Chapter Nine

The phone rang. The shiny new answering machine picked up.

Sera’s own voice rang back at her. “You’ve reached the Cinderella Project.”

She’d never stop getting a kick out of that.

The message played out, beeped, then a cultured voice came over the line. “Grandmother, it’s Margot. For the zillionth time...call me.” When Margot added a breathy, “Please,” Sera had to sit on her hands so as not to pick up the phone.

“Darling!” Hazel said, aspirating from thin air.

Sera took her glasses off and rubbed thumb and finger over her eyes. “Hazel, Margot called again –”

Hazel waved a hand in the air, cutting her off. “My grandchildren are spoilt. It’ll do that one some good, learning how to wait.”

Every family was different, Sera supposed. But she couldn’t imagine ignoring a call from her dad. Add the mysterious Carly who never called, and it made her want to do even better for Hazel.

“Did you find time to look over the résumé I left for you? For an assistant?”

“Hmm?”

“She’s young, but bright. Mature beyond her years. Shall I bring her into work so you can meet her?”

“Yes, fine.”

Sera did a little fist pump under her desk.

“Now grab your things, darling. I’m taking you to lunch.”

“It’s a little before four o’clock.”

“Drinks then.”

Sera had once bumped into her professor at a pub near campus and been thrilled to receive a nod of recognition. But drinks? This felt too rare an opportunity to rebuff. That, and the fact that her backside was beginning to take on the shape of the throne beneath it.

Outside, a town car waited. Hazel’s driver – who turned out to be a seriously handsome young man named James – took them to the Rouen, one of the loveliest hotels in town.

Used to living off university cafeteria lunches for the past few years, Sera eyed off the glittering restaurant as they moved through the elegant gilt lobby, only to whimper as Hazel herded her towards a lift.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

On the twelfth floor Hazel swiped the key and opened a door leading to a suite with the most spectacular views of Sydney Harbour that Sera had ever seen.

Or they would have been if she actually noticed them. Hard to spot anything else, really, with a Murdoch blocking the way.

Pacing back and forth, he was, staring hard at his watch. In dark jeans, button-down shirt, and a sports jacket that clung to all his good bits, it was the first time she’d seen him completely clean. No tool belt, no days’ worth of dust clinging to the hairs on his arms, no beanie covering his thick hair.

Just the man. In. All. His. Glory.

He looked up at the clatter of Hazel’s heels. His dark eyes narrowed before flickering to Sera and sticking. While she slammed to a wavering halt his jaw hardened and grew eerily still.

She braced herself, trying to regain traction on the irritation she felt earlier. You kissed me. Then disappeared without a word. I didn’t like it. But being in the same room as the man in the warm, actual flesh she failed miserably.

“Murdoch, darling,” said Hazel. “Don’t you look spiffy? Stop glowering and go take a seat at that lovely looking dining table.”

His stillness was telling. The air seemed to seep from the room as his voice dropped a note or three. “You called me away from the site to show me a dining table?”

Seemed to Sera his usual barely-constrained patience was in danger of fraying.

“No, darling,” Hazel said. “I’d like you to sit at one.”

“You’re pushing the friendship, Hazel.”

“Only way to see how far I can.” Hazel patted him on the chest, then whistled as her hand bounced back.

Murdoch’s ire seemed to fracture and settle as he laughed at the move. His fondness for Hazel always won out. Another reason why Sera found it hard to be mad at him.

“You too, Serafina,” said Hazel. “Sit. Sit. And all will be revealed. Now, where did I put... Oh, I know.” With that, Hazel disappeared into an adjoining room.

Sera’s gaze flickered between the table where a basket of crusty bread sat waiting to be eaten and Murdoch, who continued exuding a Hulk-esque vibe.

Sera rolled her eyes, then moved to the table and took a seat.

A small bowl of fresh peonies sat in the centre of the table with squat apple pie-scented candles either side. Two menus lay beneath cutlery. Music played gently through hidden speakers nearby.

