McKnight in Shining Armor (15 page)

Suddenly she felt as if she were cocooned in sun-warmed silk. “Alec.” She could see his smile and lake-blue eyes as clearly as if he were right there in her basement.

“How’d you know it was me?” he asked. “You must get dozens of calls like that every day.”

“As a matter of fact, I did just get a call requesting I dance around and take my clothes off at a bachelor party.”

“What?” he sat up in his chair, distinctly
displeased at the idea of some other guy making suggestions like that to Kelsie.

“A misunderstanding. That’s what I get for coming up with a name like Monkey Business. What’s up?”

Alec gave her a wicked chuckle. “How can you ask me a question like that after talking about dancing around and taking your clothes off?”

“Al-ec!” she said with a groan, blushing like a teenager.

“Can you get away for lunch?” he asked, crossing his fingers. “It’s business.”

“Business? The kind that pays money?”

“You bet.”

“What is it?”

“Ah! It’s a surprise. Can you be at my office by eleven-thirty?”

   Kelsie took deep breaths as she rode the elevator up toward the offices of Glendenning Advertising. She was nervous—a good kind of nervous—about the business Alec wanted to talk about. She was nervous about seeing Alec. They
had made up—if it really could be called that—but they were still stepping around each other like cats walking on egg shells. At least they had been before his phone call this morning. It wasn’t anything obvious, just a sensation she had that wouldn’t leave no matter how many times she pictured his smile. His anger had hung a wall between them, a thin, invisible wall, but a wall just the same.

She had warned him, she thought defensively. She had said she didn’t have time in her life for an affair. There were already so many demands on her time, and now part of her wanted to chuck it all and live only for Alec. That terrified her. She couldn’t let herself fall into a dependent relationship again. She should never have let him talk her into dating him.

“As if I had a choice,” she grumbled to herself. The guy could have made a million bucks as a door-to-door salesman. Certainly there wasn’t a woman on the planet who wouldn’t have melted at the sight of his wily smile. And when he set his mind to something, there was no changing it. The combination of his cut-from-granite determination
and all-American-rascal charm was lethal. He could have sold sports cars to the Amish. “You never stood a chance, Kelsie.”

Now she was in love with him, and the knowledge caused her more fear than anything else. She hadn’t known anything about dating. She wasn’t sure she knew much more about love. Part of what she had felt for her ex-husband had been love, but it had been so intermingled with dependence, with fear of the unknown, and it had been destroyed so long ago….

The opening of the elevator doors stole away any more time she might have given to brooding.

Ms. Bond ushered her into Alec’s office. Alec’s face was alight with suppressed mischief. Smiles he refused to give rein to tugged at his lips as he looked from Kelsie to his secretary. “Thank you, Mr. Bond. Why don’t you take off for lunch now?”

Ms. Bond’s eyebrows scaled her forehead. “It’s only eleven-thirty.”

“Treat yourself. Ms. Connors and I will be taking a long lunch, so there’s no need for you to hurry back. Two should be early enough.”

“Would this be a good time to ask for a raise?” Ms. Bond questioned.

“Don’t push your luck, Ms. Bond,” he said through his teeth.

“Har!” She laughed, leaving the room.

“Have a seat, Ms. Connors,” Alec told Kelsie with the formality of a little boy playing business executive. He motioned her to one of the chairs in front of his desk as he took his own seat.

Kelsie sat down, her nerves settling at Alec’s obvious good mood. She crossed her legs and folded her hands on the lap of her green dress, looking at Alec expectantly.

His body tightened with need. She was so pretty sitting there with her attention solely on him, her big blue eyes watching him. She wore her hair loose, which suddenly drove him crazy with desire; it looked so soft and wild falling around her shoulders. His fingers itched to run through it, then undo the big brass buttons that marched down the front of her dress. Would she be wearing something sexy underneath? Something lacy he could play with?

A little uncomfortable at seeing the hot look in
Alec’s eyes, Kelsie cleared her throat delicately. “You said something about business?”

“You got the Van Bryant deal,” he said without preamble.

Kelsie’s jaw dropped. “For real? You mean it? You’re not suddenly into sick jokes, are you?” Mentally she was already paying off bills and picking out extra Christmas presents for the kids.

Alec laughed. “It’s for real,” he said, his heart warming at the thought that he had been able to make Kelsie look so happy.

