Heidi Rice - Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition

To think she’d once thought that accent—crisp British vowels underlaid with a lazy, measured cadence that sounded oddly American—and that steely, impenetrable gaze were sexy. Somebody must have spiked her drink with Viagra that night. His voice didn’t sound compelling any more, just detached, while the icy blue-grey of his irises looked cold, not enigmatic.

All of which would explain why she was fighting the urge to shiver in the middle of August.

‘I’m sure that’s all very fascinating.’ She flicked her hair back. ‘But I’m afraid I’m terribly busy at the moment. And we only do one Eligible Bachelors issue a year. Maybe if you’re still eligible next year you could come back, and I’ll interview you then.’

Louisa congratulated herself on the deliberate insult. She knew how much he had despised being on her list. But she didn’t get as much satisfaction as she’d hoped. Instead of looking annoyed, he simply stared at her. Not by a single flicker of his eyelashes did he acknowledge the hit. Then, to her silent irritation, his mouth curved at the edges. He put his hand flat on her desk and leaned over her. The familiar citrus scent of the soap he used had her boot-heel tapping harder against the chair.

‘You want to have this discussion in public? That’s fine by me,’ he said, in a voice so low only she could hear it. ‘But then I’m not the one who works here.’

She didn’t have a clue what this was all about, but from his predatory smile she suspected the ‘discussion’ he intended to have would be personal. As much as she didn’t want to give him any quarter, at the same time she didn’t want to be humiliated in front of everyone she worked with.

‘All right, then, Mr Devereaux,’ she remarked loudly, swivelling to turn off her computer. ‘As luck would have it, I might be able to squeeze in an interview now. I could talk to our features editor—maybe she’ll consider putting it into next month’s issue. You’re obviously very keen to get your face out there, so the debutantes know what they’re missing.’

He straightened away from her. One muscle in his cheek twitched. She’d got her hit that time.

‘Which is not a lot,’ she continued under her breath, going for the jackpot.

She didn’t get it. The tension in his jaw disappeared and he smiled. ‘That’s very accommodating of you, Miss DiMarco,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’ll make it worth your while.’

Ignoring the thinly veiled threat, Louisa turned to Tracy, who was doing a very good impression of a goldfish. ‘I’ll finish the article later, Trace. Tell Pam I should still make the five o’clock deadline.’

‘You won’t be back this afternoon,’ Devereaux announced from behind her.

Louisa had swung round to correct him when Piers butted in. ‘Mr Devereaux has asked that you take the rest of the day off. I’ve already approved it.’

‘But I’ve got an article due today,’ Louisa said, stunned. Piers was usually a total Nazi about copy deadlines.

He waved the remark away, looking harassed. ‘Pam’s going to stick in an extra page of ads. Your article can wait till next month. If Mr Devereaux needs you with him today we’ll have to accommodate him.’

What? Since when did the managing editor of Blush magazine take orders from aristocratic bullies like Luke Devereaux?

Devereaux, who’d been listening to their conversation with apparent indifference, chose that moment to pick her bag up from the desk. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked impatiently.

‘Yes,’ Louisa replied, still disorientated. What was going on here?

He took her arm and tugged her out of her chair. ‘Let’s go,’ he said, steering her out of the office with his hand clamped on her elbow.

She wanted to yank her arm out of his grip. She yearned to tell him where he could stick his Attila the Hun act. But everyone was staring at them. And Louisa would rather die than cause a scene in front of her colleagues. She was forced to submit to being marched out of the office and down the stairs like a disobedient schoolchild under the command of the headmaster.

It didn’t stop her fuming every single step of the way.

By the time they’d walked out onto Camden High Street, Louisa’s temper had reached boiling point. She wrestled her arm out of Devereaux’s grasp. ‘How dare you do that? Who do you think you are?’

He stopped by a flashy convertible sports car, parked in a no-parking zone at the front of the office. Opening the door, he flung Louisa’s bag into the back seat. ‘Get in the car.’

‘I will not.’ Of all the cheek! He was treating her as if she were one of his minions. Well, he could think again. Piers might obey his orders, but she most certainly did not. She crossed her arms over her chest, determined not to budge an inch.

His eyebrow lifted. ‘Get in the car, Louisa,’ he said, his voice deadly calm. ‘Unless you want me to pick you up and put you in there.’

‘You wouldn’t dare.’

She had barely finished the sentence before she was hoisted off her feet. She had just enough time to gasp, and slap her fist against the solid wall of his chest, when she was dumped like a sack of potatoes into the passenger seat. The door slammed and the locks clicked shut. She shot up onto her knees, determined to climb right back out again. Unfortunately her movements were somewhat restricted by the skin-tight pencil skirt of her much-loved designer dress. She’d barely wriggled it up past her knees when the car peeled away from the kerb and she was thrown back against the seat.

‘Put your belt on before you get hurt,’ he shouted above the engine noise.

‘Let me out. This is kidnapping!’ The words came out on an outraged squeak, which would have been embarrassing if she hadn’t been in a state of shock.

Handling the steering wheel with one hand, he reached across her with the other and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of the glove compartment. ‘Stop being melodramatic,’ he said, not even sparing her a glance as he put the glasses on.

‘Me-lo-dra…!’ She sputtered to a stop. No one but her father had ever treated her with such high-handedness. And she’d put a stop to that when she was a teenager. She certainly wasn’t going to put up with it now. ‘How dare you?’

He slowed the car to stop at a traffic light and turned to her, an annoyingly assured smile on his face. ‘I think we’ve already established that I would dare. Now, if you want we can have another tussle—which you won’t win,’ he added with complete certainty. ‘Or you can do what you’re told and save a little of your precious dignity.’

Before she could think of a pithy enough reply, he’d shifted into First and accelerated across the intersection.

Drat, she’d missed her chance to leap out.

‘Put your belt on.’ He repeated the words as he shot up a side street, narrowly missing some ambling pedestrians.

Grudgingly she put the belt on—not quite angry enough yet to get killed for the sake of her pride. He’d have to stop eventually, and then she’d let him have it. Until then she’d give him the silent treatment.

That plan worked for about five minutes. But after they’d wound their way through the back streets of Camden, sped down the wide tree-lined outer circle of Regent’s Park and crossed Euston Road into Bloomsbury, her curiosity had got the better of her.

‘Where exactly are we going? If lowly little me is allowed to ask, that is.’

The quick smile he flashed suggested he found her sarcasm amusing. ‘Lowly? You?’

She didn’t dignify that with a reply. ‘I have a right to know where you’re taking me.’ Forget sarcasm—he obviously didn’t have the intelligence to process it.

He made one more turn, braked, and then backed into a parking space outside a six-storey Georgian terraced house. He switched off the engine and, slinging his arm over the steering wheel, angled his body towards her. His shoulders looked even broader than she remembered them in the expertly fitted linen jacket and white shirt. Intimidated despite herself, she had to force herself not to shrink back into the seat.