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Chelsea flicked a stray streak of wet mud off the nose of the beagle motif on her old umbrella as she ducked under the silver and black striped awning of Amelie’s, a newly opened Melbourne restaurant a stone’s throw from the Yarra River at South Bank.

She peered through the floor-to-ceiling windows to see the place was peppered with bright and shiny types decked out in designer duds.  While the chocolate brown knee length skirt she’d found in the back of her closet sat at a slightly askew angle to hide a fresh doggie shampoo stain.

‘In a couple of hours I’ll be out of these high-heeled boots and into sneakers,’ she said aloud.  ‘While you’ll all have bunions before you’re forty.’

As some kind of perverse justice, her boots teetered beneath her as she twirled out of the way of a rushing pair of suits barging out of the restaurant barking into their mobile phones rather than looking out for stray women on the sidewalk.

Not wanting to push her luck, she slipped inside the glass doors and patted the criss-cross of bobby pins holding back her too long fringe to make sure they were still in place and not dangling from the end of her hair like some odd mobile.

‘Do you have a reservation?’ the skinny, bald maitre d’ in head-to-toe black asked.

‘I’m Chelsea London,’ she said, leaning back slightly to make sure he wouldn’t get a waft of the camphor scent of her recently de-cupboarded fancy clothes.  ‘Meeting Kensington Hurley.  She’s always madly early, I’d be happy to sneak through and find her myself - ’

‘Not necessary.’  He gave her a cool smile.

Phoney schmuck, she thought as she gave him a weak smile in return.

He ran a bony finger down the pale pink diary page and nodded.  Then said, ‘Your phone please.’

Chelsea stopped her grooming. ‘Excuse me, my what?’

‘Your...mobile...phone,’ he repeated, more slowly this time.  ‘They are a nuisance to other customers thus we don’t allow them in the restaurant.  You would have been told at the time of reservation.’

‘My sister chose this place,’ she explained through gritted teeth.

‘Nevertheless, you need to check it into the cloak room.’

She bit her lip while she made up her mind about what to do.  Her whole life was in her phone.  Her address book, her appointments calendar, her grocery list, her emails, the profit and loss statements to take to the bank later that morning now that she’d finally made an appointment with a loan officer to see about expanding Pride & Groom, her pet grooming business, from one salon to three.  He may as well have asked for her future first born child for all it meant to her.

She sunk her hand into her oversized handbag and held it clamped in her hand as she asked, ‘What if I don’t have a phone?’

He kept his hand outstretched, palm up.

‘Okay fine,’ she said doing a quick, obsessive compulsive message check before handing it over.  ‘But couldn’t you just ask everyone to turn their phone to silent?  And confiscate those who don’t comply?’

‘This isn’t high school, Ms London.  We believe mobile phones are anti-social.  And haven’t you come here today to be social?’

High school is forever, she thought.  Those in new uniforms compared with those in hand me downs, all living out the failures or successes of their parents like some great evolutionary joke.

She kept her theory to herself and instead muttered, ‘I came here today because my sister has the kind of big brown cow eyes you can’t say no to.’

He gave her a pink ticket with a smudged black number written upon it in return then she pressed on into the restaurant.

Weaving her way through the tightly packed tables past a plethora of “new school uniform” types with money and time and an apparent desire to be social on a Tuesday morning, she made a determined beeline for Kensey’s curly brown ‘do.  Thus she didn’t notice a gentleman prepare to slide back his chair until it was too late.

She put on the brakes but her inexperience in her high-heeled boots meant she lost her grip upon the swanky silk carpet.  Her momentum pitched her forward and everything from there on seemed to happen in slow motion.

The man turned, alerted by either the whoosh of air she displaced before her, or perhaps the frantic oath she’d emitted a second before that.  As she fell she found herself amidst one of those time-stands-still-while-my-life-flashes-before-my-eyes moments as she made eye contact with her attacker whose features burned onto her brain one after the other.

A toothpick between perfect white front teeth.  Smooth dark hair so neat it looked like it had been cut that morning.  A jaw line so defined it made a girl want to reach out and run the back of her finger along it.  Dark glinting eyes the colour of the Pacific just before dusk.

Even that tremendous collection of visual stimuli wasn’t enough to stop the laws of physics.  Chelsea had no choice but to reach out and grab him by two handfuls of his suit jacket to stop herself from going completely head over heels.

He instinctively slid both arms around her middle, slowing her momentum until she came to a complete stop.  Upright, or almost, considering her legs were twisted, she clung.  Bodily against him.  Her breasts pressed into his chest.  Her stomach hard against the zipper of his pants.  Her shaky right knee clamped snug between both of his.  She knew enough about the shape of him that in some cultures they’d be considered betrothed.

She curled her fingers gently beneath a lapel or two.  His suit felt really nice.  Expensive.  The fabric was soft and warm.  And it smelled so good.  Like falling leaves and crisp fresh air.  At least she assumed it was the suit.  Maybe it was just him.

