Tori Carrington - Taken

“Here?”

“No. He’d like you to go up to his office. Just ring his assistant when you’re ready so she can signal the elevator.”

Seline sighed. “Thanks, Rita.”

Signal the elevator .

Oh, she’d known the layout of the building like the back of her hand before she’d ever set foot in it. Architectural plans were easy enough to access. But she’d never had reason to venture into Ryder Blackwell’s professional domain. And she didn’t want a reason to now. Not with such a short time remaining before a punch of a button would transfer a significant amount from Blackwell & Blackwell’s business accounts into a series of dummy front accounts and eventually make its way, untraceably, into her own.

She could pretend she hadn’t got the message. Blame the miscommunication on Rita. After all, who she was—or rather wasn’t—and why she was really here would become painfully obvious soon enough.

She swiveled restlessly in her chair. This was exactly the reason she’d established a strict set of rules to work by. And today the breaking of one of them had snowballed into the breaking of Golden Rule Number 1: Stay under the radar of the higher-ups.

And in this con they didn’t come any higher than Ryder Blackwell.

She clicked through the documents on her computer, then made a couple of notes. There was no way in hell she was going up to that office.

Seline remembered his sexy grin and her panties grew tighter. A reaction that had nothing to do with July sunshine and fast cars, and everything to do with sex and a great candidate to have some with.

2

“UH OH. I know that look.”

Ryder turned his leather chair from the clear view he had of the Empire State Building from the forty-fifth floor of the building his company owned. He considered his second-in-command and longtime best friend, John Coleman. “What look?”

Coleman sat back in the righthand guest chair and gave him a wry expression of his own. “That one that says you’re about to do something dangerous. Or stupid. Or both.”

Ryder grinned, not so much at his friend, but at himself. “I don’t know whether I should take offense or be amused.”

“Oh, God. You are about to do something stupid and dangerous, aren’t you?”

“When have I ever done something stupidly dangerous?”

“Oh, how about that impromptu trip to Alaska two months ago to drop from a helicopter and snowboard down some virgin mountain when we had a meeting to close the deal with Trump? Or the month before that when you disappeared so you could hike up the side of the Montserrat volcano before it was due to erupt?”

“You call that dangerous?”

“I definitely call that dangerous.”

Ryder leaned forward in his chair. “That’s because risk to you is whether or not to wear the pink tie your new wife gave you for Valentine’s Day.”

“Yes, well, someone’s got to keep their wits about them around here.”

Ryder’s mind wandered to the clock. Four-thirty.

“So what are you considering now?”

“What?”

“Isn’t there a hurricane due to hit Florida’s east coast? Are you having your surfboard waxed?”

“Nothing quite so unimaginative.”

“But you are considering something.”

Ryder picked up his pen and tapped it on his desk. “Maybe.”

It all depended on one very inscrutable Carol Lambert.

Granted, he’d been privileged to enjoy the company of a lot of women in his life. And he knew that outer wrappings often were deceiving. There was the raunchy pop star he’d gone out with who had pretended to be an exhibitionist sex kitten in public, but the minute he got her home she’d folded in on herself then passed out from the stress of having to put on such an act all night. He recalled having waited around until morning in that case, convinced the sex—when he got it—would be worth it. But it hadn’t been. One-on-one she’d been shy and hesitant, the exact opposite of the image she portrayed for everyone else.

Then there was the icy socialite he’d briefly—very briefly—considered marriage material. She headed the right charities, boasted the right pedigrees and was the perfect hostess of myriad social events. But behind closed doors she was a borderline nymphomaniac. She had nearly shredded his back with her nails and broken his eardrums with her loud and X-rated demands of what she wanted him to do to her for what had to be a record-breaking ten hours straight.

It had been the one and only time that Ryder had been more preoccupied with whether he’d survive what his sex partner might do to him than with the sex itself.

Then there was Carol Lambert.

He leaned back in his chair, ignoring his friend.

There was something about Carol. Something different. The first thing being that the hot lady who’d challenged him to race didn’t seem to fit her name, forget the person she turned into the minute she entered the front doors of Blackwell & Blackwell. He’d even consulted her employment records to try to solve the mystery, but nothing from her file had helped him to reconcile the two women with whom he was acquainted. Acquainted being the operative word.

And something he hoped to upgrade to having intimate knowledge of when she came to his office that afternoon.

“Should I call legal and make sure your insurance policies are up to date?” Coleman asked.

“What insurance policies?”

Coleman stared at him.

Ryder chuckled and got to his feet. “Go home to that pretty wife of yours, John, and stop being such a worrywart. You sound like a nagging mother.” He smacked his hand against his friend’s back on their way toward the door.

“Promise me you won’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Ryder raised a brow.

John sighed. “Okay, then. Promise you’ll be careful.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Why doesn’t that make me feel any better?”

The minute John was on his way down the hall to his own office, Ryder’s secretary approached.

“There were three calls for you while you were occupied.” She said, offered up the message slips.

“Hold on to them, Mrs. Newman. I’ve got a meeting to make.”

“Meeting?” she asked his departing back. “I have no meeting on your agenda.”

Ryder grinned at her as he turned inside the elevator then pressed the button for the floor he wanted. “It just came up.”

IT TOOK a bit of doing, but Seline managed to push everything up by twelve hours. Which meant that the minute she stepped out of her office, the con would be done and she would be free to shuck Carol Lambert’s conservative suits and identity for good.

It also meant that her personal accounts would be that much fatter, while Blackwell & Blackwell’s accounts would be that much slimmer.

And, ultimately, it meant that she could duck out before anyone would miss her. Specifically, Ryder Blackwell.

Of course, it went without saying that she also wouldn’t have an excuse to see whether or not Ryder growled in bed as satisfyingly as the engine of his car did on the road.

But that was part of the price she paid in her line of work. It came with the territory. Even if the rules she lived by didn’t already make involvement with anyone personally connected to any company she targeted off limits, it just made plain business sense to keep her attention focused on the job rather than indulging sexual fantasies that would only endanger her and the con. No matter how delicious the temptation.

And Ryder Blackwell was the epitome of delicious and temptation.

She’d been around long enough to understand that if she were lucky there would be only a handful of men she would connect with in a way that transcended your run-of-the-mill attraction. And she’d felt that connection strongly with Ryder upon realizing who he was when he’d blocked her access to the garage. Within a nanosecond, his gaze had communicated an understanding, an awareness, to her that sometimes years with another person couldn’t accomplish. An “I see you” gaze that left her feeling…no, knowing that he had seen her. Not the details. Not what her favorite color was or what she was up to. But, rather, more fundamental elements. Almost as if the past, present and future had melted together to become immaterial in light of their meeting, their connection.