Chapter Two

Alex leaned back in his chair with a smile. For the first time in nearly a month, he felt cheerful sitting in Hank’s office. Almost happy—and that was despite the massive failure in the latest clinical trials of their new allergy medication.

“Indy’s looking better today,” he said as he tapped out an upbeat tune on his knee. “Almost like her old self.”

Hank, who’d been on the receiving end of these unnecessary updates on his assistant’s mood for weeks now, hid a smile in his new flaming-red beard. The facial hair itched like hell, but beards were in now—and the additional hair on his chin somehow seemed to balance out the amount he was losing up top—or so his wife assured him.

“She’s dating again,” Hank said. “That could be the reason.”

Alex stopped tapping. “What?”

“Yes, through some online matchmaker site. I heard her talking about it with Wendy from Accounting. Actually, I think it might have been Wendy’s idea. She met her husband online.”

“The internet’s full of weirdos,” Alex said. He recalled some recent headlines. “Perverts and serial killers.”

“Or just normal people who don’t have the time or ability to date the old-fashioned way,” said Hank. “People like Indy.”

Alex shook his head, which was suddenly full of images of silk sheets, golden skin and long, tangled black hair. “Indy’s not an internet dater.”

“Seems like she is. And,” Hank added, with the distinct air that he was rubbing in some unpleasant news, “she seems to have met someone, if what I’ve overheard is any indication.”

Alex’s jaw tightened. “Has she met the man in person yet?”

“I don’t think so.” Hank appeared to think about it. “I believe it’s just been phone calls and the like so far—X-rated emails and so on.”

The wink the other man dropped him made Alex feel physically ill. X-rated emails. What would Indy even put in an X-rated email? He suddenly wanted very much to find out.

“I think she deserves better,” Alex said. “Why don’t you do something about her meeting strange men online?”

“I’m not her father!” Hank protested. “It’s not my job to interfere with her social life—or to watch over her.”

“She needs someone to,” Alex muttered. His jaw felt so stiff that he started to rub it.

Hank noted the telltale sign. Ever since he’d known the man, Alex had rubbed his jaw in times of intense stress. Yet the recent clinical trial failures they’d suffered in Research & Development hadn’t made him rekindle that habit. It was because of Indy.

Very interesting.

 

* * * *

 

“Would you like to go out with me on Saturday night?”

Indy looked up from her computer screen to find…Alex Winters? That didn’t make sense. She glanced quickly around the office but saw no one else in the vicinity.

“Are you asking me out?” She found it impossible to keep the note of incredulity out of her voice.

Maybe it was because he didn’t exactly look thrilled to be standing in front of her desk. Actually, he appeared to be speaking through clenched teeth, yet Indy couldn’t see a man holding a gun to his back.

Was this some kind of a dare? Had Hank put him up to it? Or, God forbid, Ray?

“Yes.” His reply sounded unenthusiastic. “I’m thinking dinner or perhaps a show…or both.”

His expression suggested a night watching the executioner ply his trade at the gallows.

Indy’s confusion deepened. The contrast between his attitude and his words was stark. Why in the world was he doing this?

It had to be Hank’s fault.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Did my boss put you up to this?”

“No.” It wasn’t an illuminating answer. “If you prefer to skip the usual movie or show, I’m open to suggestions. Whatever you want.”

Those last three words opened up a sensual vista. Indy had an urgent image of herself bent over his massive desk, her skirt flipped up over her ass and Alex Winters reaming her pussy from behind.

Lord, the image made her break out in a sudden sweat.

She wiped her hands surreptitiously on the front of her skirt. “No, thank you, Mr. Winters.”

“Alex,” he corrected, his lips curving in an expression she could only describe as self-mockery. Perhaps he saw the humor in asking her out when they weren’t even on a first name basis.

“No, thank you, Alex.” Indy poised her fingertips over her keyboard. She couldn’t very well dismiss the head of the company, but she could make it clear that she had better things to do than parry his unexpected come-ons—if that was what this was, and not just a pity date request prompted by Hank. She would have to find out.

