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This was exactly the angle I wanted to work. Social responsibility was hot these days, particularly with the younger crowd that Knox needed so desperately to attract. I couldn’t just slap a social justice sticker on the label, though—that might have worked back in the nineties, but today’s young consumers had been burned before, and the Internet made fact-checking easy. I would have to back up my claims with solid proof, but in a way that didn’t make the company and the product sound boring, overly earnest, or self-congratulatory.
I certainly wouldn’t want Hunter to think I was any of those things, either.
I mean, for the good of our business relationship.
Could I do it? Could I get the company to back a cause both local and global in a way that wouldn’t be written off as cynical or dismissed as a media show? I jotted down a reminder to look up the current components of the packaging and see if Knox could start using anything more environmentally friendly. It joined a long list on my tablet with the rest of my ideas, notes, sketches, and first drafts of e-mails to my art partner. It made a beautiful addition, and made me feel incredibly productive.
This could work. This could really work.
I was so absorbed by the library and by my ideas that it wasn’t until my stomach gave a particularly painful rumble that I looked up and realized how low the sun had dipped in the sky. My stomach gave another rumble like it was trying to imitate Mt. Vesuvius, and then twisted painfully until I got the message. Well, with the map I could probably make my way back to the kitchen before I starved to death. Probably.
I packed up my things as quickly as I could and speed-walked out the library—
Right into the broad chest of Hunter Knox.
It was not quite the way I’d wanted to be sprawled across that muscular expanse.
“Just the lady I was looking to see,” he drawled in that gentlemanly tenor voice. “Though I confess I wasn’t thinking so up close and personal.”
It was entirely unfair how nice he smelled, like salt and spice, cedar and oak and clean sweet sweat. Without thinking, my hand opened, fingers spreading to stroke where they rested against the T-shirt over his chest…No!
I snatched my hand away, blushing.
“Uh. Why were you looking for me?” I asked quickly, trying to distract him from my accidental almost-groping. “Was there something you needed to tell me?”
“Indeed there was,” he said with a grin that told me he had definitely noticed that too-long touch, and hadn’t quite decided whether or not to let me off the hook. “I wanted to tell you that the cook has made her famous pork chops for dinner.” He offered his hand. “I was hoping that might tempt you to join me.”
Like that man needed to offer pork chops to be a walking temptation.
Too bad it was one I couldn’t give in to.
“My room has plenty of food in the kitchen, I don’t want to intrude—” I began, though I really did, in the worst way. But then my stomach rumbled like a dying bear, betraying me. I blushed so scarlet that the Red Sea would be a pale pink in comparison.
“Sounds like someone disagrees with you,” he said, eyes twinkling.
“Just my body,” I said. “It’s an idiot. I try not to listen to it.”
“Oh?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve found that my body offers excellent advice.”
Well, why don’t we reintroduce them and see if yours is a good influence, my mouth urged me to say. I bit it back down and said instead, as lightly as I could, “Care to trade?”
That was a mistake. He eyed me up and down, and I felt my blood heat up in some extremely inopportune parts of me.
“It is an excellent body,” he murmured.
He leaned forward, and for one second, I thought he was going to kiss me.
Then he linked arms with me instead. “Come on. Let your body lead you to some new experiences.”
When he put it like that, how could I refuse?
SIX
“And don’t come back here for thirty minutes!”
Turns out that those pork chops were still simmering, and the cook didn’t take kindly to two people standing over her shoulder drooling, even when one of those two people was a hunky guy with a body that belonged on the cover of Playgirl.
A blast of hot air accompanied us out of the kitchen doors, before the cool air-conditioning enveloped us once again.
Then I looked up at Hunter, grinning that easy grin with those perfect teeth and those golden eyes…
Yeah, suddenly all the air seemed very hot again.
“Sorry about that,” he said, grabbing my wrist and tugging me down the hall. I tried to concentrate on his words and not the gentle firmness of his hands. “She’s got a bit of a temper, and the whole kitchen is her sovereign territory.”
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