Kyle’s Bargain (2 page)

Just that little bit of contact set her pulse pounding. Fear
mixed with unwanted attraction made her breath hitch and a shiver rush down her
spine.

She looked up into his steel blue eyes. Sparks of desire
danced across the hardness there, glittering like moonlight on the ocean. Then
his head dipped toward hers and she could no longer focus. She closed her eyes
as his mouth drew closer. Another shiver crawled down her spine and set her trembling.

His arms wrapped her in a firm, muscular grip, fingers
splayed on her back, pressing her to him so that her breasts were crushed
against his chest. The deep musky fragrance of body spray and man surrounded
her. Her thighs touched his and the bulge of his cock pushed into her abdomen.
No question he wanted her. That might give her some leverage. Maybe. Fear and
anticipation combined into a powerful drug that made her weak and dizzy in his
embrace.

No. Meg resisted the urge to lean into him, to sink into his
strength and sexual pull. Instead she held herself steady, trying to keep a
small gap between them.

Until his lips brushed hers in the gentlest, most delicate
of touches. Light though it was, it roused odd, almost electric tingles in her
skin and sent a rush of heat sizzling along her nerves. Several times he moved
his mouth side to side over hers, the softness of his lips nuzzling gently.

Muscles tightened in surprised response to the sweet little
shocks his mouth roused. She did lean into him then, eager for more contact.
Dear heaven, he was delicious, almost unbearably so.

His lips grew firmer, claiming her mouth and sealing his
right to it with increasing pressure. Ragged waves of pleasure spread from the
contact, zipping through her blood stream until she felt it in the tips of her
fingers and toes. Her heart began thumping a drumbeat of desire in her chest
and her breath sped up to fuel it.

He moved to encompass her lower lip, sucking it in and
nipping at it with careful use of his teeth. She moaned deep in her throat as
sensation tore through her. Heat and pressure built inside, tapping into a deep
and too-long-bottled-up spring of need.

Wrapping her arms around his waist to pull him closer, she
parted her lips. He didn’t immediately respond to the invitation but spent a
few moments raking around the rim of her mouth with his tongue. Needy little
pants and groans rolled out of her as the moist heat blasted into her.

Dear God, this was Kyle Harrison—cold, hard-as-nails,
ruthless Kyle Harrison—making her blood boil and her body melt. Who’d have
guessed? At some deep level she had known all along. Her nerves clenched and
spasmed every time she got close to him. She’d attributed the reaction to
irritation, but now she realized how much more it was.

His tongue pushed slowly into her mouth, exploring as it
entered, running over her teeth, swiping at gums, brushing over her tongue.
Heat became a river flowing through her, beginning to pool in her core. She
wanted to melt into him, become part of him, find a way to join herself with
that hard, male body.

She squeezed against him and met the dance of his tongue in
her mouth, stroking it with hers, twining around it. His hands moved lower to
the hem of her sweater and pushed beneath it, brushing up the skin of her back.
Warm fingers rubbed at her spine and up farther, leaving trails of heat in
their wake. She could barely breathe and didn’t care.

A sound somewhere in the building, a metallic clunking,
probably the air-conditioning system turning off, startled them.

When Kyle disengaged, pulling back just as gently as he’d
started, her first reaction was to cling and try to keep him close. Good sense
kicked in shortly, even though part of her still longed to have him back. She
struggled to calm her breath and her heartbeat, drawing in air so she could
talk again.

She sighed softly and shook herself. A blast of anger
coursed through her. Anger with him for rousing her so, but even more anger
with herself for being so easy to manipulate. “I guess the deal’s well and
truly sealed now?”

“I guess it is.” He drew a deep breath and plopped down in
his chair. “Give me five minutes.” She shrugged and settled into the armchair,
struggling to show nothing but calm composure. Though he tried to hide it, his
fingers trembled on the keyboard as he typed.

While he concentrated his attention on the computer, she
watched his profile. Even from the side, strong, clean lines defined his brow,
nose, cheekbone and chin, making him an astonishingly attractive man. From a
newspaper feature, she knew he was thirty-three years old, but his expressive
face could look either older or younger. Straight, thick, dark hair, a very
deep shade of brown rather than true black, fell over his forehead. He brushed
it back with a strong, long-fingered hand and chewed on his lip as he thought
about whatever he typed.