Instead of leaving, though, he leaned over her desk, close enough to give her a hint of his tangy aftershave. Did the rest of him smell that good? If it did, she wanted a chance to taste it.

Indy tried to ignore the perspiration dripping from her fingers onto the keys.

“I’ll ask again,” Alex promised. “In case you change your mind.”

Persistent, wasn’t he?

As he turned to walk away with that long, confident stride of his, Indy had to stifle the urge to call him back.

In case she changed her mind.

She already wanted to.

 

* * * *

 

The following night she readied carefully for her date with Trevor. A weekday coffee date was meant to take the pressure off. Coffee could be quick or could spin out into a few hours. And the Wednesday night meeting meant that either one of them could grab at the excuse of an early morning in the office the next day.

No pressure, Indy told herself as she knotted a brightly patterned scarf around her neck. She examined the effect for a few seconds before untying the silky strip and letting it fall onto the floor.

Her bedroom looked like a family of raccoons had been squatting in it. Most of her clothing was already piled up on her bed, and half of that pile was starting to slip onto the ground.

Indy was pleased with her final choice, a striped knit shirt paired with a jean skirt and a straw tote. The outfit was fun and summery. It was summer, after all, even though the sun didn’t seem to shine anymore at Mavrell Pharmaceuticals. Ray Mehta stood like a shadow behind the scenes, casting darkness over her usual routine. She lived most workdays in fear of seeing him, although when he did come to visit her boss, he was cool and distant, as if they’d never spent an afternoon fucking on the very bed behind her.

She had to put Ray behind her. It had been over a month already, and Ray had apparently moved on. Her friend Wendy had heard a rumor that Ray was throwing a big engagement party for when his bride-to-be arrived from India. But that didn’t stop him from asking out one of Wendy’s co-workers in Accounting.

One rule for men and another for the women… That, as far as she could tell, was the way it worked for guys like Ray Mehta…and likely Alex Winters. She couldn’t forget ‘call-me-Alex’…an invitation that was made only three years after she’d met the man. He had his own reputation to contend with—although, to be fair, he probably wasn’t planning on getting engaged while he played around on the side.

Why was it that whenever she thought of Ray, she inevitably thought of Alex? It was more than the fact that they were attractive men who just happened to both work at Mavrell.

Maybe it was because they were cut from the same cloth. Both were playboy material, the kind that didn’t settle down, not really. In Ray’s case, she suspected any marriage for him would be in name alone. At least, for him it would be. Remembering his prejudices, she suspected that he would never tolerate his wife having the same freedoms.

Indy strove to put both men out of her mind. She should be concentrating on Trevor.

No pressure, she told herself as she adjusted her gold earrings in the mirror. It was just coffee.

Coffee with a stranger, about whom the only facts she knew were what he had told her. Trevor was her age, thirty and a graphic designer with a well-known software company. That much, at least, had checked out on Google, unless he was someone else pretending to be Trevor the Easygoing Graphic Designer.

Unless he was some kind of maniac.

Her face in the mirror looked flushed and irritable. She had to calm down.

The entire date would take place in public. Wendy knew where she was going and when and was on speed dial in case Indy needed an excuse to vamoose. The coffee shop they’d decided on was a good twelve blocks from her apartment, so it would be unlikely he would follow her home without being spotted—if he did turn out to be a maniac.

He wasn’t a maniac. He was a nice normal guy with—

A sharp rap on her front door startled her into frantic thoughts.

It was Trevor! He was at her door. He was into computers, so maybe he figured out a way to track her through her IP address.

The knock sounded again as she stared into her own frightened mirrored eyes.

Indy grabbed her cell phone and walked toward the door, hovering her thumb over the emergency call feature.

She peered through the peephole.

It was Alex Winters.

Indy wrenched the door open. “What are you doing here?”

His smile faded slightly. It was like turning the dimmer switch on his eyes, which had been bright only a moment before.

“I thought I would ask again,” he said. “Can I come in?”

