The tropical sunlight played teasingly over my skin, warming me, though not as much as Grant’s gaze as it traveled the line of my bikini-clad body. The spray of the waterfall made his skin glisten as though each muscle had been made of polished marble, and the sun off the water wasn’t one bit more brilliant than his smile.

“Come on in, the water’s fine,” he drawled, beckoning me into the turquoise pool surrounded by bright flowers. “And don’t feel as though you have to bring the bathing suit…”

I slid into the pool, the rushing of the waterfall nearly drowning out the rapid beating of my heart, the cool water doing nothing to quench the fires he had lit inside of my veins…

Beep-beep beep beeeeep. Beep-beep beep beeeeeep.

“Goddammit, not again,” I muttered, and slapped the alarm off before whacking the pillow in frustration. When would my subconscious stop torturing me with visions of myself and Grant together again? When would I be able to get a good night’s sleep without torrid dreams which, to add insult to injury, got cut off right before the good stuff by the sound of my ancient alarm clock going off, leaving me with only the scent of Grant on the silk pillow—

Wait just a damn second.

My alarm made an entirely different sound than the one that had just gone off. I didn’t have any silk pillows, and they sure as hell didn’t smell like Grant.

Also, why could I still hear a waterfall?

Memories of last night came flooding back in HD and surround sound, and I sat upright in shock. I gazed around Grant’s bedroom. So…it hadn’t been a dream. There was the evidence right before me—the clothes on the floor, the rumpled sheets, the half-open door to the bathroom, steam drifting out of it from Grant’s morning shower…ah, so that was where my dreaming mind had gotten the sound of the waterfall.

I let my mind drift to last night, to the way Grant had consumed me with his mouth and his hands, to that tender look of passion in his eyes, to the—

I wanted to rest in the amazement and the afterglow, but unfortunately my common sense had woken up with the rest of my brain, and Grant wasn’t right there to send it back to sleep. Shit, what had I done? And what did it mean for him?

What did it mean for…us?

Was there an us?

The sound of the shower cut off abruptly, and I fidgeted with the blanket, suddenly shy.

Grant wandered back into the bedroom, naked except for the towel he was using to squeegee his hair.

Even as nervous as I was, I couldn’t help but take a moment to admire the long lean lines of his body, the way his muscles rippled as he walked. His cock jutted at half-mast from a triangle of golden-brown hair, and my fingers twitched on the blanket, wanting to trace a line down his chest until they rested just above him. I wanted to look up teasingly into his eyes as I very deliberately kept from touching where he wanted me to, and I wanted to say—

Grant’s head swung towards me and he started slightly as he saw that I was awake. “Ah. Good morning. Fancy running into you here.”

His eyes darted all over my body, as if checking that I was really there. A smile crept onto his face, and he couldn’t seem to decide to do with his hands, starting to lower the towel and then raising it again as drops of water began to drip onto his shoulders.

I couldn’t help but return the smile. God, but I loved him. I loved him when he was imperious and when he was nervous, when he was angry and when he was sweet. I loved each line of his face and every way they changed, in every mood and every situation. I could watch this beautiful man all day. “What a coincidence. Good morning to you, too.”

“I was thinking, ah, eggs?” he said. “Or fruit. Or pancakes. Toast? It occurs to me that I don’t know your favorite breakfast food yet.”

You, I thought but didn’t quite have the confidence to say. “All those sound good. Any of those. I mean, one. Or two. You don’t have to get all of them.”

“I, er.” He elected to lower the towel, finally, not quite covering himself but not keeping his arms awkwardly raised anymore. Now that was more like it. “I may have already ordered all of them.”

“Good,” I said. There was a dizzy, fizzy, soaring singing in my blood, as if I’d downed a glass of champagne just by looking at him. “That’s good.”

There was a silence, probably not as long as it seemed to be, where we were both frozen across the room from each other, me sitting and him standing, both of us naked and grinning our matching goofy nervous uncertain grins.

“Oh, come here!” I burst out finally, opening my arms, and he laughed—a real laugh, at ease and hardly nervous at all, and came into my embrace, pillowing his head against my breasts as I let myself fall back against the headboard, holding the man I loved.

