He found her that unattractive?
It was ridiculous to be disappointed. And it was just lucky he couldn’t read her mind.
Cassie nodded. “Yeah. It can get pretty steamy out there. It’s supposed to get to thirty-six degrees today, and inside our tin shed it can be even hotter.”
“I assume you have health and safety regulations in place to look after the welfare of the employees?”
It was a simple question with a simple answer. But Cassie’s mouth went dry as she watched him shrug out of his jacket and drape it on the back of his chair. His white shirt was still pristine, a heavy cotton that had no visible logos and screamed “more expensive than you can imagine in your wildest dreams, Cassie Hartman.”
But he didn’t stop there.
“If I’m talking to warehouse guys, I should lose the tie, too,” he said, almost to himself.
It was a good idea, on so many levels.
His fingers loosened the knot of his burgundy tie and the luscious silk slipped through his collar with an illicit whisper. He undid the top two buttons of the shirt and revealed the beginnings of a light dusting of dark hair against smooth, tanned skin. Then his hands worked at his cuffs and a moment later, the shirt was rolled up at the sleeves, exposing muscled forearms sprinkled with that same dark hair.
It was only the burn in her lungs that reminded Cassie to breathe.
This was not a strip show on King Street. But Cassie had a sudden urge to order a cosmopolitan, sit back and watch as he continued. Button. Another button.
She shook her head and sucked in a breath. To give herself recovery time, she looked down at the table and shuffled some papers around. But as soon as she’d managed to tear her eyes away from his delectable body, another element hit her senses—his scent.
He wasn’t as unaffected by the heat as she’d thought—there was a whiff of sweat there, but it was the good kind, the kind that made her want to inhale deeply. It was only just discernable under his expensively discreet aftershave, musky and woody, a smell that reinforced the conflicting impressions Cassie was trying to assimilate. On the one hand, he was all coolly professional sophistication, on the other, he radiated earthy, primal masculinity.
Cassie’s eyes lit on the cuff links from his French-cuffed shirt that were sitting on the table—quirky little enameled blocks decorated to look like dice.
It was an effective reminder of the reality of the situation. They probably cost more than every item of jewelry Cassie owned combined.
And for Ronan, this little exercise was a game. A roll of the dice and Cassie won or lost. It didn’t matter to him. He’d go back to America and his waiting partnership and never think about Country Style or Cassidy Hartman again.
Now was not the time for Cassie’s underdeveloped sex drive to suddenly come to life. Part Three had to wait until Parts One and Two were in place.
She stopped fiddling with the papers and set her eyes directly on his face, bypassing those arms, that chest. “Yes, of course we do.” It came out a little more direct than Cassie had planned.
He frowned.
“Have a health and safety policy,” she clarified, moderating her tone. “The foreman has an ambient-temperature monitor. As soon as it gets over a certain level, we send everyone home. And we try to plan our shifts around the weather report during summer. For example, today we started at dawn to ensure we could receive and store the stock before the heat really hit.”
He nodded, seeming to take Cassie’s undisguised defensiveness in stride.
“Good to hear. Shall we?”
He raised that single eyebrow again, but this time Cassie was prepared; she’d fortified herself and the expression didn’t melt her into a messy puddle.
“Absolutely. Follow me.”
CHAPTER THREE
RONAN WAS READY TO FALL into bed by the time he got back to the hotel after a full day at Country Style. But, determined not to let the jet lag win, he changed his clothes, ran a couple of miles on the hotel gym’s treadmill and then swam a few laps. A quick meal from room service and he was feeling better—still tired, but now in a physical sense, not just a blurred, fuzzy, jet-lagged sense.
He cracked open his laptop and crawled into bed with it, sitting a nightcap of substandard Scotch from the minibar on the side table. A quick review of his emails and then the whisky and he’d be guaranteed a decent night’s sleep before he had to get up at dawn to catch the plane to Perth.
Two hundred and fourteen emails.
Not bad, considering it had been a full day since he’d last checked.
Only one of them from his father. Requesting a progress report according to the subject line—no surprises there. Ronan’s finger hovered over the delete key, but then remembered how much was riding on this job. Instead, he clicked on the message, and his father’s brusque words filled the screen.
Ronan
Report back on progress with Taylor job ASAP—client expects interim recommendations by end of week. You know what outcomes are sought. Keep your nose clean. Keep your pecker cleaner!
Patrick Conroy
President and CEO, Conroy Corporation
Didn’t even bother to sign it “Dad,” just his full name and company signature, which was as effective a reminder that Ronan was in the doghouse as anything else.
Ronan bristled at the warning in the email. As if he were a child. As if the point hadn’t been made loud and clear before he’d left San Francisco.
It was why he’d made a last-minute decision to use his grandmother’s maiden name for this job. He didn’t want the CEO-son stigma following him around the world. “Ronan Conroy” brought too much baggage with it, whereas “Ronan McGuire” was nice and anonymous. It gave him space and time to think through what had happened—which was exactly what his father had hoped for by sending him to Australia in the first place.
The past month had been a mess. Everything had been going so well up until then, or so he’d thought. Now that he looked back on it, he wondered just how long the storm had been brewing.
An image of Sarah Forsythe swam up in his mind’s eye and made him shudder.
Ronan didn’t like to think of himself as the kind of man who spent time tying himself up in knots over regrets, but he couldn’t let this one go.
How had he not predicted what would happen? How had he been so wrong? Probably because he’d been concentrating on the long blond hair and the swimsuit-model body hidden within prim business suits, he reflected ruefully.
It wasn’t as though he’d never slept with a client before. It was a line he’d crossed, but always carefully. This time he hadn’t been so careful. He’d simply seen what he wanted and he’d taken it.
He’d been groomed his entire life to take over the leadership of Conroy Corporation one day. And until recently, he’d thought that was what he wanted. The last job he’d managed—a complex M&A in New York—had been a goldmine. A runaway success for the client had resulted in a tidy packet of consulting fees—and a newly polished reputation for Conroy Corporation on Wall Street. Ronan had been full of his own success.
He and Sarah, an accountant with one of the companies, had worked long hours together. When, toward the end of the job, a late night turned into drinks after work, they’d both had one too many. And when the night had ended with them sharing her bed, he’d been reasonably sure they were on the same page. It had been mutual; two consenting adults seeking pleasure in each other. These things happened in high-pressure environments. It was a release valve for both of them.