CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FOUR
Harris felt rather than saw Eden Fennell leave.
He wanted to pinch himself to make absolutely sure that he wasn’t in the middle of some elaborate dream but he’d already acted out of character this evening. And it was because of her. From the moment Eden had walked in, he’d felt as if everything solid and real were turning to sand.
Of course, if he’d bothered to read the report that his staff had compiled, none of this would be happening. He would have seen her photo, and he would have made an excuse to his team. Or perhaps he wouldn’t. He was the boss and that was one of the perks. Never having to explain or apologise.
Either way, he would have vetoed her appointment.
Or would he?
His mind returned to the moment she had sashayed into the room in that skirt and those heels. The last time he’d seen her she was naked on the bed, her arms stretched above her head, that tempting curve of a body arching up as she offered her breasts to the heat of his mouth, so understandably it had been a shock to see her again. And even now it was almost impossible to believe that the petite, cool-eyed brunette in the pinstripe skirt and sky-high heels was the same woman who had come apart beneath him two weeks ago.
She had been shocked to see him too.
Not openly. She hadn’t gasped or pressed her hand against that mouth of hers, but her eyes had widened fractionally as she’d recognised him.
He knew exactly how she’d felt, finally putting a name to a face.
To a body.
To a pulse.
He knew because he was feeling it too. That pinprick of shock like an inoculating jab and then the slow, numbing spread of disbelief.
Beside him, Avery was putting her laptop into her bag, and he could sense her confusion. He couldn’t blame her. Today was supposed to have been a friendly meet and greet, and normally in these meetings, he was happy to let his team ask the questions. He preferred to watch…
His body tensed, groin hardening as he remembered watching Eden in the mirror and he had to blank his mind quickly to the image of her body shuddering against his.
‘I’m sure you must be wondering why I took the lead.’ He waved away Avery’s protests. ‘I just wanted to know she can do the job.’
Which was true, but what was truer was that the shock of Eden being there had left him feeling tricked and exposed, and he’d needed to own the room.
Own the room or own her?
Gritting his teeth, he glanced at his watch. ‘I have to go. I have a dinner this evening. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘But you liked her. Ms Fennell. You think she’s a good fit?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I do. You chose well.’
As he strode through the club towards the doors, he saw that his car was already idling outside, sleek and dark, the tinted windows only partially concealing his driver. Beside it, his bodyguard stood, solid and imposing.
But he wasn’t looking at them, instead his gaze was fixed on the limo behind his. The one that would take Eden Fennell back to wherever she wanted to go.
Eden. He rolled the name on his tongue. Another woman, most women in fact, would find it impossible to carry off. But it suited her and not just because she was beautiful. In those few febrile hours they’d shared together there had been a wildness to her and a lack of inhibition that had transformed that simple hotel room into a paradise of pleasure.
Today though she was poised and aloof, and that aloofness had wound him up. That was why he’d been so hard on her. He had wanted to see that flare of passion again, so he’d pushed her on every point. But she’d held her ground. Pushed back, he thought, remembering the snippy remark she’d made about him being small and subservient.
He gritted his teeth. This was the second time Eden Fennell had knocked him off balance and left him scrambling to make sense of his world.
But things had changed.
She was working for him now and the sooner she realised what that meant, the better it would be for both of them. Waving away his bodyguard, he stalked over to the second limo. She wasn’t in it, so she was probably still sorting out her security clearance.
By the time Eden appeared through the doors, he was back in control, lounging against his car, his eyes ostensibly on his phone but he knew exactly when she caught sight of him because he saw her falter.
‘Ms Fennell—’
‘Mr Carver—’
She was walking towards him now, her eyes steady on his face and he felt another tiny jolt of admiration and a curiosity that rarely troubled him when it came to women. But there was usually nothing to be curious about. Women liked him because he was rich and good-looking, and he liked them because they were beautiful, willing and endlessly available.
His jaw clenched and he had a sudden vivid memory of waking alone in that bed, and of reaching across the mattress to find nothing. He couldn’t think of one woman who would even have contemplated walking away from him.