Maybe the bread called to Murdoch, too, as he tugged off his jacket, folded it over a chair and slid into the seat opposite her. Then his eyes lifted to hers, a flash of wild glinting behind the green, and her heart beat like it had never beaten before.

Nip it in the bud? She’d been seriously kidding herself. What ever this was there’d be no talking it out over a cup of tea...and mug of black coffee.

“Care to give me a clue?” he asked.

A clue? Did he mean, like, a penny for her thoughts? Could she...? Should she...?

“What does Hazel have up her sleeve?”

Oh. He wanted a clue about Hazel’s intentions, not hers. Because who was she to him? Not a woman he’d kissed a few days back, told he’d see at work on Monday and then simply not shown up. Oh, that’s right. She was.

The aggravation she’d been reaching for earlier tickled at the back of her subconscious. Sera clung onto it for dear life.

She picked up her knife, pressed the pointy end to the napkin, and twisted. “I have no idea what this is about.”

Then her gaze landed on the fork beside the knife. The beautiful flowers. And the man across the table.

From the outside it looked a heck of a lot like they were on a date.

A date arranged by her boss who was setting up shop as a professional matchmaker. The boss to whom Sera had admitted earlier that day that she thought Murdoch was a glorious hunk of manhood.

Sera’s frantic gaze went to the door behind which Hazel had disappeared. Was she even coming back?

“You know her better than me,” she said. “What do you think she’s up to?”

Murdoch leant back in his chair, his body stretching one way, his long legs stretching the other. Sera had to squeeze her feet as far as possible under her seat so as not to brush against him.

Even though she really wanted to brush against him. Then all over him. In such a big way. Maybe a date was what they needed. To see if the spark between them could be anything more.

She saw the moment Murdoch noticed the flowers. The menus. The candles. And he frowned – hard – as he seemed to come to the same conclusion she had.

She’d been baffled. He looked pissed.

Self-protective instincts finally coming back online the flood of feelings and fear coalesced into a quiet rage.

“You okay over there, tiger?” she said, her voice dripping with sugar.

His eyes lifted to hers. One eyebrow continuing the journey skyward as if asking her, Really, you’re going there?

“You’re all good? I wondered if maybe you had a little indigestion, the way you were glaring at the bread like it might physically hurt you.”

Murdoch’s mouth tilted, marginally. And beneath the mix of anxiety and anger, desire adrenalin pumped through her till she could barely sit still.

“I met Phil and Cyrus today,” she said, reaching for a breadstick before snapping it in half with a satisfying crunch.

“Is that right?” His voice had turned dry, deep, humming through the floorboards and into her curling feet.

“It was a surprise finding them there this morning rather than you and Guy, but they seem like a lot of fun. Nice, easygoing, just my kind of guys. I’m looking forward to working alongside them.”

“Phil’s gay,” he said, a muscle ticking in his jaw.

“Why does everyone feel a need to tell me that? Do I have some aura about me that makes me think I have the ability to turn gay men straight?”

This time his eyes stayed locked onto hers. Darkened. Heated. Told her she’d poked the bear.

Well, he’d poked her first. Kissing her like he had and then blithely sending other men to work in his place. She’d felt worse than foolish. It had hurt. Like a fist-sized bruise beneath her ribs.

The force if his presence made it hard to appear cool. She bit at her lip in an effort not to appear the exact opposite.

Then his gaze slowly made its way to her mouth.

“Sera,” he said, his voice a warning and a promise. A hum that shot through her veins like liquid heat. “About the other night.” He leaned forward, his hands inching across the table—

Hazel chose that exact moment to clickety-clack back into the room.

Slowly, but surely, Murdoch leant back taking his hands and whatever he was about to say with him.

“So quiet in here,” Hazel said into the tense silence. “I’d have thought you two would have been yakking up a storm.”

“We talked,” said Murdoch.

Not enough! Sera thought, whimpering internally at how close they’d been to the good bit. Or was it about to be the bad bit?

