“Let me guess,” she snapped, covering her own embarrassment with the familiar snarl of anger. “Instead of firing me, you decided to just scare me to death and save on the paperwork.”
He grinned, and the solid punch of it raced across the room and hit Kyra like a bolt of something hot and dangerous.
Oh, so not good.
She’d known the man for eight years, during which time he’d irritated her, annoyed her and just plain pissed her off. But she’d never, ever felt a flash of desire for him. Okay, sure, she’d noticed how gorgeous he was.
Heck, she’d have had to be blind to have missed that.
But noticing and noticing were two different things.
Shaking his head, he unfolded his arms and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “It’s eleven o’clock at night, Ms. Fortune. Why are you still here?”
Uncomfortable under that cool, steady stare, she shifted a little in her seat. She’d thought she was alone in the building. Well, except for the cleaning crew and the security guards.
She often stayed late at night, to catch up on work, to get a jump on the next day’s tasks. She liked the quiet. Probably a holdover from living in a too-crowded house when she was a kid. Just remembering her father’s sudden, unpredictable shouting rages could make her long for peace and quiet. But it was even more than that.
She liked knowing that she was alone and for a few hours could drop the pretense of always being in charge. Kyra knew darn well that most of her co-workers considered her an arrogant know-it-all.
Which would have been funny if it didn’t bother her so much. God, she wished she were a know-it-all. School had never come easy to her. She’d always had to study twice as hard as anyone else to get the grades that had assured her of four years at Texas A&M.
And she’d worked even harder here at Voltage. Staring at Garrett now, though, Kyra wondered if all of her hard work had been for nothing. Frustrating to know that no matter how good her job performance, she could lose everything she’d been working toward because one man didn’t like her.
Well, she wouldn’t make it easy on him.
He was watching her now, still waiting for an answer to his question. “I’m just working out a few details in the Hartsfield plan.”
One of his brows lifted. “Then you’ve managed to sign them on with Voltage?”
“Not yet,” she admitted, wishing she could say yes. “But soon.”
He nodded and straightened up, taking one or two steps into her office. “Good. But you don’t have to work twenty-four hours a day, you know. Voltage really doesn’t expect that of its employees.”
It was strange, having him here in her office. As far as she could remember, this was his first visit. And since she knew full well that her career was currently dangling by a thread, she didn’t count this as a social call.
Which meant he had another reason altogether for dropping by in the middle of the night.
She only wished she knew what it was.
“Really?” she countered, tilting her head to one side and studying him as he walked the perimeter of her office. “Then why are you still here?”
“Touché.” He walked slowly around the room, examining the paintings on the wall, checking out the crystal vase of yellow roses on the credenza, and then finally stopping beside her desk.
He was too close for comfort. Kyra pushed her chair back from her desk so that she could give herself an extra foot or so of space and have an unobstructed view of the man.
His gaze locked on the night beyond the rain-spattered windows. Kyra waited, stubbornly refusing to be the first one to break the silence that seemed to stretch tautly between them. At last she was rewarded.
He turned his head to look at her. “Why are you so driven?”
She blinked, surprised not only by the question, but by the genuine curiosity she heard in his deep voice. There were, of course, lots of answers to the query, none of which she was interested in sharing with her boss.
Especially a boss who made no secret of the fact that he didn’t much like her. But she had to say something.
“Why is it when a woman works hard, she’s driven. When a man does the same thing, he’s just conscientious?”
The smile that curved his lips suddenly was gone almost before it was born, but in that instant something warm and liquid rushed through Kyra, despite her efforts to stop it.
“Good point,” he acknowledged. “But that doesn’t answer the question.”
“Why do you care about the answer?”
“Call it professional curiosity,” he said with a slight shrug. “I see a young woman who should be out having a good time, and instead, she stays locked up in her office nearly every night.”
“And you know this how?”
His lips twitched. “I’m the boss. I’m supposed to know these things.”
He was keeping track of her? She didn’t know what to think about that. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
“I’d like to point out,” she said cautiously, “that you’re here in the middle of the night, too.”
“Yeah,” he said, turning his gaze back to the windows, When he continued, his voice was lower, more thoughtful. “But spending my nights in this building wasn’t something I planned.”
“So go home.”
He turned his head to look at her again, and Kyra saw a half smile flash across his face before it disappeared again. “Good idea. How about we both go?”
He was being nice.
Why?
That swirl of emotion started in the bottom of her stomach again. Surprise flickered through her as she realized she was actually enjoying the sensation. There was something very…intimate about being here in the office alone with him. With the stormy night crouched outside and only a puddle of light from the lamp on her desk illuminating the room, it was as if they were the only two people in the world.
His presence seemed to make the room shrink in size. The walls seemed to close in around them. The tap of rain against the windowpanes was a steady, almost musical accompaniment to the silence stretching between them. She looked into his blue eyes and— Kyra caught herself and shook her head.
If Garrett was being nice, it was only to lull her into complacency before putting her head on the chopping block.
“I’m just going to finish up this last report,” she said, “and then—”
“Mr. Wolff?”
They both looked toward the doorway. Carol Summerhill stood there, watching them in obvious disapproval. Her eyes were narrowed and her lips were nothing more than a flat, grim line.
Kyra suddenly felt like a cheating wife caught sneaking out of a cheap motel. Stupid, she knew. But the look on Carol’s face was that of a jealous woman. Weird.
Garrett, though, seemed more annoyed at the interruption than anything else. “Yes, Carol?”
The woman shifted her gaze from Kyra to their boss. “I only wanted to remind you that you have a teleconference at six in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
His tone, if not the words themselves, were dismissive, but Carol ignored both. “I’ll walk out with you if you like.”
Geez, Kyra thought. Had the woman brought rose petals to toss down in front of him, too?
Garrett stiffened. “No, thanks. You go ahead.”