Unlike Pyrmont, with its massive central swing span, this bridge was just a smallish, nondescript one tucked away on a commercial section of shore.
‘You’re not listening to what I want.’ Cartwright’s mouth tightened.
‘I’ve listened. As did the Project Manager who liaised with you initially. The advice in his report was sound.’ Overhead, a seagull offered a cry to the pale blue sky as it searched the ocean below for food.
Rick had a strong face to match his strong tone. Wide cheekbones and a firm square jaw that, even at nine-thirty in the morning, revealed a dark beard shadow beneath the skin. A tall vital man with thick shoulders and defined musculature beneath the perfectly cut charcoal suit and pale green shirt.
Marissa didn’t want to be aware of him, but she couldn’t seem to help it.
‘We can make something truly stupendous of this area.’ Cartwright repeated his mantra.
Again.
For about the tenth time, paying apparently no attention at all to Rick’s explanation.
The company boss growled softly beneath his breath.
It was not a sexy growl!
Marissa inhaled the tang of sea air and Rick’s citrusy aftershave cologne and stopped herself from closing her eyes in what would have been a completely inappropriate appreciative sigh.
Instead, she forced her attention to Cartwright’s rounded face. Maybe she could help … ‘Since you’re limited with what you can do in terms of refurbishing this bridge, perhaps you could implement some onshore improvements to emphasise the dock area and make the most of that aspect of things?’
‘My thoughts exactly, Marissa. Something more commercially viable.’ Rick cast a quick glance her way, offering a small nod of approval. The quirk of his lips that went with that approval made her tummy flutter.
Okay, so the company boss could show appreciation as well as look good. He still fell under the Tall, Dark and Aggressive about Success category.
She reminded herself rather desperately that that definition was one hundred per cent not right for her. Despite what her headed-for-thirty-years-of-age and back in the dating pool hormones might suggest otherwise. What did they know, anyway?
Enough to make her join a dating site, and to recognise an appealing man when she saw one?
The first had been a sensible, well-considered decision, nothing more, and, as for the second …
‘Not going there,’ Marissa muttered towards the foaming sea and tossed her head of curly hair before she remembered the hard hat squashed over the top of it.
Fine, so the impact was lost a little. And she hadn’t actually been thinking about emotions. She’d made her choices clinically. That was all she needed to remember. Marissa grimaced and shoved the hat out of her eyes.
‘Are you all right?’ Rick leaned his head close to hers. The grey of his eyes deepened with a combination of amusement and interest as his gaze roved over the hard hat, her face, the hair sticking out about her cheeks and neck.
‘I’m fine, thank you.’ He probably wondered why she’d tossed her head like that. ‘It was nothing, really. I had a twitch.’
In the brain. It started when I looked into your eyes this morning as you said, ‘Good, you’re here,’ in that deep, toe-curling voice and it hiccups back every time I look at you or listen to you.
‘Er … a twitch that made my head nod and the hat fall forward.’
Toe-curling, authoritative voice, Marissa. Get it right if you’re going to think it at all.
‘I see.’ Though his lips didn’t move, Rick’s eyes smiled.
Marissa stared at that charming expression and thought, deadly. The man was deadly to her senses.
‘A central steel swing span—’ Cartwright began again.
‘Would require a whole new bridge, one far larger than this one and located in deeper water.’ Rick raised a hand as though to push it through his hair—also covered by a hard hat, except in his case he looked good in it—and dropped it to his side again. ‘As Hedley told you in his assessment.’
‘Hedley isn’t management level,’ the man spluttered. ‘He doesn’t understand some of the committee members’ vision for the project. We could have the bridge swing open and closed at certain times of the day—a ceremonial thing even if only smaller craft passed through. It could create a major tourist attraction.’
‘But you don’t have the funds or planning permission to make that kind of change,’ Rick pointed out gently, ‘nor the conditions or traffic to demand it.’
‘I have influence where the approval is concerned.’ Cartwright suddenly turned to glare in Marissa’s direction. ‘Are you getting all this, girly? I don’t see that pen moving.’
‘It’s a stenographer’s pencil,’ Marissa corrected kindly while Rick’s big body stiffened at her side. ‘I’ve written down every new piece of information you’ve provided and, actually, I’m almost thirty. Not quite a “girly” any more.’
‘Miss Warren is part of the Morgan’s team. She is not—’
‘Not at all perturbed,’ Marissa inserted while a flow of gratified warmth filled her.
Rick drew a breath. His gaze locked with hers and the starch left him. His voice dipped about an octave as he murmured, ‘Well, you really don’t look …’
‘That old?’ She meant her response to sound cheerful, unconcerned. Instead, it came out with a breathless edge, the result of that considering gaze on her. Of the way he had championed her, despite never having worked directly with her until today.
And perhaps a little because of her need not to feel quite as ancient as she did in the face of her looming birthday. ‘Thank you for thinking so.’
Thank you very, very much and you look appealing yourself. Very appealing.
Did hormones have voices? Whispery ones that piped up right when they were least welcome?
First chance we get, Marissa thought, those hormones and I are having a Come To Mama meeting and I’m telling them who’s in charge of this show. Namely, me.
Stupid birthdays, anyway. They should be cancelled after twenty-five and never referred to again.
You’ll have found Mr Right by your birthday and won’t have time to notice that over a third of your estimated life span has passed you by while you wasted some of it on Michael Unsworth, the cheating, lying, using—
‘Well. What was it we were saying?’ Marissa forced a smile. She mustn’t think of Michael, or of Rick Morgan’s charismatic presence.
‘We were discussing this bridge …’ Prosaic words but Rick’s gaze moved over her with a delicious consciousness before it was quickly masked.
He was attracted to her!
Her hormones cheered.
Marissa frowned.
He couldn’t be attracted. At all. Why would he be?
A moment later he blinked that consciousness away and turned to stare at the other man. ‘Unless you have something new to add to the discussion, Cartwright, perhaps we could wind this up.’
Focusing on work was a great idea, really. If her heart had already done a little flip-flop dance, well, that didn’t matter. She would simply force all systems back into submission because control was the thing.
Control her destiny and it couldn’t hurt—control—her, and that was exactly how she wanted things to be.
Rick