“About?” Hazel asked.

Murdoch caught Sera’s eye. “Phil, mostly. And indigestion.”

Hazel chuffed. “Murdoch, honestly. You’re an educated man. He’s an educated man. He can do better.”

Ignoring her, he tapped the menu. “I’m thinking of getting the lobster. You’re paying right, Hazel? Lobster, Sera? Hazel, are you in? Shall we empty the ocean?”

“Nothing for me,” Hazel said, a flick of her hair the only evidence Murdoch’s blunt displeasure got through. “But you two order anything you like. Lobster, bottle of wine, a chocolate fountain and a barrel of strawberries, as many oysters as your sweet bellies can handle. I don’t care. Whatever you need to get this done.”

Considering the litany of aphrodisiacs Hazel had sprouted off, there was no doubting where her mind was at. Sera’s mind, on the other hand, coughed and spluttered until her gaze landed on the papers Hazel held in her hands.

“Hazel, is that what I think it is?”

Hazel slid the copy of “The Paperwork” in front of Sera. “I believe people in your line of work call it beta-testing.”

Oh no. No, no no.

“I tried to rope my granddaughter Margot and her ‘partner’ into being my guinea pigs – mostly in an effort to prove how incompatible they are for one another – but she’s wilier than you two sweet lambs. Of my blood after all.”

“I can be wily.” Yeah, right. She might as well have been hogtied to the chair for all the fight she’d put up. Practically giddy at the thought of being taken out to drinks with her boss. Mother issues, anyone?

“Brass tacks; one set of ‘The Paperwork’ is for my clients, the other for prospective gentlemen. These are the foundation of the Cinderella Project, a way in to helping those who can’t help themselves.”

She looked pointedly at Sera, then Murdoch whose jaw clenched hard enough Sera thought he might crack a tooth.

“This document was created in a dry environment with the aid of a copywriter who I’m sure is two brain cells shy of a goldfish. But, in the end, we got there.”

Hazel plopped another copy in front of Murdoch of them.

Murdoch’s chair scraped on the floor as he physically backed away from the pages.

“Ask Guy to do it,” he said, running a hand up the back of his hair before his eyes hit Sera’s and he dropped his hand away.

Seemed she’d ruined the move for him forever. Pity; it was sexy when it wasn’t directed at her.

Murdoch went on. “He’d fill it out for fun. Or Cyrus. He needs a girl more than any man in the history of men.”

“This is important to me, Justin,” Hazel said, stilling Murdoch with a hand over his.

The look on his face, stern and reverent all at once, had Sera’s next breath catching in her throat.

“For all the luck I’ve received in my life,” Hazel said, “the men who’ve loved me, the family I’ve been so blessed to have, this is my way of paying it forward.”

Sera saw the moment Murdoch gave in. His nostrils flared and he rubbed a hand over his face before coming out the other side as calm as the eye of a storm. “Fine.”

Sera couldn’t believe it. He had to be the one to convince Hazel this was ridiculous. She needed the job way too much to say no!

“Excellent. Be as honest as you can because at the end of this process, I need to be able to find you both the perfect mate. The one who inspires you and challenges you and makes your hormones go crazy wild.”

Murdoch’s gaze found Sera’s and caught. Heat flared behind his eyes and she felt like she’d been turned to stone. A stone that had been sitting under a desert sun all day long.

“Theoretically, of course,” Hazel added slickly, though by that point her voice was a blur beneath the blood whumping through Sera’s ears. “I have to make a phone call, so I’ll give you gorgeous young things some privacy to do your thing.”

With that Hazel disappeared back into the room beyond leaving Sera alone with Murdoch, and the promise of strawberries and oysters.

Sera rubbed both thumbs against her temples. “Are we really going to do this?”

Murdoch frowned so hard at the papers she wouldn’t have been surprised it they turned to ash. “Sooner it’s done, sooner it’s over with.”

Realising he was right, Sera opened “The Paperwork”.

