Luke Dallas stood in front of the closed door of Rinaldi Executive Search. In the flesh. All six feet, four inches of him, from his wavy dark hair to his rather impressively sized loafers.
She’d been wrong. He was indeed that arresting—and more—in person. A two-dimensional image was incapable of capturing the aura of danger in his stance, coiled tension threatening to spring into action at the slightest provocation. The photo revealed the handsome symmetry of his features, but couldn’t impart the sheer sensuality and command. This was a man who got what he wanted and didn’t care how. Pinned by the force of his gaze, she shivered as his expression darkened. The air grew heavy, thickening with the ominous atmosphere of two weather fronts about to collide into a supercell.
She was in the direct path of the storm.
* * *
This should have been a day for triumph. Instead, Luke Dallas’s jaw hurt from hours of clenching his teeth. It was a new sensation. He was always in control, no matter the situation.
But that was before this morning. Before a casual meeting in an out-of-the-way coffee shop, away from prying eyes and ears, to sign the deal memo for his company’s acquisition turned into an ambush orchestrated by Irene Stavros and her father, Nestor. His vision still flashed red.
He’d travelled straight from the meeting, the ultimatum handed to him by Nestor running on a constant loop, to Johanna Rinaldi’s boutique search firm. Johanna was the only person he could think of under the time-crunched circumstances who could help to extricate him from the trap Nestor had pulled closed so artfully.
Where the hell was she? Her office was locked tight and no one answered the door or the phone. His patience had just stretched past its breaking point when a woman, who couldn’t be bothered to look where she was going, nearly ran him over. She stared at him with eyes so wide they threatened to take over the rest of her face. Pretty eyes though. Big and green. A man could get lost in those depths if he wasn’t careful.
Then she blinked, breaking the connection, and his anger came back.
“Can I help you?” he barked, partially to cover being caught staring at a stranger, no matter how attractive, and partially because she wasn’t Johanna and, right now, Johanna was the only person he wanted to see.
“You’re Luke Dallas.” Her gaze ping-ponged between the newspaper clutched in her hand and his face. “But our meeting isn’t until Wednesday.”
“You work for Johanna?” Finally. Maybe his day could get back on track and he could salvage what was left of it.
“Um.” Her eyes were still wide as she ran a hand through her messy blond ponytail, then used it to tug on a white shirt that looked like it had been put on straight off the floor. Finally, she held it out to be shaken. “Yes. I do. I’m Danica. Novak. Danica Novak.”
He shook her proffered hand. When he pressed against it, her fingers trembled and she leaned back, as if she were Little Red Riding Hood and he the Big Bad Wolf and they were standing in Grandmother’s house. An appealing rosy shade appeared on her high cheekbones.
“It seems you know my name.”
“Yes, well,” she said, waving the newspaper clutched in her left hand, “it helps to have a visual aid.” She gave him a tentative smile, and if he thought her eyes pretty before, the smile turned them downright stunning. Then the newspaper headline caught his gaze and made him forget any nonsense about the eyes being the windows to the soul.
“May I see that?” he asked. She handed it over.
He read the article, the hallway walls pressing in further with every word. The Weekly’s business reporter Cinco Jackson somehow had received wind of Luke’s talks with the Stavros Group, despite his best efforts to keep them quiet. The article outlined the rumors surrounding the acquisition, calling it a done deal with the papers due to be signed imminently. Luke would be lucky to make it ten feet past Ruby Hawk’s front door without his employees questioning him about timing and next steps.
Thanks to his family, plus some savvy investments of his own, Luke could’ve retired after college graduation and still lived an extremely comfortable life. But that was due to being born to the right parents. He hadn’t earned it.