Slave to Love

‘Karl, please,’ he invited, his eyes alight with expectancy.

Her hesitation was only slight before she returned the invitation. ‘Roberta,’ she informed him, and his pleased smile at her acquiescence must have been infectious because she found herself smiling too.

‘Shall we say seven-thirty, then?’ he suggested.

Just what I needed! she decided, when she noticed a new lightness in her step as she walked into the hotel to book in. Karl Loring might be an out-and-out rake, but even a rake was better than nothing to a girl alone in a strange city.

And anyway, she decided, it did her battered ego good to have someone as good-looking as Karl eager to be with her!

Then she frowned, making a mental note to find out if he was married, or divorced—or obligated in any way, shape or form!

She’d had her fill of men like that.

Her room turned out to be a luxury suite, which made her smile ruefully because she knew it really should not be. But it had been booked originally for Joel—and Joel obviously expected only the best.

Still, she wasn’t going to complain, she decided happily as she moved about the elegant grey and green bedroom, putting away the few items of clothing she had brought with her. Then, with her mind firmly clicked on to work, she hauled the bulky file out of her briefcase, took it into the equally elegant sitting-room, plonked it down on the low table flanking two soft sofas, then sat down and began the long slog through all the paper stuffed inside, looking for those loopholes that Joel had said he wanted her to find.

It was gone five o’clock before she came up for air, an

d it was the sudden rumbling of her stomach that did it, reminding her that she had barely eaten a single thing all day!

She called Room Service, ordering herself a ham sandwich and a pot of coffee, then stood, looking down at the mass of papers scattered across the table. Several hours of solid reading had turned up nothing that could vaguely be called a loophole. Not that she was surprised; the people in Maclaines’ legal department weren’t known for leaving loopholes. Mac wouldn’t employ them if they were.

Mac.

No, she told herself firmly, when the usual ache began deep down in the pit of her stomach. For the next few days she was not going to think of Mac!

She would have a quick shower instead, she decided abruptly, aware even as she moved off towards the bedroom that it was Mac’s name she was moving away from.

Fifteen minutes later saw her coming out of the bathroom wrapped in one of the short, fluffy white towelling bathrobes provided by the hotel, with her hair piled up on the top of her head in a riot of silky blonde curls and her face looking pink and shiny. She moved across the room to go in search of fresh underwear to put on, then paused, a scuffling noise from the sitting-room beyond catching her attention.

Room Service! she realised, and changed direction, going to throw open the bedroom door with words of thanks ready on her lips—only to stop dead, the words congealing in her throat, when she found herself staring at not a waiter with a loaded tray, but Mac.

Mac—looking as comfortable as hell on one of her sitting-room sofas.

CHAPTER FIVE

HE WAS reclining in one corner of the sofa with the jacket to his slate-grey suit discarded along with his tie. The collar to his pale blue shirt was tugged open a couple of buttons and his feet were propped up on the edge of the coffee-table—she could hardly believe her eyes!

‘Mac!’ she gasped. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Working—the same as you,’ he drawled, obviously not as surprised to see her as she was to see him. In fact, he didn’t even bother looking up from the stack of papers he had in his hand. ‘What the hell has Joel been playing at with this Brunner thing, Roberta?’ he demanded while she just stood there, shaking with a dreadful mixture of horrified shock and sheer, undiluted joy at seeing him. ‘It’s no wonder the crafty devil is still playing hard to get when we seem to have been conceding to every damned proviso he can come up with since discussions began!’

She blinked, trying to pull herself together, unable as yet to accept the fact that he was here at all, or to compute a single word he was throwing at her.

And throwing was right, she realised as her eyes began to clear, the silly rose-tinted hue through which she had been gazing at him fading away so that she could see him as he really was.

Mac was in business mode, not personal. And he was angry, his grey eyes snapping beneath frowning black brows as they flicked down the sheet of paper he was currently studying.

The Brunner deal.

Oh, goodness! She almost jumped into stinging life. Mac was going over the Brunner deal!

‘Come here and take a look at these,’ he commanded, still without offering her a single glance.

Fingers playing nervously with the knotted belt to her robe, she went, simply because she didn’t know what else to do! Mac playing the impatient businessman was a whole new concept to her. She might work in the same building as him, and he might be her ultimate boss, but, until now, he had made a strict rule never to involve himself in any business matters that she might be involved in too!

‘Concessions—concessions!’ he gritted, the back of his fingers snapping against the paper in a deriding pointer to what he was talking about. ‘In each one of these meetings Brunner demanded and we conceded. Sit down,’ he ordered, sliding his feet to the floor so that she could get by him and sink meekly down next to him.