It was his thirty-sixth birthday.
As a waiter cleared away the remains of his birthday dinner, Morgan Abbott absently touched the silvering temples of his chocolate-brown hair and decided that birthdays were overrated, embarrassing, and only fussed about by people whose birthday it wasn’t. After all, he was thirty-six, and not a nine-year-old, excited about presents and birthday cake. He didn’t even like desserts anymore.
But George Boswick, his friend and business associate, had insisted on celebrating this milestone by taking him out for drinks and dinner at an elegant North Shore Chicago restaurant, since he, Morgan, had been away from home on a business trip on his birthday. George and his wife had even provided a kind of date for him to make the party a foursome.
Morgan glanced at his date. Lisa, an attractive blonde, was a junior executive in the accounting department of George’s electronics supply company. She had just the right amount of brains, ambition, and soothing personality to take her far in the corporate world. As chairman and chief executive officer of Abbott Industries Morgan knew that she was exactly the kind of person he wanted working for him. Lisa knew it, too, he thought, as she gave him a polite, yet acknowledging smile that meant she was happy with her job, but was open to another company’s offer of more money and quicker promotions.
Realizing he was vaguely thinking of her only as a prospective employee, Morgan ruefully chuckled under his breath. He was getting too damn old.
He silently conceded that recently there had been very few women in his life. In fact, there had been very few women in his life, period. Running a corporation demanded all his time.
Briefly closing his eyes, he wished he could find the woman who would be his first priority in life.
Instantly Morgan gave himself a silent lecture. Making a silly birthday wish at his age! He had never met a woman challenging enough to take the place of Abbott Industries in his life and probably never would. Lisa was certainly someone who could understand his often twenty-hour workdays, but she wasn’t a challenge. Nothing about her was new or different. There were no hidden facets to discover. One quick reading of her résumé, and he could accurately guess the rest. Lisa was the typical, career-oriented, no-nonsense modern woman. He saw too many Lisas striding purposefully along AI’s corridors to be more than mildly interested in her.
A slight grimace crossing his sharply etched features, Morgan decided why he was still a bachelor at thirty-six. He was damn picky.
Amused by his private thoughts, he absently gazed around the crowded dining room. And instantly froze, when he caught sight of a lone woman standing in the entryway. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she was looking directly at him.
His gaze roved over her oval face. Delicate reddish-brown brows arched over wide, dark eyes, contrasting alluringly with her milky skin. A hint of a sensual smile played on her full lips. Lips made for a man’s kisses. Her nose was slim, and her chin was raised at an almost haughty angle. Flaming red hair was wrapped in an intricate chignon. It seemed too heavy for her slender neck, yet she held her head proudly.
Her beauty would have drawn second looks anywhere, but it was her dress that left the other diners gasping. The long-sleeved gown of black crepe fit like a glove over her slender body, covering her from neck to toes. But it was cut on a diagonal between her breasts, shockingly exposing the flesh of the right side of her upper body under a sheer black net sparked with diamentés and tiny black crepe flowers. Only the breast itself was modestly covered by a large crepe flower, a winking stone nestled in the center directly over her nipple.
Morgan couldn’t take his eyes off it.
The woman spoke to the maître d’, then turned back in Morgan’s direction. She gazed coolly around the room for a moment before she followed the maître d’. Her walk was lithe and graceful, and Morgan knew he could have watched her movements for hours. She was a goddess come to life. The thought popped into his head that if he had wanted a birthday present, she would have been it.
A hush had fallen over the restaurant, and heads turned in her wake. The men were more than appreciative; the women enviously disdainful. Realizing she was actually coming to his table, Morgan felt his heart leap and begin to pound its way out of his chest. As he continued to stare at her everything seemed to fade into a gray mist until he and she were the only ones in the room. A still-functioning corner of his mind cursed his schoolboy reaction to the woman, and sternly told him if he didn’t snap out of it he was going to make a fool of himself.
That thought penetrated his numb brain, and he managed to politely stand when she reached his table, vaguely aware that George had also stood. He didn’t even take notice of George’s wife and Lisa as they sat stiffly, glaring at the female stranger.
The woman stood directly in front of him, and he found her even more impossibly beautiful. Her brown eyes locked with his. For a moment he thought she was angry, until she smiled an impy little grin that belied all her regal elegance.
His face beginning to heat, he wondered if she was a birthday surprise arranged by George. Belly dancers, singing telegrams, and strippers were popular gifts nowadays for the American male.
Morgan fervently prayed she wouldn’t burst into a chorus of “Happy Birthday.” Or worse, start stripping to her bikini!
