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‘You can put a tropical fish tank in the ceiling?’
She straightened away from him, breathing hard, her eyes chips of green fire. ‘I can do anything.’
Right now Lukas didn’t doubt it.
And it wasn’t often that he had been surprised in his life—well, in his adult life. Or impressed.
He turned his head and caught a whiff of apples. If she turned her head toward him they would be inches apart and he had a sudden and very primitive urge to taste her.
As if sensing his thoughts she went still and then shifted very subtly away from him. Harnessing a driving need to follow he clamped down on his unusually wayward libido and forced himself to relax back against the sofa. ‘Actually, I quite like the sound of that pirate’s cabin.’
She flushed a tempting shade of pink and twisted to face him, her deep breaths pushing her plump breasts forcefully against the front of her dress. ‘Is that a yes to my conditions?’
He ignored the unhelpfully explicit instructions from his body and forced his mind to concentrate on the conversation before he gave her the hotel and his shipping business along with it. ‘Not to putting Harrington’s name on the door but I will put your name on the promotional material.’
She frowned at him and worried her bottom lip with her even white teeth. ‘Does that include the website and all related online media as well as brochures?’
‘As the designer only.’
‘Creator.’
‘It’s my concept.’
‘Soon to be our concept.’ A genuine smile cracked across her face and Lukas felt his heart miss a beat—as impossible as that was to have actually occurred—and he found himself agreeing before he’d meant to. Another surprise he’d prefer not to think too deeply about. ‘You can have your “Creation by Harrington’s” but it’s my hotel and all your decisions go through me, is that understood?’
If possible her smile widened. ‘Of course.’ She held out her hand for him to shake.
Lukas paused before taking it, a strange feeling his life was about to change and not necessarily for the better. Then he enfolded her fine-boned hand in his and wondered why it was he couldn’t shake the desire to have her in his bed.
‘How soon can you be ready to fly out to St Petersburg?’
She blinked. ‘Now?’
‘You were the one who told me my time line was optimistic.’
‘Yes, well, I need a shower first.’ She got up from the sofa, collected her bag and stopped. ‘Oh, no.’
Distracted by her legs, Lukas flicked her an annoyed glance. ‘Oh, no—what?’
‘Oh, no, I just remembered whose hotel I’m in.’ She crinkled her nose. ‘Couldn’t you have stayed somewhere else?’
‘My PA booked the hotel. I quite like it.’
She looked less than impressed with his response and he was surprised to find that his mind was still on sex and now sex in the shower. A pointless endeavour when he had no intention of confusing his professional interest in her with a personal one. ‘Go. I’ll pick you up in an hour.’
‘Before I do.’ She turned back from the door and Lukas gritted his teeth. ‘What’s the temperature in St Petersburg?’
‘Cold.’ Just like him.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE WASN’T JOKING, Eleanore thought as she stood in the open doorway of Lukas’s private plane and looked down on the snow-covered tarmac.
But cold wasn’t exactly the word she would use. No, she’d tend more toward the word freezing. Maybe frigid. Or arctic...
She huddled further into her puffer jacket that did little to stop the cold from seeping through to the business suit she’d changed into prior to landing. She noticed that Lukas seemed impervious to the weather. Well, he would, she supposed; he’d grown up here and he had that big black cloak thingy on his wide shoulders again.
‘You weren’t being flippant when you said it would be cold,’ she murmured, feeling as if all the air was being punched out of her lungs every time she took a breath.
He turned to her. ‘I thought a New Yorker would be used to the cold.’
‘So did I.’ She shivered and zipped her normally adequate jacket right up to her chin. ‘But this is something else altogether. How cold is it?’
‘About minus twenty-seven.’
‘Oh, good grief.’
Glad when they reached the warmth of Lukas’s limousine she slid gratefully into the soft seats and let out a relieved sigh when he pulled the door closed.
