Читать книгу Becoming The Boss - Maya Blake, Zuri Day - Страница 17

MONTREAL BASKED IN the warmth of a glorious dusk, the sky a canvas of fluffy spiralling ribbons tinged with orange and red, with only a blaze of yellow on the curve of the earth, where the sun kissed the horizon.

Its beauty failed miserably to improve her ugly mood.

‘You’d better be in, Finn,’ Serena muttered as she stormed across the endless blanket of tarmac towards his glossy black motor home.

Never mind the prescient darkness that had clung to her skin for two weeks since Monaco, like some kind of impending doom, Michael Scott—aka dear old Dad—had just pulled a number on her! As if the day hadn’t been enough of a stress-fest.

The day? Who was she kidding? The last two weeks, working with Mr Death-Defyer, had been a roller coaster named persecution; emotions had dipped and dived all over the place, to stretch her patience endlessly. Was it any wonder she could hear the clang of looming disaster?

Still, she’d never forget this afternoon as long as she lived.

Another close shave as Finn scraped second place after going silent on the pit-lane channel for over two minutes. Heart in her throat, she’d snatched the headset from the chief engineer in the end. Not exactly the done thing, but she’d had to snap him out of it somehow.

He was getting worse. Darker. Harder. Taking unnecessary risks no other man would dare to chance. Why? She couldn’t understand it. Unless… Unless Serena had made him worse. By storming into his life and throwing Tom’s death in his face when he’d been trying to deal with the loss in his own way. Burying it. Just as she had.

It boggled the mind to think they had something in common.

God, she felt sick.

But had he been worried when he’d nearly obliterated himself? Heavens, no. While she’d popped migraine pills like chocolate drops he’d supplicated and beguiled the masses with his glib tongue and legendary rakish smile, standing atop the podium as if life was a fun park and darker emotions were aberrant to him. When she knew they were anything but!

Then—then he’d swaggered into the Scott Lansing garage, again, and drawled in that sinfully rich, amused voice, ‘What do you think, baby? Was I awesome?’

As if he hadn’t just phased out while driving at over two hundred miles per hour!

Fist balled, she stomped up the metal steps and rapped on his door until her knuckles stung.

If she was an ace at burying pain and masking it with a brave face he was a pro—a grand virtuoso. But now Serena could see it. Feel his darkness more acutely.

Oftentimes behind the charming, irrepressible smile lurked a guilt-drenched agony she still couldn’t bear.

Last night hadn’t helped matters either. Bored—okay, plain nosey—she’d searched the internet for a peek of his sister and got a lot more than she’d bargained for. Not only was Eva Vitale the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, but together with Finn she ran a huge charity for breast cancer in honour of their mother. Another death that must have crippled him.

By the time she’d trawled through all the articles and spotted the Silverstone driving day he held every year for sick and disabled children she’d cringed at all the heartless, dishonourable comments she’d perpetually tossed in his face.

The thought that she’d been so prejudiced against his type, his Casanova proclivities—enough to use him as an easy scapegoat for Tom’s death—was making her seriously dislike herself.

The door opened on a soft swish to reveal the man himself, wearing a deep red polo shirt—yum—and a pair of washed-out stomach-curling jeans riding low on his lean hips.

As her gaze touched his bare toes that delicious drawl rumbled over her. ‘Do I meet with your approval this evening, Miss Scott?’

Her heart thundered like a freight train through her chest and she crossed her arms over her breasts before it burst through her skin. ‘You’ll do.’

The ghost of a smile softened his sinful mouth—only to veer into a scowl as he searched her face. ‘What’s wrong? Has something happened?’

Yeah, I feel wretched.

This was a stupid, stupid idea, she thought for the millionth time. Fair enough doing practice laps and talking designs, but to come to his trailer? She was making their awkward truce personal and she knew it.

‘Can I come in?’

His eyes said, Do you have to? His mouth said, ‘Sure.’

Unconvinced, she battled with the urge to turn around and flee. But he’d offered, hadn’t he? To be a friend if she needed one? And maybe, just maybe, he needed one too.

