As he topped the long uphill rise and lengthened his stride toward the intersection, he tried not to think about her parting thrust and K.G.’s early-morning phone call, or the fact that the two might be related.
He told himself the queer feeling in his gut was hunger. K.G. wouldn’t do it. Milson Landing was too big a project, its success too important to the company’s bottom line to risk on a whim, even if that whim belonged to his precious only daughter.
Jack slowed to take the corner into Sycamore Road and automatically started scanning for the Ridleys’ deranged fox terrier.
There was no connection between K.G.’s summons and her threat to seek out a job in Jack’s office.
The foxy came out of the shrubs at the front of lot nine, but Jack dodged the open jaws with ease and sprinted out of range. The mutt didn’t even get close.
He kept up a punishing pace for another two Ks, until the sweat ran freely down his back and the breath rasped harsh in his throat. Only then did he slacken off.
The uneasiness in his stomach didn’t.
Three hours later it churned like a cement mixer when he caught sight of the woman crossing Grantham’s car park. Not because of her long-legged stride or the skirt that drew attention to it, but because it was Paris Grantham.
Jack bent to pick up the keys he’d dropped and told his stomach not to jump to conclusions. Two people arriving at the same building at the same time didn’t necessarily mean they were there for the same meeting. Could be coincidence.
On a Saturday morning, with the car park all but empty? Yeah, right!
He pocketed his keys and headed for the lift bay, where she waited in her little yellow dress, smooth bare legs and strappy high heels. But when she turned and smiled, the action was quick and not quite smooth, as if driven by nerves.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she said brightly.
Jack punched the lift button and decided he’d been way off beam about the nerves. She looked too cool and polished to be nervous. His cement mixer switched to turbo.
“Princess,” he greeted her evenly. “Looks like you’ve got the jet lag beat.”
“Yes. And my feet are back to normal size.”
This time her smile was real and ripe with early-summer sunshine. It took Jack a count of three to control his light-headed dizziness, and he jibbed himself about sunstroke in a dim basement. It was more likely a result of terminal tiredness. To avoid that smile, he looked down at her feet. They arched inside her sexy shoes, and the way his body reacted, she might as well have arched them right over his….
Don’t even think about it, he told himself, lifting his gaze quickly. “Is there any reason why you wear those things?” he growled, annoyed with himself as much as her.
Her smile dimmed, and irritation sparked in her eyes. “They match my dress.”
He noted how the dress was perfectly plain apart from the bright color and the fact that it skimmed every curve of her body and ended a good six inches above her knees. His gaze kept on sliding downward, and about halfway to her ankles he decided the legs were a perfect match for the dress, forget the shoes!
And then he remembered why she was here and why he was here, and his eyes snapped back to hers. “Are you here to see your father?” he asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. He asked me to come in. It’s about this job he has for me.” The elevator pinged its arrival, and she ambled past him, holding the doors when he didn’t follow. “Coming?”
He stepped into the lift, and she pressed the top button—K.G.’s floor. Jack swore beneath his breath. “Tell me you’re working for your father.”
“God, I hope not!”
Their eyes met and held, hers wide with mock horror—or maybe not so mock. No one wanted to work directly with K.G., not even his daughter. A wry smile tugged at Jack’s lips, then her eyes slid down to his mouth, and as quickly as that the mood shifted.
He wondered if she was thinking about the other night, about how he’d kissed her in anger and frustration. Heat closed around him, along with the drift of her perfume, something unexpectedly soft and warm. He badly needed to loosen his tie, and usually that didn’t happen for at least two hours.
Floor fifteen, he noted. Still four to go.
Why was this lift so damned slow?
He made a mental note to speak to the building manager about having it serviced. Eyes trained on the indicator, he returned to the question she’d so neatly sidestepped. “What is this job, exactly?”
“He didn’t exactly say…”
Eighteen.
“…although he did mention a special PR project.”
Nineteen.
Ping.
Jack knew, without a shadow of a doubt, which project. He’d petitioned K.G. for weeks about appointing a PR person to Milson Landing, with no response. He hadn’t wanted to believe K.G. would do something this shortsighted, this foolhardy.
Taking the three steps out of the lift required enormous effort—maybe it was the weight of all that cement in his belly.
Paris flicked her hair back and started down the corridor, even though Jack was slow to follow. She wanted, so badly, to ask why he was here, what this was all about, but she didn’t want to let on how little she knew. K.G. had done his don’t-you-worry-your-pretty-little-head thing when she’d pressed him for details, and her hopes of earning his respect through a working relationship had plummeted.
Everything with Jack might have changed in six years, but nothing with K.G. had changed a bit.
She didn’t know why he’d asked her to come home, but it wasn’t because he’d suddenly recognized her true worth. The bad feeling in the pit of her stomach intensified. K.G.’s reasons involved Jack—they must, or why was he following her down the corridor? She knew he was there because the back of her neck prickled with awareness, even though the thick carpeting muted their footfalls. On this floor everything was muted, beige, restrained, as if subdued by her father’s personality.
Despite it being Saturday, K.G.’s secretary sat guarding the portals of power. Evelyn inspected Paris over the top of her glasses, her eyes beetling over the yellow dress, her mouth pursing at its length. Evelyn’s disapproval dated back to the day she’d caught Paris feeding papers from her father’s briefcase into the shredder.
Paris’s seven-year-old reasoning had been simple. If there were no papers, then her father would have no work, thus he would come to her ballet concert. Of course Evelyn hadn’t understood her reasoning, and she doubted her father had, either. He’d laughed and indulgently scrubbed her hair, but he hadn’t come to her concert.
Paris lifted her chin. “He’s expecting us,” she stated imperiously as she breezed toward K.G.’s door.
Evelyn bounded out from behind her desk and took charge of the door handle, effectively stopping any unannounced arrival.
“How about you let him know we’re here, Evelyn?” Jack suggested with a lopsided grin that seemed to render the middle-aged secretary witless.
Paris took advantage of Evelyn’s distracted state to push past.
“Good morning, princess.” K.G. came out from behind his desk, and as she offered her cheek for the obligatory kiss, Paris wished her father wouldn’t call her princess in that indulgent tone. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but he was busy shaking Jack’s hand and ushering him to the conference area at the side of his office. Paris shut her mouth and helped herself to a seat.
“I won’t be here long enough to sit,” Jack said.