Ally Blake - Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue

‘Would you do me a favour?’

Dylan’s deep voice rolled over her. ‘You certainly aren’t backward about asking for what you want—I’ll give you that.’

‘I need you to get the key for my cuffs.’

After a long, slow pause he said, ‘The key?’

She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. ‘It’s my top right breast pocket. I can’t reach it. So, unless you do want me to become a permanent fixture…’

The rest of her words dried up in her throat and her eyes flung open.

It seemed she hadn’t had to ask twice. Dylan’s hand was already sliding into the pocket, his fingertips brushing against the soft cotton over her bra—just slowly enough so that a ripple of goosebumps sprang up all over her body, and just fast enough so that she couldn’t accuse him of taking advantage.

All too soon he held up the key. ‘This the one you’re after?’

She hoped to God it was. If he made another foray in there she didn’t know what she might do.

When Ally Blakewas a little girl she made a wish that when she turned twenty-six she would marry an Italian two years older than her. After it actually came true, she realised she was onto something with these wish things. So, next she wished that she could make a living spending her days in her pyjamas, eating M&Ms and drinking scads of coffee while turning her formative experiences of wallowing in teenage crushes and romantic movies into creating love stories of her own. The fact that she is now able to spend her spare time searching the internet for pictures of handsome guys for research purposes is merely a bonus!

Come along and visit her website at www.allyblake.com

Ally Blake also writes for the Mills & Boon® Romance series!

Recent books by the same author:

A NIGHT WITH THE SOCIETY PLAYBOY

THE MAGNATE’S INDECENT PROPOSAL

Mills & Boon® Romance:

DATING THE REBEL TYCOON

Dear Reader

After setting most of my books in the cool, elegant, cosmopolitan southern Australian city of Melbourne, in which I now live, when the idea for this story popped into my head I had no choice but to set it in the city in which I grew up.

Brisbane is a city with a young heart. When I think of her I see a gleaming city skyline, sprawling suburbs, the tight curves of her meandering river, lush green hills, warm golden beaches a stone’s throw away, and most of all the kind of stunning year-round weather other cities envy. They don’t say she’s beautiful one day and perfect the next for nothing!

The funny thing is, living away from a place for nearly a decade means things change—favourite restaurants have closed down, shopping precincts that were once cool are now passé , and even street names have disappeared into the cavernous blur that is my memory. But that has given me the chance to rediscover Brisbane in a new way—and more great excuses to head on up to visit my gorgeous family.

And now that I’ve started writing about the fabulous and formidable Kelly family, and their place in the Brisbane landscape, I’m not sure where I’m going to stop! Dylan’s brothers and sisters, and their friends, have all clamoured to the surface of my subconscious, begging for stories of their own.

My only concern is who will be the next to fall in love?

Ally

www.allyblake.com

BY

ALLY BLAKE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To beautiful, sunny Brisbane.

The city which gave me

my first crush, first kiss, and first love.

CHAPTER ONE

‘MR KELLY?’

Dylan looked up from his corner office desk on the thirtieth floor of Kelly Tower to find his assistant, Eric, practically quivering in the doorway. ‘Shoot.’

Eric’s voice tremored as he tried to say, ‘I… There’s… I’m not sure I quite know how to…’

Whistling a breath through the smallest gap between his lips, Dylan pushed back his chair and leant his chin upon steepled fingers. ‘Take a breath. Visualise your happy place. Count to ten. Whatever it takes. Just remember that I am a very busy, very important man and get to the point.’

Eric did as he was told, so quickly Dylan thought the kid might hyperventilate. But he managed to say, ‘I have to get onto your computer for a sec.’

‘Go for your life.’ Dylan pushed his chair back to give the guy room.

Eric slid into place, his fingers flying over the keyboard with the speed of a kid born with a laptop attached to his thighs. ‘A friend of mine works for an online news mag and he messaged me to say I had to see something. This address ought to give us a direct feed.’

Dylan’s cheek twitched. ‘Seriously, kid, if you’ve come in here all a fluster because some blog has footage of me feeding spaghetti and meatballs to that nifty little Olympic diver I met in Luxembourg last week…’

His next words froze on his tongue and he slid his chair back beneath his desk with such speed Eric had to leap out of the way.

The monitor was not in fact showing any footage of him. Or the nifty little Olympian. Or meatballs, for that matter.

Dylan didn’t even have the chance to be the slightest bit ashamed of his own self-absorption as the crystal clear digital footage brought his raison d’être , the family business he championed day in day out, back to the forefront of his mind with a wallop.

The half-acre forecourt keeping Kelly Tower clear of the maddening CBD crowds that traversed Brisbane’s hectic George Street had in its north corner a twenty-foot-high, silver, zigzag sculpture—symbolising the impressive escalation of fortune that securing representation with the Kelly Investment Group ensured.

The sculpture usually stood proud and alone bar a few stray pigeons brave enough to cling to its slick diagonal bars. Today it had been taken over by camera crews and reporters with mini-sound recorders and logo-labelled mikes. That kind of excitement had encouraged a crowd of ten times as many interested onlookers.

No wonder.

From what he could make out through the sudden ache descending upon his head, the excitement in the reporter’s voice, and Eric wheezing in the doorway, in some kind of crazy protest a woman had handcuffed herself to the zig. Or was it the zag?

Dylan had nothing against handcuffs per se. They had their place in the zeitgeist of the single man. Just not in the middle of a busy workday, not in front of his building, and not when as the head of Media Relations it was his job to make the fact that a crazy person had picked that particular statue to attach her daft self seem less interesting than it certainly was.

The crowd parted, and Eric’s friend’s camera slipped into the gap, giving Dylan a better look at the ruination of his afternoon.

She was fair skinned, dark-eyed, with dark wavy hair made all the more interesting by the fact she kept having to shake its wind-mussed length out of her face. A floral top cinched and flowed in all the right places, telling tales of the kinds of curves and hollows that could distract a weaker-willed man. Not to mention the white calf-length trousers into which her second-glance-worthy bottom had been poured, or the pair of the most insanely high-heeled hot pink sandals…