“That’s great! That’s wonderful! That’s—” She leaned back in her chair, suddenly wary of her good fortune.

“What?” Alec asked, seeing her swift change of mood.

She took a breath, holding it as she briefly stared down at her feet. “Um… did this have anything to do with us?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t understand,” Alec said, watching her.

“You didn’t decide to give the idea a second chance because of you and me, did you? Because if the only reason I’m getting this job is… I know
you’re my number-one rescuer, Alec, but I couldn’t accept that kind of favor. My business has to survive on merit, not on the good deeds of a knight in shining armor.”

Alec’s smile was an ironic one. He gave his head a little shake, dislodging a lock of neatly combed, dark hair so it tumbled roguishly across his forehead. Vena had not only expected such favors from him, she had demanded them on more than one occasion.

“What?” Kelsie asked, bewildered.

“Nothing,” he said, his smile gentling for her as he pushed his chair back and stood. “The ultimate decision was Mr. Van Bryant’s to make. He simply, flat-out loved the idea. It was exactly what he wanted. Congratulations.”

“That’s fabulous.” She sighed, her eyes drifting shut for a moment. The image of the teal blue silk dress she’d had her eye on in Van Bryant’s front window shimmered in her mind. “The timing couldn’t have been better. Have you told Steve?”

“Yes. He wanted to take you out for a celebratory
lunch, but I had to tell him you were already booked.”

He held his arms out for her. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for Kelsie to go to him. She beamed a smile up at him. “So where are you taking me?”

“I don’t see any reason to leave this room,” he said as his arms tightened around her. “I have what I’m hungry for right here.”

Kelsie giggled. “Alec! We’re in your office!”

“Mmm, I know,” he whispered, nuzzling behind her ear. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamed of making love to you in here?”

“No,” she said, gasping as his palm brushed over her breast.

“Thousands,” he said, nibbling at the corner of her mouth. He gave her a teasing kiss, dipping his tongue in to touch hers, then withdrawing. As he sifted her hair through his hands, he kissed her eyebrows, traced their slight arc with the tip of his tongue, grazed them with his teeth. “You have the sexiest eyebrows.”

Kelsie had never considered her eyebrows an erogenous zone until now. Alec made love to them with his mouth, setting off a trembling sensation that raced down her body and settled between her thighs. She tried to wiggle away from him, managing only to worsen the situation as she came into more intimate contact with his aroused body.

“Alec, stop trying to seduce me,” she said with no authority in her voice at all. Her resolve had gone as weak as her knees.

“Why?” he asked, chuckling deviously.

“Because you’re so darn good at it!” Kelsie answered, knowing she shouldn’t give in to him here but knowing she would. She had no kind of control when Alec touched her.

His fingers went to the top button of her dress, freeing it and then to two of its companions below. “Let’s see if you’re wearing something sexy for me, sweetheart,” he said, easing the dress back off her shoulders.

A purr of satisfaction rumbled low in his throat, and he smiled as he uncovered her. The camisole she wore was pearly pink satin with a
panel of sheer ivory lace down the center. Tiny pearl buttons drew a line from between her breasts downward, disappearing into the belted waist of her dress. He unfastened them with ease.

“Alec, we shouldn’t.” Even as she uttered the puny protest, Kelsie’s thumbs hooked under Alec’s red suspenders and began tugging them off his shoulders. “We’re in your office; anybody could walk in.”

“They’ve all gone to lunch,” he said, maneuvering Kelsie so she was half sitting on his desk, the narrow skirt of her dress riding high up her thighs. He ran his hands up her legs as he lowered his head toward her breast.

A brisk rapping on his office door jerked Alec’s head up.

“Alec, you home?”

Alec swore swiftly and eloquently. Kelsie scrambled from the desktop, wildly looking around for a place to hide.

“Under the desk!” Alec ordered in a frantic whisper. Before Kelsie could protest, he planted a hand on top of her head and shoved. The next
thing she knew, she was on her fanny in the cubbyhole on Alec’s desk, staring at a pair of gray argyle socks and black and gray wingtip shoes.

Alec dropped into his chair just as the door opened and Art Parnell stuck his balding head in. “Art, come on in.”

Parnell was a small, chubby fellow with a foot-long lock of black hair he combed from the right side of his head over the top.

“Here are those figures you wanted—jeez, you look like hell,” the man said, taking a seat in front of Alec’s desk.

