CHAPTER ONE
“Could you arrange for my laundry to be collected from my usual dry cleaners? There should be three suits and seven shirts. I’d like a meatball sandwich from Carlo’s for lunch, light on the sauce. I’ll also need you to work late this evening. Probably until seven. And could you book our plane tickets for London next week? First class. For both of us this time, Karen. I don’t want the same fiasco as the last time. Having you sitting in economy class meant I couldn’t work during the flight. Oh, and could you get me a coffee right now? I have the hangov— Who the hell are you and why are you sitting behind Karen’s desk?”
The man speaking had come to an abrupt halt on the opposite side of the slab of black marble that was his PA’s desk.
The same man who, minutes ago, had begun talking in that rasping English accent the moment he stepped off the elevator, but had now finally looked up from scrolling through the information on his cell phone and realized he wasn’t talking to his PA at all.
Ellie would be lying if she didn’t admit to feeling grateful for having that brief time lapse after her first glance of Knox Wilder, in the flesh, when the London-born New York CEO of Wynter Security arrived on the thirtieth, and penthouse, floor of the building where the company’s offices were situated.
She had seen photographs of Knox, at the society events he had necessarily to attend as head of the company’s New York office, sometimes with a beautiful woman hanging off his muscular arm, sometimes not.
Those photographs had not done the sheer presence of the man justice.
His gruff voice, with its distinct English accent, was also sexy as sin.
The combination of that husky voice and his stark good looks was a lot, Ellie acknowledged.
There was something savage about Knox Wilder, despite the gray bespoke suit and white fitted shirt and perfectly knotted silver tie he was wearing on his four-or-five-inches-over-six-feet-tall frame, along with highly polished black leather shoes on his very large feet.
Because that tailored suit and other accoutrements to his position in this prestigious company were only a dismissive nod to what other people expected of him.
The rest of him was anything but the traditional businessman. His head was completely shaved with a dark stubble. His shoulders, chest, and abdomen were wide with toned muscle, his legs long, with muscular thighs. There were also several colorful tattoos visible above the collar and beneath the cuffs of his shirt.
His hands were so big, they looked as if they could easily squeeze the life out of someone before dinner and another couple of people after he'd eaten.
He actually looked more like one of the members of the Mafia she’d seen on the covers of romance books than one of the CEOs of a worldwide security company.
Or a taller Jason Statham lookalike.
He certainly had the same gruff and sexy English voice as the actor. What he didn’t look or sound like was the CEO of a billion-dollar security company that had offices worldwide and helped actual countries with their security, as well as companies and individual people.
None of which, Ellie inwardly admonished, was of any immediate relevance to this current situation.
Having finished sending a text, Ellie now placed her cell phone on the desktop and sat up straighter in the chair situated behind the marble-topped desk that stood as sentinel outside the CEO’s office. This man’s office.
Ellie had always had every intention of explaining the situation to him from the onset. Hopefully, there would be less conflict that way.
Although, she wouldn’t count on it when Knox Wilder was already looking so combative.
Considering Ellie had avoided any sort of romantic entanglements for the past six months, when even the thought of being attracted to a man had made her feel nauseous, she couldn’t possibly have foreseen how she was going to be so instantly physically aware of Knox Wilder’s appearance.
But, at the age of forty-three, he was undoubtedly the most physically attractive man Ellie had ever set eyes on, with a slightly dangerous edge that made him even more so. He also had the most piercing and intelligent brown eyes she had ever seen, along with a sharp and stubborn jaw beneath the dark scruff that looked as if it could literally cut glass.
Ellie’s mouth tightened. “I’ll deal with your latter comments first and then return to the former ones.” She drew in a long breath before speaking. “Firstly, my name is Ellie Hall. Because I haven’t yet received a call updating me on the situation, I can tell you that Karen was driven to the hospital by Geoff at two o’clock this morning, and she is probably still in the process of giving birth.”
Those brown eyes widened. “Karen went into labor early?”
She nodded. “Only by a few weeks. Apparently, that often happens with twins.”
“Twins!”
“She didn’t tell you? Of course she didn’t,” Ellie answered her own question. “She mentioned you have been particularly…stubborn in regard to listening to updates on her condition.”
His eyes narrowed. “I?—”
“A condition,” Ellie continued firmly, “that, even if she wanted to, would have prevented her from flying anywhere with you next week when she would have been in her ninth month of pregnancy.”
His cheeks flushed at the rebuke. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