It looked scarier than the first time she’d read it. Ominous. As though if she went deep enough it might swallow her whole.

Then what if she came at it scientifically, like a research project, working through “The Paperwork” like she was a part of the team implementing it?

She found her glasses in her bag, slid them onto her nose, and lifted her pen.

It wanted to know her name, age, and vital statistics. She had no idea how much she weighed. Last time she’d checked her height had been at the doctor a few years ago.

Be honest? Be scientific? One page in and she was fudging the numbers. Lucky then that this was theoretical.

Having filled out the basics she moved onto the horror that was the down and dirty questions about her desires, her needs, her preferences. Some bordering on stalking, others on fifties housewife mentality, and others with serious feminist overtones. It was hard to keep up.

Especially when her dating experiences to date had been light on self-analysis.

Had to be “a”. Life was too short for anything else.

Sera ticked “c” even while she could feel Hazel tsk-tsking in her head.

At that one Sera did everything in her power not to look at Murdoch.

Was he up to that question yet? His pack seemed a whole lot thinner than hers. He probably only had to fill in watch brand, car type, bank balance, and lawyer’s name.

She scribbled the fastest answer in history and moved on.

Then came the question she’d been dreading. The one all the rest inexorably led towards.

Unable to help it any longer Sera glanced up to find Murdoch shaking his head while he answered a question. Her gaze roved over his thick hair, the creases around his eyes, his dark stubble. He rubbed a hand over his jaw, as if it helped him concentrate.

He’d told her he had projects running all over town. Yet there he sat, a mile outside his comfort zone, because a friend needed him.

He was tough, hard-headed, but he channelled it in ways that were good. And that touched her. Far more than a watch brand, car type, or bank balance.

He muttered and frowned more deeply as he scribbled down an answer.

A smile tugged at her mouth.

Then something bigger tugged behind her ribs. Tingled at the ends of her fingers and toes. And her head felt light, as if she’d been upside down for too long and stood up too fast.

Then Murdoch lifted his pen, read something that made him crack a smile before laughing softly; his eyes creasing deeply, his hand lifting to rub the back of his neck.

And like water tipping over the lip of a too full glass, tingling warmth eased through her body and ending up as a throbbing pulse behind her ears, in her belly. In her bones.

No. Panic rose into her throat. But it was too late.

She knew in that moment why her bones had been so quiet all this time – all her energy, all her gift, had been centred around her heart.

It was a tough sell, after all. A heavily protected fortress that usually only opened for her father, her closest friends, or a great car.

But it felt open now. Wide open, pulsing madly.

This was it. It was happening. And it was no crush, no chance to hook up for some fun. She had actual feelings for this man.

There would be no ignoring. No nipping anything in the bud. All she could do was follow and see where it took her.

The terms bitter and end slid into her subconscious.

She must have made a noise – feral, strangled, desperate – as Murdoch looked up. His dark gazed centred on her eyes. His long slow breath out flaring both nostrils.

“Wishing you could poke thumbtacks into your eyeballs yet?” she asked before he had the chance to baffle her with that deep voice of his.

He moved in his chair, easing back, settling in. It was all Sera could do to stop herself from nabbing a quick pic on her iPhone.

“Which bit are you up to?” he asked.

“Finances,” she fudged. “You?”

The quirk of his mouth and the gleam in his eyes told her all she needed to know. So his paperwork did have questions about...preferences after all.

Then he said, “Want to swap?”

Sera’s hand slapped down on her pages. And Murdoch laughed hard enough to shake the room.

In the quiet that came after, Hazel’s voice could be heard chatting away on the phone in the room next door. Then Murdoch sat forward, steepling his hands on the table. “You know why she asked us both here, don’t you?”

The candles? The soft music? The conversation in the kitchen earlier. Oh yeah, she knew. “If I say to beta-test ‘The Paperwork’ you’re going to correct me, aren’t you?”

He smiled. She suffered a glorious little death.

“Hazel’s got it in her head to set us up.”

