Thankfully, flying on a private jet hadn’t left her looking as haggard as surviving a twelve-hour flight in economy would have. So she would go now to meet the man who clearly expected his underlings to leap into motion when he spoke. And she would, even if it killed her, keep her temper.
“We need the new storyboards by tomorrow afternoon at the latest,” Brady barked into the phone. He’d been hung up for the past two hours with call after call and his patience was strained to the breaking point. “No more excuses, Peter. Meet the deadline or be replaced.”
Artists were difficult to deal with in the best of times. But Peter Singer was an artist with no ambition and no idea of how to schedule his time. With the best of intentions, the man laid down deadlines, then because he was so disorganized, he never managed to meet the dates he himself had arranged.
His talent wasn’t in question. Peter was good at sketching out the boards the programmers would use to lay out the basic story line of their newest game. And without that road map, the whole process would be brought to a crawl. In fact, Peter was good enough at his work that Brady had given him several extensions when he’d asked for them. But he wasn’t getting another one.
“Brady, I can have them for you by the end of the week,” the man was arguing. “I’m on a roll here, but I can’t get them by tomorrow. That’s just impossible. I swear they’ll be worth the wait if you—”
“Tomorrow, Peter,” Brady said flatly, as he turned in his desk chair to stare out the window behind him. “Have them here by five tomorrow or start looking for another job.”
“You can’t rush art.”
“If I can pay for it, I can rush it,” Brady told him, idly watching a blackbird jump from branch to branch in the pine tree out back. “And you’ve had three months on your last extension to make this deadline, so no sense in complaining now that you’re being rushed. Do it or not. Your choice.”
He hung up before he could be drawn into more of Peter’s dramatic appeals. He’d been dealing with marketing most of the day—not his favorite part of the job anyway—so he admittedly had less patience than he normally would have for Peter’s latest justification for failure. But the point was, they had a business to run, schedules to keep and for the past year Peter hadn’t been able to, or wasn’t interested in, keeping to the schedule. It was time to move on, find another graphic artist who could do the job. Sean was right. Jenny Marshall deserved a shot.
And now, rather than head home for a well-deserved beer, Brady had one more meeting to get through. As the thought passed through his mind, he heard a brisk knock at his door and knew the Irishwoman had arrived.
“Come in.”
The door opened and there she was.
Auburn hair and green eyes identified her as Aine Donovan, but there the resemblance to the woman in the employee photo ended. He’d been prepared for a spinsterish female, a librarian type. This woman was a surprise.
His gaze swept her up and down in a blink, taking in everything. She wore black slacks and a crimson blouse with a short black jacket over it. Her thick dark red hair fell in heavy waves around her shoulders. Her green eyes, not hidden behind the glasses she’d worn in her photo, were artfully enhanced and shone like sunlight in a forest. She was tall and curvy enough to make a man’s mouth water, and the steady, even stare she sent him told Brady that she also had strength. Nothing hotter than a gorgeous woman with a strong sense of self. Unexpectedly, he felt a punch of desire that hit him harder than anything he’d ever experienced before.
Discomfited, he tamped down that feeling instantly and fought to ignore it. Desire had its place, and this definitely wasn’t it. She worked for him, and sex with an employee only set up endless possibilities for problems. Even that fact, though, wasn’t enough to kill the want that only increased the moment she opened her mouth and the music of Ireland flavored her words.
“Brady Finn?”
“That’s right. Ms. Donovan?” He stood up and waited as she crossed the room to him, her right hand outstretched. She moved with a slow, easy grace that made him think of silk sheets, moonlit nights and the soft slide of skin against skin. Damn.
“It’s Aine, please.”
She pronounced it Anya and Brady knew he never would have figured that out from its spelling. “I wondered how to say your first name,” he admitted.
For the first time, a hint of a smile touched her mouth, then slipped away again. “’Tis Gaelic.”
He took her hand in his and felt a buzz of sensation shoot straight up his arm, as if he’d grabbed a live electrical wire. It was unexpected enough that he let her go instantly and just resisted rubbing his palm against his pant leg. “I assumed so. Please, have a seat.”
She sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desk and slowly crossed one leg over the other. It was an unconsciously seductive move that he really resented noticing.
“How was your flight?” he blurted out, wanting to steer the conversation into the banal so his mind would have nothing else to torment him with.
“Lovely, thanks,” she said shortly and lifted her chin a notch. “Is that what we’re to talk about, then? My flight? My hotel? I wonder that you care what I think. Perhaps we could speak instead about the fact that twice now you’ve not showed the slightest interest in keeping your appointments with me.”
Brady sat back, surprised at her nerve. Not many employees would risk making their new boss angry. “Twice?”
“You sent a car for me at the airport and again at the hotel.” She folded her hands neatly atop her knee. If she was uneasy about speaking her mind, she didn’t show it.
He merely looked at her for a long moment before saying, “Was there something wrong with the car service?”
“Not at all. But I wonder why a man who takes the trouble to fly his hotel manager halfway across the world can’t be bothered to cross the street and walk a block to meet her in person.”
When Brady had seen her photo, he’d thought, Efficient, cool, dispassionate. Now he had to revise those thoughts entirely. There was fire here, sparking in her eyes and practically humming in the air around her.
Damned if he didn’t like it.
It was more than simple desire he felt now—there was respect, as well.
Which meant that he was in more trouble here than he would have thought.
* * *
Aine could have bitten her own tongue off. Hadn’t she promised herself to rein in her temper? And what did she do the moment she met her new boss? Insult him was what. An apology was owed him and Aine knew it, though the words stuck in her throat and wouldn’t come free. Yes, she shouldn’t have spoken to him so, but nothing she’d said was untrue, was it? Oh, she should have taken a moment to calm herself before coming into his office. Instead, she’d allowed her temper to simmer into a fine boil and then spill over the moment she met the man. Now there was an unwanted tension between them and she had to find a way to try to smooth things over.
The trouble was, Aine told herself as she met his steady gaze across the wide expanse of his desk, she hadn’t expected him to be so...wildly attractive. On the short ride to his office, she’d told herself to be confident. Then the door had opened and she’d taken one look at the man and gone light-headed enough that all her good intentions had simply dissolved.
His thick black hair fell across his forehead, making her want to reach out and smooth it back. His strong jaw, sharp blue eyes and just the barest hint of whiskers on his cheeks made him seem so much more than a man who made his fortune by inventing games. He