Jennifer Greene: A Baby In His In-Box

“Get that look out of your eyes, McGannon. Right now.”

He advanced a step. She not only failed to look intimidated, but she also parked two slim fists on her delectably shaped hips. Flynn could still remember how she skittered and jumped if he looked at her crossways in those first days. He’d been bluntly honest with her—she’d never last a week if she couldn’t stand up to him. In six months, she’d come a long way.

But not as far as he’d like her to. “You’ve got the same look in your eyes,” he pointed out.

“I do not.”

Yeah, she did. And that unholy sparkle in her eyes only upped in wattage when he took another step toward her. And another.

“Back off. Or you’ll have a shiner so fast it’ll make your head spin, buster.”

“Nah. You wouldn’t give me a shiner unless I earned it. And there isn’t a prayer we’d be doing this if I wasn’t sure we both liked it. All you have to do is say no and I’ll behave. I swear.”

She didn’t say no. But when she was backed up against the plush red carpeted wall, she reverted to her favorite defense. Logic. “I like this job and I don’t want to lose it.”

“That makes two of us. You’ve made yourself so totally indispensable that I’d be lost with you. I’m not joking. I mean it. I told you the day you hired on that I’m an insensitive clod—but I learn. If I do one thing to make you uncomfortable, all you have to do is say so.”

“It’s not that simple, and you know it. People comingling where they work is never a good idea. Someone gets hurt, and then someone ends up out of a job.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. If both people are honest with each other and play by the same rules.”

“You couldn’t define ‘rule’ with a big print dictionary, Flynn. You like anarchy. Everybody doesn’t. Some people can’t just hop into bed and have everything be the same the next morning.”

“Actually I wasn’t thinking about hopping into bed. Well, not much anyway. But I do respect that you’re real strong on that rings and commitment sort of thing....” He motioned with a hand, indicating his unfamiliarity with those alien concepts. “Really, all I had in mind was a kiss. To see if the last one was some kind of aberration.”

“Aberration?”

“Yeah. You put my knickers in the twist the last time we tried this. And I don’t wear knickers. Somehow what I assumed would be a little innocent mischief turned into spontaneous combustion. I wasn’t expecting it, and to tell you the truth, I hope you won’t do it again. You may not believe this, but I’ve been around a few blocks in life—”

“I believe it.”

“—So I’m definitely not used to falling in love on a first kiss. I’m figuring you must have caught me at a weak moment. When my blood sugar was low, or I was catching a fever, something like that. But the thing is, I can’t get that last power-punched kiss off my mind. Maybe if we did it again, and the kiss turned out tepid and dull, we could both quit this nonsense and go back to working like normal.”

“Flynn...”

Flynn used the word “love” easily, Molly knew. He’d claimed to be in love with her before—her, hot peppers, a crunchy-leaf autumn day, toasted almonds, a staff member who solved a tough problem and any puppy with floppy ears. That was just yesterday. Flynn was an upbeat, boisterously effusive man. “Love” was just a word he used on a daily basis. Molly knew perfectly well he didn’t mean it seriously.

But he was standing right in front of her by then. It was a butter-soft fall day, with blinds drawn to shutter out the bright mid-afternoon October sun beating in the windows this early in the afternoon. His computer screen was flashing, his fax noisily spewing out paper, the door to his office wide-open. Molly was aware of the sun, the office textures and noises, yet all she really noticed right then was him.

She was no shrimp at five foot five, yet he towered over her by a good six inches. Flynn always looked more like the wild warriors in his Scottish ancestry than anyone respectably civilized. His eyes were as piercing as blue lasers, his shoulders beam-broad, his thick, unruly hair the color of dark cinnamon and never looked brushed. His clothes were disgraceful the same way—jeans with holes, a long-sleeved black T-shirt with a threadbare neck—the man had money to burn, yet couldn’t seem to spare a dime to dress conventionally. Doing anything conventional never seemed to occur to Flynn.

He stood there. Within pouncing distance. But he didn’t move—and wouldn’t, Molly guessed. Flynn was an unpredictable, amoral, immoral rascal, but he never crossed a certain line. Once she’d made a teasing comment about sexual harassment, and startling her completely, he’d sobered faster than a judge and sat down with her for the next three hours. He’d listened, but Molly could see he honestly didn’t get it. That he had power. That he was a boss. He seemed to think of his owning the company as accidental, and unfailingly treated the staff as if they were a team of all equal players, with his vote weighing no more than anyone else’s. Flynn’s management style didn’t fit in any rule book she knew, but sexual harassment never even crossed her mind in a teasing way once she knew him. His code of behavior around women was crystal-clear.

He’d never tried that first kiss, never made any sort of move, until she’d invited it. He never intruded anywhere near a woman’s principles or choices.

Unless she were willing.

And let him know she was willing.

Those damn blue eyes of his were waiting. A kiss simmered between them like an untasted stew, the scent tantalizing, the hunger aroused by the possibilities.

Molly mused that she’d heard him call himself homely once.

Possibly he even believed it—heaven knew, his clothes reflected a total blindness or lack of perception about his physical appearance. Technically the blunt chin and craggy nose and broad-planed bones fit no classic claim to handsomeness... but he was still the sexiest man she knew. Those blue eyes could caress a woman before he’d even touched her; the mouth could tempt a nun to jettison her vows and jump him. The problem with Flynn—one of many—was that he loved everything about being a man, and it showed. He couldn’t seem to help being dangerous. That compelling, earthy sexuality was downright impossible to ignore, and God knew, she’d tried.

“You stalling, Ms. Weston?” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“You thinking about it? Whether you want me to kiss you or whether you want to knock my block off?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to let me know before November what you decide?”

Maybe she needed that whole month, Molly thought desperately. Her decision should have been cut and dried, but somehow it wasn’t. Six months ago, if anyone suggested she could conceivably fall in love with a man like Flynn McGannon, she’d have checked herself into a funny farm for immediate shock treatments.

He was a bellower. A man who expressed both humor and temper at the same roaring volume. He worked like a slave, played like a glutton, intimidated strangers and clients both with his booming voice and unpredictable moods—and then invariably acted confounded why anybody would be afraid of him.

Molly knew precisely why she was.

He was too sexy for her. Too sexy, too self-centered, too dare-the-world wild, too everything that she wasn’t. She wanted a husband, children, a family. Not an affair with a man who was bluntly honest about his terror of wedding rings. Flynn loved risk. She honestly hated it. He saw every day as a free-wheeling adventure. She was a list-maker.

Nothing could come from kissing him but trouble. Heartache. A woman as sane as she was—and the whole world knew Molly Weston was practical and hopelessly straitlaced—simply had more brains than to hurl herself off a cliff without a parachute.