In that instant, Indy was convinced that her boss had set it all up. Why else would the vaunted Alex Winters be so persistent in his sudden attention? He’d barely noticed her before—

Before Ray had dumped her.

Was that it? Was the CEO only trying to mend the damage caused by his best scientist?

She’d sometimes suspected that a calculator sat where Alex Winters’ heart was supposed to be. He was always so polite, so even-tempered, even when provoked. The only passion he showed was in his eyes, which could flare into sudden flame on occasion, before he damped the emotion down. Coming out of a board meeting once, she’d glimpsed that fire. But in the next second he’d been pleasant and smiling.

These thoughts tumbled through her mind as she left him standing in the hallway. Yet, aside from the dimmed smile, he didn’t display any impatience.

Maybe that was why she refrained from telling him that, actually, she was on her way out—on a date. A real date, not a pity gesture from a man who everyone knew wasn’t a long-term undertaking.

If his heart was a calculator, it was powered by Mavrell Pharmaceuticals.

“Come on in,” Indy said finally. It was hardly polite, but she wasn’t on the clock now. She didn’t have to be polite to men who treated her either as invisible or an object of pity.

“You look very pretty,” he said as he passed her, an appreciative glint warming his clear grayish-blue eyes. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in casual clothes before.”

He wouldn’t have. She didn’t work out in the gym, preferring an extra hour’s sleep to physical exercise, and the Marvell dress code didn’t allow for casual Fridays.

“You look…different,” Indy offered as she followed him into the combination living and dining room.

Wearing a white shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and a pair of faded blue jeans, he looked incredibly sexy. He filled out those jeans in all the right places. Indy practically had to tear her eyes away from the bulge at his crotch—and of course once she noticed it, she wanted to keep darting looks at it.

Alex edged a smile at her that was no more than a sideways pull of his lips. “Thanks,” he drawled.

It was the first time she’d heard him speak sarcastically, although he carried it off as if he practiced that jagged mockery diligently every day.

She couldn’t very well tell him he looked sexy enough to eat, could she? ‘Different’ might sound rude, but it was better than the truth.

They stood in the middle of her living room. Alex seemed to be at ease, frankly examining her multihued bohemian furniture and the vintage Bollywood posters on the walls.

Indy felt as if her arms and legs were superfluous. She didn’t know what to do with them, so she ended up crossing her arms over her chest, which no doubt made her appear defensive.

Well, wasn’t she on the defense? Skating backward without anyone behind her to back her up—and the goalie was out of the net.

“I like the artwork,” Alex commented. He reached into his back pocket and withdrew two slips of thick paper. “It leads me to believe I’ve chosen well.”

She accepted the outstretched slips. They turned out to be two tickets to a concert taking place on Saturday night. The music was Classics of Indian Film.

“Looks interesting,” she said, holding the tickets back out for him to take.

“Keep them,” he told her, slipping his empty hands into his back pockets.

Aside from putting the tickets back into his pockets herself—that would mean finding out if his ass was as tight as it looked in the worn material—she had no choice but to hang on to them.

“The concert’s at seven. We can have dinner afterward.”

“Do I have a choice about it?” she muttered.

He speared her with a look that made her suddenly remember how forceful he was rumored to be in the boardroom. Was he the same way in bed?

“Of course you have a choice, Indira.”

Except the way he made the statement made her feel like an irrational child he was doing his best to reason with.

Any woman would have jumped at the chance to spend an entertaining evening with this man, no matter what his motive. Why wasn’t she jumping?

“Too much thought makes you timid,” Alex said softly.

It sounded like a quote—and a dare.

“Okay,” she said. It would be stupid not to let Alex Winters show her how the other side lived, if only for one night. “I’ll go out with you.”

His full-wattage smile flashed out at her. It was worth agreeing to nearly anything to see that smile with its genuine warmth and hidden promise of fire.

Though she’d been expecting him to gloat a little at her capitulation, he merely thanked her.

