrust the bag back at her. ‘Let me impress on you, Miss Summerfield,’ he said, enunciating each syllable with punishing precision, ‘anything you did happen to hear is completely off the record. Don’t even think of trying to use it.’ He towered over her in such an intimidating stance that it took all her nerve to hold his gaze. ‘Though you did say, didn’t you,’ he added, his eyes narrowing, ‘you didn’t hear anything?’ He scoured her face. ‘How true is that?’

Maybe it was the excess of testosterone in the air, but somehow her feminine spirit seemed creatively inspired.

‘Nearly true,’ she assured him, hoisting her bag to her shoulder. She gazed at him with smiling innocence. ‘Unless you count that bit about the merger. But don’t you worry. I don’t know much at all about share prices and the Stock Exchange.’

It was like kerosene to the bonfire. He hissed in a long searing breath, and stood stock still. Then he began to advance on her, his grey eyes glinting through the screen of his black lashes. ‘What else?’ he murmured, his deep, rich voice smooth with menace. ‘What else did you hear?’

Her heart revved up to an insane degree, but there was a crazy exhilaration in taunting him that drove her on. She gave a breezy little shrug and neatly eluded his grasp, sashaying over to the table to take a look at his notes.

‘Nothing else,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘Oh, except the part about Ms West’s divorce. Something about deceiving the courts so she can rip off her husband in the division of property, et cetera. It was all really too complicated for me to take in.’ She shuffled through the pages and slanted him a mocking glance. ‘And then there was that bit about how you have to hire a woman.’ She gave an amused laugh.

He stared at her for seconds, his eyes narrowed in calculation, then strolled across and tweaked the pages from her grasp. In a visible change of tack, he perched casually on the edge of the table, quite close to where she stood.

Too close for comfort.

‘Now, how does a female body,’ he drawled, cool amusement in his deep, dark voice as he made a slow, appreciative appraisal of her from head to toe, ‘so clearly designed for an angel, come to house such a teasing little devil?’

In spite of herself her blood heat rose. She told herself she was impervious to flattery. Her body wasn’t like an angel’s, unless it was a fallen angel that had consumed one chocolate too many. She made an effort to keep her voice under control. ‘I’m—just doing my job.’

‘Now, now, Cate.’ His mouth edged up in a smile. It gleamed in his grey gaze and lit his harsh, sardonic face with such warmth, it was impossible to believe she’d not seen at once how handsome he was. ‘You know you can’t write a word of it. Think of your code of ethics. Wasn’t it the Clarion who invented it?’

He was all suave reason and charm. She knew he was turning on the seduction, but it worked. All the air was sucked from her lungs and her heart started an erratic thumping.

‘The code, yes,’ she agreed, breathless. ‘We do, we do—adhere to it. Religiously. Although if something’s in the national interest—I’m sure Harry would think that a merger between Russell’s and the West Corporation—’

‘Won’t happen if you publish it.’ He still smiled, but the warmth vanished. ‘Olivia will pull out. Then I’ll sue you for a billion and take your Clarion to the cleaners.’

The cold menace in the words helped her to pull herself together. She fished in her bag for a notebook. ‘That sounds like a threat, Mr Russell.’ She challenged him with her eyes. ‘Hang on, I’ll just write it down.’

Danger flashed in his grey irises like a lightning strike. ‘Take care, sweetheart. This is not the day to be playing games with someone who can ruin you.’ He gestured at her accusingly. ‘Consider your position. Here you are, caught red- handed, listening in on a conversation in which some highly sensitive information is being discussed. You’ve deliberately concealed your press pass—’

She gave a deep sigh. ‘I explained that.’ Resigning herself, she capitulated, feeling in her bag for the pass, then lifting up the edge of her jacket while she clamped it on. ‘See? Ruins it.’

His eyes were fastened to her waist. He must have only seen the merest fragment of bare skin over her ribs before she dropped the hem back, but his pupils dilated and she saw his heavy black lashes give an almost imperceptible flicker. He raised his darkened gaze to hers.

Somehow she couldn’t look away. The air tautened and she felt her mouth dry. She pulled the pass off and patted down the hem several unneccessary times, conscious of her heart’s sudden mad racketing.

A priest’s dark figure loomed in the doorway, and they both started. A gang of small, fresh-faced boys crowding in behind him told her that the choir had arrived. She became fully conscious then of something she’d had at the edge of her awareness for some time, but had been too intensely absorbed in Tom Russell to notice.

The organ was playing, and there was a growing swell of voices.

The church was filling up.

‘I’d—I’d better go,’ she said, making an abrupt move towards the door, looking for a way through the milling boys. ‘I don’t want to miss my spot in the church.’

‘No, you don’t.’ Tom Russell sprang to his feet and caught her elbow. ‘I’m not letting you out of my sight.’

Visions of Mike, outside, fuming, assailed her. ‘But—I have to do my job—’

His hand closed around her wrist in a deceptively light grip. ‘Until I decide what to do with you, sweetheart,’ he said softly,

‘you’re with me.’

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