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Suddenly, she jerked to a stand, whipped her still-damp hair over her shoulder and faced the mirror, giving him a wide-open shot of a pink lace bra that barely covered her sweetly curved cleavage.
“Oh, my God!” She yelped and spun around, slapping her hands over her and hardly covering a thing. His gaze dropped lazily, taking in the narrow waist, the flare of feminine hips, the low bikini cut of delicate pink panties cupping an alluring apex between those lovely thighs.
Good God, his administrative assistant had been hiding all this under navy pantsuits and crisp white blouses?
“Anna?” His voice sounded as tight as his throat suddenly felt.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
The question yanked him back to her face, her appealing features tinged with the shade of her matching underwear, bottle-green eyes bright with embarrassment.
“What am I doing here?” He didn’t mean to smile. Or stare. But, he was human. And she was… unbelievable. “Last time I checked, this was my office.”
She managed an indignant breath—no mean feat for a woman clad only in heels and underwear. “I mean, so soon. What are you doing here so soon? Aren’t you in a meeting? With your family? About the will?”
The will. The words whacked him over the head as effectively as if he’d stepped into the shower that still dripped behind her. “I left early.”
She threw a pleading glance at the towel rack next to him. She wanted coverage. But he wanted answers. And a few more seconds to memorize every delectable inch of her.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, still struggling for her always-professional voice.
“No kidding.” He couldn’t help the tease in his. This was, without a doubt, the bright spot in an otherwise dismal morning.
“I went running,” she said, with another desperate look at the towel rack. “It’s very humid out there. I needed a quick shower. I thought you’d be a while.”
His gaze was slipping again, along with his ability to form a coherent thought other than the one screaming in his brain: How the hell had his all-business-all-the-time administrative assistant concealed that body from him?
And why would she? Most women with a figure like hers would wear as little as possible, as often as they could.
“The meeting ended early,” he said calmly, lingering just one more minute on the heels. Did she wear them every day?
He tore his attention from her slender ankles to slide over the neat little turn of her calf and meander back to that silky triangle with a silent vow to buy more Victoria’s Secret stock. He zeroed in on a luscious inny navel, then paused just long enough for those lace cups to rise and fall with an exasperated breath.
“If you don’t mind, I could use a towel.” Her demand was sharp as shock morphed into anger.
She was angry? He should give her a lesson in professionalism, a reminder that she shouldn’t be making herself at home in his office. He could treat her like the employee she was, and reprimand her for not being at her desk, or even issue a warning that she shouldn’t assume anything about his schedule.
But all he did was smile and tug the towel from the rack, holding it out to her. “Great shower, isn’t it?”
Her eyes widened in surprise as she took the welcome cover and wrapped it around her narrow frame, hiding every blood-warming curve. “Yes.”
“Gotta love those dual massage heads.”
A sneaky smile pulled at her mouth as she tucked terry into terry and formed a makeshift knot under her collarbone.
“Yes. They’re great. Both of them.” She straightened and lifted her chin, doing her very best to appear the altogether competent assistant who’d impressed him from the first interview. She almost pulled it off, except for the tumbling waves of dark hair that she normally wore in a tight twist, and the fact that the towel barely covered her backside.
He cleared his throat and tried really hard to scowl. “Anna,” he said sternly.
“Yes?”
His head pounded with the morning’s news followed by the surprise attack on his hormones. But that was no reason to take his anger and physical response out on this young woman whose only real crime was bad timing. Or good timing, depending on your perspective.
“Don’t quit your day job to be a singer.”
Her smile transformed her whole face, taking what had been plain, passably pretty features to something more stunning. “Not to worry, Mr. Garrison.”
But he was worried. Not only had he missed her incredible body, he’d never even noticed her milky smooth skin, or the way the tip of her tongue slipped between her teeth when she smiled, or how nicely her eyes tilted up at the sides. He’d never noticed this lovely woman right under his nose.
So of course he worried. Worried that he was going blind. Or maybe he was just so deep into the family business that he’d failed to see the gorgeous woman who sat outside his office all day long.
He turned to leave, closing the door to give her privacy to dress, and congratulating himself on the return of control and focus. And perspective.
So she was pretty. So she had a body that could bring him to his knees. It didn’t matter. What had just happened was nothing more than a close encounter that she would regret and he would forget. She was an excellent assistant and he had an empire to run, a will to contest, a brand to build. He needed his legendary control and focus more than ever.
But, damn, it would be hard to forget those legs.
Anna crossed the Oriental rug that welcomed visitors to the CEO’s suite and stabbed the digital air conditioner control until it read a chilly sixty-seven degrees.