She was worried about him. Her conscience pleaded with her to help him before he well and truly did some harm. She just didn’t know how. While she knew tons of men, she hadn’t felt ready to spontaneously combust with any of them as she did with Finn. So just ignore it, like you have for the last four years!

Sucking in a courageous breath, Serena followed him into the spanking new motor home—all sharp lines of glass and steel alongside huge cushy leather sofas.

‘Nice place. Biggest and best on the lot. If I hadn’t heard the endless man-muck around the pits—’ she was not about to admit he was dubbed the world’s greatest lover ‘—I would think your penchant for size compensated for some kind of deficiency.’

He flashed his sexy suggestive smile and her knees turned to hot rubber. ‘Nothing lacking in that department, I promise you.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ she muttered. Meaning it. Only to curse blue when her traitorous mind provided her with an image of the first time she’d ever seen him in the flesh, bar-boxer-shorts-naked, strolling into his bathroom. Where Serena had been… Oh, God.

A tingling flush crept up her neck until she felt impossibly hot. And the idea that she looked like some gauche ninny made her vibrate with pique.

‘Uh-oh. I sense trouble.’ Finn leaned against the slash of the kitchen bench, gripped the ledge on either side of his hips and crossed one ankle over the other. ‘Okay, baby, spill it.’

Baby. Baby. She had to stop dissolving in a long, slow melt when he called her that!

‘I’m…’ Shifting on her feet, she eyed the door. South America was wonderful at this time of year. Maybe—

‘Enraged? Incensed? Hopping mad? Splenetic? Thoroughly bent out of shape?’

‘You swallowed a thesaurus, or something?’

‘Nah, it’s that school I went to. You know—the one that specialises in breeding the most arrogant and annoying people ever?’ he said, flinging her words back at her.

‘As you can see, I’m rolling around the floor laughing.’

He grinned.

She sighed. Glanced at the door again. Wondered why she felt hideously exposed. Sharing woes and asking for help wasn’t weak or too feminine, was it? She didn’t enjoy giving men the impression she was weak—it was like hand-delivering an invitation to be messed with.

Oh, to hell with it. ‘My dad just decided not to launch the prototype at Silverstone.’

‘Why not?’

A tinge of anger fired in his eyes. One that made her feel infinitely better. Even though her bad funk was technically his fault.

Because Finn here had officially earned the title ‘too wild and problematic’ to handle her multimillion-pound prototype. And she was angry. Noooo. She was upset. There—she’d admitted it, and miraculously the sky hadn’t caved in.

‘Doesn’t matter the reason. His decision is final.’

Next year wasn’t so far away. It felt like forever. It wasn’t as if it would never happen. There was really no need for her to be so…devastated. ‘Point is, he has a brunette over there, and I refuse to play nice when I feel—’

‘Like someone peed in your biker boots?’

‘Exactly.’

One side of his mouth kicked up ruefully before his focus drifted to the window, far into the distance, as if he’d virtually left the room.

Angst crawled through her stomach and Serena gnawed her top lip.

Yes, she was crushed, but she could easily have gone to a hotel. It was a convenient excuse and she knew it. Somehow she had to slide him back on track.

Letting go of a long, soft sigh, she sprinkled some candour on her remorse.

If she’d been courageous enough to look into her heart, to face her own fears, she would have accepted that culpability lay with fate. Otherwise she couldn’t possibly have kissed Finn with everything she was. And, if she wanted to be brutally, painfully honest, blaming him had been a grand excuse to hate him even more. Since the moment she’d laid eyes on him he’d stirred a hornets’ nest of inadequacies to sting her pride and spawn desires that defied logic. Reason.

Inadequacies she’d been slammed up against from when she was nine years old—ribbed for being ‘too girly’ to play—and had stolen a pair of blunt scissors to hack off her hair.

Desires she’d always had to force, coerce, to do her bidding. Determined her past would not define her.

Disaster.