“Are you heading out?” Alex asked when he saw her check the vintage sunburst clock hanging on her wall.

“Yes, I have a date.” The words emerged a tad defiantly. “So, if you’ll excuse me…”

“I’ll walk you there,” he said.

This time she recognized the futility of arguing. Instead, Indy grabbed her bag and got going. She was already running late.

Showing up late and with her boss in tow—that would be sure to impress Trevor. Maybe she could ditch Alex before they got to the coffee shop.

As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, he asked, “Is this a first date?”

“Yes.” She was determined not to let out more information than necessary. For some reason, his interest seemed ominous, as if he was going to talk her out of the entire endeavor.

“Do I know this guy?”

“No,” she said, “you wouldn’t know him.”

“How did you two meet?”

Should she tell him or would he just laugh? “We met online.”

Alex’s steps slowed, and hers automatically matched his pace.

“Is that safe?” he asked.

“It was on a dating site,” Indy told him, “not ‘prison-pals-dot-com’. The site vets its users.”

Now he was frowning. Worse, his pace had slowed to nearly a standstill, forcing other pedestrians to swerve around them.

“How well does the website investigate their users?” he questioned. “I read in the news that—”

“I saw the same articles,” Indy cut in. “I have safety measures in place, okay? We’re meeting in a public place, and I have my friend Wendy on standby in case of anything…strange.”

“What could be stranger than meeting men you don’t know for a romantic evening?” Alex’s tone was gallingly light.

“Hardly romantic,” she insisted. “It’s a coffee date, for Pete’s sake! I don’t expect to end up in bed with the man.”

She picked up her speed, hoping to outstrip him. Maybe he would get the message.

Why did she ever agree to go out with this infuriating man? Easygoing Graphic Designer was far simpler than Arrogant CEO, though possibly less exciting. Her heart was surely pounding enough for the short stroll to count as her weekly exercise.

“He might.”

Indy turned her head to find Arrogant CEO right beside her. While she was hurrying, his long strides made it look like he was taking a leisurely walk in the park.

“What are you talking about?” she demanded.

He spelled it out. “You’re not expecting to end up in bed with this man tonight, but he might be expecting that very scenario. Are you prepared to deal with those expectations?”

“Yes.” Indy spoke from between gritted teeth. “I’ll have hot coffee on hand, remember?”

This time Alex did actually halt in his tracks. She watched him throw back his head and laugh heartily.

For a moment, she stood and admired the sensual line of his throat and jaw. Damn, was there no part of the man that wasn’t sexy? No woman would dream of pouring hot coffee on him, unless it was to be provocative.

“Come on,” Indy said, her voice peevish due to her own wayward thoughts. “I’m late enough as it is.”

Trevor was sitting outside on the patio, cradling an oversized ceramic mug and checking his phone.

Indy stepped onto the patio, hoping that Alex would leave quietly…but no such luck.

“Hello, you must be Trevor.”

Indy flinched at Alex’s over-the-top friendly voice. She watched as Trevor looked up in confusion, first spotting Alex then her standing by his side. Recognition lit up his features.

“Indy!” Trevor got to his feet to exchange a brief hug with her. “So glad you’re here. I was starting to get worried.”

“Sorry I’m late,” she said, sliding into the empty chair across from his. Fortunately, there were only two chairs.

Trevor’s expression grew clouded as he stood gazing at the other man. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“Alex is the CEO of the company I work for,” Indy quickly explained. “We just ran into each other on the street—which is why I was late. Alex was just heading home. Weren’t you, Alex?”

The two men shook hands somewhat gingerly.

“Don’t let us keep you,” Indy chirped as Alex showed no sign of leaving.

Alex bared his teeth at her in what could have generously been interpreted as a smile. “I’m not in a hurry,” he said. “But remember that I’ll want the details of that project we were speaking about later tonight, Indy…before ten o’clock.”

She widened her eyes at him. “What project?” she asked sweetly.

“Ten o’clock,” he repeated. “Enjoy your date.”

That parting statement was as good as a curse.