Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin. Anna Cleary
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had a different feel, as if it had been given over to some sterner god.
Daylight streamed in through the tall windows, and with it the view her office shared of the Botanical Gardens and the strip of harbour beyond. A laptop sat on a heavy rosewood desk beside a stack of new stationery—cardboard folder files, packaged paper and a selection of office equipment. The bookshelves were bare, a large tea chest of books beside them waiting to be unpacked. She tilted her head and read a couple of the titles upside down. Policy and Practice of Human Rights Law. International Human Rights.
She felt disconcerted. Connor O’Brien was a lawyer?
How ironic. If he was so concerned about human rights, what was he doing stealing people’s private letters? For a second she experienced a doubt. It hardly made sense. Could she have leaped to the wrong conclusion and lost her letter somewhere else?
Even visualising the envelope made a hot and cold sensation of the most unmistakable immediacy sweep over her, as though all the tiny hairs on her body were standing on end. Her overwhelming instinct told her it was close by. If she closed her eyes, she could practically feel the texture of the paper in her hands. Without a doubt she knew it had to be here in this room.
The question was where?
A new filing cabinet stood within easy reach of the desk. She glanced over her shoulder at the door and, ignoring some warning prickles in her nape, tried the top drawer. It sounded empty, but it was locked. They were all locked. She felt a surge of excitement.
Why would he lock the filing cabinet if he had nothing worth hiding? She looked around for the keys. She tried the desk drawers first, but, finding them empty, turned to survey the room. Her eye fell on a briefcase, leaning up against the leg of his desk chair.
Ah. A thrill of guilty excitement shivered down her spine.
Should she?
She vacillated for a moment, but with the seconds ticking away it was no time for squeamishness. Her pulse drumming in her ears, she whisked the briefcase up onto the desk, pushing aside stationery to make room, and unzipped the main compartment intended for the laptop. It was empty, apart from a couple of memory sticks.
Increasingly conscious of the possibility of the workmen’s return, she made a hasty search of the other compartments. Her letter wasn’t in any of them, nor any keys. In fact, the case contained nothing except for a few odds and ends for the computer. That was when she noticed Connor O’Brien’s jacket, slung on the back of his chair.
Having sunk this deep into crime, rifling a personal jacket didn’t seem much more of a stretch.
Gingerly, suspense creeping up her spine, she slipped her hands into the side pockets, and came up with nothing. She had no greater luck with the breast pocket, although her fingers detected a bulge through the fabric. She turned the jacket to the inside and tried the inset pocket. Her heart bounded in her chest. There was no envelope in there. Only a passport.
She slipped it out, then put it straight back in. This would be an unforgivable invasion of the man’s privacy. But then, how concerned was he about respecting hers?
With a bracing breath, she squashed down her scruples and took out the alluring little red book.
Probably it was her imagination, but the covers felt warm to her touch, as if the book vibrated with some vital energy. It was such a temptation. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to examine the photo. Almost at once she gave in, opening straight to the ID page to be faced with Connor O’Brien.
She might have known. Other people took ghastly mugshots, but not him. She stared, riveted, as his face looked out at her, stern and unsmiling, but still with the faint possibility of amusement breaking out on his sardonic mouth. He was thirty-four, according to his birthdate. She flicked to the back pages, and widened her eyes in surprise. Connor was a frequent traveller. And a recent one, going by the last stamp in the book. He’d only just arrived in the country.
She’d heard of workaholics, but this was an extreme case, surely, if he came to work straight off a plane without going home first to shave. Unable to resist one more look at his picture, she flipped back to the identity page. Was it her imagination, or were his eyes piercing her now with that infuriating mockery as if he knew what she was doing and could see right through her?
Her heart suddenly thumping too fast, she snapped the book shut. She held it between her palms, swept by a confused mixture of conflicting instincts about Connor O’Brien. They couldn’t all be true. Was she going insane?
She gave an alarmed start as the sound of approaching voices alerted her that she was about to be caught red-handed, and the passport slipped from her fingers.
She dived to pick it up as bumps and grunts began to issue from the reception office, suggestive of several men hefting some bulky piece of furniture through a narrow aperture.
In her haste to slot the little book into the pocket, she knocked the stationery pile askew, and sent manilla folders sliding across the desk and onto the floor.
She dropped to her knees, and as she scrabbled to gather the files and stack them back on the desk the activity outside ceased. Her heart nearly seized as she caught sight of the briefcase. Quickly she dashed it onto the floor. For a panicked instant she considered hiding in the tea-room, then dismissed the action as cowardly.
She could do this, she thought, her heart slamming into her ribs. She’d just brazen it out. She straightened up and faced the door, steeled for the worst.
There was a brief exchange of conversation outside. She was straining to hear what was being said when the door to the room burst open. At almost the identical moment her horrified gaze fell on the passport, still lying on the corner of the desk.
She snatched it up, whipping it behind her back just as Connor strode in. When he saw her, he stopped short, an initial flare of astonishment in his dark eyes changing nearly at once to cynicism. Almost as if catching her there was no real surprise.
Without a word he stepped past her, seized a pen from the desk, and turned back to the outer room, where he signed something on a clipboard presented to him by one of the delivery men.
With no time to return the passport to his jacket, and nowhere to hide it, she popped it down the front of her shirt, just as Connor turned to stroll slowly and purposefully back into his office.
If he saw her surreptitious movement, he didn’t show it. He shut the door gently behind him, then paused to examine her, his black eyebrows raised.
He looked taller, grimmer and more authoritative when he was annoyed. It was harder to imagine him plunging through the pond.
No. No, it wasn’t.
Her mouth became uncomfortably dry, and she smoothed her skirt with moistening palms.
He didn’t appear to be imagining her in as favourable a light. His speculative gaze swept over her while she waited in an anguish of suspense, realising from the hard glint in his eyes he wasn’t about to let her off lightly.
‘Did you want something?’ His deep voice was polite, with just a tinge of incredulity lapping at its edges.
As if he didn’t know. The sheer duplicity of the man.
She tried to assume a cool, poised demeanour. ‘Oh, look, er, I should apologise. I probably shouldn’t have walked in. I came to—speak to you. The door was open, so I just—’ she made a breezy gesture ‘—wandered in.’ Her voice wobbled a little, but she kept her head high and forced herself to keep meeting his eyes, all the time conscious of her pulse ticking like a time bomb.
His eyes flicked to his desk, over the once rigidly neat pile of stationery, now listing dangerously to one side, and on—to her conscious eyes at least—to the neon-flashing space where she’d rested the briefcase.
In a brilliant move inspired by adrenaline, she did the only possible thing, and sat on the desk in the telltale space, stretching a hand back so she could lean, and once again knocking over the wonky pile.
‘Oh,