“Yeah.” Sera breathed, or near enough. “Considering Friday evening that would seem a benign effort.”

“Do you mean the kiss?”

“Kisses,” she said, her voice coming out all husky. “Plural.”

“Mmm,” he said, a smile in his eyes, darkness in his voice. Like that dichotomy wasn’t exactly what she found so damnably attractive about the guy. “I feel like... There’s something you should know.”

Oh, God. He was married. Dying. Secretly in love with Phil and using her as a final test of his sexuality—

“About Hazel’s granddaughter.”

Sera’s next breath grew heavy in her chest. In her heart she hoped he meant Margot, the one with the partner who always sounded so indignant with Hazel on the phone. But she knew better. She’d known her name would come up again from the moment she’d first heard it. “You mean Carly.”

Murdoch rubbed his thumb across his chin and looked somewhere over Sera’s shoulder. And the darkness that bled into his eyes gave Sera chills.

“We met at uni. I was studying architecture. Carly was doing arts, or astronomy, or something. She changed majors pretty much weekly; if she went at all. It was early days of our acquaintance when my dad died suddenly. Heart attack. Turned out he’d left my family pretty flat financially. Things went bad for a while. I had to quit school, get a job, keep my brother at uni come hell or high water, look after my mum who pretty much fell apart. And there was Carly – wild, risky, untethered, the opposite of everything facing me at home. Not impressed in the least with her daughter dating a builder’s apprentice, Hazel’s daughter saw me as a tool belt with an eye on her trust fund. Half the reason Carly kept me around. But I didn’t care if they liked me or not. I needed what she gave me far too much. Respite from real life.”

He ran a hand through his hair till it settled into a rugged schmozzle.

“But while her parents came down on her harder and harder, urging her to settle down, to find a nice lawyer or banker, Hazel always treated me with respect. She asked questions about my life. Listened to the answers. And she loved Carly for being Carly.”

Murdoch sniffed, looked down at the table, scraped what looked like sparkly silver paint from under the edge of a thumbnail.

“When I realised how far from my life I’d drifted, and that she had every intention of drifting forever, I broke it off. Told her I’d help her in any way she needed, but that I couldn’t go on the way we were. It was in the middle of this wild party. She’d downed enough cocktails to and pills to knock out a weightlifter. Furious, she took my car. I can see the car fishtailing down the street. She careened off a cliff...”

Oh, God.

“Her death tore that family apart. Her parents blamed me.”

The quiet that followed made Sera wonder how much Murdoch blamed himself as well. She knew all about that feeling. Wondering where she’d gone wrong. How she could go back and fix things so that they turned out different. Pretending that she got past it, when, really, the big hurts never went away, never ceased colouring every decision she made. Poor poor guy.

“It’s been five years and Hazel has never faltered in her support of me. She helped me find my way out of the tunnel I hurtled back down after Carly died. Helped me make new plans, forge new goals. And we’ve been careful not to touch on my...romantic life since that time. So this...” He looked at Sera then, his beautiful eyes tinged with torment. “This turnaround is concerning.”

Struggling to find her footing with all that had been thrown at her feet, Sera moved in her seat. Her foot bumped his. He didn’t move it. And man did she light up all over at the scrape of his boot against hers.

So there were stumbling blocks. She’d never thought love was meant to be easy.

Not that this was love. Couldn’t be. Way so soon. Her father’s story was the exception to the rule and even that had ended terribly. But whatever it was, this spark, this tension, this connection grew more robust every chance they found themselves alone together.

Going on raw instinct, she sat forward, her hands moving towards Murdoch’s...

Before he drew them back and they disappeared beneath the table.

Leaving her hands hanging midair as Hazel came out of the room.

Hazel paused. Looked over the two of them. Murdoch brooding and Sera no doubt pale with embarrassment.

Hazel hovered on the verge of frowning. Then she raced over to a chair, grabbed her handbag and said, “Phone call’s out of the way so I’m off. I’ll collect you in an hour. Make that two. Have fun!”