But even that wouldn’t reduce the burn of embarrassment that singed her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. If it even was embarrassment. It was a burn, anyway. As hot and uncomfortable as Parker Garrison’s eyes when he’d given her a visual lick from those same roots to those same toes.
A familiar wicked, gooey sensation stirred low in her belly. Really low. Really wicked. Really familiar. And really dumb to think about her boss that way.
“Stupid,” she chided as she turned on her computer and picked up the phone receiver to listen to voice mail messages. How could she have been so careless? Just for five extra minutes under the ultimate hydro-jet massage from heaven?
God, if he knew how many times she’d treated herself to that shower, she’d be updating her résumé. And she’d worked in human resources long enough to know that the last place she wanted to be was on the job market. No one hired anyone without a check of the Internet—and she knew exactly what would pop up when someone typed “Anna Cross” into a search engine.
Accused of corporate spying…
No, Anna shouldn’t do anything that would force her to look for another job. So, she’d better hope her boss didn’t think borrowing the shower was grounds for dismissal.
She squeezed her eyes shut as she listened to the voice mail system announce that Parker Garrison had seventeen messages.
Seventeen? What the heck was going on?
By the time she jotted down message number five, she knew. At least she knew that something really bad had gone down at the morning meeting. The various Garrison siblings and a couple of lawyers didn’t provide details in their voice mails, but their tone, along with a few clues about “what the will said,” didn’t sound good.
Parker’s door had remained firmly shut since she’d done her level best to exit his office with some measure of dignity, knowing he watched her, knowing he’d seen everything she’d been careful to hide. Ever since she’d arrived at Garrison, Inc. four years ago, Anna had done whatever was necessary to stay off the radar, and do an outstanding job as an administrative assistant.
In fact, she’d done such an outstanding job in human resources that she’d been handed the promotion of her dreams when the slot for Parker Garrison’s administrative assistant had become available three months ago. Maybe, considering her history, she should have turned it down.
But she couldn’t resist the upgrade in status, pay and benefits. Plus, she’d been tucked away on a lower floor for almost four years. Surely, after all this time, her past would remain, well, in the past.
Still, it had become habit to keep a low profile.
Until ten minutes ago when her profile had been anything but low. It had been… damn near naked.
She closed her eyes again as another heat wave threatened, trying to ignore it as she noted each caller. No, that definitely wasn’t embarrassment. Nor was it a feminine response to the warmth of Parker’s very obviously high opinion of how she looked sans suit. The heat wave that warred with the air conditioner was raw terror.
The only thing she’d ever wanted out of this job, this city and this life was anonymity and peace. No attention—from men or media. No connection—with her boss or his associates. No trouble—ever. And what had just happened in that bathroom spelled attention, connection and trouble in capital red letters.
She recorded the rest of the messages on a call sheet that she delivered to him hourly, only slightly reassured by the fact that whatever was going wrong in Parker’s world, it would divert his attention from her.
Her intercom buzzed.
“Yes, Mr. Garrison?”
“I need you.”
Her gut clenched. “I’ll be right there, Mr. Garrison.”
“I think, Anna—” his voice in the receiver was just soft enough to make her tighten her grasp and push the phone closer to her ear “—you could probably call me Parker now.”
Now that I’ve seen you in your underwear. Her heart wobbled. “Absolutely, Mr…. Parker.”
He was still chuckling when she hung up.
“Come on, Anna,” she whispered to herself, gathering her planner and pen. Parker didn’t strike her as the kind of man to torture and tease a woman, or one who would assume that just because he’d seen her in the almost altogether that he could have his way with her.
She stood, surprised at how shaky that thought made her legs. Have his way with her.
A stupid, archaic phrase that sent even stupider, more archaic pulses down her body. So they’d had an awkward moment.
She rolled her eyes at the understatement. A really awkward moment. And so what if she’d seen a lusty side of a man she found attractive? Okay, gorgeous. All right, hot as sin.
She was still a top-notch administrative assistant who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that office affairs were for fools who liked to job hop. And he was a very important, busy man who had an electronic black book with the name and private cell phone number of every available model, debutante and businesswoman in Miami-Dade County.
She was still an employee, and he was still the boss. Period. End of fantasy.
She tapped on his door, opening it as she did. She’d always done that, but this morning, the intrusion felt more intimate. He stood at the window, the cordless phone held to his ear, his attention on the postcard view of Biscayne Bay. Through a floor-to-ceiling window, sunlight glinted off blue-violet waves, polka-dotted with pleasure craft and cruise ships, fringed by emerald palm trees and the pastel high-rises of Miami Beach on the horizon.
But the real view was inside and, as always, Anna stole an eyeful.
