Scandalizing the CEO by Katherine Garbera Read Free Book Online

much from the womb I knew I wanted it all.”
    “Do you think you’ve gotten it?” she asked.
    He tipped his head to the side to study her. She asked questions that no one else ever had—except that one reporter. The frumpy, clumsy woman had little in common with Ainsley except for her eyes and her probing questions. He remembered the woman’s eyes…so similar to Ainsley’s.
    “Not yet, but I’m close,” he said.
    He tried to recall other details of the woman but he couldn’t see anything but those wide violet eyes. He took his keys from the ignition and got out of the car to come around and open her door.
    One thing his mother had been a stickler about was manners in a man. She said that women liked to be treated with respect and that they always deserved it.
    He’d often wondered if Malcolm’s betrayal with his other mistresses had wounded his mum deeply. She’d buried herself in her lab and in her research after his birth. Steven could think of no greater disrespect than finding out the man you were having an affair with was seeing two other women at the same time.
    He opened her door and offered his hand. She took it, her fingers small and delicate in his bigger grasp. She turned in her seat, stretching her legs out the door first. They were slim and yet curvy, one of the first things he’d noticed about her. Once she had one foot on the sidewalk, she stepped out and stood next to him. He wanted her again. Wanted to kiss her once more, but he knew better than to move too quickly.
    He wanted to savor every moment with her. To make this quasi-emotion he felt—one he knew was lust—last a little while longer before he went back to the dull, gray world he usually inhabited. The world where he just worked and concentrated on proving he was the best.
    “I’ll see you to your door,” he said.
    “That’s not necessary,” she said. “I think I can find it.”
    “I insist.”
    He put his hand on the small of her back again and nudged her toward her door. She tossed that high ponytail of hers as she looked back over her shoulder at him. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you?”
    “Not unless I have to. Men who back down usually end up losing.”
    “I don’t like to lose, either,” she said.
    “If you want what I want, then we’ll both win.”
    “Somehow I’m not sure I’ll know if I really want it or if your will has made me think I do,” she said.
    Her words had been carefully chosen. She was trying to tell him that he overwhelmed her, or at least that was what he suspected.
    “I’m not going to ask for anything you’re not ready for,” he said.
    She studied him for a moment and he hoped she found whatever it was she was searching for. Hoped she didn’t see that emptiness he always tried to mask. That spot inside him where he suspected other people had their hearts but he just had a driving impulse to succeed.
    “Would you like to come in for a drink?” she asked.
    “I’d love to,” he walked behind her to her front door, keeping his hand on the small of her back the entire time.
    Her waist was small and pronounced, her hips larger but not too big. He brought his other hand to her waist because he wanted to see what his hands looked like on her body. He really wanted to hold her like this when she was naked. To see the full curves of her bare derrière.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Imagining you naked,” he said.
    She blushed and dropped her keys. She bent to pick them up and he moaned as the fabric of her skirt was pulled taut against her buttocks. He let his hands slide down her curves, skimming along the outside of her hips until he almost reached the hem of the skirt.
    She stood up, put her key in the lock and opened the door. “Don’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because we still have a business arrangement. A deal for me to publish feature articles about your family—we shouldn’t have a personal relationship on top of that.”
    “We aren’t working together,