The Millionaire Affair (Love in the Balance 3)

“I’m… um, I’m going to go to bed.” Her lips lifted into an unsure smile, making him feel like a grade-A jackass.

“Kimber, wait.”

She stopped short of walking down the hallway, wrapping her fingers around the wall and leaning back into the open doorway. Her teeth stabbed her bottom lip, her eyes were wide and innocent, her cinnamon-colored brows raised in curiosity.

Every last cell in his body wanted to rush across the room and fold her against him, sample her lips, and bury this… this bizarre, but unmistakable need in her fiery hair and plush mouth. He blinked, stunned and overwhelmed by his thoughts.

“Chips.” He snatched a bag out of the box and held it up.

Kimber came into the room and accepted it, a look of confusion on her face as if she’d been expecting him to say—or do—something else. But no matter how much he’d wanted to say or do that something else, he wouldn’t.

Seducing Kimber wouldn’t be productive. Not for either of them.

CHAPTER FOUR

Landon leaned into the back of the conference room chair, now permanently molded to his body. He flipped his Mont Blanc pen end-over-end on the legal pad in front of him, listening with half an ear to his team rounding the long, oval boardroom table.

He’d climbed into the shower this morning almost amused by the direction of his thoughts last night. He supposed the combination of fatigue and stress could cause the borderline mania he’d experienced. When he’d entered the kitchen to find Kimber making coffee and Lyon kicked back on the living room sofa watching cartoons, he’d felt none of the strange longing he had hours prior. Yes, she was still undeniably attractive, but that… need he’d felt for her was gone.

He hadn’t been able to ignore her beauty but, thank God, he was able to have a normal conversation with her before kissing Lyon’s head and walking out the door. A perfectly normal morning where he hadn’t shot headlong into The Twilight Zone with host Rod Serling.

Hopefully this morning was a predictable trend for the future.

“Red and silver. It’s who they are,” Margaret was arguing.

He tuned in to the chatter around him.

Margaret moved her empty Starbucks cup to the side and flipped around an art board, featuring Windy City’s current packaging, to show Brenda. “They’ve built a brand out of these colors.” She gestured at the beauty shot of the bag next to a heaping bowl of thin, golden potato chips before tapping it twice with her fingernail. Once when she repeated “red” and tapped the red part of the bag, and again when she said “silver.” Brenda leered at her from across the table.

Landon felt a migraine coming on.

“They’ve built a not-so-well-known brand,” Brenda challenged. “For them to stand out, we have to think outside of the box, here. I say we start with tearing the brand down to the studs and rebuilding from scratch.”

“Lay’s has the color yellow cornered,” someone piped up.

And then they went around again. Like they had for the majority of the morning. It became quickly apparent that the direction of this conversation, like the other earlier conversations, wasn’t productive.

Landon drew in a solid breath and spoke for the first time in thirty minutes. Because he only spoke when he needed to, the room quieted when the first syllable exited his lips. “Margaret is right.”

Margaret sat up straighter and batted eyelashes over round cheeks. “Thank you, Mr. Downey.”

He resisted the urge to shake his head, and capped his frustration. His designers were like little puppies, desperately seeking pats on the head. Brenda sent Margaret a sneer. Margaret fluffed her dark hair in an arrogant manner.

Why they took their wins and losses personally, he had no idea. The product won or lost. A lesson for another day, perhaps. One for a day when he wasn’t circling a hellacious headache at the hands of a group of corporate ladder-climbers. He scrubbed his face, aware his thinning patience was not their fault. Not technically. He had a lot riding on nailing Windy City’s brand. Otto Williams had fired his last ad agency. Landon had seen the other agency’s proposal Otto had called “crap on a stick.” Even Landon could admit it hadn’t been half-bad, though he’d kept that opinion to himself.

“The brand’s colors aren’t the issue,” he announced, infusing his voice with authority. “It’s their image that needs updating.” A dozen wide-eyed stares greeted him. Waiting for him to solve this epic conundrum. He threw the problem back at them. “Suggestions?”