“Do I?” Alec was still breathing hard, his face was flushed, and his tie was askew. He raked a hand back through the disheveled mass of his hair, trying vainly to restore a modicum of order to it. Hoping to look nonchalant, he shrugged his suspenders back into place.

“You’re a slave to this place, Alec. You work too hard. I’ve got just the thing for you,” the little man said, his beady eyes gleaming. “There’s this little redhead in the mailroom who’ll really deliver, if you get my drift—”

“I don’t think so, Art,” Alec interrupted. The
last thing he wanted right now was one of Art’s never-ending play-by-play accounts of his disgusting extracurricular activities. “I’m seeing someone.”

“Not often enough by the look of you.” Parnell chuckled.

Under the desk Kelsie made a face. What a vulgarian! And, while Alec’s answering laugh was less then halfhearted, she was none too pleased with him either. He’d been awfully quick to stuff her into this convenient little spot. Now she had a hole the size of Vermont in her panty hose and her neck was beginning to cramp.

“You’ve been spending too much time looking at that secretary of yours. Man, her face belongs on a wrestling poster! Do you believe what she said to me when I made that suggestion for the Christmas party? I’ve got nothing against women with brains—as long as they’ve got plenty of T and A to go along with it! Right?”

While Parnell laughed at his own tasteless joke, Alec gave him the same sort of pained, tightlipped smile he gave his dentist.

“You ought to dump that old broad and get a sportier model, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, I couldn’t get rid of Ms. Bond,” Alec said. Suddenly his breath lodged in his throat. The look on his face was one of near pain.

“You okay?”

“F-fine,” he stuttered, drumming his knuckles against the top of his desk, while underneath it Kelsie had decided to take advantage of the situation. “It’s j-just a—a muscle spasm. Must have—a-strained something running.”

“Running.” Art grimaced, patting his paunch lovingly. “I get all the strain I need in the sack.”

“G-good for you,” Alec said hoarsely, squirming on his chair. Short of reaching under the desk—which would have been a little conspicuous—there wasn’t anything he could do to stop Kelsie from her little game. He wasn’t so sure he wanted her to stop. What he wanted was for Art Parnell to make himself scarce. “You know, now that you mention it, I’m not feeling too well, Art. You’d better leave. It’s probably the stomach flu.”

Parnell shot out of his chair. “I just had it,” he
said, backing toward the door. “Cripes, I lived in the bathroom for two days. You’d better lie down or something, Alec.”

“Oh…” he said in a soprano voice as Kelsie’s fingers moved on his thigh. “I will. Right away. Good-bye, Art.”

As soon as Art was out the door, Alec bolted across the room to lock it.

“Kelsie Connors,” he said with a growl, half laughing as he stalked toward the desk, “you little witch. I’m going to get you for that stunt.”

Kelsie stayed put under the desk, holding her stomach, laughing. “Maybe you should just go down to the mailroom, Alec.”

He muttered his opinion of that suggestion as he dropped down on his knees and reached under the desk to drag Kelsie out. She pretended to struggle, giggling as he tickled her. Alec hauled her up off the floor and into his arms, kissing her wildly. He hugged her against his chest, and gave free run to the desire that had been building inside him.

What was left of Kelsie’s control dissolved, and
she kissed him back, groaning as he brought one hard thigh up between hers, inviting her to arch against him. The hunger she felt for him was overwhelming. Every cell of her body ached for his touch. The first time she had felt this kind of need it had frightened her. Now what she felt was a ravenous sense of anticipation, because she knew Alec could satisfy her hunger and leave her feeling exalted instead of empty.

She jerked his suspenders down and went for his tie, her hands fumbling frantically until she nearly choked him. Alec jerked the strip of silk from his shirt collar and dropped it on his desk, hurrying his mouth back to Kelsie’s for another kiss. His need for her was beyond anything he’d ever known. They were like fire and dynamite when they came together. He wondered if Kelsie realized how rare that kind of explosive mutual passion was.

Buttons flew off his shirt as her hands sought to touch his chest. Her dress pooled at her waist. Alec bent her back over his desk, his mouth closing hotly over a breast, while his hands chased her skirt up and yanked hose and panties down.
Kelsie braced a foot on the arm of the desk chair, lifting her hips to Alec’s touch, moving in time to the rhythm his boldly teasing fingers set.