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Because, while the prospect seemed unlikely at the moment, it would be nice if she could at least like the man who was soon to be her brother-in-law.
Though given what she’d experienced so far of Daniel Caruana, she wasn’t too confident.
She smiled her thanks to the PA, whose colour had returned and who managed to smile back, clearly relieved she wasn’t going to have to ring her boss a third time. Sophie rapped her knuckles lightly on the door and let herself into the largest office she’d ever seen.
She stopped dead, stunned by the sheer dimensions of the room. All this space for one man? Maybe he needed it to accommodate his ego. She shoved her scorn back where it belonged. He had agreed to see her, even if it had taken an eternity; maybe the man wasn’t completely beyond redemption.
She worked up a smile, remembering the old adage that to think positive was to be positive. ‘Mr Caruana,’ she offered with an enthusiasm she didn’t feel and that barely cloaked her nerves. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.’
He was standing with his back to her against the wall of windows that brought the best of the far-north Queensland beach views into the office, his arms crossed and feet planted wide apart. Maybe it was because she’d already witnessed the view that five storeys could offer over the coast line that Sophie found herself assailed with impressions that had nothing to do with the view outside and had no place on today’s agenda.
Broad shoulders.
Narrow hips.
Long, lean legs.
Then he turned and the view outside faded to grey. She blinked, wondering what it was exactly that the pictures on the Internet had missed. Sure, they might have captured the short, tousled black hair, the steel-like gaze and the wide, generous lips. They might have contained a hint of the aura that surrounded him of power and success and raw masculinity. Yet they’d been unable to capture that grace of moment, that animal-like quality that turned even his slightest movement predatory.
His head tilted and his narrowed gaze assessed her, as if he had stripped through all her professional-development bluff and seen her for the nervous sister of the groom anxious to make a good impression that she really was. ‘Is it a pleasure?’
Maybe not. Not that he was waiting for her answer. She got the distinct impression Daniel Caruana wasn’t used to waiting for anything, even before he continued, ‘You wanted to see me?’
‘Ah.’ She swallowed, his prompt reminding her why she was here, and that it wasn’t to ogle the brother of the bride or lose herself in her thoughts. ‘Of course.’ She forced her frozen legs into motion and crossed the space between them, holding out her hand. ‘Sophie Turner, from One Perfect Day. One Perfect Day makes perfect memories to last a lifetime.’ The business’s advertising blurb rattled off her tongue before she could stop herself. She was proud of her business and all she’d achieved. She believed that she offered her clients as perfect a wedding day possible, but right now in this office, faced with this man and battling her own rattled thought-processes, her words sounded trite and hackneyed.
He surveyed her hand for what felt like an eternity before his eyes once again lifted to snag on hers. This close she could see the dark shadow of a beard accentuating the strong line of his jaw. This close his dark eyes seemed to swirl with un-plumbed depths, the hint of a smile in those ever-so-slightly-upturned lips.
Then he finally took her hand in his and sent a jolt to her internal thermostat. She dragged in much-needed oxygen, only to find it fuelled with the warm, spiced tang of male. She pressed on, trying to ignore the feel of her hand in his, trying to discount the skin-on-skin contact and the scramble it was making of her senses. ‘Monica has told me a lot about you. She wishes she could have visited you herself, to tell you about her plans, but—’
‘But she was suddenly whisked away to Hawaii?’ His voice was deep and rich and with the merest trace of an accent. It rolled over her senses much like the way his thumb seemed to be skimming the back of her hand. ‘By the latest man she’s apparently fallen head over heels in love with?’
The tension hummed through his words, an obvious cynicism shining in the gleam of his dark-as-night eyes, despite the easy smile that revealed a line of perfect white teeth.
That man, she wanted to say, is my brother, and he loves Monica as much as she loves him. But right now all her thoughts and senses were centred on the hand that somehow still remained firmly lodged within his.
Power, she felt in his touch, and a heat that radiated up her arm to fan out to her extremities in a delicious wave.
She tugged her hand free, sensing a slight reluctance on his part to let her go, and then wondered if she’d just imagined it.