“You don’t—I take it you don’t…regret it, then?” Grant said against my skin. He was curled up against me, seeming in that moment so vulnerable. So lost. “Staying over? Letting me…touch you?”

I stroked his hair gently, feeling yet more love bloom within my chest. How was it that each time I thought I couldn’t love this man more, I found there was yet room to grow? “Not one bit.” I hesitated, my hand stilling as my insecurities struck. “Do you?”

“Never,” he said, pressing a kiss against the swell of my breast as he found my hand and gripped it with reassuring warmth. “Never in a thousand years.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “Good.”

He chuckled gently. “My sentiments exactly.”

Silence fell again, a little awkward, but not entirely uncomfortable. I found myself wishing we could stay like this forever, and not have to rise and deal with all the problems in the world.

But the world wouldn’t wait for us.

“It’s all right,” I started, at the same time Grant began to say: “If you’d like to talk about it—”

We stuttered off into nervous chuckles, and I caressed his lightly stubbled face.

“How about we talk about it when this is all over?” I suggested finally. “We can figure out what we’re doing here—what this is—after we’ve figured out what Portia’s up to.”

He reached up and covered my hand with his, caressing my fingers. “That works for me.”

* * *

The first step in what I was mentally calling Operation Snowplow—‘cause she was an ice queen, get it?—was to figure out what Portia was plotting. And what better place to look for clues than the castle of the ice queen herself—by which of course I meant her office at Devlin Media Corp headquarters.

Grant and I had managed to keep a low profile all the way into the building—it helped that we went through a service entrance, and it was the weekend—but we were stymied by the appearance of Portia’s secretary bustling down the hallway towards her office door, holding a steaming latte she must have picked up on her lunch break.

“Damn,” I muttered, frustrated, peering around the corner as the secretary fumbled with a set of keys. “If we’d just gotten here fifteen minutes earlier!”

“Don’t lose hope yet,” Grant said. He stretched, showing off the way his tight shirt clung to his abs, and grinned wickedly as he undid several buttons on his shirt. “I’ve always wanted to play a homme fatale.”

“Isn’t that supposed to be femme—” I started, but Grant was already sauntering down the hallway towards his prey.

The secretary looked up and her whole face filled with the expression of a deer in headlights, if headlights had ripped abs and a smile so charming your panties gave up and fell to the floor of their own volition.

“Why, fancy running into you here, Emily,” Grant purred, resting an arm against the wall next to her so that he could loom into her personal space and, by way of a bonus, block her view of the rest of the hall.

“Oh, um, er, hi,” she stammered. I could see her flushing red over his shoulder. “Ms. Smith’s not in, I didn’t know you had an appointment, I mean—”

“No appointment,” Grant murmured, his voice low and intimate. “But lately I’ve been taking a rather…personal…interest in these matters.”

The secretary blushed so hard I was amazed that there was any blood left for the rest of her body.

Grant ran his hand along her sleeve. “I like the way this feels,” he said. “So soft.” His hand lingered right on the collar, just where the fabric met her skin. “Your hair looks soft too.”

“I—I—I—” Emily the secretary stuttered like a faulty tape recorder.

Grant slid his arm around her shoulder, one finger playing with a ringlet of her hair. “It’s a pity Portia isn’t here, but it does give us some time alone—to discuss business, of course.”

“Of course,” Emily echoed, dazed.

Grant began to lead her down the hallway. “Perhaps we could discuss the matter over wine…I know a nice intimate restaurant not too far away…you can take a break, can’t you?”

“Intimate,” she whispered, gazing up into his eyes as though someone had written a winning lottery number there.

“Tell me, Emily,” Grant’s voice carried to me as they disappeared from sight, “do you believe in mixing business with pleasure?”

Meanwhile, around the corner, I was rolling my eyes so hard I almost sprained them. He was going to give that poor girl a heart attack. And if her choice of employment was any indication, she already had enough trouble in her life.

But there’d be time later for pitying those caught in the crosshairs of Grant’s charm.

Right now, it was time for a little good old-fashioned breaking and entering.

Sending up a little mental thank-you to my bad-influence high school boyfriend for teaching me how to pick locks—I should definitely send him a fruit basket or something, did they let you send fruit baskets to prison?—I pulled a bobby clip from my hair and had the lock jimmied in less than thirty seconds. That’s what you get for refusing to upgrade to the passcard system, Portia.