The door slammed shut behind her.

And while Murdoch seemed happy to sit there and brood, Sera wasn’t.

What had happened to Hazel’s granddaughter was awful. The things some people had to go through in their lives didn’t bare thinking about.

But her dad’s motto had always been to keep on keeping on. It had held them both in good stead, helping both lead pretty happy lives, despite any and all setbacks that had got in their way.

Dodging around the issue wasn’t getting them anywhere. It was time for one of them to take a big step forward.

“About Hazel’s turnaround,” Sera said.

Murdoch’s eyes landed on hers.

“I may have admitted to her this morning that I thought you were...a glorious hunk of manhood.” She shrugged, as if it hadn’t taken every ounce of chutzpah she had to admit it out loud. “I know it doesn’t sound like it, but it was in an effort to stay her interest in us. It didn’t work.”

Murdoch shook his head. “She’s not ready for this.”

“Says you. Everything I’ve seen of Hazel tells me the complete opposite.”

Murdoch’s eyes turned so dark they were black.

While he clearly wasn’t warming to her train of thought, she was already tumbling down the path of no return. “In case you don’t realise it, Murdoch, I’m with Hazel on this. You make my head spin, and my knees tremble. You make my nerves go haywire and every other part of me melt when you look my way. And if that kiss – those kisses – the other night are anything to go by, I don’t think I’m alone here. I’m probably making a hash of this, because this is all new for me. To be honest, I’m totally out of my depth. But I do know I don’t want to turn my back on it. I’m not sure that I even can. So the real question is—are you ready for this? Are you ready for me?”

“Sera,” he said, his voice deep with warning.

But her theory when it came to the opposite sex had always been simple; see a guy, like a guy, kiss a guy. The time had come to test her theory on a man.

She took off her glasses and placed them carefully atop “The Paperwork”. Then she stood.

Murdoch closed his mouth on whatever it was he was going to say next. Much better.

She felt tipsy and turvy as her feelings grew sideways and out ways. But the surety that she was doing the right thing beat within her like a second pulse.

Purpose taking a hold, she moved around the table, eyes on the prize. What a glorious prize it was. Big, strong, beautiful, settled back in the chair with all the ease of a hungry lion. His dark, green eyes watching her, stuck on her, deciding what to do with her.

A part of her expected him to tell her to stop. After all he’d shared it would have been fair. But Sera didn’t feel like playing fair. She was falling here, and for the first time in her life she wanted to be caught.

It was enough for her legs to start shaking as she closed in. Her neck felt hotter than sunburn. Then sense memory kicked in, reminding her how it felt to have this man’s big hands on her. To kiss his mouth. And it got her the rest of the way.

He turned at the last. Knees facing her, fists clenched atop his thighs. Things could go either way.

It was her last chance to collect her bag and make a run for it. But that was never going to happen.

She walked into the gap between his legs, nudging them apart. Taking the banked heat and brooding dark eyes as signs he was as close to falling apart as she was.

Then she put a hand on his big, warm shoulder and sat astride Murdoch’s lap.

Okay, said a little voice in her head, now what?

For all her see a guy, like a guy, kiss a guy mantra, she was no great seductress. The times she’d made the first move had been on the back of a great pool shot, or high on the thrill of an engine kicking over for the first time in years. She’d never been taught – by words or example – how to toss her hair, or bat her lashes, or—

He moved beneath her and she gasped at the heat of him, the length, the breadth. Seemed all that girly stuff wasn’t necessary. Straddling a guy pretty much set the tone right off the bat.

Then with a groan so wretched it could have stripped paint from the walls, Murdoch slid his arms around her, pulled her tight, and kissed her senseless. Taking up right where they’d left off all way too many hours ago.

Need and longing burst through every impasse until all the tension in Sera’s body melted away.

And Murdoch... It was if he held himself together so tight when he let go, he really let go.

His hands ran up and down her back till she arched against him. His lips sipping, sucking, biting. His breath stealing hers.