Except this one. Who wasn’t even looking at him, he realised with a flicker of irritation. Instead, she was turning slightly, frowning at the tail lights of the departing limo.
‘Was that—’
‘Your car? Yes.’ He nodded. ‘I told the driver to leave. No point taking two cars when mine is heading in the same direction.’
She didn’t like that. Even before she spun round towards him, he could feel the annoyance snap down her spine.
‘I doubt that. I don’t live in the Upper East Side.’
‘Then it’s lucky for you that I’m not going to the Upper East Side.’ He held her gaze. ‘Look, it’ll be a small diversion for my driver, and it’s good for the environment too. Besides, we need to talk,’ he added.
‘You just spent an hour grilling me. I think that’s enough talking, don’t you?’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a phone. ‘You go ahead. I’ll call a cab.’
‘Just get in the car, Ms Fennell. It’s a ten-minute drive. I mean, what are you scared of?’
‘Not much. Spiders. Snakes. The occasional very big beetle.’ Angling her chin, she looked up at him in that cool, taunting way of hers. ‘You know, if fear is how you motivate your staff, Mr Carver, I’m surprised that this is your first reputational crisis.’
‘And I’m surprised you need any motivation to have a brief conversation with your boss. What was it you said about being in my corner? Something about my having your attention twenty-four hours a day? Yet here you are quibbling over giving me ten minutes of your time.’
Her green eyes flashed, and she glanced away because he was right, and she hated that. He loved that he could read her reaction so easily now, because she had spent the last hour keeping her emotions in check—keeping him in check.
‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. I’m very happy to have a conversation of any length with you. But only if it doesn’t involve you making accusations about why we ended up in bed.’
He swore under his breath. ‘And that is exactly why we need to talk.’
She held his gaze as he took a step forward and he felt another reluctant flicker of admiration. He was six foot three. She barely reached his shoulders yet here she was staring him down.
‘Fine,’ she said coolly. ‘You can take me to Cooper Square. I have a hotel room just off there.’
She did?
Then why had they rented another one that night?
But she was already sidestepping past him, opening the door on the passenger side, slamming it after herself before that thought had finished formulating, and he laughed. It was either that or pull her back out of the car and kiss her until she accepted that they were doing things his way—
‘Mr Carver?’
His driver’s voice snapped him back into his body and, feeling exposed and annoyed that Eden could make him feel that way, he turned and said curtly, ‘Change of plan, Owen. We’re taking Ms Fennell back to her hotel first.’
Yanking open the other door, he slid onto the seat beside Eden and, having stretched out his legs, he turned to where she was sitting stiffly.
She spoke first. ‘So that’s what this is about? You think I’m going to go and tell everyone what happened?’
Their gazes collided. No, she wouldn’t do that, he thought, without missing a beat. Inside the club just now, she had been eloquent—but that was business.
How many words had she spoken to him before they’d left the bar? Thirty maybe. Less than that in the hotel. But by then, they’d had other things on their minds aside from conversation.
He shrugged. ‘It crossed my mind,’ he lied.
She glanced away. ‘Well, uncross it. I’m not a fan of blabbing about my private life to anyone and I don’t expect you to do it either.’ Her head turned slightly, enough for her green eyes to pierce him, steady, determined, proud. ‘What happened that night was between us.’
Us. The word vibrated inside him. He had never managed to be a ‘we’ or an ‘us’ with any woman. How could you be something that you fundamentally didn’t understand?
Sex was different. There was nothing to understand. It was hormones, pheromones, biology. You didn’t need to learn it; it was a primal urge, an instinct. And some relationships were instinctive too, or they were supposed to be. Parents were programmed to love their children, to want to protect and nurture and indulge them.
Not in his family.
His chest tightened with the old, familiar mix of fury and bafflement and pain. Logically, he could see why it had been like that. His parents had nothing in common with each other except one night of cheap beer and careless sex. They hadn’t wanted to marry. They certainly hadn’t wanted a baby. But that was what they’d got. And maybe in the beginning, they had thought that against all odds they could make it work. Or maybe they had simply been marking time until they could get divorced. Either way, despite being man and wife they’d not been a couple except in name only.
