Never Naughty Enough. Jill Monroe
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“Do you like it?” Annabelle asked
Oh, yeah.
“It’s called Persuasion.”
“What?”
She wiggled her tempting little red-tipped, pink-striped toes at Wagner. “My nail polish. It’s called Persuasion.”
“What about the stripes?”
“That’s a technique one of my friends taught me. She says it never fails to grab a man’s attention. She calls it ‘take-me-now toes.’”
Her friend was dangerous. How easy it would be to walk to Annabelle and draw her into his arms. To learn with his fingers and lips if she wore a bra or not. To drive out the burning need to make her his.
“All work and no play makes Wag a dull boy. So before I shut the door, I plan to introduce a little play into your life.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
Annabelle’s fingers played with the gathered material of her skirt, lifting it an inch. “By letting you know I’m not wearing any panties.”
Dear Reader,
Have you ever loved someone from afar? A man so sexy and exciting your every nerve ending sparks to life as soon as he walks into the room? You want to say something, to tell him how you feel, but every time you try, your nervous system locks down and you freeze. That’s what happens to Annabelle Scott and her own mouthwatering, unattainable man.
For Annabelle, a woman who has quietly been in love with her boss for years, courage comes from the most unexpected place. Finally her true naughty nature is released, and she takes Wagner Achrom on a wild, sensual adventure he’ll never forget. I hope you have as much fun reading Annabelle and Wagner’s story as I did writing it.
This past year has been amazing. Right before the holidays last year, I received THE CALL that Harlequin wanted to buy Never Naughty Enough. Now one short year later it’s in the stores. This is a dream come true for me. I’ve loved reading romance since my grandmother handed me my first Harlequin novel to read on the long, hot summer days.
I’d love to hear from you! E-mail me at [email protected] or visit my Web site at www.jillmonroebooks.com.
Happy reading!
Jill Monroe
Never Naughty Enough
Jill Monroe
To my family and friends for all their love and infinite support.
Contents
1
SHE WAS STRETCHING again.
Wagner Achrom rubbed the bridge of his nose as he watched his assistant, Annabelle Scott, slowly rotate her shoulders, first her right, then her left. Then closing her eyes, she swayed from side to side in her chair, her breasts jutting from the blue sweater she wore.
A curl of tension snaked through his body. He’d never noticed Ms. Scott’s breasts before. Of course, she’d never worn a curve-hugging sweater before now. But the inviting, fuzzy material of her sweater, with the hint of flashing metallic, didn’t quite fit with the cool, professional image his assistant usually projected.
Cool…at the moment Wagner was anything but cool.
He dug a finger under his collar to force a little calming air on his skin. Skin. His eyes strayed to Ms. Scott’s smooth skin, flushed a pretty pink above the plunging neckline of her sweater. He’d never noticed her skin before either. But then, she never revealed anything below the top button.
Maybe they should discuss the office dress-code policy. Henceforth, sweaters were strictly forbidden.
Not that her clothes were inappropriate, just surprising since she normally wore ankle-length skirts and loose-fitting suit jackets.
His gaze was irresistibly drawn to her ice-blue sweater and his mind took another unexpected, and unwelcome, turn toward the sensual. Something easily dealt with and restrained. Well, not easily, but he would restrain it. He had too much at stake with the Anderson deal to let a blue sweater, and the woman wearing it, distract him.
Anderson. Oh, yeah. Right. With calm and firm determination, he reached for the file Annabelle had left on his desk. He needed to examine the latest demands before he signed, green-lighting the proposed merger between his company and theirs.
Anderson’s stock would bullet up the exchange once this merger was finalized. They’d acquire free reign of his father’s patents. Using the technology behind Mason Achrom’s energy storage ideas, Anderson’s Research and Development team planned to develop a large-scale solar-and-wind-power network, retooling and often replacing much of the aging electrical grid system. It was a far different vision than Wagner’s of bringing cheap, independent power to the farms and rural areas of the world.
Anderson would gain the better end of this deal. A fact he acknowledged, but couldn’t avoid grinding his teeth over. Once pegged as a corporate raider, Wagner would have torn a small, undervalued company like Anderson apart with a few swipes of his pen, all while making a healthy profit. In the past, he’d made the best deals in the southwest. Deals where he, and the investor group he’d worked for, came out on top. But these weren’t the old days, and this merger provided exactly what he desperately wanted. Cash. Cold, hard and lots of it.
With that money, he would finally put to use the only thing his dad had ever left him. To some, the lines, graphs and chemical equations resembled nothing more than scribbles. But Wagner saw what his father was never able to, those patents represented cheap, clean fuel. And cheap fuel was something others would be willing to pay millions to attain.
He hated to share the lucrative development rights to his father’s patents. Except, without a capital injection, they weren’t doing him any good anyway. The Anderson people could have the large-scale energy network, the short-term profitable end of the deal.
But not for long.
Wagner wasn’t the type to throw it all away. He had a new project in mind. Abetter one. With Anderson’s money, Wagner would take some of his father’s unfinished ideas off the drawing board and create a small, inexpensive fuel cell. One with amazing power that could be almost instantly charged and ready to operate anything more draining than a solar calculator.
Now that his mind had successfully dulled the image of Ms. Scott’s breasts, he