He hit the
Send
button and turned to look her way.
His sharply angled dark brows rose when he caught her staring. Meg blushed but
refused to look away, so they spent a moment watching each other, their gazes
clashing, challenging. She wondered what he really thought about her since she
couldn’t read it from his hard-edged expression. No doubt he considered her a
pain in his butt, an aggravation, an idiotically simple and close-minded
traditionalist. Maybe the next two hours could convince him to look beyond the
obvious and see the deeper reasons for her opposition to his plans.

He turned to shut down his computer then he stood up and
grabbed his keys and wallet out of the drawer. “Your two hours begin now. What
is it you want me to see?”

“We’ll have to drive there. My car’s parked down the
street.”

“Mine’s in the employee lot out back. Non-negotiable,” he
said, cutting of her incipient protest.

Meg stood up when her nemesis did. She stiffened her spine
and made sure her expression showed nothing of the mix of emotions roiling
inside. Under any other circumstances Kyle Harrison would still have rocked her
boat but maybe not in such complicated ways. The man was so incredibly
handsome. Sexy. Too bad he was such an asshole as well.

She tried to ignore the way he loomed over her when he
stood. At five foot four, she didn’t look many men directly in the eye, but he
seemed to make his nine-inch advantage mean more than just additional height.
He led the way out to the hall and stopped for a moment at the outer office
door to be sure it locked behind him.

Meg shivered. This was the craziest, most dangerous thing
she’d ever done in her life. No matter how desperate she was. No matter that
important things, including her sister’s future and the livelihoods of several
of her friends and neighbors on the shopping strip, were at stake. She might
well end up regretting this action for a long, long time.

As he led the way out of the office and locked the door
behind them, Kyle Harrison couldn’t help but wonder what he’d turned loose in
agreeing to Meg Travis’ absurd proposal. He still wasn’t sure why he’d let her
talk him into holding to his half-joking and mostly insulting offer. Or maybe
he did, but why hadn’t his brain overruled his hormones? He knew all too well
the stupid, foolish and dangerous line he walked.

He’d gone down this path before, with disastrous results.

He could already guess what she wanted to show him and it
wouldn’t make any difference. He’d heard sob stories before. This one couldn’t
affect him or make him change his plans. He had to make this project work.
Had
to
. His future rested on it.

No matter that the woman made every male cell in his body
burn. Honey-colored hair worn loose to her shoulders, hazel eyes, plus curves
in all the right places even though she barely came up to his shoulder added up
to a package he found all but irresistible. He should know enough to resist.
Hell, she was also a thorn in his side, one who refused to give up or go away.
From the first he’d recognized the danger she represented. It was getting worse
with every second he spent in her company.

Especially that telltale jolt and widening of the eyes when
he mentioned accepting his penalty. She was a sub, probably a virgin sub, if
not a virgin period, and that just iced the cake. He didn’t need this.

Without indulging his ego, Kyle knew most women found him
attractive. Even her, though? That could be a hell of a complication. It was
hard enough already to restrain himself from making a move on her. On the other
hand, it might help smooth the way for later when she kept her part of the
bargain.
If
he insisted on her keeping that part.

He’d thrown the offer at her as a calculated challenge, to
see how far she would go, and he’d led her along just to keep her from
destroying his data. He really didn’t intend to actually go through with it.
The sleeping with her part, anyway. She’d get the two hours he’d promised since
he’d given his word. And some sort of penalty. He knew what he wanted to do but
probably wouldn’t.

Sleeping with someone who was doing it just to fulfill a
bargain didn’t appeal to him at all. Or shouldn’t. His brain said it was a bad
thing. His body had other ideas. Even as she’d annoyed the heck out of him he’d
been lusting after her too.

If it turned out she actually did want it as well, he’d have
a harder time restraining the urge. The way she’d reacted to the kiss suggested
it was a real possibility. That could be a complication. A big one.

They got in the elevator and headed down to the basement in
the same uncomfortable silence. Her floral aroma teased his brain with visions
of long, sensual nights in a bed with silken sheets, stroking a woman with
satiny skin. He firmly pushed it out of his head.

They left the building by the back door. He guided her
across the private parking area to his Lexus SUV. She looked surprised when he
opened the passenger side door for her and helped her step up into the seat
before he went around and got in himself.

Kyle reached for the ignition. “Where to?” He hesitated
after he put the car in gear but before he backed out of the parking space.
“The strip on Winston Drive?”

“No. First stop is at 2214 Bellwood Drive. It’s not too far
from the strip. Head there and I’ll direct you.”

