But that was a long time ago and there’s no use looking backward. Or at least, that’s my philosophy and I’m sticking to it. As soon as I can get this damn paycheck and be on my way.
I brace myself for a long wait—I can’t believe a fired cocktail waitress is exactly high priority to Richard Caine—but barely a couple minutes pass before the nun in civilian clothing tells me to go in.
I head to the door leading to the office’s inner sanctum, but before I can so much as touch the knob, it swings open. And reveals a tall, well-built man with the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen. A man who is very definitely not seventy-year-old Mr. Caine is standing there.
Our eyes meet as I cross the threshold, our bodies brushing in the narrow doorway. And for long seconds I can’t think, can’t breathe. Can’t do anything but stare as my carefully constructed don’t-give-a-shit attitude comes crashing down around my ears.
I don’t want him to see it, can’t let him see it, so I look him in the face, straight in the eyes, just like my mother taught me. But this time, it doesn’t work. This time all it does is make me shakier. Not because he’s a letch like that Russian bastard from last night, but because he isn’t.
I blink, try to focus, but all I can see are his green eyes. Lush, verdant and filled with a darkness that seems to echo the one inside of me. It’s a darkness I’ve worked hard to ignore, a darkness I’ve spent so much time trying to pretend isn’t there.
The fact that I can so readily see it reflected in him is terrifying. I should be looking away, pulling away. Running away. But instead I just stand there for several long, quiet seconds. Spellbound. Captivated. Enthralled.
I don’t move. I don’t blink. Hell, I’m not sure I even breathe. It’s only the wild galloping of my heart that proves to me I’m still alive.
There’s a small part of my brain—the only part that’s still functioning, it seems—that is horrified by my fascination with this man. It’s the same part that is screaming at me to walk away, to get out now while I still have a modicum of control and to hell with the forty-eight hours of pay that they owe me.
And still I don’t move. Still I stand there in that doorway, my breasts only an inch or two from his chest, my face much too close to his for comfort. And I watch him as he watches me.
But then something shifts in those gorgeous green eyes of his, something opens, and for a moment—just a moment—I can see as deeply into him as I suddenl
y fear he can see into me.
It’s the scariest thing about this whole damn encounter, the idea that he can see with a glance what I’ve worked so hard to cover up. Just the idea of it snaps me out of the weird fugue state I’m inhabiting and straight back into my fucked up present.
“Excuse me,” I say, bowing my back and pressing my spine against the doorway to ensure that I don’t touch him again. “I’m here to see Mr. Caine.”
“I am Mr. Caine.”
The blatant lie helps me get myself a little more under control. Narrowing my eyes at him, I inch my way back out of the doorway, sliding into the reception area. “I’ve seen Mr. Caine and you look nothing like him. Not to mention, you’re about fifty years too young to pass for the guy who runs this place.”
He smiles then, and just that easily he goes from dark and good-looking to absolutely gorgeous, so gorgeous that if I hadn’t felt the heat of his body against my own, I wouldn’t believe that he was real. Wouldn’t believe that he was anything but a god of Atlantis stepping out of one of the paintings in the art gallery located twenty stories below us.
But he is real, and that smile makes the most of his sharp cheekbones and full lips and suddenly my fingers itch to tangle themselves in the wild black hair that frames his fallen angel face. It’s not a feeling I normally have—not a reaction I normally have—and it makes me nervous in a way few things ever do.
“People say I look like my mother. And I’m actually forty years younger than my father, but thanks for the compliment.”
“You’re Richard Caine’s son.” I have a hard time believing that considering I haven’t heard anything about him being back. It seems like an awfully big secret to keep, and a totally unnecessary one.
“I am. Sebastian Caine. My father’s been ill, so I came in last week to take over some of his duties,” he explains, answering the question I didn’t ask.
But that explains why I didn’t know he was back—I was off all last week, hanging with Lucy in the hospital when the gossip would have been at its most rampant.
“Please,” he says, stepping out of the doorway and gesturing toward his desk. “Come into my office.”
Says the spider to the fly. Except that had something to do with a parlor, didn’t it? Still as he waits patiently, watching me with those laser green eyes of his, I can’t help but see the parallels. There’s a part of me—that part in charge of self-preservation—that wants to run as far and as fast as I can from this man, this office, this moment. But I’ve already run once. I promised myself then that I wouldn’t do it again and I don’t plan on breaking that promise. Especially not over something as ridiculous as a little sexual attraction.
And so I do the only thing I can do—I step into his office. And pray I’m not letting pride get in the way of common sense.
But I’ve barely made it past the threshold when my heel catches in the thick shag carpet and I pitch forward, my balance completely gone. Figuring I’m done for, I stick my hands out in front of me, brace myself for the fall. But it never comes. Instead, a strong arm winds itself around my waist, pulls me back sharply.
Just that easily I’m upright again, but I’m also right back where I started—pressed against Sebastian Caine’s long, lithe, lethal body. Only this time it’s not a little brush of chest to chest, hand to hand. No, it’s full-on body contact—my back to his front—and I’m not sure if I’m startled or aroused by how good he feels.
Maybe both.
At least that’s the excuse I’m giving myself about why I don’t immediately leap away. Why I stay there, pressed against him—sheltered by him—for far longer than I should.
Not that he seems in any hurry to let me go. No, his hand is curved around my hip, his thumb stroking my waist. My nerve endings spark at his touch, heat sizzling through me with every back and forth brush of his thumb.