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The man was an idiot...a total blockhead. Star was still fuming half an hour later as she slipped between the cool, fresh sheets of her hotel bed. He had to be to have behaved the way he had.
She knew that he had been turned on, aroused, when they were sharing that passionate kiss; she had felt the unmistakable hardness of his body against hers.
When sleep eluded her she thumped the pillow angrily, refusing to admit that it wasn’t so much Kyle’s calm expression of his lack of any desire to take things to their natural sexual conclusion that was keeping her sleepless and furious as her own unwanted excess of desire.
How could she, a sophisticated, experienced woman in her mid-twenties, who had had no trouble at all in remaining celibate for over two years, suddenly want one man so much that her body ached as painfully as though she had succumbed to a virulent fever?
With a small, fierce groan she closed her eyes angrily, willing herself to go to sleep. She had a busy day ahead of her tomorrow, starting with an early-morning meeting with Brad, and that was what she ought to be concentrating on, not some pathetic apology of a man whose claim to some hypothetical high moral ground was simply a cloak to conceal his real lack of libido.
It was just over half an hour’s drive from the hotel downtown to the lakeside home that Kyle had bought when his distribution business had first become successful.
A little further up the lake and rather more isolated than Brad’s home, the clapboard house had virtually been on the point of falling down when Kyle had bought it.
He had done most of the restoration work himself, enjoying the challenge of not only practically rebuilding the old house but also scouring the neighbourhood for the replacement materials he had needed to do so.
It had amused him the previous summer to be approached by the features editor of a local prestige publication who wanted to run a piece on the house and the restoration work he had done on it.
It hadn’t just been his home that the features editor had shown an interest in either. She had been an attractive, vivacious brunette with a sensational sense of humour to match her equally sensational figure and Kyle had had to remind himself pretty sternly of the vow he had made to himself.
An ambitious college graduate, she had made it plain that all she was looking for was a summer romance before she headed for New York and fame. But he had done the New York thing and discovered that, after all, he was really a small-town guy at heart, with small-town values and beliefs and, if he was honest with himself, which he tried to be, happily content that that should be so.
Friends teased him about the fact that he lived alone in what was so obviously a family home, but he simply smiled good naturedly, laughing with them.
Only Kyle really knew how important his home was to him and how much he had felt in need of somewhere that was his own, of roots, of stability and continuity, after the confusion and pain of his early childhood.
Knowing that he had too much on his mind to sleep, he parked the car and walked down to the lake following the shoreline, his mouth quirking into a rueful smile as he recalled the angry insult that Star had flung at him outside her bedroom door.
If only she knew. Not since his turbulent teenage years had he experienced such an overwhelming surge of sexual desire.
Just standing there in the hotel corridor kissing her, he had already, in his imagination, removed her clothes, stroked the satiny softness of her skin, felt the soft feminine tremble of her body as he cupped the warm, full globes of her breasts, marvelling at the contrast between their creamy satin fullness and the dusky rose-brown of their areolae and the taut nipples that crested them, just as he had already felt the way she’d moved against him, her eyes closing, her body swaying and straining closer to his hands and mouth as he gave in to his desire to touch and taste the sweet femininity of her.
He knew exactly how it would be. How she would cry out in sharp pleasure as he kissed the quivering softness of her throat and then moved lower over the creamy slopes of her breasts and lower still until a taut nipple was his captive, drawn into the hot suckle of his hungry mouth, he equally its prisoner as he felt himself yield to the sensual power of his desire for her.
Yes, it had been a long time since a woman had affected him so intensely, so overwhelmingly, so sexually... and so emotionally.
There had been a moment after he had released her when he had looked into her eyes and seen beyond the outraged anger of her pride to the hurt bewilderment behind it and had had to fight with himself not to step forward again and take her in his arms and hold her there.
If he had done... If he had done, right now his body wouldn’t be aching so hard that he was practically grinding his teeth with the intensity of it. But there was more to being a man than satisfying a sex urge... Much more, even if Star Flower did not appear to think so.
One day he would... He had already turned round and started to retrace his steps, but now abruptly he stopped and stared out across the lake’s deceptively placid surface. One day he would what?
Right now he ought to be thinking of ways of calming the situation. Tomorrow morning, when Brad formally introduced him to Star and told her that they were going to be working together in Britain, she wasn’t going to like it; she wasn’t going to like it at all.
CHAPTER THREE
‘AND one vital aspect which I’d particularly want you to focus on in any campaign is the reliability not just of our systems but, even more importantly, of their installation and maintenance.’
Star raised one eyebrow as she swiftly made a brief note of what Brad was saying to her. She had done her homework very thoroughly indeed before coming over to the States to meet with him and that homework had included interviews with those who had already had Brad’s company’s air-conditioning systems installed. A complaint from many of them had concerned the delays and problems that they had experienced in getting the systems installed and running efficiently.
‘Is something wrong?’ Brad asked her thoughtfully now, seeing that raised eyebrow.
‘From what I’ve heard, there seems to be a problem with the installation and back-up system in Britain,’ Star told him unhesitatingly. ‘And, that being the case, I wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea to focus any PR campaign in that particular direction.’
‘We have had problems in that area,’ Brad agreed, ‘which is one of the reasons why I’m hiring you to come up with a campaign which will improve our image in that area...’ He paused as his intercom buzzed, excusing himself to Star whilst he answered it.
‘Yes, that’s fine, Jan,’ Star heard him saying warmly. ‘Tell him to come right through.
‘I am aware of the problems and I have taken steps to correct them,’ Brad continued to Star, ‘and for that reason I’ve asked a friend and business associate of mine, who owns a highly successful business over here, to help us out by going over to Britain and seeing what he can do to improve things over there, so far as the installation and service side of things is concerned...
‘I’ve actually asked him to call by this morning so that the two of you can meet. You’ll like him. He’s—’ Brad broke off as the door opened. ‘Ah, Kyle!’ Star heard him exclaim warmly. ‘Good... Come in and meet Star.’
‘Star...’ Brad began as Star fought to control her consternation.
But Kyle forestalled him, saying calmly, ‘Star...Ms Flower and I have already introduced ourselves to one another.’
They might have introduced themselves to one another, as he had put it, but he had certainly made no mention of who exactly he was, nor of the fact that there was every chance that they were going to have to work together, Star fumed as she gave him a glitteringly insincere smile.
Now she understood what had motivated him last night. Quite plainly, knowing who she was, he had decided that he didn’t want to become sexually involved with her, to allow her to have any kind of upper hand or control of the situation when he knew that they were going to have to work together.
&n
bsp; She, regrettably, had not had the benefit of that particular piece of information, and if she had done...
‘I’m sure that the two of you are going to work very well together,’ she heard Brad saying.
She could feel Kyle looking at her, almost willing her to look directly at him, but she refused to do so, keeping her gaze fixed rigidly instead on a point several feet away whilst she said with as much calm as she could muster, ‘I understood that I would be working with Tim Burbridge.’ She was referring to a relative of Claire’s. ‘I thought he was in charge of the British side of your distribution network.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Brad agreed, ‘but, as you’ve already mentioned yourself, there have been problems in establishing the standard of installation and back-up service we pride ourselves on giving our customers, and as Tim would be the first to admit, whilst he has no problem selling the units to customers, he is finding it difficult to recruit the right kind of technical people to follow through from his sales, and that’s where Kyle comes in.
‘Not only does Kyle have a firsthand knowledge of just how our units should be installed and maintained but he has also built up States-side the very best installation and service team we have ever used.’
Star’s mouth twisted in a slightly cynical smile as she listened to Brad singing Kyle’s praises.