The man had skill. And finesse. And lips so soft within the rasp of his stubble.

And were those little mewling sounds coming from her? Seemed they were.

His hands tucked beneath her backside and hitched her closer, lifting her like she was made of air. Then he leant back in the chair and...oh my.

All that for her?

She gripped the back of his chair with one hand, and ran the other up the hard, hot undulations of his big chest before digging her fingers into his hair as she rode him. The friction luscious. Muddling. Compressing until her whole world was that chair. This man.

“Murdoch.” She gasped, as the wild pleasure tightened inside of her like a delicious knot.

He swallowed whatever she was about to say in a kiss that tore her heart from her chest. Sweet, sensuous, and scrambling, he slid a hand down her arm, holding her hand for one aching second, before touching to her waist, her hip, and between them, caressing through her clothes. Coaxing, not letting up even as it all became too much.

She was so ready for him, so achingly sweetly ready, all the colours of her world turned white before exploding into a million points of luminous heat that rained down over her like sparks from a bonfire.

Reality bled slowly into the edges of her vision. Pleasure rippled through her in small languishing waves as Murdoch kissed her softly. Unhurried. Deep.

She felt devoured, inside and out.

And constricted. A short skirt would have gone down brilliantly.

Consumed, and yet still hungry for him, for all of him, she wanted skin on skin. She wanted it all.

Relinquishing her twisted grip on his hair, she ran her fingers down his neck, over his big shoulder.

Too many buttons on his shirt. Fingers too thick and numb to undo them with any kind of finesse – blood required elsewhere in her body – she grabbed a hold of the edges and ripped.

Pop, pop, pop went the mid three buttons, scattering noisily on the floor.

Murdoch pulled back. Panting. Eyes wild.

Sera tried closing the breach, patting the fabric together. But there had been some real desperation in the act, and the fabric was stretched and torn.

Too late now, she made to undo the top button with more decorum and less cavewoman but his hand closed over hers.

Then his hands moved to her waist and he literally picked her up and removed her, plonking her on the table, and forcing her to grip the edges so as not to topple right off.

“Murdoch?” she said, her voice croaky.

“I have to go.”

No rubbing hands up the back of his head in chagrin, or serious frown lines creasing his forehead. He was blank. More unreadable than she’d ever seen him.

He pushed back his chair so hard it rocked on its back legs. Then he whipped his jacket from the back of the chair, made a beeline for the door of the suite, and whoosh he was gone.

Sera threw her hands out sideways, looking about her as if hoping someone might have been watching on, someone who could agree that the man was crazy-making!

Hot, and cold, and...so, so hot.

She could still feel his hands on her back making her curl up and sigh, his bruising kisses crushing her lips, his heat wrapping itself about her as he held her so close, every touch on the edge of despairing.

And yet with all that going on, he’d still been able to walk away.

The man was a rock. Literally, she thought, squirming on the table at the memory of all that hardness locked away behind his zipper.

Eyes misting over red, Sera growled. Then howled in frustration. She might even have kicked the chair in which Murdoch had sat.

What was a girl to do? He kissed her like he wanted to get beneath her skin and live there. Yet a few torn buttons and he’d literally removed her from his person.

Was it time to admit defeat and slink back to her corner? Just working hard, acting the untouchable tomboy, going home to her dad every night.

Problem with that was slinking wasn’t her style. She had not inherited that fascinating facet from her mother.

She glanced around the room in the hopes of negating the sudden craving for chocolate.

With none to be had, she slid off the table, making sure her legs worked before heading back to her chair.

No. There was no going back. She’d looked Murdoch in the eye and told him how easily he unravelled her. Then he’d unravelled her further. And walked away.

She ran two hands over her hair, her gaze landing on “The Paperwork”, still open and incomplete. With shaking hands, she put her glasses back on.

The next question?

A week ago she’d have said plenty.

But when it came to Murdoch, she couldn’t stamp down the niggling fear that he might be the one man for whom it might be more along the lines of “d” no frickin’ clue.