Gray Quinn's Baby by Susan Stephens Read Free Book Online

dream seemed to be influenced by her research; there was certainly plenty of raw material here. Although quite how the summer of love, the sexual revolution and the Whisky a Go Go, the first disco in America—which just happened to be Quinn’s homeland—would manifest themselves remained to be seen.
    She would have to rely on what she knew if she was going to anticipate and avoid some of the problems, Magenta concluded. She would draw on that knowledge now—and her first action would be to open all the windows and let the smoke out.
    Predictably everyone complained that it was too cold. ‘Well, you can’t smoke in here,’ Magenta insisted. ‘It’s against the law.’
    â€˜Since when?’ one of the younger guys asked, swinging his arm around her waist to drag her close so she had no alternative but to inhale his foul-smelling breath.
    â€˜And that is too,’ she informed him, removing his searching hand from her tightly sculpted rear end.
    â€˜Ooh.’ He turned to his friends to pull a mocking face. ‘What got into your bed this morning, Miss Steele?’
    â€˜No one?’ another man suggested, to raucous jeers.
    â€˜We all know what’s wrong with you, ice maiden.’
    â€˜Cut it out!’ Magenta said angrily. ‘I’m not in the mood.’
    â€˜Apparently, you never are,’ one of the men murmured to his colleagues in a stage whisper.
    As if that were the cue for the main player to enter the scene, the double doors at the far end of the office swung open and every head swivelled in that direction. Some of the women even stood at their desks as if royalty was about to enter the room. To say Magenta was stunned by this reaction wouldn’t even come close. ‘What the…?’
    â€˜Quinn,’ Nancy told her tensely, hurrying away.
    Magenta turned to say something to Nancy, but everyone including Nancy had returned to work the second Quinn arrived. And Quinn didn’t just arrive—he strode across the floor like a conquering hero. To make matters worse, all the women were giving him simpering glances when what he needed, in Magenta’s opinion, was a short, sharp, shock and someone to stand up to him. Whatever dream state they were both trapped in, this was getting out of hand.
    But could this really be Quinn? Magenta’s head was reeling. Quinn in the sixties was none other than the gorgeous biker, in a jauntily angled Trilby hat and a dark overcoat that, instead of making him look silly, only succeeded in making him look like the master of the sexual universe.
    â€˜Magenta,’ he said curtly, shrugging the coat off his shoulder and handing it to her along with his hat.
    He knew her?
    â€˜That’s a better look for you,’ he said, giving Magenta the most intrusive inspection yet. ‘I like to see a woman in a dress with some shape to it.’
    What?
    â€˜Keep it up,’ he said approvingly. ‘And remember, I expect the same high standards from my staff at all times—’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ she said smartly, playing along, which was all she could do—other than acknowledge Quinn was a beyond the pale chauvinist—as well as the best-looking man she had ever seen in her life. With his tough-guy body clothed ina sharply tailored dark suit and impeccably knotted tie, he looked amazing.
    â€˜I’ll need you for a meeting later,’ he said, as though they had been working together for ever. There was not a shred of equality between them, Magenta registered with a spear of concern.
    â€˜So no gossiping with the other girls in the kitchen when you’re supposed to be making my coffee,’ Quinn warned.
    Would that be the coffee with the extra-strong laxative in it? Magenta wondered.
    â€˜And absolutely no lunch break for any of you girls. You’ll have a lot of work to get through by the time I finish the meeting I’m going into