In Harmony (12 page)

“Karen’s a musician,” Jasmine told him. Then, before I could stop her, “A cellist.”

I saw him do
the thing.
The instinctive reaction all men have when they find out you play the cello. He stared at me, and I knew he was picturing me with my legs spread. I saw a smile touch the corners of his lips and could feel myself bristling.

“Let me get you another one of those,” Kurt said, taking my glass.

As he turned to pluck a full one from a waiter’s tray, Jasmine whispered in my ear.
“Be nice! Maybe he’ll ask you to play in his basement, like Natasha!”

“
That was completely different!”
I whispered. But then Kurt was handing me a full glass and, to my horror, Jasmine excused herself and left.

Kurt smiled at me, and I told myself that maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. I had no intention of dating him, let alone sleeping with him, but everyone was always telling me I needed to get out more. If I could brace myself and carry on a conversation like a normal human being, even if I didn’t particularly like the guy, that was good practice. Right?

“You’re lovely, Karen.” said Kurt.

That threw me a little. “…right. Okay. Thank you.”

“Do I shock you? Not everyone can admit that they like a man who’s direct. But deep down, a lot of women like that. Do you, Karen?”

“Um…” I looked around the room for Natasha, or Clarissa. Knowing Jasmine, she’d spirited them away to “Give us some time alone together.”

He stepped closer. “I think you do.” His voice became very slow and deliberate, emphasizing certain words. “I think…
you want
a man
”—and his hand turned to point almost casually at his own chest—“who knows how to give you
what you want.”
It felt like he was trying to hypnotize me. He was staring straight into my eyes without blinking and it wasn’t “intense” or “entrancing”—it was just creepy.

“I think you read certain books,” he said, “and you wonder if men like me—CEOs—are really like that. If power in the boardroom translates to power in the bedroom. Well let me tell you…
yes it does.”

“Okay,” I said, stepping back. “I think—”

He stepped close again, thrusting his face right up to mine. “Have you ever had a man withhold an orgasm from you, until you were crying and begging to come?”

“Yes,” said Connor. “But only when she’s been very, very bad.”

He stepped between us, a protective wall of muscle and attitude. Kurt had to crane his neck to look him in the eye.

“I’m—” Kurt said.

“Leaving.” Connor told him, with exactly the sort of authority Kurt had been trying for.

Kurt suddenly saw something of great interest across the room and went to look at it.

Connor turned to me. “Isn’t that three times I’ve saved you?”

“What makes you think I needed saving?” I said hotly.

“You
wanted
Fifty Shades of Gray…Hair?”

“I don’t think what I want need be any concern of yours, Connor.”

“I’m serious, you know.”

He sounded so sincere that I took him seriously, for a second. “About what?”

“I’d let you come. Unless you were
really
bad.”

I stalked away, leaving him smirking. My face was hot, a point between my shoulder blades tingling as I felt his gaze there. In the next room, I ran into Natasha.

“Having a good time?” She was smirking, too. Jasmine must have told her about leaving me with Kurt.

“Spectacular. I have a contract I’m going to need a lawyer to look over, and then I’ll be needing some handcuffs and a blindfold.”

“What?!”

“Where’s Jasmine? I need to kill her.”

“Outside, flirting with a waiter. Hey, could you do me a favor and see what’s keeping Darrell? I sent him down to his workshop to fetch an extra folding table and he’s disappeared.”

I suspected she was just giving me time to cool off, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. I needed a few deep breaths before I saw Jasmine…or Connor.

In the elevator on the way down, my traitorous mind went straight back to Connor. I was glad he’d showed up, even if I’d never admit it to him. But why did he have to be such a jerk? Why all the jokes about sleeping with me?

The doors opened, and the first thing I saw was the polished wooden stage Darrell had installed for Natasha when she’d starting dancing for him. I hadn’t appreciated how big it was…or, as I stepped out and looked around, just how big the basement was. I tried to imagine the two of them down here: Natasha jumping and pirouetting up on the stage, Darrell watching her, the two of them gradually falling in love…although from what she’d told me, there hadn’t been much
gradual
about it. Was that why they were having problems now, because they’d plunged in so fast?

I looked down the length of the room, seeing what I took to be workbenches and heavy machinery. I had to guess at most of them, because everything was covered in dust sheets. He really had stopped, then, this man who’d been driven to the point of burnout by his work. That was good…right?

I heard a movement, down at the end of the room. Only the tiniest of sounds, but in the utter silence of the basement it was like a scream. I froze, eyes searching for the source.

Darrell was sitting at what must have been his old desk, dust sheets turning the monitors into a white ski slope in front of him. He was leaning right back in the chair, so far that it looked like he might overbalance, and staring at the featureless white in front of him. I’d never seen anyone look so dejected.

I had no idea what to say to him, so I found the folding table and deliberately banged it against the wall as I lifted it. Darrell suddenly came to life, blinking and looking round, then hurrying over to help me.

“Sorry,” he told me. “Just got thinking.”

I nodded and wondered whether to say anything to Natasha.

***

Upstairs, Jasmine had a glass of champagne and a plate of canapés waiting as a peace offering. “I didn’t know he was going to go all creepy dom on you,” she told me. “I thought he’d just be all
you beautiful creature
and buying you necklaces.”

“No more setting me up,” I told her.

“Pinky swear.”

I took a canapé. It was impossible to stay angry at Jasmine for long. “Where are Clarissa and Neil?”

Jasmine raised an eyebrow.

“
Here?
At the party?”

“Natasha says they do it every time they come here. This place has, like, sixteen bedrooms or something. They’re probably making sure they’ve christened every one.”

