Ryan cursed under his breath as he kicked the tyre of his car. Bloody thing was letting him down more and more these days. With a huff of resignation, he threw his jacket on the passenger seat, yanked off his stupid tie, rolled back the sleeves of the one collared shirt he owned, and opened the bonnet.
Twenty minutes later he had the engine of the forty-year-old Triumph Spitfire running again. But now he was late.
Why had he nodded dumbly last week when Sam had asked if he wouldn’t mind driving because her car was having its airbags replaced, thanks to a customer recall? Why hadn’t he laughed and said airbags, what the hell are they? His car was lucky to have seat belts.
But no, with his brain in a fog of worry because of the phone call he’d just taken, and his mind hung up on the image of them travelling together, just the two of them, he’d meekly agreed to pick her up.
Quickly slipping the tie back on, he jammed himself behind the wheel and set off towards her place. Of course he hadn’t needed the address, because he’d been there before, two months ago.
The memory caused heat to prick at the back of his neck and he pulled the tie further down. No point strangling himself all the way to the meeting venue.
She was waiting outside when he arrived, and his heart skipped a beat as his eyes drank her in. Looking wow in a curve-hugging purple trouser suit, her hair neatly coiled into a bun, she dripped sophistication and poise. And he was about to cram her into his battered old car.
Fuck, he was stupid.
Keeping the engine running – he wasn’t going to take a chance on it not starting again – he jumped out. ‘Sorry I’m late.’
She gave him a polite smile. ‘No problem. London traffic is never predictable.’
Averting his eyes, he pulled open the passenger door for her. Was it lying if he didn’t correct her? Sod it, for once he was keeping quiet. She slipped inside and he banged the door closed. His mum would be proud of his chivalry, but he knew he’d had no choice. Ruddy door only shut if you banged it from the outside.
‘Do you need me to map read?’ she asked as he pulled off, waving her hand at the pathetically barren dashboard. ‘No GPS, I take it.’
He leant towards her and pulled open the glove compartment, feeling a jolt as he inhaled her familiar scent. Immediately images from that night flooded through him and he reared back. ‘GPS is in there somewhere.’
His voice was suspiciously hoarse, something she must have clocked because he saw her swallow before she spoke. ‘There had better not be anything in here that might bite.’
As she angled her body to dig around in the compartment, Ryan felt himself starting to smile. ‘Nah. It’s just where I keep my spare boxers.’
She stilled, but her eyes were alive with humour. ‘Dirty or clean?’
‘Clean.’ He gave her a mock disgusted look. ‘I’m not a total slob.’
‘Thank heavens for small mercies.’
She smiled and he felt a rush of air leave his lungs. As he reached to take the gadget from her, their fingers touched and he felt another jolt. This was going to be impossible. The car was too small. She was too gorgeous. And he was far, far too aware of everything about her. ‘This was a bad idea.’
Those huge blue eyes swivelled towards him. ‘Sorry?’
Was she really that clueless? Or was it only him feeling as if he’d been tied into a hundred knots? ‘Do I need to spell it out?’
He watched the heat touch her cheeks. ‘No.’ She swallowed again. ‘Maybe it would be better if I got a cab.’
He laughed humourlessly. ‘What, you go by cab, I drive, and when we meet up at the conference, I suddenly don’t want to have sex with you any more?’
Her breath hitched. ‘Please don’t say things like that.’
Feeling a mix of annoyed, turned on and helpless, he exhaled roughly. ‘Sorry.’ After a few humming moments of silence, during which he plugged in the sat nav and stuck it to the dashboard, he handed her a crumpled Post-it. ‘It’s the postcode for the hotel where the conference is. Can you enter it while I turn the car round?’
She took it from him, carefully avoiding touching his fingers, and within a few seconds the woman on the sat nav was telling him the way to go. He wished she could also tell him how to erase the simmering tension he’d just created.
As he set off down the road an awful thought struck him. Was it sexual harassment if you told your female boss you wanted to sleep with her? Bile flew up his throat as his stomach churned painfully.
‘Perhaps we should use the journey to get to know each other.’
He swallowed down the nausea and took a breath. And then another. ‘Yeah?’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her gaze fly to his face. ‘Professionally.’ A little laugh bubbled out of her. ‘Oh God, how ridiculous. We’re two grown adults. We can manage an hour in a car together without weirding ourselves out.’
