At the Billionaire's Beck and Call? by Rachel Bailey Read Free Book Online Page B

through the office yesterday for their chance to report in to the CEO.
    In between his scheduled appointments, Ryder had made a point of keeping up with what was going on in her Chocolate Diva project.
    He paused in his rapid one-handed typing on his BlackBerry and looked up at her. “Do you want to discuss any of it?”
    She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m happy with the progress.”
    When Ryder had started sitting in on her meetings, she’d been wary, feeling like Big Brother was watching over her shoulder. But as the days had passed, she’d found they worked well together as a team and had come to value his input.
    He nodded approvingly and threw the BlackBerry on the seat beside him. “Good work.”
    They traveled in silence, Bernice and the driver chatting in quiet voices, Macy mentally running through the day’s agenda and preparing the commentary she’d be giving Ryder at the factory.
    And thinking about their upcoming conversation about her building’s security.
    Every so often, she flicked a glance at her boss lounging back in his seat. He occasionally watched the cityscape, but more often, made or took calls. Had his sleep been disturbed, too, or had the kiss been a purely clinical exercise for him with an eye on her father’s company?
    Even in the spacious luxury car, his legs lay spread to accommodate his considerable height, and one of his thighs rested within touching distance from hers. She could feel the body heat radiate across the distance, and she fought the urge to trail her fingers along the length to see if the muscles were as firm as they appeared through the taut fabric.
    She turned to focus on the peak hour traffic on the motorway, unwilling to let herself indulge in fantasies of an incredibly inconvenient physical attraction. A man who treated her as a commodity to be bought and sold was not a man she could let herself lose control with again.
    The problem was, she couldn’t put Ryder in a simple box. Instead, when she thought about him she almost became dizzy from the back and forth….
    He’d worked beside her in harmony for a week.
    He’d tried to buy her in a business deal.
    He was secretly protecting her from the media.
    He wanted them to have a loveless marriage.
    He brought her body to life like no man before.
    Macy closed her eyes to quiet the tumult of emotions churning in her belly. This project would be over in one month and one week, and then she’d be free. Would never have to see Ryder Bramson again. And in ten days, Ryder would have finished his appointments with his management teams in the Asia-Pacific area and would be on a plane home to America.
    All she had to do was survive ten days. The rest, after he was gone, would be easy.
    Ten days.
    She could do that.
    She began reciting projected growth figures in her head and came very close to forgetting about the masculine thigh that lay mere inches from hers.
    Very close, but not quite.

Four
    A fter two hours of walking through the chocolate factory with Macy and shaking hands with employees, Ryder had developed a monster of a headache.
    It was probably sleep deprivation—he’d had major trouble getting a full forty winks since the moment he’d kissed Macy’s sweet lips. His body had been demanding a repeat performance, and more. Most nights he’d given up and worked until dawn…though he’d been tormented by visions of her mouth, the feel of her hands in his hair, the sensual sound she’d made in her throat when he’d claimed her lips.
    As he strode down the corridor, he took a deep breath and brought his body back under control. He was dangerously close to showing everyone in the factory just how much he wanted her. Fatigue made restraint seem less appealing, despite knowing he had to take it slow with her.
    He needed time to regroup. Mercifully, a twenty-minute break had been scheduled for him and Macy to discuss their thoughts