LIBBY, appalled and embarrassed by her outburst, struggled for composure. ‘He is not a man who inspires mild feelings,’ she admitted with a little laugh.
‘Am I interrupting?’
Libby loosed a gasp and turned her head jerkily, her complexion going through several dramatically rapid shade changes before she faced the man framed in the doorway, her eyes wide and horror-filled in a face that was porcelain pale.
Rafael Alejandro, his face a stony mask, levered his lean length from the doorframe, channelling dark, mean and brooding from every perfect, arrogant pore as he tipped his dark head, displayed a perfect set of white teeth and divided his nasty sardonic smile between her and Jake.
Her outburst replaying in her head—he had obviously heard every word—Libby bit her lip to restrain the groan that rose in her throat, utterly helpless to control the rush of liquid heat that surged through her body.
She watched as he levered his shoulder off the doorframe and straightened up to his full impressive height before sauntering into the room with the feline grace of a jungle cat.
‘I was just—’ ‘Yes, I heard.’
Libby swallowed, her cheeks flaming, and lowered her gaze, struggling to regain a semblance of control. She had meant every word she had said in her no-holds-barred summary of his character; her only inaccuracy lay in omission.
You could not describe Rafael Alejandro without mentioning the trivial detail that he was arguably—no argument in Libby’s mind—the most incredible-looking man on the planet. But no description of his well-built body, chiselled features and sexy mouth could articulate the force field of arrogant, raw sexuality he projected.
It was something a person had to feel to appreciate. Libby was feeling it now, feeling it from her scalp to her toes.
She wondered if she was having a heart attack.
‘I am intruding?’ His questioning glance slid past Libby and to the man beside her.
Libby missed the social cue. ‘No … yes … that is …’ Libby stopped. Forced onto the offensive by sheer embarrassment, she snapped crankily, ‘What are you doing here?’
Rafael raised a brow and Libby bit her lip, feeling a total idiot.
‘That is, this is a surprise. Nobody told me you were coming.’
‘I had no idea I was meant to inform you.’
Jake, who had been silent, stepped in to fill the awkward silence. ‘Jake Wylie …’
For an awful moment Libby thought that Rafael was not going to take the hand extended to him.
The contact was brief. After subjecting him to a stare that made the ice cap look warm and cosily benevolent by contrast Rafael ignored the other man totally and turned his attention to Libby.
‘Right, well, I must be going. It was very nice to meet you and it was lovely to catch up, Libby …’ Jake threw her an apologetic look.
There was a silence after the door closed behind Jake, broken eventually by Rafael.
‘You have been putting your time to good use, I see. I am all for thinking outside the box, but I think you might have the wrong idea about what skills are required when running a light manufacturing company.’ His lips curled into an expressive sneer of disdain.
The smiling insult drew a gasp from Libby. ‘That was totally uncalled for!’
‘In this building I do not receive lessons on manners, I deliver them!’ The stinging rebuke brought a fresh rush of anger to her cheeks.
‘And actually I think that under the circumstances I was admirably restrained. You are meant to be shadowing Rob. Instead I find you making out with someone on your desk. I’m assuming you have worked your way through the football team.’
‘I was not on my desk … or making out,’ she added hastily. ‘And Mr Monroe … Rob … he is sick.’ She shook her head and added, ‘Football team?’
‘Why was I not told?’ ‘How should I know?’
A nerve ticked along Rafael’s jaw. ‘Who is responsible for giving you this junk?’ He picked up the file on top of the pile and waved it towards her.
Libby deflected the question. ‘Why—are you going to bully her too?’ She might not like the woman, but she would not put her worst enemy in Rafael Alejandro’s firing line.
He stared at her face, betraying little beyond blank incredulity. ‘Bully?’
She lifted her chin another defiant inch and met the blaze of his golden stare head-on. ‘You heard me.’
She saw something dark and dangerous flare in Rafael’s mesmeric eyes and swallowed, moistening her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue.
‘Please go on, you fascinate me.’ At one level Libby did know that this was probably the worst advice in the world to take. But she was way past taking the sensible option. Besides, this situation was past fixing by grovelling. It was obvious she’d already totally blown whatever chance she had of saving her father from financial ruin, so why hold back?
What was the worst he could do?
Libby’s thoughts veered away from the question. ‘You know what my definition of a bully is?’
Rafael’s dark brows twitched into an interrogative dark line above his hawkish nose as he folded his arms across his chest, his eyes trained on her heaving bosom, and he murmured, ‘I feel sure you are going to tell me.’
Libby’s chin lifted. ‘A bully is someone who browbeats, humiliates and harasses someone else who is in no position to respond.’
With each successive indictment the skin pulled tighter across the fabulous bones of his face. Libby couldn’t drag her eyes from the frenetic nerve pumping away like a time bomb in his lean cheek.
‘They only pick on people who can’t or won’t fight back!’
Rafael ground his teeth. ‘Nothing,’ he gritted, ‘would have pleased me more than if your friend had taken a swing at me.’