Sex in someone else’s house. Probably with the door unlocked. Knowing that everyone downstairs had a pretty good idea what you were doing. I just couldn’t see myself ever doing that…and, of course, I wouldn’t want to. So why did thinking about it send a little crackle of desire sparking straight down between my legs?

“Looks like your Irishman’s having a good time,” said Jasmine.

“He’s not
my—”
And then I broke off as I saw him.

He was talking to a willowy blonde in a white dress, her head thrown back as she laughed at his jokes. We were too far away to hear what they were actually saying, but Jasmine did a voiceover.

“Oh, hi, begorra! I’m the cheeky sexy Irishman! Will you be needin’ any help in getting’ them panties off, miss?
Oh! Your accent is so cuuute! Let me give you my phone number and you can ravish me on the hood of my Porsche!”

We watched him step away with a phone number written on a napkin. He stuffed it into his pant pocket and headed for a brunette, her hair elegantly piled up on top of her head.

“Unbelievable,” I whispered aloud.

Jasmine shrugged. “That’s what he is. He must think he’s died and gone to heaven, all these rich girls to work his rough charm on.”

“Talking of money….” I said quietly. “How are things?”

“Okay for now, thanks to you. I’ve been looking around for somewhere cheaper, but that place is pretty much rock bottom. It’s New York—what did I expect?” She sighed. “I’m only a little behind at the moment, but when the rent comes due,
that’s
going to be a problem.”

“Any room to negotiate with your landlord?”

Something flickered across her face. “Yeah,” she said distantly. “We’ve been discussing an arrangement.” She gave me a hug. “Don’t panic. I’ll figure something out.”

As we moved apart, something caught my eye. Connor had moved away from the brunette and was stuffing a new napkin into his pocket. Shaking my head, I stalked over to him.

“Really?” I asked. I didn’t quite have my hands on my hips, but it felt like that sort of moment. I was angry—and on some level, I realized I was angrier than I should have been.

He looked at me blankly. “Really what?”

“How many napkins do you have stuffed into your pocket?”

He looked down at his pants. “Oh, no. I’m just pleased to see you.”

The simply, unashamed crudity of it took my breath away. “You’re incorrigible!” I told him, and turned away.

A strong, warm hand grabbed my arm. “Wait: I’m
what?!”
He pulled me back to him. Closer than before, close enough that the rest of the room seemed to fade away.

“Incorrigible,” I grated. “It means—”

“I know what it
means.
I just can’t believe you said it! Who says
incorrigible?!
You sound like you’re in a bodice ripper!”

I felt myself flush. Underneath my bed was a large cardboard carton packed tight with exactly that sort of romance—haughty heroines and square-jawed heroes who said things like “Oh, I like a wildcat.” But Connor didn’t know that. He
couldn’t
know that.

The band started to play and people drifted off the dance floor—no one wanted to be the first to start dancing. I was too angry to notice.

“It’s not my fault your vocabulary only extends to jokes and—and flirting.” I told him.

He frowned. “Why do you care who I flirt with?”

I opened and closed my mouth a few times. Why
did
I care? The women who’d given him their numbers were all old enough to know what they were doing. Far more experienced than me, in fact. For all I knew, they were using him just as much as he was using them.

“I don’t,” I said at last. “I just think going from one to the next like that is…tacky.”

“Tacky?”

“Tacky.”

He considered for a moment. “Dance with me. That’ll stop me chatting up anyone else.”

I looked around. The floor had mostly cleared, and we were standing in the center. I felt about a million eyes on me, and I couldn’t just walk off thanks to his grip on my arm. “No,” I told him. “I don’t dance.”

He fixed me with a stare, and I felt the strangest sensation ripple down my body. As if, for just that second, nothing else in the world mattered except for me. “
Dance for me, Karen,”
he whispered.

I blinked and drew in my breath. “I—”

He grinned, and the spell was broken. “Do you think that’s what it was like for your friend, with her millionaire?”

I narrowed my eyes. For a second there, it had almost felt like—but of course he’d just been kidding around. “You’re lacking about thirty million dollars, a mansion and the looks.”

He looked at me seriously for a second. “You don’t think I’m good looking?”

That threw me. Because I was starting to see that,
yes
, if you went for the dark, bad boy look with the wicked smile, if you had a thing for biceps and strong chests and—Anyway, if you went for all that, which I most definitely
did not,
then yes, he was very good looking.

“You’re not my type,” I told him.

“What is your type?”

“That’s—”

“Are we back to Kurt again? Would you like me to bend you over my bed and spank you?”

My jaw dropped open. Unbidden, some very dark images flashed through my mind. “How dare you?” I croaked.

“
How dare I?”
He was trying not to laugh. “You’ve gone all Brontë on me again. Are you going to start putting a ‘sir’ on the end of everything? Do I forget myself? Am I a bounder and a cad?”

I tried to speak, but couldn’t find the words. Hot anger was bubbling through my brain. I was drunk with it.

“Why
did
you come over here, Karen? Did you really think those women needed saving from me?”

A little voice inside me was demanding to know that, too. What was it about him chatting up some random women that had me so worked up? “I—”

“Let’s dance.” Suddenly, his other arm was around my waist.

“What? No, wait—”

He pulled me close and I yelped. Suddenly my body was pressed against his, the heat of his body shocking through my thin dress. I could feel the hard wall of his abs against my stomach and I tried to speak, but I couldn’t seem to get any air. I was dimly aware that the band were playing a slow number, and a few couples had drifted back onto the floor around us, but we still seemed to be very much the center of attention.