Yet, the strange thing was that even though he and Eden had spent only six hours together at most, they had felt like an ‘us’. And he’d felt at one with himself, and with her, in a way that was absent from any other relationship he could remember.
Which was probably why his daughter was being raised by another man on the other side of the world.
‘Is that why you wanted to talk to me? Because I meant what I said. My private life is private.’
He nodded. ‘But you can understand why I would have concerns. I don’t need any more bad publicity.’
There was a lengthy pause.
‘As your reputation manager, I can only concur.’ Another pause. ‘I just didn’t know that’s what I was.’
He shook his head. ‘You misunderstand me—’
She shrugged. ‘What’s to understand? You like to pick up women in bars for sex.’
Her directness surprised him enough to tell the truth. ‘I usually don’t, and you picked me up.’
He felt his body respond to the sudden heat in her eyes. ‘Whatever.’ She shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter either way.’
‘Is that why you left before I woke up?’ He spoke unthinkingly, her absence still a raw wound, but as her chin jerked up, he felt a tiny stab of satisfaction that he had got beneath her skin even if it came at the cost of her having got beneath his.
‘I had something to do.’ Her voice was fierce, and he felt a sudden compulsion to ask her what could have been more important than their feverish need for each other.
‘And you paid for the room—’
‘Why does that matter?’
Good question , he thought, only it was one that he couldn’t easily answer even though he was feeling the same sense of shock and outrage as before, the same irritation with himself for minding so much about something so trivial. But any answer he gave would make him look like some Neanderthal throwback. She would think it was his ego.
And it was, but not because he needed to pick up the bill to feel like a man.
It cut deeper than that. He had felt that same sense of being surplus to requirements. Maybe if they’d had a conversation about it, he would have let her pay if that was what she wanted, although that in itself was mind-boggling. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had offered to pay for anything.
But she hadn’t talked to him. She had simply paid and left.
Just like Jessie. Only she had bought an air ticket back home to Australia.
Aged eighteen, he had been relieved. Relieved? It shouldn’t hurt that much when something was true, but he felt a hot wave of shame and anger rise up inside him and although his voice was quiet when he finally answered her, it cost him.
‘I’d already given them my credit card details.’
‘I know, but I wanted to pay.’ She frowned. ‘I don’t see what your problem is. Surely, you’re not so old-fashioned that you can’t let a woman pay for a hotel room.’
‘I’m not old-fashioned—’
‘Then what’s the big deal? Yes, I paid, but before that you left your credit-card details so how is that any different?’
‘Because you were there. You saw me do it. You had a chance then to say how you wanted things to be.’
Unlike him. He had been sidelined his entire life, first by his parents and then by the mother of his child. Not that Eden Fennell needed to know about any of that.
‘I’d have preferred to be consulted.’
Yet another pause.
‘Would you have hired me if you had been?’
He felt a pang as he remembered the remark he’d made when he’d introduced her to Avery.
‘I mean, if you had realised who I was?’
He glanced over to where she was sitting. In the subdued lighting of the car, she looked defiant and young. She was young, he reminded himself, remembering her date of birth from the résumé Avery had sent him. The same age he’d been when he’d finally had the money to start trying to track down Jasmine. By then, he’d felt so old, as if he’d lived a hundred lives.
‘Probably not,’ he admitted. ‘But I trust Avery. She has good instincts and you presented well today.’
‘I know it must feel like you’re taking a risk but I’m very good at my job.’
‘I hope you’re better than good. In fact, I expect the best and by that I mean I want this process to feel organic, not staged in any way.’
‘Of course.’ She nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t have you judging best in show at the county fair or kissing babies—’
It was instantly and shockingly, piercingly painful, just as if she’d leaned over and punched him in the face. Because it didn’t matter how many years had passed. In fact, with every year that passed, it was getting harder and harder to not think about his daughter because she was always in his heart.