I began to rifle through the papers on her desk. There wasn’t much—a dry-cleaning bill, a routine memo from accounting, and projections for quarterly growth. I had to rifle very carefully, taking note of exactly which spot on the desk I lifted each paper from; Portia’s office was a fascist’s dream, neat to the point of insanity. Papers were crisp, mahogany and steel were polished, and personal effects were nonexistent.

I found her datebook in the second drawer on the left, and quickly took several photos of its contents for the next week with my phone. A moment’s thought, and I copied her call sheet too. I couldn’t tell now whether or not they held any useful information, but give me a little more time, Google, and all of Grant’s passwords to the company database, and there was a good chance that they would paint me a distinctly un-pretty picture of what Portia Smith was up to.

The computer was the only thing in the office that looked in less than pristine condition; my guess was that Portia didn’t relish showing her age by having to ask for help with an upgrade. I quickly logged in using the password Portia had helpfully jotted down on her memo pad, and my eyes were immediately drawn to a file on the desktop labeled ‘Accounts Payable.’

Now, what was such a boring and out-of-her-job-description sounding file doing right there on her desktop, where she could immediately access it? I clicked it, and whistled under my breath.

It was an entire presentation on the takeover. Undeniable proof in black and white.

I almost clicked on the Google Chrome icon, but stopped myself just in time. Tempting as it was to send myself the file in a few seconds, the fewer digital tracks I left on Portia’s computer, the better.

Time to do this old school.

I hit Print instead, and then almost had a panic attack as Portia’s ancient printer started up, wheezing and groaning like an asthmatic with a face full of pepper spray as it struggled to heave and jerk and finally wheeze out the ten-page document, at a nail-biting rate of one minute per page.

I held my breath. What if someone else was working nearby and came to investigate the noise? What if Grant was on his way back with the secretary and this alerted her that someone had broken in? Maybe I should have e-mailed it after all?

But either no one was around, people were around but were also deaf, or everyone in Portia’s workspace vicinity had grown accustomed to the sound of a dying elephant every time she wanted a hard copy of something, because no one came knocking.

When the printer finally surrendered all the pages to me, I grabbed them and made a quick circuit of the room, doing my best to put everything back exactly as I found it. I locked the door behind me, smirked at my good fortune, and ran around the corner right into Grant Devlin’s broad chest.

“Well, hello, young lady,” he said with a smirk. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“We’re totally about to school Portia’s ass,” I said, breathless from both the impact and his smile. I narrowed my eyes in a mock-glare. “How’d the ‘intimacy’ go?”

“It was quite fun! I had to let her down gently after awhile, of course, but I’ve set her up with a nice accountant from NYU.” He slid an arm around my shoulder. “You know, you’ve quite corrupted me. I could get used to you being my partner in crime.”

* * *

The mood was tense in Grant’s office where we pored over the documents I had pilfered. Earlier had been fun, and our budding relationship do-over was still giving me butterflies, but we couldn’t afford to focus on things like that now. We had to be all business.

I was just sitting in his lap to save space, that was all.

It was a very solid business decision. It definitely felt solid.

“It looks like she’s planning to do this at the shareholder’s meeting,” I said, trying to ignore how good Grant’s neck smelled, only inches from my lips. I could just reach out and lick—no, BUSINESS. “She wants them to vote on a takeover from Pinker Inc.”

“She’s stabbing us all in the back,” Grant said grimly. His hands were at odds with his angry words, gently massaging my shoulders. “She’s going to bait the shareholders with all these cost-saving measures—”

“By which she means, firing everybody who isn’t nailed down,” I put in.

“And the shareholders just might go for it,” Grant said with a grim nod. “The payoff is certainly big enough. But the national employees are in for a royal screwing.” A frown creased his brow. “And in this economy, it won’t be easy for them to bounce back.”

“What are we going to do?” I asked. “How can we fight this?”

Grant’s face set in an expression as determined as it was sexy. It was really difficult to decide whether to get out of his way or jump his bones that very second.

“No way is she stealing our company out from under my nose,” he growled, his eyes hard and resolute. “I’m going to fight for what’s mine.”

And I realized, looking at him, that so was I.