Until Finn. Who had never failed to spark every female cell in her body to ignite. The sexual pull of his velvet gaze roving over her when he thought she wasn’t looking jacked her pulse. Made her dream about the firm, sinful stroke of his hands moving over her skin and the hot drive of his tongue between her lips. Then came the heat, spearing through her veins like arrows of fire.

She didn’t want her heart to thump when he was near or for weakness to spread through her limbs. He was still a Casanova. A prolific player.

He took a long, sensual pull of water from a tall glass bottle and she watched his smooth jaw work, his sexy throat convulse, and knew this was a stupid, stupid idea. Tough.

‘So, can I stay here?’

‘No!’ he choked. A distressed noise followed by a splutter. A cough. A hard swallow and watering eyes. ‘I don’t do sleepovers.’

Her mouth going slack, she wasn’t sure which to process first. The fact that he didn’t do sleepovers with his women or the fact he thought she wanted to ‘sleep’ with him!

‘I didn’t ask you if you did. I asked you if I could hang out here while you go out and do your Lothario thing.’ Okay, she was digging for info, but right now she didn’t care. ‘You know—borrow your place. Like friends do.’

Wincing inwardly, she hung on his reaction as she played the friend card, unsure if the tight knot in her stomach wanted him to pick it up or discard it.

‘I was planning on staying in most of the night.’

‘Oh.’

Come to think of it, of late there’d been no kiss-and-tell stories. No rumours of orgies or nightclub antics. Half of her gloried in the idea that he was abstaining from his playboy shenanigans and the other half hated the suspicion that he was becoming reclusive, withdrawing from the world even more.

For pity’s sake, the man had her tearing herself apart!

Finn scrubbed a palm over the back of his neck. ‘Fine. You can hang out here. For a little while.’

‘I’ve never seen a “fine” such as yours right now, Finn.’ At his quizzical expression, she elaborated. ‘Like I’m sticking hot needles down your fingernails.’

His knuckles bleached white as they gripped the lip of the bench. ‘Probably because that’s what it feels like trying to keep my hands off you.’

A loaded pause sparked in the air. ‘Seriously?’

‘Oh, you’re happy now?’

Maybe. It wasn’t so bad resisting him if he felt the same. Maybe he hadn’t been lying to her. Maybe he did find her beautiful after all.

Her heart smiled. ‘I’ll be even happier if you feed me and let me beat you on your games console.’ Friend stuff.

He snorted. ‘In your dreams, baby.’

She had the feeling that was exactly where he’d be tonight. In her dreams. Centre stage. Just as he had been last night. And every other night she could remember.

‘You have until ten o’clock to triumph and prove your console supremacy, then I’m going out.’

‘Oh.’ That was not disappointment in her voice. Certainly not.

Finn cocked an arrogant brow and tilted his head, as if she’d presented him with a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out. ‘I’ll make you a deal.’

‘I’m not keen on your deals. Last time I ended up—’ Ohh, there it went. Stomach flipping over…

‘Getting your belly button piercing licked?’

Hello, heatwave—blasting her from all angles as the incredible sensation of his hot mouth on her skin flicked over her on replay.

‘It wasn’t the most disgusting experience in the world.’ So you can do it again if you like. No—no, he could not. It was a terrible idea. Crazy to think she was hurtling towards a lack of self-preservation as diabolical as his.

That legendary beautiful smile touched his lips and he raised one hand to scratch at his jawline. ‘Deal is—if you beat me I’ll take you with me.’

His grin said he was perfectly safe. That she didn’t have a hope in hell of winning. Obviously he didn’t want her going with him at all. Which naturally flipped every one of her excitable curiosity switches.

Poor guy. She almost felt sorry for him.

He’d been thrashed. By a girl.

Totally and utterly thrashed at supercars, tennis, football and loaded weapons—repeatedly. Then he’d fed her and fetched her soft drinks. Before she’d zonked out on the sofa in an alluring puddle of colour and vulnerability—the latter hitting him smack-bang in the solar plexus.