When time finally caught up with her, the surrounds of the restaurant swarmed in.  Clinking cutlery.  Tinkling laughter.  Steam from the kitchen.  The feel of his long thin wallet beneath hr knuckles and next to his heart.  And the intermingling whisper of the pair of them breathing overly heavily.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.  His voice was husky.  Deep.  It rumbled through her hands and into her chest until it found a home deep within her stomach.  She gave into the need to lick suddenly bone dry lips.

‘Hey,’ he rumbled again, and tucked a finger beneath her chin, lifting her gaze to his face as he repeated, ‘Are you okay?’

His skin was unblemished and evenly tanned, his eyes so blue it hurt, and he truly smelled beautiful, like the rainy autumn day she’d left outside.  All that glowing, carefree perfection made him as tempting as the yummiest forbidden fruit.  But this gal had likely already eaten away her lip-gloss, her clothes were a decade old, and she smelled like wet dog and moth balls.

She slowly let her grip abate.

‘I’m fine,’ Chelsea said.  ‘Dandy in fact.  Embarrassed as all get out, but there seems to be no permanent damage to the patch of carpet my boots did their best to take on.  It could have been worse.’

‘True,’ he said.  ‘If there’d been a dessert cart in the vicinity we would very quickly have become a scene out of a Pink Panther film.’

Her cheeks twitched in amusement.  ‘Can’t you imagine a barrage of chocolate cream pies flying through the air and landing on that table of coiffed princesses until they are dripping in pearls and chocolate sauce?’

The man’s eyes darted sideways to the table of women who had been eyeing Chelsea off as she had walked in.  And he said, ‘It would certainly have added a dash of sunshine to such a drab morning.’

As he smiled at her some more, his eyes now twinkling, his toothpick twirling as though behind his teeth his tongue was hard at work, Chelsea’s stomach felt unnaturally hollow.  And she didn’t think it had all that much to do with hunger for food.

She smiled back, all lips, no teeth, and then proceeded to disentangle herself as elegantly as she could manage.  But once she’d let go she discovered she’d scrunched up his lovely suit lapels something awful.  She spent a good ten seconds flattening them out, running her hands along the soft wool which did little to hide the hard body beneath.

‘Though I’m not sure I could handle any more sunshine than I have right now,’ he said, his voice ever deeper, and so close she could feel the air of every word brush against her fast-warming cheek.

She bit.  ‘And why’s that?’

‘I’ve never before had a woman fall for me quite so quickly.  Usually I count on an introduction and a little flirtation before the sunshine part.’

She glanced up into his eyes again.  Dark.  Absorbing.  Blue as the heavens.  He was pure charm.  And she had the distinct feeling he knew it.  Which meant he also knew she was no longer hanging onto him for balance.

She stopped her fussing and said, ‘One little hint?  Next time you’re looking to land yourself a girl, don’t bother with the chair.  Props are for amateurs.’

His playful smile faded until it was no more than a glimmer deep within his eyes.  He breathed in through his nose, she felt it in the swell of his chest, and then realised that for all intents and purposes she was still feeling the guy up.  She gave his lapels one last tug, then said, ‘Now nobody will know I was ever here.’

He removed the toothpick and with his deep voice so low only a person a mere breath away would be able to hear him he said, ‘I’ll know.’

His words slid through her, hot, liquid, and unimpeded by any kind of sense or self-defence.  In a stab of unadulterated desire it occurred to her that if she slanted her head an inch, two at the most, she could find out if his smiling lips tasted anywhere near as good as they looked.

She took an abrupt step back and bumped his table hard enough his full latte glass rocked mercilessly and sloshed a gulp or two over the edge.  Mr Suit and Tie leapt for the glass and caught it just before it tilted all the way over.

Free of his autumnal scent, his magnetic gaze, and the pleasure of luxurious wool, Chelsea slid out of his gravitational pull.  ‘That’s my cue to leave before I accidentally set you on fire.’

‘No wait,’ he said, putting the glass back on the table, and patting down the polished wood with a napkin.

But she hitched her handbag higher onto her shoulder, and then eased around him and hurried to join her sister on the other side of the restaurant.

Kensey stood, kissed her cheek.  ‘Tell me you got his phone number,’ were the first words out of her mouth.

v

 

From "The Magnate's Indecent Proposal" by Ally Blake
Mills and Boon Modern Heat May  2008
ISBN:  978-0-263-86377-2  Copyright: © 2007 Ally Blake
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. The edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A. For more romance information surf to: http://www.eHarlequin.com

The Wedding Date  |  Millionaire Dad's SOS  |  Getting Red-Hot with the Rogue

Dating the Rebel Tycoon  |  A Night with the Society Playboy  |  Hired: The Boss's Bride  |  The Magnate's Indecent Proposal

Falling for the Rebel Heir  |   Steamy Surrender  |  Millionaire to the Rescue  |  Billionaire on Her Doorstep

Getting Down to Business  |  Meant-To-Be Mother  |  Wanted: Outback Wife  |  A Father in the Making  |  The Shock Engagement  

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