Suddenly her arms wound around his neck, and she kissed him. Her lips were petal-soft, a butterfly’s caress to tease and tantalize, and her breasts pressed against his chest, the small mounds causing an ache he had never felt before. Perfume, as light as dew on the morning grass, seemed to enfold them in a private cocoon.
It was the sweetest kiss he’d ever received.
She quickly broke the embrace, and Morgan opened dazed eyes, expecting to see her standing before him. But she wasn’t there.
Wild-eyed, he glanced around the dining room, only to discover the woman had completely vanished, while all the diners were staring at him as if he’d suddenly gone insane.
Dark red staining his cheekbones now, he instantly turned to George and demanded, “Who was that woman?”
“I thought you knew her!” George said. “Because I certainly don’t.”
“George! Stop playing dumb. My birthday surprise was very funny, and a little embarrassing, but I’m not angry. So don’t be afraid to admit you hired her.” He chuckled dryly. “At least, I’m not as angry as I would have been if she’d started belly-dancing in front of me.”
“Morgan, I didn’t hire her. Believe me, I wouldn’t be afraid to admit it if I had. But I never saw that woman before in my life.”
Morgan stared at George in confusion. George’s consternation was too genuine: he obviously had no idea who the beautiful redhead was. Morgan looked around the room to see if he could spot a familiar, laughing face, then drew his brows together in puzzlement when he didn’t find one.
“Well, whoever she is,” he said with a lopsided grin, “she forgot to wish me a happy birthday.”
Morgan stepped out into the searing heat of a Dallas summer day. He smiled in satisfaction at Peter Scarborough, the head of his Dallas office. Having just acquired a small oil company, Abbott Industries’s power base was growing in leaps and bounds. This phase of his business trip had certainly been most successful.
“Hey! Watch it, lady!”
Morgan stopped dead and nearly snapped his neck as he turned in the direction of the shouted warning. At first, he didn’t recognize her, then the flaming red hair rang a loud bell. It was she! The kissing “birthday present” from the restaurant.
But what was she doing in Dallas, Texas, three days after Chicago? In hot-pink shorts, a green T-shirt, and on roller skates?
Morgan watched in disbelief as she enthusiastically skated toward him. All her cool sophistication was gone, and her red hair was in two ponytails, sticking straight out above her ears.
She braked slightly when she reached him, stopping within inches of him. Her hands tangled in his hair and she kissed him soundly on the lips. Then, giving him that thoroughly impy grin, she skated off, disappearing around the corner.
“Who was that?” Peter asked in a surprised voice.
Morgan barely heard him, his thoughts more occupied by the way her breasts had delightfully jiggled the words on her T-shirt: “Kiss a Gorilla Today.” Somebody was pulling a fast one on him, he thought, and when he found out who it was, he’d kill him.
“My question exactly, Pete,” he said finally. “My question exactly.”
One week later, Morgan smiled politely at his companion as they stepped into the elevator of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Sultry and sensual, Carla always expected a wild time in New York nightclubs, and a wilder time in bed. Tonight Morgan found her dull and boring. More than once during the evening he had caught himself wishing that she were taller and less chesty. And had stunning red hair.
It had been seven days since he had seen the woman. He didn’t know why he should be thinking about her, but he was. Who was she? Why had she kissed him again? Which one of his friends was putting her up to it?
Those questions, and others like them, had constantly intruded these past few days, while he was at meetings, touring manufacturing facilities, on construction sites, reading blueprints. At night, he found himself lying in bed for hours, speculating on the unanswerable answers.
When he had arrived in New York this morning, on the third leg of his business trip, he had immediately called Carla, an old girlfriend, hoping she would be a very effective remedy for the redhead. Carla had failed miserably.
Morgan didn’t pay attention to the people who filed into the elevator after him and Carla. He glanced at Carla, and she smiled back, catlike, and snuggled up against his side. Carla always clung, he thought absently, and sighed inwardly. He didn’t have the slightest desire for her.
Thirty-six was turning out to be a hell of a year, so far.
A light, exotic perfume suddenly teased his nose, sharply reminding him of a summer’s morning. He knew that scent, and it wasn’t Carla’s. Its uniqueness matched the woman who had worn it in a Chicago restaurant. She was here.
He glanced to his right and was shocked to find her actually standing next to him. How had she done it? Her dazzling white gown was a stunning contrast to her creamy skin and flaming hair.
She was ignoring him, staring at the floor buttons lighting up one by one. Morgan studied her for a moment, noting the way her brown eyes were fringed with thick lashes, the incredibly soft column of her throat, the delicate shell of her ear. He silently congratulated whoever had picked her as the bait for this elaborate stunt. She was a beauty.
