Finn forced himself to relax, to look somewhat approachable. Then he increased his pace to close the gap between himself and Ellie. He reached her just before she stepped through the glass doors of the lobby.
“Miss Winston.”
She stopped, her hand on the metal bar, ready to exit. Then she turned back and faced him. Her long blond hair swung with the movement, settling like a silk curtain around her shoulders. The short-sleeved crimson dress she wore hugged her curves, and dropped into a tantalizing yet modest V at her chest. For a second, her green eyes were blank, then she registered his face and the green went from cold emerald to warm forest. “My goodness. Mr. McKenna,” she said. “I recognize you from the article in Architecture Today.”
“Please, call me Finn.” She’d seen the piece about his award for innovative building design? And remembered it? “That was more than a year ago. I’m impressed with your memory.”
“Well, like most people in our industry, I have an absolutely ridiculous attention for detail.” She smiled then, the kind of smile that no one would ever confuse with a grimace. The kind of smile that hit a man in the gut and made him forget everything around him. The kind of smile that added an extra sparkle to her green eyes, and lit her delicate features with an inner glow.
Intoxicating.
Get a grip, McKenna. This was business, nothing more. Since when did he think of anything other than a bottle of single malt as intoxicating? Business, and business only. “If you have a minute, I wanted to talk to you.”
“Actually I’m heading out.” She gestured toward the door. A continual Morse code of headlights went by on the busy street outside, tires making a constant whoosh-whoosh of music on the dark pavement, even though it was nearing midnight on a Tuesday night. Boston, like most cities, never slept. And neither, most nights, did Finn McKenna.
“Perhaps you could call my assistant,” she said, “and set up a meeting for—”
“If you have time tonight, I would appreciate it.” He remembered Riley’s advice and decided to sweeten the pot a little. Show her he wasn’t the cold business-only gargoyle that people rumored him to be. Hawk indeed. Finn could be suave. Debonair even.
His younger brother could charm a free coffee from a barista; talk a traffic cop into forgetting his ticket. Maybe if Finn applied a bit of that, it might loosen her up, and make her more amenable to what he was about to propose. So he worked up another smile-grimace to his face—and tried another tack.
“Why don’t we, uh, grab a couple drinks somewhere?” he said, then groaned inwardly. Casual conversation was clearly not his forte. Put him in a board room, and he was fine, but attempting small talk … a disaster.
Damn Riley’s advice anyway.
“Thank you, but I don’t drink. If you ask me, too many bad decisions have been made with a bottle of wine.” Another smile. “I’m sure if you call in the morning—”
“Your schedule is certainly as busy as mine. Why don’t we avoid yet another meeting?”
“In other words, get this out of the way and then I can get rid of you?”
He laughed. “Something like that.”
“It’s really late …”
He could see her hesitation. In a second, she’d say no again, and he’d be forced to delay his plan one more day. He didn’t have the luxury of time. He needed to get a meeting with Ellie Winston—a private one—now. In business, he knew when to press, and when to step back. Now was a time to press. A little. “I promise, I don’t bite.”
“Or pick over the remains of your competitors?”
“That’s a rumor. Nothing more. I’ve only done that … once.” He paused a second. “Okay, maybe twice.”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh my, Mr. McKenna. You are not what I expected.”
What had she expected? That he would be the stern predator portrayed in that article? Or that he wouldn’t have a sense of humor? “I hope that’s a good thing.”
“We shall see,” she said. Then she reached out and laid a hand on his arm, a quick touch, nothing more, but it was enough to stir a fire inside him. A fire that he knew better than to stoke.
What the hell had been in that beer? Finn McKenna wasn’t a man given to spontaneous emotional or physical reactions. Except for one brief window, he’d lived his life as ordered as the buildings he designed. No room for fluff or silliness. And particularly no room for the foolishness of a tumble in the hay. Yet his mind considered that very thing when Eleanor Winston touched him.
“I’m sorry, you’re absolutely right, it is late and you must want to get home,” he said, taking a step back, feeling … flustered, which was not at all like him. “I’ll call your assistant in the morning.”
Riley had said to say what he would say. And Finn knew damned well Riley wouldn’t have said that.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry, Mr. McKenna. I’ve had a long, long day and I …” She glanced back in the direction of the closed double doors, but Finn got the sense she wasn’t looking at the black-tie crowd filling the Park Plaza’s ballroom, but at something else, something he couldn’t see. Then she glanced at her watch. “Midnight. Well, the day is over, isn’t it?”
“If you want it to be, Cinderella. Or you could continue the ball for a little while longer.” The quip came out without hesitation. A true Riley-ism. He’d been spending too much time with his brother.
Or maybe not, he thought, when she laughed. He liked her laugh. It was light, airy, almost musical.
“Cinderella, huh?” she said. “Okay, you convinced me. It would be nice to end my day with some one-on-one conversation instead of an endless stream of small talk.” She wagged a finger at him and a tease lit her face, made her smile quirk higher on one side than the other. “But I’ll have tea, not tequila, while I hear you out on whatever it is you want to tell me.”
“Excellent.” He could only hope she was as amenable to his proposal. Surely such an auspicious beginning boded well for the rest. He pushed on the door and waved Ellie through with one long sweep of his arm. “After you … Cinderella.”
“My goodness, Finn McKenna. You certainly do know how to make a girl swoon.” She flashed him yet another smile and then whooshed past him and out into the night, leaving the faint scent of jasmine and vanilla in her wake.
Get back to the plan, he reminded himself. Focus on getting her to agree. Nothing more. He could do it, he knew he could. Finn wasn’t a distracted, spontaneous man. He refused to tangle personal with business ever again. He would get Ellie to agree, and before he could blink, his company would be back on top.
But as he followed one of his biggest competitors into the twinkling, magical world of Boston at night, he had to wonder if he was making the best business decision of his life—or the worst.
SHE had to be crazy.
What else had made Ellie agree to midnight drinks with Finn McKenna—one of her competitors and a man she barely knew? She’d been ready to go home, get to bed and get some much-needed sleep when Finn had approached her.
There’d been something about his smile, though, something about him charmed her. He wasn’t a smooth talker, more a man who had an easy, approachable way about him, one that she suspected rarely showed in his business life. The “Hawk” moniker that magazine—and most of the people in the architecture world—had