Seraphina Scott was extraordinary in every single way, and if he didn’t give her a good shake pronto he was liable to kiss her awake like Sleeping Beauty. If he was any kind of prince material he would. As it was he’d lied to her repeatedly and lusted after her repeatedly.

Unfortunately some idiot had suggested he was friend material, and though it scared the crap out of him—because he wasn’t the most reliable bloke on the planet, and his own sister could vouch for that—he fully intended to stick by his word. It was the least he could do after he’d caused her so much pain, despite the fact it was the equivalent of flinging himself onto the track lane mid-race.

The fact was, she fed his wildness. Unearthed all kinds of feral, animalistic instincts until need was a constant claw that slashed his insides. Not just craving the heat of her sweet, supple body, but wanting to protect her at all cost, to touch that desolate tinge in her grey gaze.

She was a lonely soul right now.

It took one to know one. He’d been surrounded by people all his life, and yet soaked in a bone-deep loneliness he found impossible to shake.

Yeah, and impossible to understand too.

Easily bored, he relished variety. Every day with Serena would be as unique as she was, a little voice whispered. He told that little voice to shut up. It was being controlled by his libido and for once he wasn’t listening.

Finn stared at her for a long moment, curling a strand of her hair around his finger. How could anyone even resist her? How long was it going to take before he snapped and crossed the bridge from friends to lovers? An eternity, his conscience told him, because it’s never going to happen. You’re supposed to be keeping her safe, remember?

‘Hey, Sleeping Beauty.’ He flipped his hand over to check his watch. ‘It’s nine-thirty and we have a date.’

With her sinuous stretch and a sultry writhe her T-shirt inched upwards until that sexy-as-hell diamond piercing winked at him.

Just like that an airlock cinched his chest. ‘Come on, spitfire, get a shake on.’ Before I take that silver loop between my lips, flick it with my tongue and suck it into my mouth. Then I’ll tear those jeans off and lick all the way down to your clit.

Damn.

‘Or maybe I’ll just go by myself.’ Way better idea.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ she murmured, in that gorgeous, husky sleep-drenched voice.

He growled long and low. This was such a bad idea. What had possessed him to gamble with her? No one had ever beaten him. Ever. He should’ve known this minx would throw him for a loop—which only made him want her even more! So cancel. Tell her something. Anything.

The problem was he was already living one lie, and the thought of customising another pierced his guts as if they were twisted in barbed wire. Add in the suspicion that today’s racing blip—courtesy of a flashback like no other—had totalled her aspirations of launching her prototype at Silverstone and he could never tolerate it.

‘Where are we going?’ She swung her legs off the leather couch, sat upright and shook out her hair until those spectacular ruby-red flames blazed down her back.

‘Here,’ he croaked, grabbing two caps from the marble bench and tossing one in her lap. ‘Put this on.’

‘Incognito?’ Her grey eyes bolted to his, sparkled with excitement.

It was an effervescence that wasn’t going to last long. Or was it? Continually she threw him, and this little jaunt might be just what she needed.

In a sudden burst of self-honesty he acknowledged that the temptation to take her had arrived shortly after the tickets. But the subject matter had made him pause. She was prudish at times, yet inquisitive at others—the delightful memory of her ear crushed against the bedroom door on his yacht came to mind—and he’d flirted with the idea that her past experiences were slim and less than stellar.

Meanwhile here he was, a veritable connoisseur in the erotic arts of passion and seduction, impervious to being knocked off his feet, suddenly disturbed—no, downright daunted—because this woman could easily take his legs from under him.

It took him five minutes to lock up, usher Serena round to the storage compound and heft the double doors wide.

Click went the automatic lights, flooding the space with fluorescence, blinding him momentarily as he waited for…

Her swift inhalation. A deep, rapturous moan. One that nearly brought him to his knees.

Did she have to be the hottest woman on the planet?

‘Ohhh, yeah,’ she breathed, her sultry voice loaded with salacious hunger for his latest toy. ‘Your taste is impeccable, Finn. All that horsepower makes me twitchy. I think I’m about to have the ride of my life.’

Finn closed his eyes. He was doomed.