Beside him, Eden shifted forward. ‘I will do a good job for you. I’m not a quitter.’ There was a different note to her voice now, a certainty and a confidence that made her seem older than twenty-five.
‘I’ll hold you to that.’
Outside the car, the city was changing tempo. The rhythm of the night was starting to overlap the end of the working day.
He felt the memory of that night lap up against his skin and, even though she was sitting on the other side of the limo, he felt crowded by his need for her. His fingers twitched as she looked over at him, her pupils huge and dark, holding him steady, and he felt the combative tension between them dissolving like salt in warm water.
Glancing away, she cleared her throat. ‘This is fine for me.’
He tapped on the privacy screen and the limo pulled smoothly alongside the kerb.
‘I’ll send a car to pick you up in the morning. Be ready for eight.’
‘No need. I know where your office is, Mr Carver.’
He shook his head. ‘The paparazzi are already sniffing around the building.’
‘I can take care of myself.’
His chest tightened sharply as he pictured her trying to push her way through a baying pack of photographers and journalists. ‘Take the car, Eden, and that’s an order.’ It was the first time he had spoken her name out loud, and he felt something loosen in him as her chin jerked up and their gazes locked momentarily, her green eyes clear and startled. Then she was opening the door and stepping onto the pavement.
She didn’t look back and after a few seconds she was swallowed up by the crowds. As the car began to move, he found his gaze pulling towards the window. But that was understandable, he told himself. He was still coming to terms with her sudden reappearance. It was frustrating that just when he needed to be most stable, he was feeling so unfettered, so like a stranger to himself.
Tomorrow would be different.
By then he would no longer be in shock, and if they spent more time together then Eden would become a woman like any other and stop feeling like some fantasy who had sprung unexpectedly and distractingly to life.
Leaning back against the headrest, he deliberately closed his eyes. Everything was under control, and he fully expected that in a matter of weeks his reputation would be, if not fully restored, then well on the way to it. Finally, he would be able to put this whole disastrous episode behind him.
And that night in the hotel would be nothing more than a half-remembered dream.
* * *
His expectations had proved correct, he thought a week later as he stepped out of the elevator on the executive level. Except on one account. His mouth formed around a four-letter word.
Eden.
It had been a promising theory, thinking that proximity and familiarity could dull the senses, and with every other woman of his acquaintance it had swiftly and effortlessly become reality. But not with her.
It was almost the end of the working day and most of his staff were picking up their coats and bags. A few were chatting. Others were heading towards the elevator.
Soon the office would be empty and quiet. He liked it like that. Liked watching the sun set from his office. Some days, most days if he was being truthful, it felt more like home than his glittering, echoing triplex. Particularly at the moment. He seemed drawn here, coming in earlier, staying later than usual, returning when there was really no reason to do so.
The lie fizzed inside his head. There was a reason. He was looking at her now.
His stride faltered infinitesimally as his gaze narrowed in on Eden, and that was annoying in itself. There were any number of brunettes currently working at HCI and yet without exception every time he walked into the open-plan office, his eyes seemed to find their way to her unerringly like a heat-seeking missile.
Although he couldn’t put his finger on why.
It wasn’t as if she dressed outlandishly.
Take today. She was wearing another of those silky blouses and a pair of slim-fitting trousers, and that his brain had even registered that blew his mind. He wasn’t remotely interested in women’s clothing and usually had no opinion on what they wore. But he could pretty much remember every single outfit Eden had worn this week and all of them seemed to have been designed with the express purpose of hinting at what they appeared to hide.
He watched her leaning forward to look at something on Avery’s laptop, her hair falling to cover her profile, and he felt a flash of regret that he could no longer see the curve of her jaw.
The two women were talking intently and then Avery’s assistant, Aaron, came over and said something and Eden nodded and smiled, and he felt his insides clench. She had a sweet smile, natural and warming like spring sunshine. Not that he’d experienced it first-hand. The smiles she reserved for him were polite and perfectly calibrated to reveal nothing and he suddenly found himself willing her to look over and smile at him like that.
