Kate Carlisle – How to Seduce a Billionaire (страница 8)

It was useless to deny that she was susceptible. All she had to do was think back to a few hours earlier when Brandon had kissed her. If he’d wanted to take things further, she would’ve gone right along with him. That’s how good his kiss had been.

“Okay, fine, the man can kiss.” She tossed her fork on the plate and stood, too antsy to eat.

Even if he kissed her again and it led to something more, she would never be so stupid as to fall for Brandon Duke.

She strode around the room, picking up her jacket and hanging it in the small closet, then sorting through her clothes for tomorrow’s outfit.

Yes, she’d laughed at his ground rules earlier that day, but now that she’d kissed him, was she still willing to guarantee that she could remain resistant to his charms?

“Yes,” she said firmly, and shoved the closet door shut. She wasn’t a complete dummy. She knew Brandon’s reputation with women, knew his habit of dating one woman for a brief period of time, then moving on to the next. It would be insane for any woman to expect Brandon Duke to reciprocate her tender feelings. So why would Kelly ever fall for him? She simply wouldn’t.

Brandon wasn’t the “settle down and get married” kind of guy Kelly wanted to meet and fall in love with. He didn’t fit in with her life plan at all.

“And that makes him perfect for this plan,” she said, as comprehension dawned. Since she would never fall for him, Brandon Duke was the perfect man to teach her how to kiss!

Now, if she could just convince him to continue helping her. After all, look how much she’d learned with just one try. Her eyes were now opened to the fact that Roger had been the problem all along. It was obvious now. He had never kissed her the way Brandon had kissed her. She would’ve remembered.

“Oh yes,” she said with another sigh as she forced herself to take another bite of her dinner. She would’ve remembered a kiss like that.

So how could she convince her boss to let her practice her kissing with him some more? Roger would be here next week so it wasn’t as if he would be forced to keep kissing her forever. It would only be for a few days. She needed to make it clear that lessons in romance and seduction would be all she needed. The more skilled she became at romance and seduction, the better her chances would be of putting Roger in his place.

Brandon could appreciate that, right?

Still, it was a dilemma. Brandon was her boss. If she was smart—and she was—she’d just forget about Brandon and use her own best instincts to attract Roger.

What instincts? she wondered, and grimaced. When it came to romance, she had none!

As she took another bite of chicken and rice, she realized there had to be a website somewhere with instructions she could follow. There was a website for everything else, so why not seduction?

Oh, but it would be so much better to learn from a real live expert. And Brandon was indeed an expert. She couldn’t help thinking that if mere kissing had given her this much perspective into her problems with Roger, then having sex with Brandon would be absolutely revelatory.

“What?” She jumped off her chair and wrapped her arms around herself. Where had that thought come from?

“You stop thinking about that right now,” she admonished herself as she grabbed her plate and glass and carried them to the sink. “You’ll just embarrass yourself.” Again.

But now that she’d thought it, she couldn’t get the image out of her mind. What in the world would happen if she and Brandon ever had sex?

“Oh, no,” she said, gasping. What if they had sex and she found out she really was bad at it? How could she face Brandon at work? She would have to quit.

But wait. What if she was really good at it? Would he think she’d been lying about her lack of experience? Would he assume she’d been having sex all along, with every guy in town? How could she face him at work? She would have to quit.

And oh, dear Lord. What if Brandon was no good at sex? Would she have to lie and tell him it was wonderful? He was her boss, after all. She couldn’t exactly tell him he was a loser in bed. She would have to quit.

She moaned and took another sip of water.

“Okay, that’s it,” she said, as she tapped her fingers on the counter anxiously. “Just forget the whole thing.”

This whole kissing thing was too much to think about. She had to figure out some other way to deal with Roger. She would explain to Brandon tomorrow that she’d been wrong. He would have to forgive her. And she was certain that he would. After all, before today, she’d never done anything to cause her employer the least bit of consternation. Tomorrow, after she explained to Brandon that her brief lapse into lunacy was over, everything would be fine. They’d go back to normal. She would assure Brandon that he would never have to worry about inappropriate behavior from her again.