The woman finally slanted him a glance, and her full lips slowly curved into a grin. That delightful grin.
Morgan felt his chest tighten in anticipation, his blood flowing heavily in his veins. This time, though, he wasn’t about to play the game.
“Who are you?” he asked hoarsely, and immediately cursed the unsteadiness in his voice.
She kissed him in answer. Not a brief kiss or a buss, like the last two times, but a full-bodied kiss. Morgan greedily took the lips under his, determined to teach her the peril of kissing strangers for a living. A vague regret surfaced at that thought, but he immediately dismissed it, drinking in the heady wine of her mouth instead. He curved his arms around her willowy body, feeling the sleek satin and substance of her. Her tongue stroked across his bottom lip in invitation, and he opened to her invasion, wanting to taste her fully. Their tongues mingled, then dueled and flamed. He groaned into the moist cavern of her mouth, never hearing the gasp of outrage from Carla, or the bell of the elevator indicating another stop.
She suddenly faded out of his arms. Stunned by the impact of the kiss, he couldn’t get his brain working enough even to blink at her.
The elevator doors opened, and she stepped quickly through them. Then she turned around and braced her hand on the doorframe before they closed.
“I’m the woman you really want tonight,” she said in a husky voice that sent shivers down his spine.
The doors closed and, in almost the same instant, a loud crack resounded in the elevator. Morgan’s frozen state immediately disappeared, as his cheek stung fiercely from the slap Carla had just delivered.
“Who the hell was that, you pig?” she screeched in fury. Twin spots of red stained her cheeks, and her artfully applied makeup looked garish.
One hand nursing his bruised cheek, Morgan hid his sudden smile in a false grimace. The redhead had embarrassed him again, but this time she deserved a medal for her timing. The last thing he’d needed tonight was Carla, and now he didn’t have to worry about how to end the evening politely.
“That was my gardener,” he quipped impulsively. And reeled back from the force of her second slap.
Morgan jogged through the park in the early-morning light. It was a hot morning, rare for the usually wet and foggy San Francisco August. A stray wisp of fog, not yet burned off by the bright sun, floated by. The path he followed led him along the edge of a steep cliff. Far below was the beautiful panorama of a mist-covered San Francisco Bay.
He was home now, his two-week-long business trip finished. He was also disappointed and more than a little frustrated. The beautiful redhead hadn’t reappeared since the fiasco in the elevator. He’d been waiting for her, too, in Philadelphia, Washington, and Miami.
Who was she? Of course, he still didn’t have the answer. And none of his friends had asked about his reaction to a surprise birthday gift.
He’d made a complete fool of himself with the redhead, he thought. First by being immobilized with shock at her daring, then by being immobilized again by his own response to her … while she escaped.
Yesterday afternoon, during a meeting of major importance with his top executives, his usually sharp attention had wandered from the reports to the redhead. That had never happened to him before. Not once had a woman, for whatever reason, kept him from concentrating on his work.
It wasn’t until later that he had found out the little tidbit he’d missed while daydreaming. His construction company had been underbid again by C/Mac Construction, his biggest competitor for the last six months. He was still furious with himself and his staff. He had warned them the last time it happened that they’d all better start looking for new jobs.
But he hadn’t fired anybody. Yet. Instead he had ordered an intense investigation into who was backing Charles MacMillan, president of the newly revamped company. Someone had poured big money into Mac’s flagging business. The man now had the best engineers and architects working for him. It was no wonder C/Mac had undercut him three times with more environmentally sound proposals at the same cost or less! Abbott Industries’s construction subsidiary was undergoing a complete overhaul. It needed new blood to compete with C/Mac.
Morgan jogged along, letting his business thoughts flow in a cadence to his pounding feet. The thin strip of tarmac wound like a black ribbon through the lush grass, and on through a small copse of pine trees.
He noticed another jogger up ahead on the path. It was a woman, and her long red hair swayed from side to side with her rhythmic movements.
Staring, Morgan slowed, then halted as a funny kind of explosion went off in his chest. It was she! It had to be.
“Hey!” he shouted, breaking into a run.
The woman glanced over her shoulder. Suddenly she seemed to take flight, as her long strides ate up the jogging path. She disappeared into the trees fifty yards ahead.
“Wait!” he bellowed, running faster than he’d ever thought he could. She was not going to get away again!