Was she weirded out because she felt the same blinding sexual attraction he felt? Or was hers down to the acute embarrassment of knowing she’d slept with one of her underlings? And yeah, he didn’t really need to wonder, did he? He was the only one tied up in knots here.
He had to get over himself. Determinedly he searched for a safe topic. ‘So, word on the street is you started Privacy Solutions straight from university. Is that true?’
Her shoulders relaxed a little. A clear signal she was relieved to be talking work. ‘Sounds precocious, I know, but yes. Me and … another student planned it while we were studying. When we graduated, we’d already put a business plan together and had a few interested parties keen to invest.’
‘Impressive. This other student was Damien Lynch? The guy who left to set up the rival company you’re wetting yourselves over?’
Her stance stiffened again. Clearly she was happy to talk work, but not happy to talk about her ex-partner. ‘Yes, though I’d use the term “concerned” rather than “wetting ourselves”.’
‘Guess that’s CEO-speak compared to employee-speak.’ Or posh end of town compared to poor end. Either way, he was at the wrong end of the spectrum. ‘What did you have a bust-up over?’
Her posture wasn’t just stiff now, it was rigid. ‘We had a difference of opinion on the way forward.’
‘That’s the line trotted out to the media. I was looking for the real reason.’
Once again tension hung in the air, but this time it wasn’t sexual, thank God. He was a million times more comfortable handling an annoyed boss than an attractive one.
‘You don’t need to know what we disagreed about. It’s irrelevant to the work we’re doing.’
‘Irrelevant maybe.’ He flicked her a look. ‘Uninteresting, I doubt it.’
Their eyes caught briefly and he saw a glint of humour before he had to look back at the road. ‘I’m not here to entertain you.’
‘Shame.’ And just like that, the sexual tension was back again. ‘Sorry.’ Feeling the stiffness invading him now, he rolled his shoulders. ‘I’d offer to put the radio on, but it’s broken.’
‘Maybe I should ask the questions.’ He was aware of her gaze falling on him. ‘Why were you fired from your last job?’
He snorted. ‘You already know the answer to that.’
‘I know that Becky’s brother said you refused to work on the next app they assigned you. What I don’t know is why.’
Ryan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. Why hadn’t he had the radio fixed? ‘I don’t like gambling apps.’
Sam watched Ryan’s hands clench the wheel and realised she’d touched a nerve, just as he’d touched hers when he’d asked about Damien. Was it a misuse of her power to prod at it, when she’d deliberately cut his questioning of her dead? But if they weren’t arguing, they seemed to fall into conversations laden with sexual innuendo, and that was even more dangerous. Besides, she was interested in what made Ryan Black tick, what made him so anti-social. Why a man who earnt a pretty good salary was driving a forty-year-old rust heap.
Though it was painful to admit, Becky was right. She was interested in Ryan Black, full stop.
A gentle prod it was, then. ‘You’ve never had a flutter on the horses?’
‘I didn’t say I disagreed with gambling. I disagree with making it too easy.’
‘So much so that you gave up a well-paid job, with nothing in the pipeline?’
He indicated to switch lanes and it was a few seconds before he replied. ‘Yes.’
There was history there, but if she probed, it would move their conversation into the personal, and she’d promised professional. ‘Why didn’t you just ask to work on another project?’
‘Simple as that, huh?’
‘I can’t see why not. I know the company. There must have been other apps you could have been moved to.’
When he didn’t immediately reply she turned to study his face. At times, like now, she’d put him down as a thinker. Slow and careful about what he said. It went with his need to work in isolation. He liked to detach himself from others, and from the problem, so he could look at it painstakingly. Logically. It was in direct contrast to her, who liked to talk out a problem, and then go with her gut instinct. At other times though, he seemed quick to blurt the first thing that came into his head. That, she guessed, was when his emotions were involved.
‘I probably could have moved apps.’ He shrugged his wide shoulders, drawing her attention to the way his muscles shifted beneath the white shirt.
Eyes forward, Huxton. ‘I suspect you screwed up any chance of being moved to another project by going, and I quote from Becky’s brother, “apeshit”.’
Humour danced around his mouth, drawing her eyes again. She really should have gone by cab. It was far too easy to stare at him, knowing he couldn’t stare back. ‘Why ask the question, when you knew the answer?’
‘I only know you lost your temper,’ she corrected. ‘I don’t know why.’ Because she wanted it to at least appear she was asking the question for professional reasons, she added, ‘I don’t want the same to happen when you’re working for me.’