And a year from now, she would look back and be able to laugh over this momentary ripple in her otherwise unblemished record.

The doorbell chimed and she jumped.

Checking her wristwatch, she wondered if it might be Housekeeping at the door. She’d asked them not to stop by with those yummy evening chocolates anymore. But tonight, maybe she’d take one. Anything to provide a diversion from her disconcerting thoughts. She ran to open the door and her resolutions of a moment ago flitted away.

“Brandon,” she whispered.

“We need to talk.”

Brandon stared at Kelly and could no longer remember why he’d thought it would be a good idea to come by her room.

After a long run around the hotel grounds after work, then another brief conference call with his brothers to finalize arrangements for their family’s arrival to attend the resort’s grand opening, followed by a quick taste of the chef’s latest creations for the harvest festival menu, Brandon had retired to his suite to watch Dallas eviscerate Denver on TV. But he hadn’t been able to concentrate on the football game, and that was a first.

He blamed it on Kelly.

The fact was, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Not in a sexual way, he hastened to tell himself, despite the vivid memory of her warm mouth and sweet tongue and an explicit picture of exactly what he’d like to do with. but he wasn’t going to go there. No way. Not with Kelly. Not in this lifetime.

In the first place, she worked for him. How big a fool would he be if he jeopardized his working relationship with the best assistant he’d ever had? And even if he was willing to overlook that little fact, Kelly just wasn’t his type. She wasn’t sophisticated and worldly like the women he usually dated. She wasn’t the kind of woman Brandon would ever think of calling on the spur of the moment for a night on the town, followed by a rousing round of sex, followed by no commitment to call again.

No, Kelly was more like the girl next door, the one who was meant to find a nice guy and get married. As far as Brandon was concerned, she might as well have worn a banner that said Hands Off. And he would be wise to heed that invisible warning.

He’d had some pretty awful role models early in his childhood, before Sally Duke adopted him. He’d seen all the ways people could hurt each other in the name of love and marriage, so he wasn’t about to go that route. With that in mind, he had decided not to touch Kelly again.

But she’d looked so pensive and uncertain when he’d left the office earlier this evening. He’d never seen Kelly less than one hundred percent confident in herself and her abilities, so this change in attitude worried him.

And then there was that kiss. Which he wasn’t going to think about again, damn it.

So why was he standing here at her door, holding a bottle of wine? Oh, yeah.

“We need to talk,” he repeated. He’d used the same stupid line in the office much earlier today. It sounded somehow lamer now, even if it was the truth. When she stepped aside, he strolled into her mini-suite. “I hope I’m not interrupting your dinner.”

“No, I’m finished,” she said, and rushed to dispose of the remnants.

He held out the bottle of wine, a Duke Vineyards pinot noir. “Will you have a glass of this if I open it?”

She stared at the bottle, then up at him. “Sure. I’ll find an opener.”

He could tell she was nervous as she rattled around in one of the kitchen drawers. And why shouldn’t she be? It wasn’t every day a woman kissed her employer. And it wasn’t every night that said employer showed up at her hotel room carrying a bottle of wine. He just hoped she wouldn’t get the wrong idea. All he wanted to do was clear the air so their working relationship could go back to being as exceptional as it had been before the kiss. It was a simple problem and it wouldn’t take him long to explain his feelings, but he had to admit that a quick glass of wine would probably help them both relax.

“Here you go,” she said, and handed him a corkscrew.

“Glasses?”

“Oh.” She swallowed anxiously. “Right.”

As he worked to remove the cork, he took a moment to study his longtime assistant—and wondered how he’d ever thought he’d be able to relax in her hotel room.

She wore cutoff shorts and a T-shirt, an outfit that a jury of his peers would consider thoroughly appropriate for spending a balmy night alone in her room. But as she reached for the wineglasses on the second shelf of the cupboard, he watched her T-shirt inch up to reveal the leanness of her stomach. On her tiptoes now, her shorts stretched just enough to show the soft, pale skin above her tan line where the curve of her bottom met her perfectly toned thighs.