But she didn’t wait. A laugh floated on the air above him, and Morgan, determined to catch her, ran even faster. He passed quickly under the trees. On the other side his dream woman had just reached the incline of a small rise. He wasn’t worried, knowing that after the rise was an open picnic/playground area. There was no place to hide there, and he would finally catch her.
Or so he thought. As he topped the incline all he saw was the tables, swings, one hundred yards of straight jogging path, and no woman. Impossible! She would have to be an Olympic gold medalist to cover that distance in the few seconds since she had disappeared over the incline. For a moment he wondered if she was a track star, then dismissed the ridiculous thought.
In the center of the picnic area was a low, squat building. Of course! he thought. The bathroom. He ran over and entered the men’s side, but no one was there. Quickly walking outside again, he hesitated in front of the door to the women’s side. She might not appreciate a visitor if she was innocently using the facilities.
“What the hell,” he muttered, and strode inside. There wasn’t a sound, or even a foot peeking out from under a stall.
This was silly, he told himself. She was a very real, incredibly beautiful woman who had been seen not only by him, but by whomever he had been with at the moment. He could still feel her kisses. She was somewhere around here, and he would find her.
He went outside again and checked around the back of the building. He looked behind the shade trees in the picnic area and beat through the underbrush of the little wooded area where he’d first seen her. Ten minutes passed, then twenty, as he searched out every conceivable—and inconceivable—spot she might have picked as a hiding place. He even looked under the picnic tables, but somehow she had managed to elude him again, leaving him to wonder if he had just imagined seeing her in the park.
Finally accepting what his eyes were telling him, Morgan stood in the middle of the playground and knew he was going crazy. He decided he might as well make his insanity complete.
Glancing upward into the quiet gray-blue sky, he bellowed, “You forgot my kiss!”
Cecilia St. Martin grimaced and scratched her arms as she let herself into her narrow, three-storied Victorian home in the Nob Hill district of San Francisco. Hell! she thought. That must have been a cashmere tree she’d been stuck in while playing hide-and-seek with Morgan Abbott.
“Hi, Idiot,” she said, looking down at the gray-striped cat that swirled its body lovingly around her calves. She picked the cat up and they purred at each other, their noses touching. Cecilia laughed.
“I should be allergic to plain old wool, or strawberries, or even you. But no, I’m allergic to cashmere, and now somebody’s discovered a way to grow the damned stuff on trees.” She sighed wistfully and nuzzled the cat against her chest. “All the lovely sweaters I can’t wear. And the trees I can’t climb anymore.” She put the cat down on the brown carpet. “Time for a nice, long bath.”
Cecilia walked past the stained-glass double doors of the foyer to the gleaming mahogany stairs; opposite the doors. She climbed the first three steps, then backed down them again and walked down the long hallway to the kitchen, at the back of the house.
“I’m later than I think, kitty cat.”
Standing in her cheery yellow-and-oakwood kitchen, she picked up the telephone receiver and punched out a number. A familiar, Boston-accented voice answered.
“Harper?” she said. “It’s me.”
“I expected your call hours ago, Cecilia. I was worried,” was the calm reply.
Cecilia wondered in amusement how her attorney worried. Did an eyebrow lift, or did his brows furrow? In all the years she had known Harper Madison, first as her father’s friend and financial adviser and now as hers, he had never showed a single emotion. At most, he might give a slight smile if he was overjoyed, or a tiny frown if he was extremely upset.
“Sorry about that,” she replied cheerfully. “I was stuck up a tree, and now I’m itching like crazy. I must be developing hay fever, or something. I’ve got to get into a tub quickly, so we’d better make this short. How are the stock purchases coming along?”
“Excellently. I really appreciate your volunteering to help me out like this, but—”
“Stop right there, Harper,” she ordered. “You lost a bundle when Morgan Abbott bought that computer manufacturer you’d invested in, and then let it go bust just for a tax write-off. Don’t tell me that he bought it with good intentions and discovered too many problems afterward, so that the company had to be declared bankrupt. That’s the usual pap for the Securities and Exchange Commission, so they won’t prosecute the buyer on fraud. Not only are you my friend and adviser, but you got me through my parents’ deaths when I was seventeen. And much more. Nobody else would have done what you did. And if this is a small way of repaying you, since you won’t let me give you the money—”
“Cecilia,” Harper broke in, obviously trying to stem the rising emotion in her voice, “I still have a hefty paycheck coming from you every year, so stop the grateful-Annie nonsense. Besides, I was saddled with you, if you remember. And you were a brat. You still are. But your heart’s always been in the right place, although your methods are outrageous. You’re the only person I know who would dream up kissing a total stranger just to keep him off-guard and preoccupied while you buy up enough of his stock for a take-over threat. You’d bring Wall Street to its corporate knees if you ever decided to take up the reins of Parkhurst. But I’m glad to see you finally taking an interest in some aspect of corporate life. You’ve been drifting around the world for too many years, poking your nose into other people’s business.”
