She felt the whole forecourt hold its collective breath as they awaited his next move.
When it finally came, Wynnie was again glad of her shackles, uncomfortable as they had become, as this time when those blindingly blue eyes met hers they were filled with such self-possession, such provocation, such blatant reined-in heat her knees all but buckled beneath her.
‘You want to come up to my place for coffee?’ he asked, his voice like silk and melted dark chocolate and all things decadent and delectable and too slippery to hold on to. ‘Now why didn’t you just say so in the first place?’
CHAPTER TWO
AS THOUGH Dylan Kelly had a magic button in the pocket of his trousers, Security arrived at that moment to discreetly move the onlookers away. The city workers and tourists had had their free lunchtime show. The press had their story. Wynnie’s awareness campaign was off to a flying start. Everyone was happy.
Everyone except Dylan, who was staring at her as if she were a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
‘That was a cheap trick you just pulled,’ he growled quietly enough that only she could hear.
Wynnie shook her hair out of her face. Now the crowd had dispersed, the breeze whipping up George Street was swirling around her like a maelstrom. ‘I prefer fearless, indomitable and inventive.’
‘In the end it will be they who decide one way or the other.’ He motioned with a slight tilt of his head to the row of news vans on the sidewalk.
‘Lucky for me,’ she said with a smile.
‘Mmm. Lucky for you.’ He glanced at his watch, then back at her. ‘So did you want to conduct your bogus meeting out here or were you planning on staying here for the night?’
Wynnie twisted to get her hands to the tight back pocket of her capri pants, which had been ideal for the Verona autumn she had left behind, but in the warm Brisbane spring sunshine they stuck to her like a wetsuit. ‘Oh, no. I’m done. Horizontal is my much preferred method. Of sleeping,’ she added far too late for comfort.
She glanced up to find him thankfully preoccupied enough to have missed her little Freudian slip. Unfortunately he was preoccupied with the twisting and turning of her hips.
His voice was deep, his jaw tight, when he said, ‘I could have had you arrested, you know. This is private property.’
‘Nah,’ she said. ‘The globe belongs to none of us.’
He’d moved closer, having seemingly reconciled himself to the fact that she wanted to get out of the handcuffs as much as he wanted her to, and that her shoes were made for looks and functionality, not for use as a secret weapon. Without the clamour of the crowd making the square smell like a fish-market, she caught a waft of his aftershave—clean, dark, expensive. Suddenly she felt very, very thirsty.
Despite his focus, she twisted some more. Her shoulder twinged but better that than have to keep trying to appear professional while cuffed to the statue, and while the touch of his eyes made her skin scorch beneath her clothes.
Her fingers made it to the bottom of the tight coin pocket to find it was empty. Her heart leapt into her throat until she remembered she’d put the tiny key inside the breast pocket of her shirt at the last minute.
Naturally when she tried to reach it, she couldn’t. She stood on tiptoes, looking for Hannah, knowing it was a lost cause. She would have been back at the office the minute lunch hour was up.
Wynnie closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath and said, ‘Would you do me a favour?’
Dylan’s deep voice rolled over her. ‘You certainly aren’t backwards about asking for what you want, I’ll give you that.’
‘I need you to get the key for my cuffs.’
After a long, slow pause he said, ‘The key?’
She squeezed her eyes shut tighter. ‘It’s in my top right breast pocket. I can’t reach it. So unless you do want me to become a permanent fixture—’
The rest of her words dried up in her throat and her eyes sprang open.
It seemed she hadn’t had to ask twice. Dylan’s hand was already sliding into the pocket, his fingertips brushing against the soft cotton over her bra; just slowly enough to make a ripple of goose bumps leap up all over her body, and just fast enough she couldn’t accuse him of taking advantage.
All too soon he held up the key. ‘This the one you’re after?’
She hoped to God it was. If he made another foray in there she didn’t know what she might do.
She nodded and looked up into his eyes. Up close they were the colour of the sky back home, the unspoilt wilds of country Nimbin—the kind of wide-open blue found only in the most untouched places on earth. But the colour was the only virtuous thing about them. Barely checked exasperation boiled just below the surface.
She lifted her hand to take the key, was reminded why he had it in the first place, then gritted her teeth as she twisted so that she could expose her wrists, and her back view, to him instead.
This time he managed to have her unlocked without touching her at all. Not even a whisper, an accidental grope, a playful pat. She actually felt disappointed.
When God was handing out the mechanism for knowing who a girl could safely lean on, Wynnie had so-o-o missed out. If there was ever a man in her vicinity who was about to act against her own interests, that was the one she was drawn to.
She shook her head and vowed to ask Hannah to set her up on some sort of blind date and fast. Or maybe just a night out dancing at some dark, hazy club. Or she could take up running. Not as though she’d ever lifted a foot in purposeful exercise in her life, but there was no time like the present to begin! If she didn’t manage to release some of the sexual tension this man had summoned, she was going to make a hash of everything.
She slid the cuffs from her right wrist, sucking in a short sharp breath as the pain of their release grew worse than the dull ache of the wearing of them.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked, and she looked up in surprise.
For the briefest moment she thought she saw actual concern flicker within his gaze. She blinked and it was gone. She hid the cuffs and her red wrists behind her. ‘I’m fine. Now how about that coffee?’
‘First things first,’ he said, rocking forwards on his heels until her personal space became his personal space. His dark scent became her oxygen. His natural heat her reason for getting up that morning.
Her toes curled and her tongue darted out to wet her lips.
‘I don’t make a habit of having coffee with a woman without at the very least getting a name.’ He held out a hand. ‘Dylan Kelly.’
Wynnie blinked, mentally slapped herself across the back of her head for letting her imagination run rampant, then took his hand, doing her best to ignore the frisson of heat that scooted up her arm as his fingers curled around hers. ‘Wynnie Devereaux.’
His eyebrows rose. ‘French?’
‘Australian.’
His eyebrows slowly flattened out, but the edge of his mouth kicked up into a half smile as he realised she had no intention of illuminating him further.
The truth was that Devereaux was the maiden name of a grandmother she’d never met, and her little brother, Felix, had never been able to pronounce her real name as a baby and had called her Wynnie from the time he could talk.
Felix. The whisper of his name in the back of her mind made her soul hurt, and reminded her how her patchy instinct on who to trust could go so terribly wrong.
Either