He nodded and pulled out of the parking space and then the
lot. They drove in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes. In the enclosed
space her sweet floral aroma, underlain by the scent of a woman’s arousal,
teased his nose and made his hormones fizz. She wasn’t the kind of woman he’d
normally be attracted to, but something about her intelligence, determination,
daring, the lovely face and figure and the hint of interest in something more
than vanilla sex combined into just the right mixture to engage both his brain
and body.

To distract himself, he asked, “You don’t strike me as
someone who usually resorts to blackmail to get what you want.”

“I’m not. I don’t. At least I never have before. And I don’t
think that was technically blackmail. Doesn’t blackmail have to involve money?”

He shrugged. “No idea. I’m not a lawyer. I’m sure it was
some kind of crime. Kidnapping, maybe.”

“Don’t think it was technically kidnapping either, but I
suppose it was illegal.” She sighed. “Is coercion a crime?”

He stopped at a traffic light and turned to look at her. The
late afternoon sun shining into the car picked out gold highlights in her
honey-brown hair and showed glints of green and copper in her hazel eyes. “It’s
a damn big risk to take with your future. Since you don’t strike me as stupid,
why are you that desperate?” he asked.

“Maybe it was just an impulse? A stupid impulse?”

The light was still red so he stared at her again for a
moment. “I just said you don’t strike me as stupid. Not at all. You know what
you’re doing. And why.”

Meg shrugged. “You’ll see, I think.”

Dear heaven, was she going to run him through a bunch of sob
stories about people not being able to afford the rent for shops in the
upgraded development? Hadn’t they covered that already? He’d offered to move
them to another location at his own expense, including funding any deposits and
even making up the difference for a year if the rent in the new location was
higher. It was generous, far more than he owed her or them. More than most people
would do. What more did she want from him? She had to know he couldn’t just
stop the development completely.

The light changed and traffic thickened, forcing him to
concentrate on driving until they got to the vicinity of the address she’d
given. Awareness of her still boiled through him, but he pushed it to the back
of his mind. Meg directed him to the address. The area featured rows of small,
bungalow-style homes, most looking well past their prime with a few well down
the road to dilapidation.

They parked beside one of the better-kept places. At Meg’s
nod, Kyle got out and came around to get the door for her, though she’d already
opened it herself and jumped down by the time he got there. She led the way up
the porch steps and knocked on the front door. After a few moments an elderly
woman answered the door and invited them in. Meg introduced him to Alina
Parkozy.

“Josef is at the store still,” the woman said, the words
heavily accented by some Eastern European tongue. “But please come in. Can I
offer you tea?” She hobbled around with considerable difficulty, even aided by
the cane, but she took such obvious pride in her home and hospitality, Kyle had
to accept. Meg did as well but warned that they wouldn’t be staying long.

The woman disappeared for the next ten minutes. While she
was in the kitchen, Meg said in a voice low enough that it wouldn’t carry to
the kitchen, “She and her husband own the consignment clothing shop in the
strip. She helps out as much as she can at the store, though she suffers from
rheumatoid arthritis. It limits her time. And her hospital bills and the nature
of their business limit their options.”

“How so?”

“You know as well as I do that the shopping strip is in a
unique location, sitting right between an upscale part of town and a working
class section. It’s one of its biggest advantages. And that’s exactly the kind
of place the Parkozys’ shop needs to be, where it can be accessed easily by the
working class people who are their customers while still being in a place where
the upper enders who supply the goods will come to. And believe me, if it’s too
far out of their way or in too poor a section of town, they won’t come. They
started out in the east end of town, but it didn’t work until they moved here.
You see why they’re unhappy about being relocated?”

“I understand all that. I’ll find a comparable location.”

“Right. One Josef can walk to?”

“He walks? The strip is a couple of miles from here.”

“They don’t have a car,” Meg said. “Can’t afford it with her
medical bills. And he’s used to the walk. It’s a bit harder when Alina comes to
the store.”

“She walks too?”

Meg lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I’ve told her to
call me whenever she needs a ride. Sometimes she does. Especially if it’s
raining.”

“All right, I get the picture.”

Alina hobbled in with the tea tray. They spent a few minutes
drinking the tea and discussing business at the consignment store. Alina kept
the books and knew a great deal about almost every aspect of running the shop.
He listened and made the right noises at the right times. He could keep up this
conversation in his sleep—a good thing since he found his attention wandering
constantly to his companion.

