Untamed Bachelors: When He Was Bad... / Interview with a Playboy / The Shameless Life of Ruiz Acosta. Kathryn Ross
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‘Attractive, arrogant, ego as wide as the blue Aussie sky.’
He studied her. The you-don’t-fool-me-for-a-moment-McGregor stance, the nervous way her fingers played over the back of the chair. ‘You’re a contradiction, do you realise that? You say you don’t want complicated, yet you’re rejecting simple. What do you want, Ellie?’
Her mouth flattened and she swept to the door, yanked it open. Then she turned and glared back at him from the safety of distance. ‘With you, Matt McGregor? Nothing. Not a thing.’
Uptight young lady, he mused. Damned if he wasn’t going to enjoy finding out why. ‘You know, Ellie Rose, I’m going to prove you wrong about that, and believe me, it’s going to be a pleasure.’
He grinned as the door shut firmly behind her. ‘Yes, a real pleasure,’ he murmured. ‘For both of us.’ He was in for an interesting week.
Matt rode the glass elevator to the Melbourne offices of McGregor Architectural Designs, watching a rain shower draw a grey curtain across the cityscape. He never failed to feel the thrill of the ride up to his office on the forty-second floor. The award-winning precinct of glass and brass and green, with its unique interior-walled gardens cascading over half a dozen floors down towards a pool in the main lobby, was his first major achievement. Proof that one could turn possibilities into something real.
And his rapidly expanding Sydney branch was proof that success bred success. He’d worked bloody hard for it. In a roundabout way he had Angela to thank. His ex-lover was the reason his was one of the top architectural firms in Australia. After she’d given up trying to make something of their relationship and eventually walked out on him, he’d put his heart and soul into building his dreams.
Not that he blamed her for leaving. She deserved better than a guy who was incapable of the everlasting love and long-term commitment she’d obviously been looking for. And no-one could tell him he wasn’t pleased to know she’d found it with an accountant in rural Victoria.
The current Sydney project was nearing completion. He trusted his hand-picked team of specialist engineers to handle it for a couple of weeks, enabling Matt to think about relocating back to Melbourne in the near future. The city he’d been raised in. Home.
The elevator slid to a soundless stop and he stepped out. Light spilled through the floor-to-ceiling windows and over miles of pearl-grey carpeting and polished wood.
Joanie Markham, the first face the public saw, glanced up from the sleek polished reception desk as he approached, her middle-aged smile sparkling at him over her slim reading glasses.
‘Good morning, Joanie.’
‘Mr McGregor, good morning. We weren’t expecting to see you today. Didn’t Miss McGregor have something she wanted you to take care of?’
An image of Ellie shot into his mind with the force of a blowtorch. And not the image he should be focusing on—Ellie in cap and sexless khaki overalls wielding a gardening fork. Instead, he saw Ellie not in her little black dress and toothpick heels. He could almost taste that soft skin just below her jaw, her spiced berry scent…
She was something to be ‘taking care of’, all right. He pinched the bridge of his nose, concentrated on bringing his wayward libido under control.
‘Mr McGregor…are you okay?’
‘Fine. Fine.’ Amazed that his eyes had closed—not surprising with the lack of sleep he’d had over the past few nights—he blinked them open and pasted a reassuring smile on his lips. ‘All under control, Joanie.’
Moving past reception, he skirted desks, design boards, pot plants, greeting staff along the way.
‘Matt.’
He turned at the familiar sound of Yasmine’s voice. As usual, she looked stunning in a slim grey suit with a modest scrap of white lace at her cleavage, her raven-black hair tied back in a tidy knot. He admired her clean-cut lines from an architectural viewpoint.
As a friend, he valued her inner qualities. ‘Hi, Yasmine.’
The love of Yasmine’s life worked as a geologist at the Mount Isa mines in Queensland and was sometimes away from home for weeks at a time. She and Matt often found themselves unattached at work functions and had forged a friendship. If either had a problem, they used each other as a sounding board.
Didn’t mean he wanted to discuss his current problem, but he had a gut feeling he was about to be interrogated as she rounded her desk and accompanied him towards his corner office with its spectacular one-hundred-and-eighty-degree city views.
‘Well, aren’t you the man?’ she said with a smirk, the moment they entered.
He closed his door. Firmly. ‘Last time I looked, yes. You have something you want to say, Yaz?’
‘You and that little slip of a girl against the wall on Saturday night,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Then dashing after her that way. Hmm.’
‘I wasn’t dashing.’ He felt a prickle between his shoulderblades and rolled his shoulder. He didn’t pursue women. Didn’t have to. ‘I was making sure she got away safely.’ Hell. He set his laptop on his desk with a thunk, discarded his jacket and laid it carefully across the back of his leather chair. Was it him or was the thermostat set too high in here? ‘No law against that, is there?’
She slid her elegant backside onto the corner of his desk. ‘No. But…you? You’re usually so—’ she waved an airy hand ‘—totally cool and sophisticated and together with women.’
When he didn’t reply—because right now he really couldn’t think of a comeback—she cocked her head. ‘So, what’s her name?’
‘Ellie.’ He switched on his laptop, drumming his fingers on the desk while it booted up. ‘Fancy a coffee? It must be break time.’
‘Just had one, thanks. Are you seeing her again?’
He shot her a dark look. ‘As fate would have it, turns out she works for Belle, so the answer’s yes, I’m going to be seeing her again.’
‘Fate.’ She arched a smooth dark brow at his choice of words, eyes twinkling. ‘Serious stuff.’
He shrugged it off. ‘Not at all. Just one of life’s quirky coincidences.’
‘Of all the nightclubs in all of Melbourne…’ she purred, leaning closer. ‘Yep. Has to be fate.’
‘For heaven’s sakes, Yaz, give it a rest.’
As always, undeterred by his scowl, Yasmine swung one long leg while she twirled her fingers through a container of paperclips. ‘Are you bringing her to the staff do?’
‘Staff do?’
‘Have you forgotten? You approved the idea. Twenty-first of June—next Monday night for those who forget to look at the calendar. Formal or fancy dress or Celtic, yet to be decided. A money raiser. Charity to be determined by the boss.’ She tapped his chest. ‘That would be you.’
He grunted. Someone had come up with the idea in February for a winter solstice celebration as a morale booster, he remembered, but he’d been working in Sydney for most of this year and it had slipped his mind.
‘So are you going to bring her?’ she asked again.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Because…? He preferred the idea of something more intimate for their first date, not a roomful of colleagues garnering Ellie’s attention. When he and Ellie got together—and they would—he didn’t want an audience. ‘We’re not involved.’
‘Yeah, I noticed,’ Yasmine said dryly. ‘Bring her anyway. Make Belle happy.’
It would be a way to keep his word to Belle that he was looking out for