Harris Carver was back.
* * *
Eden didn’t look up, but she didn’t need to see him to know he was there. Her body had already quivered to attention like a dog hearing its owner’s car in the drive and as she felt him walk towards her, the noises in the office seemed to fade away and she was aware of nothing beyond the pounding of her heart.
And his eyes.
When finally she could no longer bear it, she looked up. Her throat tightened. He was staring down at her, those grey eyes of his boring into her like the drills he was designing for the moon.
‘Mr Carver—’
‘Ms Fennell.’
He inclined his head slightly and she gave him one of her specially patented you’re-the-boss smiles that she had been pinning to her face for the last five days.
‘You seem very focused on something. What are you thinking about?’
You , she thought, her eyes zigzagging down over his body. Every mesmerising inch of him. Ever since he’d dropped her off in Cooper Square, she had spent too many hours to bill researching him, and usually that was the part she enjoyed the most. Not just because it gave her the foundation stones to build a strategy. There was something relaxing about research. It was like doing a jigsaw puzzle.
Except in Harris’s case, it felt as though there were multiple missing pieces and others that simply didn’t fit into any of the holes.
His media footprint up until the Chronicle story was incredibly light. There were no puff pieces, hardly any interviews and the biography his Comms teams had given her could be best described as minimalist.
She had other ways of researching her clients. Eavesdropping on staff as they congregated around the water cooler or waited for the elevators or even in the restrooms. None of which had revealed much that she didn’t already know.
The data from the social listening company had hinted at a rivalry between Harris and Tiger McIntyre, which tied in with what Avery had said at that first meeting, but it was mostly uncredited fragments of supposition.
Still, she found herself poring over every detail like some teenager reading fan fiction about her favourite character so that even when her laptop powered down in exhaustion, he was there inside her head. Worse, when she finally made it to bed, as she fell asleep, Harris would still be there beside her, his arm pressing her tightly against him, his heat spreading through her limbs.
So that was relaxing.
She cleared her throat. ‘This is the mentoring website. It’s not completely finished but I’m really pleased with it.’
‘Come into my office and I’ll take a look,’ he said, picking up her laptop and snapping it shut as he walked off. She stared after him for a moment, then followed him reluctantly as he must have known she would, not least because she needed her laptop back.
‘So, when does it go live?’
‘The morning you visit the school. We’re letting them manage all the publicity so it will be quite basic and amateurish but that’s what we want. And it won’t stop the story getting picked up by the mainstream media outlets.’
‘Isn’t that a bit risky? What if it doesn’t?’
‘It will. Your name guarantees that, but we want it to look authentic. It has to feel organic and speak to your character. Otherwise, I might as well have you jumping out of a cake in swim shorts waving fistfuls of dollars and pledging your support for orphans and widows.’
‘You don’t see me doing that?’ His gaze had risen to meet hers, sharper than before, as if he wanted to watch her reply, and then his mouth pulled minutely at the corners, and she had to press her feet into the polished concrete floor to stop from turning and running out of his office. Because that ghost of a smile made her feel blurred at the edges as if she were melting…
She shook her head partly to answer his question but mostly because she hoped it would hide her reaction from his all-seeing gaze. ‘Funnily enough, no.’
His eyes drifted down to where the pulse in her throat was beating in time to an invisible pair of castanets and in desperation she spun round slowly.
‘This is a beautiful space.’
It wasn’t the first time she had been in this office but before there had been other people and there hadn’t been much time to take in her surroundings. It was predictably and impressively large. What was less predictable was the artwork.
She stared up at the pictures on the wall. She had been in other offices of wealthy, successful business leaders. There was a definite decor among the superrich. They liked clean lines and high ceilings and tall windows. And they loved art.
Old Masters. Impressionists. Picasso. Pollock. Rothko. Hirst.
But this man had drawings. Not the Michelangelo kind. Technical drawings of machinery. Blueprints for the future of humanity. She peered forward.