‘My friend is a gentleman, but I might punch you myself! In fact I should. I’d love to know what you said to make half the damned building think that I’m only here because we’re …’ The hint of angry colour in her cheeks deepened to a mortified scarlet as Libby shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
Rafael put the file down and began to flick through the rest of the paperwork on her desk. A few files down he began to frown. ‘What doesn’t matter?’ Having reached the bottom of the stack, he turned his gaze on Libby and arched a questioning brow.
Libby sighed and began to wish she’d never introduced the subject.
‘They think we’re sleeping together.’
The sardonic humour in his eyes vanished as a heavy frown settled on his sternly beautiful features. ‘Who has said this to you?’
‘Nobody has said anything, but I can see that’s what they’re thinking.’
Rafael picked up an empty paper cup from the desk, crushed it between his fingers before lobbing it casually into the waste-paper bin several feet away. ‘You are paranoid.’
Libby clenched her teeth; his accented drawl really got under her skin. ‘I am not paranoid!’
‘And fearful of gossip.’
Libby’s chin went up. ‘I’m not afraid of gossip.’
‘Just afraid your lover will think you’re sleeping with another man.’
Libby responded to the goad without thinking. ‘Jake is not my lover.’
A slow smile spread across his lean face. ‘Good, it is not my habit to share my women.’
Breathing through the shameful stab of lust low in her belly, Libby struggled to look amused
‘Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?’ It should, so why didn’t it? ‘I know it’s your life’s mission to put the cool in Neanderthal but really … my woman?’ On the receiving end of another powerful kick of lust, she added crankily, ‘And even if I was it would hardly make me feel special, would it, to be one amongst so many? What … what are you smiling at?’ she demanded, viewing the sudden change in his expression with suspicion.
‘I too have been very frustrated,’ he admitted bluntly.
The colour rushed to her face as Libby shook her head in denial—if only it were so easy to deny the illicit thrill that had edged the tingling sensation inside past uncomfortable and deeply into painful territory. ‘You’re deluded. Do you honestly think that every woman you have met casually sits at her desk lusting after you?’ Maybe not everyone but Libby was willing to bet there were quite a few.
‘We did not meet casually. You almost killed me.’
‘And you’re never going to let me forget it!’
If only she could let herself. Her brain had recorded and stored every second of the time she had spent with him along with a few that hadn’t happened—yet!
Libby’s gasp of horror locked painfully in her aching throat; her eyelashes lowered in a protective sweep. The moment she started acting as though this was inevitable she was in trouble.
‘Will you stop staring at your shoes and look at me?’ ‘No.’
Rafael’s lips curved into a reluctant smile. ‘You sound like a sulky five-year-old. Look,’ he said, dragging a hand through his hair as he took a step closer. ‘Neither of us chose for this to happen but it has.’
Libby shook her head. ‘Nothing has happened.’
Rafael, not a man inclined to wrap things up with pretty words, opened his mouth fully expecting to hear himself say something along the lines of, I want to have sex with you, with the option of throwing in the additional information of the imminent risk to his sanity if he didn’t.
Instead he heard the sentence, ‘I would like to get to know you better,’ come out of his mouth.
She did look at him then. The astonishment on her face did not even begin to approach the shock he was feeling, but then she did not know that he had just said something he had never even thought, let alone voiced, in his life.
The wheels of Rafael’s mind began to turn. For whatever reason he had given voice to subconscious thoughts he would have been more comfortable ignoring, but they were out there now.
He had not so much actively avoided emotional entanglements as not felt the need to become involved. He was self-sufficient and not into sharing himself with others.
Without him even realising it, his interest in a woman had for the first time in his life gone past the physical. Not only had Libby aroused a primal hunger that refused to subside, she had somehow got into his head.
‘Because you’re interested in my mind and not my body.’
Rafael cut her an impatient look. ‘And my body does nothing for you at all, I suppose.’ He flicked the button on his jacket with one finger, a slow mocking smile curving his lips as he held his hands wide.
A distracted expression drifted across Libby’s face as she was unable to refuse the unspoken invitation in his actions—her first mistake. The next was to allow herself to imagine what lay beneath the silk shirt he wore, to allow the image of hard satiny skin and taut muscle to form in her head, an image so strong, so tactile, that it seemed more real to her than the pain she felt as her teeth dug into the soft flesh of her lower lip.
Libby felt things twist and tighten low in her belly, her appreciation sliding seamlessly from the aesthetic into primitive fascination.
The effort of dragging her eyes away brought a sheen of moisture to her smooth brow. She was horrified. She had never felt this level of fascination for a man’s body before. She was mad with herself for being so weak and with him for being so damned sure of himself.
So damned unbelievably gorgeous. ‘You don’t like what you see.’
‘I see a man who has serious self-esteem issues.’
Despite the frustration that was stretching his frayed control to the limit, the sarcastic sally drew a laugh from Rafael.
‘Look, the fact is we have chemistry.’ A week to think about little else and that is the best you can come up with, Rafael? Chemistry!
Chemistry was a pathetically inadequate word hardly covering the wanting that had filled his every waking moment since he had laid eyes on her. The primitive power of the reaction she evoked in him was like nothing he had ever experienced.
‘You know I’m attracted to you.’
Libby turned her head, ashamed of the flutter of excitement low in her belly.
‘And don’t pretend that knowledge does not excite