If she’d just been the pretty but inane, empty-headed tree
hugger he’d first thought her, contending with her sex appeal would have been
bad enough. But Meg Travis showed signs of intelligence, a good heart and a
sense of humor to go along with her sexy body and pretty face. Damn. He hadn’t
been this interested in a woman since Rita’s death. Longer than that, in truth.

He’d only managed to force down half the cup of tea when Meg
told their hostess they needed to go. It was probably good tea but he’d always
preferred coffee. He got in a few more swallows as he collected the tray for
their hostess and took it to the kitchen for her before they left.

As he’d expected from the beginning, they went to the
shopping strip next. Instead of heading for her bookshop, though, she directed
him to a parking place at the other end.

He sighed as he got out and looked over the area. The
property that held this down-at-the-heels strip of shops was so perfect for his
plans. It had enough land free of problems like creeks or dry washes and the
right zoning for development into the kind of drive-up shopping complex that
was replacing malls as the venue of choice for time-constrained consumers.

Projects like this one were complex and never simple to pull
together, but it seemed as if this one were cursed. Rita’s illness and death
had caused him to put it aside for a long time in the initial stages then the
paperwork took forever and now a pretty do-gooder was trying everything in her
power to put the kibosh on it.

Their second stop was a game store and hobby shop that took
up a larger section of the strip than most of the other stores. They walked in
and passed through a large room set up with eight tables and twenty or so
folding chairs to get to the back where a woman sorted packages that she lifted
out of a huge box.

The woman turned at the sound of footsteps and smiled at
Meg. “Hey, babe,” she said. Her gaze turned to Kyle and she stared at him with
assessing curiosity. “Whoa, sorry. Didn’t realize you had company.”

Meg introduced him to Carla Soriano.

“You’re our landlord,” the woman said bluntly after shaking
hands with him. “The one who wants to kick us out.”

He looked around the room, noted a damp spot in the corner
of the ceiling, crumbling plaster in another place, the slight tilt of the
floor. “This place is about to fall down around you.”

Carla shrugged. “It needs work, but it could stand a while
longer. And I can’t afford anything better. We barely make it as it is. But
under the circumstances, it’s a damn good deal for me.”

He recognized the manipulation but asked anyway.
“Circumstances?”

Another voice spoke from the back door of the place. He
hadn’t heard it open. “Me. I’m the ‘circumstances’.” A young man stood there.
Probably in his early twenties, he wore jeans and a black t-shirt.

His dark, wavy hair and the rough-hewn features looked so
much like Carla’s he already knew the relationship even before Carla said, “My
son Danny.”

The young man nodded and offered a hand to shake. “I’m the
complication,” Danny repeated with a shrug. “I got in trouble a couple of years
ago and did some time. Now I’m in a halfway house, but it’s damn hard to find a
job when you’ve got a record. So Mom lets me work here with her and maybe I can
get a good enough report that sometime I can get a job somewhere else.”

A customer walked in then, so Kyle and Meg said a hasty
goodbye.

Instead of getting back in his SUV, they walked down the
sidewalk to the bookshop on the other end.

“So why is it so necessary the store stay right here?” he
asked.

“Neither of them drives. Carla can’t due to a medical
condition and her son lost his license. So Carla walks from her apartment and
Danny rides his bike from the halfway house.”

Figured. He nodded.

As they went up the strip, Meg told him about the owners or
managers of each of the businesses they passed, a small pet store, a Chinese
restaurant and a hair salon, among others. Meg knew everyone, it seemed. A
couple of people waved through windows at her.

When they got to her bookstore, he relished the smell of
books and the scent of potpourri that greeted him as they entered. A young
woman barely out of her teens sat at the front desk. She put down a thick book
when she saw Meg, but her gaze rested on him for several flattering seconds
until Meg introduced him to Cate Millhouse.

“Cate works here part-time,” Meg explained, “while she goes
to the university. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

“Find someone else to sit here and read for eight bucks an
hour,” Cate said.

“And supervise Laurie.”

Cate nodded. “She’s in the back, playing with paper dolls.
She did a great job unpacking and shelving that load of books from the auction
last weekend. Got most of them in the right places. Mrs. Sullivan was in
earlier. Bought almost a hundred bucks worth of books. Laurie ran the total and
got it right.”

“Excellent. We’re going to the back.”

Kyle followed Meg through a maze of book racks. He tried to
keep from looking, but he couldn’t help watching the way her jeans-clad hips
swung as she walked. A firm, round bottom was just the perfect size for her
slim figure and it moved in the most enticing way, inviting a man’s attention. What
would it look like bare?