Scandalizing the CEO

Then she worried that she was worrying for nothing. That he might not even want to make love to her. Her fingers were tightly knotted together, something she realized only as Steven put his hand over hers.

“Relax,” he said. “What are you thinking about?”

She couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t tell this man who exuded sexuality that she was afraid of her own. But then she looked into his dark eyes and remembered the way he’d looked as he’d kissed her that very first time.

She could trust Steven. “I’m not sure I’m like the women you’re used to.”

“In what way?”

“I haven’t had many lovers,” she said.

“And that bothers you?”

She shrugged. “Not really. But I think it would be nice to have more experience, especially since you seem to.”

He smiled at her, reaching over to stroke her face. “Don’t worry about any of that. You and I are in sync when it comes to physical desire.”

“Are you sure? I’m not what you think I am,” she said.

He arched one eyebrow at her. “Unless you’re secretly a man, I think you are exactly what I believe you to be.”

She gave a nervous laugh. “No, I’m not a man.”

“Then we have no problem, do we?”

She had wanted to be smooth and confident, but instead she was showing him exactly how vulnerable she was. A part of her knew that letting him see the weakness in her gave him an advantage. She’d heard that the power in a relationship went to the person who wanted the other one less. And she knew that if that were true, she was the one with less power.

She wanted Steven in a way that was overwhelming. It made her do things she’d never done before. She was on a date on a worknight, but then the last time they’d gone out it had been a worknight, too. She always got a good night’s sleep so she was sharp at work the next day. She still had e-mails to answer tonight and photos to approve for tomorrow.

But as she sat across from him in a very posh restaurant run by a celebrity chef, she didn’t care. She just sat and talked about books and movies, surprised to find that Steven and she had a lot in common.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked toward the end of the meal when he was staring at her mouth.

“I’m wondering how your mouth will feel against my chest,” he said. “Will you kiss me there?”

“Yes,” she said. The passion and the tension underlying that question brought back all her fears. A surge of electricity cascaded through her. She leaned closer to him at the table. She wanted this man and nothing, not even her own fears, was going to stop her from having him.

She thought he’d ask for the check so they could leave, but instead he took her hand in his under the table and placed it on his thigh. She felt the muscled hardness of his legs and let her fingers caress him.

Steven took a sip of his espresso and kept his hands off Ainsley. It was a struggle because she kept moving her fingers up and down his thigh. He’d taken a gamble by putting her hand there. But her earlier fears had told him that she wasn’t sure of her appeal.

And he wondered how a woman as sexy and smart as Ainsley could doubt herself. She had declined dessert, but he’d never known a woman not to want sweets, so he had ordered a seven-layer chocolate cake for them both and offered her a bite.

She shook her head, but he kept the fork extended. “Please take it away, Steven.”

He took the bite for himself. “Why?”

Pulling her hand from his leg, she wrapped it around her own waist. “I…I guess this is a good time to tell you. I used to be fat.”

Women were always obsessing over five or ten pounds. But Ainsley was perfect. Beautiful, curvy, everything a woman should be.

“I find that very hard to believe.”

“Well, it’s the truth. Men rarely noticed me when I was in a room.”

Again he didn’t believe her. “Maybe that was your perception, but I promise you they did.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Well, then they were fools because I would never have forgotten you,” he said.

“But you did,” she said. “I interviewed you five years ago. And you don’t even remember me.”

Steven tried to recall…the girl with the pretty violet eyes? She had been big, he remembered, but more than that she’d been almost invisible when she hadn’t been interviewing him. “I remember now. Weren’t you A.J. then? You were so shy when the interview was over. Almost as if you wanted to fade into the background.”

She flushed. “I did. But you didn’t remember me, did you?”