‘It’s a motor driver. For the lunar rover we designed.’
Harris’s voice made her jump inside her skin. Steadying her breathing, she said over her shoulder, ‘Are you included in that “we”?’
‘I understand the components and the engineering, and I probably could design something fairly basic, but nothing like that. Not any more. And I don’t have to. HCI have teams of designers who will do it for me. But I like to be involved.’
‘And consulted,’ she said softly.
He had moved closer while she was looking at the pictures and, glancing up, she felt his intent gaze and the latent power of his body envelop her.
‘That too.’
She licked her lips and forced her attention back to the drawings. ‘Are they special in some way? Is that why you have them in your office?’
‘Some are. That one.’ He pointed to the print on her left. ‘That one was the first of our designs to make it up to the International Space Station. It’s a safety tether, which is a basic piece of kit for astronauts. Essential, really, if they don’t want to join all the other space junk orbiting the Earth. Others, I just like the look of them because there’s something pleasing about the ratio of straight lines to curves.’
‘Like this one.’ She pointed to a different print. ‘That’s probably my favourite.’
‘Mine too,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a pistol grip drill.’
She glanced at the scale at the bottom of the drawing. ‘It must be quite big in real life.’
‘It is. It has to be, because of the gloves the astronauts wear. But it’s made of glass-coated plastic covered in aluminium so it’s light.’
‘Do you ever get to see the finished product?’
He nodded. ‘I do. I see all the various prototypes before they go into production. And we get sent footage of them in situ.’
She frowned. ‘You mean on the moon?’
He shook his head. ‘Not currently, but in the future. Right now, we have around thirty products in operational use on the space station.’
There was an odd note to his voice, guarded almost, and she was suddenly desperate to ask him why, but then she came to her senses and moved over to the window, her gaze tilting automatically up to the darkening sky. ‘Is it visible from here? The space station, I mean. Or do you need a telescope?’
He shook his head. ‘No telescope required. It’s a bright white pinpoint of light. Typically, it’s the brightest object in the sky aside from the moon. In fact, we might even be able to see it now.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I get alerts about its location, and I noticed that it was passing over New York tonight.’ He stared up through the glass. ‘It’s there. No, lower.’ She felt his hand touch her shoulder, his touch light but emphatic, guiding her forward, closer to the glass so that she had to tip back her head. ‘Look along my arm.’
The fabric of his sleeve was smooth against her cheek, and she could feel the press of his biceps and her heart twitched as she breathed in his scent. He smelled so good—
‘I can see it.’ Smiling triumphantly, she turned, and he smiled too, and she was about to turn away again, but her hand had somehow ended up pressed against his chest, and his hand was in her hair, and it was suddenly an effort to stay standing. His grey gaze was about an inch away from her, pressing into her like hot steel. Except it wasn’t grey because his eyes were all pupils. Soft and dark and as fathomless as a black hole.
She could feel their gravitational pull. Or maybe that was his scent. Or the heat of his body.
Either way, she could feel herself leaning in, and she knew it was dangerous because she wasn’t wearing a safety tether. If she got close enough there would be no pulling back—
‘Sorry, Mr Carver—’
They both jumped apart as the light flicked on, blinding white, the intimacy dissolving like a broken spell. It was one of the security guards. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t know anyone was in here.’
‘It’s fine, Ted. I was showing Ms Fennell the Space Station, but she was just leaving—’
Eden blinked up at him. She felt like Titania waking from her enchanted sleep. ‘Yes, I should be going.’
‘Have a good weekend,’ he said, and there was a trace of impatience in his voice along with a roughness that scraped over her skin, making her feel hot and flustered and unsteady on her feet.
‘You too.’
He nodded, but he was already staring back up at the night sky, and she walked quickly towards the door before she did something stupid and regrettable. Even worse than standing in the dark alone with this incomparably beautiful man whose presence kicked up dangerous sparks in her.
Sparks that should remind her that it was dangerous to play with fire. As if she needed reminding.