Parker had removed his jacket, revealing the tailored cut of a snow-white zillion-thread-count designer shirt pulled just taut enough to hint at the toned, developed muscles underneath. The shirt was tucked neatly into dark trousers, custom-made to fit like a dream over one drool-inducing backside.
The man was a god.
He turned from the window and she averted her eyes before getting caught worshipping at the altar of his backside.
“Can the legal crap, Brandon,” he said into the phone, sliding one of his hands through closely cropped, thick black hair. “I don’t care what the DNA test results will say. Can we or can we not contest this will?”
DNA? Contest the will? Anna frowned, but Parker just nodded to one of the guest chairs in front of his desk, issuing an unspoken invitation for her to sit. As always, he seemed utterly calm, the aura of authority that shimmered around him neatly in place. But there was something different in that clipped voice, and in the tense way he held his broad shoulders. His control was tied on with a tenuous thread today.
“Fine, you do that,” he said, leaning his head to one side to work out a crick. “In the meantime, it’s business as usual. My business.” He glanced at Anna, who made a show of flipping her planner to the next clean page so she didn’t stare. Even though she’d become quite adept at avoiding detection.
“Oh, damn it all, I completely forgot.” His tone changed with the admission, and she instantly sat up, prepared to help him remember what he forgot. That was, after all, her job. Not ogling his perfectly shaped butt, impossibly wide shoulders or Adonis-like chest. Parker-gazing was just a side benefit.
“I can’t go,” he said to Brandon, sliding into the high-backed desk chair and reaching for his little black digital device and pressing a few buttons. “But, with the bomb you just dropped at this morning’s reading, I think I need to be there more than ever.”
He paused and Anna tried to psych out what he was talking about.
“But I’m way too swamped to consider going that far away,” he added, “unless I charter a jet.”
Of course. London.
“I have a ton of work to do this weekend,” he continued, “and it’s impossible to get anything done on a commercial flight.”
Anna slipped a creamy-white card embossed with silver letters from the “pending” section of his calendar. Her fingers glided over the imprint of the International Hotel and Restaurant Association seal, over the gilded script inviting him to the annual ball at Guildhall in London. She’d been meaning to get a response from him so she could RSVP.
He chuckled softly, fiddling with the buttons on the PDA as he tucked the phone into one of those impressive shoulders.
“Yes. A date,” he said casually to Brandon, and shot a lazy wink at Anna, which sent an involuntary stutter to her heart. “I suppose I’d need to get one of those, too.”
Which of the lucky ladies would win that lottery?
Maxine, whose daddy owned half of Palm Beach? Or the nine-foot glamazon who’d been on the cover of Vogue twice? He’d been seeing a lot of her in the past few weeks. Maybe he’d go for that spunky redhead who owned the PR agency that had done some work for Garrison, Inc. last month. Sparks were certainly crackling in the conference room when that one came in for a meeting.
“As a matter of fact, I might have the perfect person.” His gaze landed right on her, intense, relentless and unwavering. Exactly the way it had been when he’d devoured her with it in the bathroom.
A low, slow flame curled up her belly and started a familiar bonfire. One she’d become very good at dousing with four simple words that have saved legions of love-struck secretaries: He’s your boss, dummy.
Suddenly, he stood, turned to the window and copped the voice he used to end a conversation instantly. “Keep me posted, Brandon. And I’ll let you know what I decide.”
For a moment, he didn’t move, but stared at the cloudless blue sky, his back rising and falling with steady, slow breaths.
Then he turned and trained his midnight gaze on her. “As you can tell, Anna, I didn’t get good news this morning.”
She set the call sheet on his desk. “That must explain the seventeen voice-mail messages.”
He scanned the list, and swore so softly she almost didn’t hear it. “Brandon’s right.”
“About?”
“I have to be at the IH & RA ball in London. It’s more important than ever that I maintain…” He paused, assessing her as though he was wondering just how much to tell her. “Leadership.”
“Your leadership is never in doubt.”
He tilted his head, acknowledging the compliment with shuttered lids that said he believed the opposite. At least, at the moment. Then he yanked out his chair and sat, leaning forward the way he always did when he made a decision that he would not second-guess. Not that he’d ever second-guessed anything, ever, in his life.
“Please arrange for the charter jet company to have a Gulfstream V ready to leave tomorrow, very early, from Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport. That will put me in London Friday evening, with plenty of time to make the function on Saturday and return on Sunday morning. I’ll be back in the office on Monday. I’ll need the Berkeley Suite at the Ritz-Carlton London. Don’t let them tell you it’s not available—”
“I’ll use your name.”
“Yes, and I’ll need a limo to and from the event, which is—”
“At Guildhall.”
“Right. And I have a driver in London I prefer—”