His jaw tightened, and she suspected he hated her reminding him of their unequal status. ‘Are you planning on developing an app that has the potential to feed an addiction?’
‘No. The company is all about protecting our customers’ privacy.’
His eyes briefly held hers. ‘Then I won’t be going apeshit on you.’ He smiled darkly. ‘At least not in work time.’
What did he mean by that? Sam pulled her gaze away, aware yet again of the sexual undercurrent that was never far from the surface. Her slow-burning affair with Damien hadn’t prepared her for this raw attraction and she didn’t know how to handle it. Add in the fact that Ryan was an employee, and it felt like she’d been tossed into a stormy sea without a life jacket. ‘Please stop the innuendos.’
‘It wasn’t.’
Oh boy. Her heart let out a loud thump. ‘There can’t be any non-work time for you and me. It would be too awkward.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ She heard him exhale slowly. ‘Doesn’t stop me wondering about it.’
Me too, she thought despairingly. She risked another glance at his strong profile, and her stomach flip-flopped. Would it really be so bad to continue their affair, if both parties were up for it?
Continue their affair? Dear God, she was going crazy. They’d had a one-night stand. At the time she’d been so determined they were totally wrong for each other, she’d not even wanted to know his name. To consider falling into that trap again was total madness.
To her relief he turned onto the slip road. ‘Not long now.’ He flicked a look at the sat nav.
He’d given her an out so she could ignore his previous sentence, but that would be cowardly. She had a grudging admiration for his willingness to face difficult situations head on. ‘I wonder about it too,’ she admitted quietly. ‘But you and me, we’d burn bright and then fizzle out. If you think now is awkward, imagine if we couldn’t stand the sight of each other.’
Pulling up at a red light, he gave her a small smile. ‘Does that mean you quite like me at the moment?’
‘Don’t push your luck.’ The amused look he gave her caused her stomach to execute a neat somersault. Quickly she dropped her gaze to her hands. ‘I can’t afford to lose another software developer,’ she said finally.
He obviously understood her meaning, because he sighed. ‘I read you.’
They were silent as he navigated the final few miles to the hotel. It was only when he’d parked that he turned to face her, and her heart fluttered as those dark eyes sought hers, his body looking huge in the small interior. ‘This ex-partner of yours. Will he be here, too?’
Way to kill off the sexual tension. ‘I don’t know.’ But she’d woken in a cold sweat thinking about it. They’d bumped into each other a couple of times in the early days and each time she’d told herself the next time would be easier. Apparently she’d been lying.
Ryan nodded and opened his door. ‘Well, you need me to beat anyone up, just let me know.’
The thought was so delicious, Sam started to laugh. ‘How do you know he isn’t taller and stronger than you?’ Damien was about an inch or two shorter, and on the lean end of the body scale.
Ryan shrugged those huge shoulders. ‘Doesn’t matter if he is.’
She raised a brow. ‘Cocky, much?’
He shook his head. ‘Not cocky. Just know how to handle myself.’ Before she could wonder at the meaning behind his statement, he was walking round the bonnet and pulling her door open. ‘Out you get, boss.’
Grateful for her trouser suit as she climbed out of the cramped sports car, she waited while he bent to retrieve his jacket from the back seat. That’s when she noticed the side of his shirt. ‘Looks like you’ve got some oil on your shirt.’
He stilled, looking down at the large black smear, then swore under his breath. ‘Guess I’ll be wearing a jacket all day.’
Carefully he eased into it and jerked up his tie. The transformation was quite something. A brooding hunk in jeans and a T-shirt, in a suit he was … handsome wasn’t right. He was more than an attractive face. He was mesmerising.
Willing the butterflies in her stomach to settle, she focused not on the powerful body shape silhouetted by the suit, but on the oil. ‘It wasn’t traffic that made you late, was it?’
He flushed, avoiding her eye as he did up the button on his jacket. ‘No.’
‘Hey, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just wondered why you didn’t tell me.’
‘Tell you what?’ Defensiveness ran through his voice and every inch of his body. ‘Sorry I’m late but the forty-year-old rust heap I drive is always breaking down? Think you’d have still come with me?’
Her breath hitched as those eyes burned into hers. He’d wanted to take her. Before she could start to think about that too much, she nodded towards the hotel entrance. ‘Better get in before Becky sends out a search party.’
The loaded look he gave her told her exactly what he thought about her avoiding his question, but thankfully he didn’t call her on it.