soon after the drama that had ensnared the family she’d discovered an ambitious streak in her personal makeup. After the Caroline Popping disaster had embroiled the family in a debilitating scandal she wanted to help preserve the company that carried her mother’s name. To that end she’d studied hard, earning a top score in her penultimate year. Carving out a career path didn’t include accepting favors from Stuart, however, and most definitely not when his only motivation was to keep an eye on her. She wanted to carve out a career based on talent, hard work and drive, not because Stuart thought she was a liability.
Besides, working this closely with Stuart wasn’t her idea of a great career move and she’d told him as much. His terse and brutal response was that this was a temporary arrangement. The moment Geoffrey and Giselle were off on their honeymoon, she would be back in her old job so fast her head would spin.
She glanced at the choppy channel as the sleek private aircraft crossed to the European mainland on its way to the South of France, where the important telecommunications convention was taking place over the next weekend in Nice, the French Riviera’s capital.
Stuart had settled in his own seat on the other side of the aisle, and was deeply engrossed in his work. The sight of his dark head bent over his laptop gave her a small thrill of awareness as brief images of the way it would feel if he bent over her instead, his lips tormenting her nipples, his strong hands grasping and molding the soft round globes of her breasts. She quickly abandoned the illicit fantasy for what it was: a mere erotic daydream. Why it would be Stuart of all people who suddenly featured so prominently in her fantasies, she didn’t know. Perhaps his mere proximity was wreaking havoc on her, adding to the fact that since his return from the war Stuart had grown even more formidably masculine than he’d always been. She wondered if the scar on his brow was an indication of other scars on his body. And suddenly a vivid image of herself caressing his sculpted torso, her fingers perusing every inch of his dark skin while her lips and tongue followed suit presented itself. She wriggled uncomfortably in her seat, the heat lapping at her core a stark reminder of the dangers of this trip.
Stuart was now simply her boss, she decided, and a presence she had to endure for as long as he chose to keep her on as his PA. Nothing more, nothing less. And she returned her gaze outside and this time stubbornly kept it there.
Stuart looked up from the schematics Knight’s chief IT engineer had sent him. A tendril of russet hair had escaped the confines of Kirsty’s chignon and was caressing the pale silky skin of her cheek, the fine dusting of freckles almost invisible in the early morning sun streaking in through the porthole. His gaze inadvertently lowered to the sensible lilac blouse she’d opted for, and took in the mother-of-pearl buttons, the top ones undone, a hint of lace visible beneath, whispering promises of the fullness of her breasts. The pink buds of her rising peaks strained the sheer fabric and he experienced a painful hardening of his own irrevocable response as he imagined making short shrift of those ridiculously tiny buttons and taking the full weight of her breasts in his hands while his tongue described a wet trail along the lush silkiness of her neckline.
His lips tightened and so did the grip of his fingers on the iPhone he was holding. There was no point lusting after Kirsty when all she could think about was Geoffrey, he told himself harshly. She was probably thinking about him right now, which was why her nipples were hardening into darkly pink raisins clearly visible through her blouse. She was indulging in sexual fantasies of her own, featuring Geoffrey Holland.
He’d watched Kirsty develop from an awkward gangly teenager into the beautiful young woman she was now, and had never ceased to be amazed by her