Natalie sipped her coffee trying to decide when would be the best time to call Donovan Steele. She and her aunt had worked on the schedules, and after shifting a couple of customers from Friday to Thursday—with their consent, of course—they had come up with a workable solution to accommodate Mr. Steele’s request.

      She was working on the inside today, from the office set up in her aunt’s home, doing payroll and ordering supplies, and had been, for the time being, successful in talking her aunt into taking it easy and getting some rest.

      Checking the clock on the wall once again, she figured Mr. Steele should be in his office by now and decided to give his business number a try. Taking a deep breath, she picked up the phone, glanced at the business card her aunt had attached to his file, and punched in the numbers. It didn’t take long for his secretary to answer.

      “The Steele Corporation. Donovan Steele’s office. May I help you?”

      “Yes, may I speak with Mr. Steele?”

      “Who may I say is calling, please?”

      “Natalie Ford.”

      “Please hold on, Ms. Ford.”

      Natalie pushed away from the desk to glance out the window, trying to get her mind off the fact that in a few moments she would be hearing the sound of Donovan Steele’s voice again. Maybe she was suffering from a case of concentrating too much on work and not enough on the opposite sex. Why else would the sight of a good-looking man with a sexy voice have her mind flipping around like a fish out of water?

      It wouldn’t take much to close her eyes, recall and visualize yesterday’s encounter with Donovan Steele. After leaving his place, driving over to her next client’s home had been difficult. She’d been overheated. Blatantly hot. If she could have gone somewhere and stripped down to her panties and bra she would have been tempted to do so.

      And the sad thing about it was that her body’s high temperature had had nothing to do with Charlotte’s weather. It had been a hot day in July, true enough, but not a scorcher. She could now attribute her fever yesterday to Mr. Steele.

      Mr. Steele.

      He had tried several times to get her to call him Donovan, and she had refused to do so—would continue to do so. To call him by his first name sounded too personal, and she didn’t want to have that kind of relationship with him. She refused to have any sort of a relationship with him.

      Her thoughts snapped back to the present when she heard the phone click in her ear and then…“Hello, this is Donovan.”

      Immediately, her heart began pounding, and even though she didn’t want it to, her body began heating up, similar to the way it had yesterday. The man had such a sexy voice.

      “Hello.”

      At the sound of that voice again, she suddenly realized that she had not responded to his first greeting and quickly said, “Yes, Mr. Steele, this is Natalie Ford from Special Touch Housekeeping Agency.”

      “Yes, Natalie, what can I do for you?”

      His words flowed across her body like a stroke of some explosive fluid to a simmering brushfire. She’d never concentrated on the sound of a masculine voice before, especially not to this degree. And the sound of one had definitely never even come close to giving her a sexual thrill. For her to come this unglued meant she had gone without male company too long. What had it been now? Five years?

      “Natalie?”

      She sighed and pushed a lock of hair back from her face while trying to ignore the way he said her name. His sensuous tone stroked something within her that so far no man ever had stroked fully before.

      Passion.

      While growing up she’d known about her mother’s wild and reckless ways, and had gone through life determined not to make the same mistakes Lorene Ford had made when it came to men. As a teen, instead of letting the pursuit of boys occupy most of her time, Natalie had found solace in her books.

      And when she’d gone off to college, being younger than the other students had been challenging. That’s when she had met Karl Gaines. Like her, he had been totally absorbed in his books…or so she had thought. She had found out the hard way that he’d been just as cunning, controlling and manipulating as he’d been brilliant.

      And he had been cruel. He had eroded her confidence as a woman and her ability as a mate to keep the man she loved satisfied sexually. He hadn’t minced words when he’d talked about her lovemaking abilities, or lack of them.

      Even with the disappointment of that brief affair with Karl, Natalie truly believed that somewhere deep inside of her an intense amount of stored-up fire was just waiting to be released. But she was determined to keep it under lock and key, although a part of her yearned to set it free.

      “Yes, Mr. Steele,” she finally said, determined to keep things on a professional level between them. “I’m calling to let you know that Special Touch will be able to accommodate your request to have one of our employees—”

      “One of your employees?” he cut in sharply to ask.

      Natalie knew why he’d done so and modified her words. “I will be there every Friday, and when my aunt gets back on her feet, she will resume her duties as your personal housekeeper.”

      There. She hoped he was satisfied. She shifted, uncomfortable in her chair suddenly, feeling as if she’d just placed herself at his beck and call for six weeks. She shrugged off the idea, thinking that she would probably be in his home no more than two to three hours each week.

      “That sounds better, Natalie. A whole lot better. Thanks for calling to inform me of the change. It says a lot for your aunt’s agency to try and work with her clients this way.”

      Natalie rolled her eyes. “We aim to please,” she said tartly and immediately saw the error in doing so when he replied.

      “Aim to please? Um, that’s good to know. Goodbye, Natalie.”

      “Goodbye, Mr. Steele.”

      Natalie hung up the phone thinking at least she had gotten through the conversation relatively unscathed and not feeling as if she’d been stripped naked. But for some reason she had been left with the impression that she wouldn’t be so lucky the next time around.