When she felt slightly calmer she moved further into the office, using her phone to guide her to the desk Paddy had said was his. He’d told her that his laptop should be in the top drawer, but she pulled it open to find it empty. She opened the others but they were empty too. Feeling slightly panicky, she tried the other desks but there was no sign of the laptop. Paddy’s frantic words reverberated in her head: ‘That laptop is the only chance I have to prove my innocence, if I can just trace the emails back to the hacker...’
Nessa stood in the centre of the office biting her lip, feeling frantic now herself.
There was no hint of warning or sound to indicate she wasn’t alone, so when an internal door in the office opened and light suddenly flooded the room, Nessa only had time to whirl around and blink in shock at the massive figure filling the doorway.
It registered faintly in her head that the man filling the doorway was Luc Barbier. And that she was right to have been wary of coming face to face with him. He was simply the most astonishingly gorgeous and intimidating man she’d ever seen up close, and that was saying something when her brother-in-law was Sheikh Nadim Al-Saqr of Merkazad, as alpha male and masculine as they came.
Luc Barbier was dressed all in black, jeans and a long-sleeved top, which only seemed to enhance his brooding energy. His eyes were deep-set and so dark they looked like fathomless pools. Totally unreadable.
He held up a slim silver laptop and Nessa looked at it stupidly.
‘I take it this is what you came here for?’
His voice was low and gravelly and sexily accented, and that finally sent reality slamming back into Nessa like a shot of adrenalin to her heart. She did the only thing she could do—she pivoted on her feet and ran back to the door she’d just come through and pulled it open, only to find a huge burly security guard standing on the other side with a sour expression on his face.
The voice came from behind her again, this time with an unmistakable thread of steel. ‘Close the door. You’re not going anywhere.’
When she didn’t move, the security guard reached past her to pull the door closed, effectively shutting her in with Luc Barbier. Who patently wasn’t in France.
With the utmost reluctance she turned around to face him, very aware of the fact that she was wearing black tracksuit bottoms and a close-fitting black fleece with her hair tucked up under a dark baseball cap. She must look as guilty as sin.
Luc Barbier had closed the other door. The laptop was on a desk near him and he was just standing there, arms folded across his chest, legs spread wide as if to be ready for when she bolted again.
He asked, ‘So, who are you?’
Nessa’s heart thwacked hard. She kept her mouth firmly closed and her gaze somewhere around his impeccably shod feet, hoping the cap would hide her face.
He sighed audibly. ‘We can do this the hard way, or the harder way. I can have the police here within ten minutes and you can tell them who you are and why you’re trespassing on my property...but we both know it’s to get this, don’t we?’ He tapped the laptop with long fingers where it sat on the desk. ‘You’re obviously working for Paddy O’Sullivan.’
Nessa barely heard the last phrase. Totally ridiculously, all she could seem to focus on were his beautiful hands. Big and masculine but graceful. Capable hands. Sexy hands. The quiver in her belly became something far more disturbing.
Silence lengthened between them again and suddenly Barbier issued a low, violent-sounding curse in French and picked up the laptop, moving towards the door. He was almost there before Nessa realised that involving the Irish Gardaí would be even more of a disaster. The fact that Barbier hadn’t called them yet left a sliver of hope that something of this situation could be salvaged.
‘Wait!’ Her voice sounded very high in the silence.
He stopped at the door, his back to her. It was almost as intimidating as his front. He slowly turned around. ‘What did you say?’
Nessa tried to calm her thundering heart. She was afraid to look up too much, using the lip of her cap to keep herself hidden as much as possible.
‘I said wait. Please.’ She winced. As if a nicety like please would go over well in this situation.
There was more silence and then an incredulous-sounding, ‘You’re a girl?’
That struck Nessa somewhere very vulnerable. She knew she was dressed head to toe in black and wore a hat, but was she really so androgynous? She was well aware of her lack of feminine wiles, having spent much of her life knee deep in muck and wellies. She hitched up her chin and glared at him now, too angry to remember to try and stay hidden. ‘I’m twenty-four, hardly a girl.’
He looked sceptical. ‘Crawling through undergrowth to trespass on private property is hardly the activity of a grown woman.’
The thought of the kind of women a man like this would know—a world away from Nessa—made her skin prickle with self-consciousness and her vulnerability turned into defensiveness. ‘You’re meant to be in France.’
Luc Barbier was shocked. And he was not a man who was easily shocked. But this slip of a girl—woman?—was talking back to him as if she hadn’t just flagrantly invaded his private property with clearly criminal intentions.
‘I was in France, and now I’m not.’
He allowed his gaze to inspect her more closely, and as he did he felt something infuse his blood...interest. Because he could see it now. Yes, she was a woman. Albeit slim and petite to the point of boyishness. But he could see her breasts, small and perfectly formed, pushing against the form-fitting fleece of her black top.
He could make out a jaw too delicate to be a man’s, and wondered how he hadn’t noticed it before. He also saw a very soft lower lip, which was currently caught between white teeth. He felt a very unwelcome stirring of desire and a need to see more.
‘Take off your cap,’ he heard himself demand before he’d even registered the impulse.
The small chin came up and that soft lip was freed from white teeth. He saw the tension in her. There was a taut moment when he wasn’t sure what she would do. Then, as if realising she had no choice, she raised a small hand and pulled the cap from her head.
For a moment Luc could only stare stupidly as a coil of long, dark red hair fell over her shoulder from where it had been stuffed under the cap.
And then he took in the rest of her face and felt even more foolish. He’d seen countless beautiful women, some of whom were considered to be the most beautiful in the world, but right now they were all an indistinct blur in his memory.
She was stunning. High cheekbones. Flawless creamy pale skin. A straight nose. Huge hazel eyes—flashing green and gold, with long dark lashes. And that mouth, lush and wide.
His body hardened, and the shock of such a reaction to this whippet of a girl made Luc reject the rogue reaction. He did not react to women unless it was on his terms. He was reacting because she was unexpected.
His voice was harsh. ‘Now, tell me who you are, or I call the police.’
Nessa burned inwardly from the thorough once-over Barbier had just given her. She felt very exposed without her cap. Exposed to the full impact of him up close. And she couldn’t look away. It was as if she were mesmerised by the sun. He was simply...beautiful, in a very raw, masculine way, all hard angles and sharp lines. But his mouth was provocatively sensual—the only softness in that face. It was distracting.
‘I’m waiting.’
Nessa flushed, caught