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Kalera made an inarticulate sound which she later liked to think was a protest and pushed her other hand flat against his rock-hard chest, splaying over the harsh thump of his heartbeat and discovering that it was every bit as erratic as her own.
‘Duncan, do you think—? Woops!’ Anna did an abrupt U-turn, the beads on her braids rattling with the swiftness of her spin as she scampered out again. ‘I’ll come back again when you’re not so—uh—preoccupied…’
Kalera felt dizzy with dismay and something else she didn’t dare examine.
‘Now look what you’ve done! Stop that!’ she hissed belatedly, stiffening knees that were showing an alarming tendency to sag. Her fingertips curled warningly into Duncan’s cheek, her neat nails making a row of tiny indentations in the taut olive skin. ‘Let me go…now!’
The smouldering gaze never left hers as Duncan slowly pulled her glistening thumb from his mouth and then pushed it tauntingly back in again, his teeth grazing lazily across her slick flesh, before finally withdrawing it to rest against his lips.
‘I just wanted to make sure the blood flowed to clean the wound,’ he murmured innocently, taking one last lick, his fingers still firm around her slender wrist. ‘I don’t want you getting an infection.’
‘It was only the tiniest pin-prick, for goodness’ sake,’ she protested unevenly. ‘You didn’t have to go overboard. Oh, God, imagine what Anna must be thinking!’
She groaned, remembering their conversation in the restroom. Duncan’s assistant needed no encouragement to let her imagination run riot.
‘What does it matter what she thinks?’
Kalera glared at him, a far cry from the usual serene office Madonna. ‘She might tell everyone what she saw!’
‘It’s not as if we were even kissing,’ Duncan pointed out, although in Kalera’s opinion a kiss could hardly have been more intimate. ‘So you had your thumb in my mouth. What’s so wicked about that? Be thankful it was only your thumb!’ he added drolly.
She went scarlet, squirming in his grip, her voice shrill with outrage. ‘Duncan!’
He kissed her wrist and let it slip through his fingers. ‘Well, it could have been your toes,’ he mocked. ‘That would have been difficult to explain away.’ He correctly interpreted her stunned expression. ‘No, Kalera, I don’t have a secret foot fetish—I’ve never sucked a woman’s toes in my life.’ His eyelids drooped. ‘But I’m always open to new experiences…’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, backing away, curling her damp thumb into her protective fist. ‘You’ve got to set her straight. She already thinks that you—that you—’ She faltered at his look of intense curiosity.
‘That I what?’ He hitched his hip on the corner of his desk and tilted his head to one side, his eyes bright on her rosy face.
She knew this was a mistake. ‘You know…have a—a thing…’ she mumbled.
The corners of his mouth crept up. ‘A thing? I have a thing?’
‘Yes,’ she gritted, folding her arms across her waist.
‘That’s a noun that covers a whole lot of ground…a fair bit of it minefield. Can you be a bit more specific? What kind of a thing is it that I have, Kalera?’
‘About me,’ she said tightly.
‘Oh!’ He pantomimed dawning enlightenment. ‘You mean that kind of thing! She thinks I have a mental preoccupation with you as the passionate object of my burning desire.’
‘Something like
that,’ she muttered, hunching her shoulders to present a smaller target for his mockery. Busy avoiding his gaze, she didn’t see his expression alter to one of brooding ruefulness.
‘Clever Anna,’ he said softly. ‘And here I thought the carefree playboy routine had everybody fooled.’
Kalera’s eyes flew to his face, her delicate body tensing for flight at the raw emotion that blazed in the dark eyes, sending a sizzle of familiar heat streaking along her veins. As if her fear had tripped an alarm the blaze was instantly extinguished and she could almost believe that she had imagined the shattering intensity of that look, and her shamefully ready response.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that Anna understands,’ he said, and she was so busy denying what had just happened that she failed to notice that he didn’t pinpoint exactly what it was he was going to ensure Anna understood.
‘Now, why don’t we both compare notes on those we interviewed today and then we can start reviewing our strategies for tomorrow’s list? And I want to get letters out tonight to all those who don’t make today’s cut—it’s not fair to keep people dangling any longer than absolutely necessary when they might need to reply to other job offers. Personal letters, too, not form things that make the rejectee feel even less of an individual.’
He saw her glance at her watch, mentally calculating whether the tasks would fit into the time available.
‘And I need you to print out some files for Bryan—preferably when there’s no one else around,’ he said, unfolding himself from his perch. ‘I did warn you I might need you to stay on this evening.’
It took an effort not to step back as he towered over her, but the hint of satisfaction in his tone goaded her to dig her heels in.
