Sandra Marton - The Bridal Suite

Dana sighed. “All right,” she said. “I’ll see you at seven.”

Dave Forrester, who had not yet succumbed to his afternoon ration of vodka, was lounging in the doorway to Dana’s office when she returned. He greeted her with an enigmatic look.

“Had a good lunch, did you, Dana?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Forrester grinned. “Boss wants to see you.”

Dana didn’t reply. She turned and walked down the hall to McKenna’s office, telling herself as she did that she was not about to take any more nonsense from the man and telling herself, too, that it was a good thing she’d spoken with Arthur because now she was calm, she was very calm, and nothing Griffin McKenna did or said could get under her skin anymore.

Miss Macy greeted her with a look that mimicked Forrester’s. Were enigmatic looks the order of the day?

“Mr. McKenna is waiting for you, Miss Anderson.”

“It’s Ms.,” Dana said, and stepped into McKenna’s office. He was sitting behind his desk, looking the length of the room at her, like an emperor on his throne. “You wanted to see me, Mr. McKenna?”

“Shut the door please, Ms. Anderson.”

Dana complied, then faced him again. “Mr. McKenna. If this is about our bumping into each other at that restaurant—”

“Where you eat is no concern of mine. You may eat what you wish, where you wish, with whomever you wish.”

“How generous of you, sir,” Dana smiled sweetly. “In that case, what did you want to see me about?”

McKenna smiled, too, like a cat contemplating a cageful of canaries.

“You’re fired.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Fired, Ms. Anderson. As in, clean out your desk, collect your severance pay, and don’t come back.”

Fired? Fired? Dana’s vision blurred. All the logic of the last hour fled in the face of Griffin McKenna’s self-indulgent smile.

“You can’t fire me,” she snapped. “I quit!”

Griffin tilted back his chair and laced his hands behind his head.

“Have it your way, Ms. Anderson. Frankly, I don’t give a damn, just as long as we agree that you are no longer in my employ.”

Maybe it was the way he said it, in that know-it-all, holier-than-thou tone. Maybe it was the insufferable smile, or the way he tilted back that damn chair. All Dana knew was that, suddenly, she’d reached the breaking point.

She stomped across the room, snatched a stack of papers from his desk, and flung them high into the air.

“You,” she said, “are a complete, absolute, unmitigated jerk.”

Griffin looked at Dana. She was breathing as hard as if she’d just finished a five-mile run. Her eyes blazed with green fire, and she looked as if she could happily kill him.

Something in his belly knotted. Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he kicked back his chair, rose to his feet and came around the desk.

“And you,” he said, “are a woman in need of a lesson.”

“In what?” Dana said furiously. “In the fact that the world is owned by men like you?”

A dangerous smile curved across Griffin’s mouth. For the second time in her life, and the second time that afternoon, Dana wanted to step back. But she didn’t. To give way would have been a mistake.

Standing her ground turned out to be the bigger mistake. It meant that when Griffin reached for her, he had no trouble pulling her straight into his arms.

“In the fact that women have their uses, Ms. Anderson,” he said, and then he bent his head, laced his fingers into her hair, and kissed her.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WASN’T much of a kiss, as kisses went

No bells. No fireworks. No explosion of colors behind Dana’s closed eyelids.

Not that she’d deliberately shut her eyes. It had been reflex, that was all. And she certainly hadn’t expected bells or fireworks. That was the stuff of women’s novels, those silly books that were all fantasy.

It was only that somehow, when a man like Griffin McKenna kissed you, you thought—you sort of assumed—dammit, you expected...

Expected?

She hadn’t expected. That was just the point. McKenna had hauled her into his arms and sent her straight into shock. And that, plain and simple, was what he’d counted on.

Dana exploded into action, twisting free of McKenna’s grasp, balling her hand into a fist and whamming it into his middle. It was like pounding her knuckles against a rock but it was worth it. Oh, yes, it certainly was, just to see the look of astonishment spread across that too-handsome-for-its-own-good face.

“Hey,” he said, sounding indignant.

Dana’s blood pressure soared.

“Hey? Hey?” She jabbed her forefinger into his chest. It was steely, too, like his middle, so she jabbed again, a lot harder. “Is that all you have to say for yourself, you—you beetle-browed Neanderthal?”

“Now, wait just a—”

“How dare you, McKenna? How dare you kiss me?”

She paused for breath and Griffin opened his mouth, determined to get a word in while he could...and then he shut it again. She was waiting for an answer. She deserved an answer. Unfortunately, he didn’t have one.

Why had he kissed her? It was an excellent question. She’d stood there, glowering at him, drawing a line in the dust, so to speak, women on one side, men on the other. So what? You didn’t kiss a woman because she didn’t like men. You didn’t look at the sexual chip on her shoulder and see it as a dare.

On the other hand, that was damn well what it was. And facing down dares had been the story of his life, starting with the day he’d inherited his father’s fortune along with a note handed over by John McKenna’s embarrassed attorney, a note that had contained a line he’d never forget.

Here’s my fortune, Griffin, his father had written. I worked a lifetime to build it. How long will you take to waste it?

That challenge, even though it had been given by a man who’d never had time for his wife or son, had driven a knife into Griffin’s heart. But he’d risen to it, perhaps beyond it, and built an empire he was proud of, one that might even have impressed his father.

But what kind of dare was there in hauling an unwilling woman into your arms?

None. Absolutely none whatsoever. So, why had he done it?

Griffin frowned. Damned if he could come up with a reason. A lesson, he’d said, but what lesson? Not even he believed in all that old crap he’d spouted about a woman’s place being in the kitchen and in the bedroom.

Okay, so he didn’t like the kind of female who saw men as the enemy. Who eagerly awaited the day they could reproduce by cloning and let the opposite sex kill themselves off, trying to gather a harem.

That didn’t mean he belonged to the “knock ‘em in the head, toss ’em over your shoulder, drag ’em off to the cave” crowd, either—and yet, how else could you describe what he’d just done?

“Your silence is eloquent, McKenna.”

Griffin focused on Dana’s face, still flushed with anger.

“I take it to mean that even you are aware that the days are long gone when a man could get away with coming on to a woman as if they were both decked out in animal skins!”

Griffin’s frown deepened. She was right, that was the damnedest part. It was what had kept him from really kissing her, the sudden realization, once he’d had her in his arms, that there was absolutely no rational explanation for what he was doing, that the “Me man, you woman” thing had never held any appeal for him.

By God, much as he hated to admit it, he owed her an apology.

He cleared his throat.

“Miss Anderson—”

“Ms.,” she said, her tone frigid enough to freeze water. “Or are you memory-impaired, as well as hormonally imbalanced?”