Cecilia gave a wavering laugh. “Archaeology is poking your nose into dead people’s business, so I don’t think they mind. Besides. I sponsor other people to poke their noses in the dirt. And I’m not the least bit interested in corporate life. Morgan Abbott just needs a little scare put into him for what he did to you, and I’ve got the resources to do it.”
Although few people knew of the connection, Cecilia was the major stockholder of the Parkhurst Group, an international holding conglomerate rated as one of Fortune magazine’s top one hundred. It had grown over the years, from the three whaling ships owned by an ancestor in the early 1800s.
At seventeen, Cecilia hadn’t been ready for the overwhelming responsibility she’d inherited at her parents’ deaths. Then, just after graduation from Princeton, she had discovered the fun, and risks, of sponsoring a dig for a friend. So she had never bothered with the daily running of Parkhurst. Other, much more adept people were already doing it. She didn’t even vote at board meetings. Harper did it for her. In fact, making sure a few days ago that Cormier received the contract was the only time she had actually had anything to do with the corporation itself. Voting had been split down the middle between Abbott Industries and Cormier, so she had ordered Harper to vote for Cormier. Morgan didn’t know it, she thought, but he had a very formidable adversary.
While Harper wouldn’t risk a cent of her money on an investment gamble, she knew he loved to do it with his own. Maybe the fiasco with the computer company had taught him a lesson. But it was Morgan Abbott’s little stunt that had made her furious. She didn’t like someone taking advantage of another human being like that.
She absently scratched at her arm, and Idiot suddenly leaped into the air, trying to catch it. The cat missed, and Cecilia wagged a Scolding fìnger at her.
“Harper, I’ve got to go,” she said. “Enjoy sunny Boston, and I’ll see you after we’ve got enough stock to scare Morgan with a take-over threat.”
She said a quick good-bye, then peered at her arms for a moment and frowned. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like little red bumps were developing on her skin, and the itchiness was definitely worse. Maybe she had come across some poison ivy this morning. Morgan Abbott was poison, of course, but he didn’t count.
The kiss in the elevator ran through her mind again, and Cecilia felt the heat rush to her cheeks. For a man who was supposed to be cold, ruthless, and inhuman, Morgan kissed like a sailor just home from a year at sea. And she had responded like a woman starved for him.
She had never experienced that kind of physical chemistry with a man before. Why did it have to be with Morgan Abbott? She didn’t even like him.
Remembering how he had looked the first time she’d seen him, she reluctantly decided that he was attractive enough to catch any woman’s eye. He was tall, over six feet. His eyes were very blue, although she thought they had an icy look. Then, of course, his rich coffee-brown hair, long enough just to touch his collar, had a few distinguished gray streaks at the temples. His features were too sharp and angular to be truly handsome, but he wasn’t ugly. In fact, the saturnine face was appealingly virile. His build wasn’t overly muscular, but had more of a tough leanness to it. He carried an easy mantle of command that Cecilia knew she would recognize, even without his expensive haircut and custom-made suit. She had grown up around men like him, and thought herself immune. Until now.
It was disturbing to discover she could feel an attraction for a man she didn’t like. She had studied him extensively before implementing her plans, trying to find a way to distract him. She had discerned that he was used to being in control of his surroundings. Having a strange woman kiss him would force him out of that control. And would keep him thinking about the woman, and why she was doing it. He should be very distracted by now … she hoped. All her plans depended on it. He mustn’t notice that various stockbrokers throughout the country were buying his stock for her. If he discovered the purchases too soon, he could put a stop to it.
“What I’m doing is just as bad as what Morgan did,” she said to her cat. Then she added with a grin, “But I won’t allow that little fact to stop me.”
She owed Harper too much to allow his losses to go unrevenged, and the idea of using Morgan’s own methods amused her. Besides, she wasn’t seriously going to take over Abbott Industries. She would just show Morgan he wasn’t quite the omnipotent executive he thought himself. After she’d finished, he would have learned to be more loyal to his own stockholders.
Realizing that she was furiously scratching her legs, Cecilia grimaced. Her hot soak was long overdue.
“Come on, Idiot. Let’s take a bath.” The little cat’s ears perked up, and she meowed. Cecilia chuckled.
“I’ll be sure to put in plenty of bubbles for you,” she promised. “Rrroowww!”