The Party Starts at Midnight. Lucy King

raked his hands through his hair and gave his head a shake but it didn’t dispel the sleep-induced fuzziness, the bewilderment or the thundering of his heart.

      What the hell had happened? he wondered dizzily. What had woken him? Not a nightmare, that was for sure. So had it been a noise? A movement? What?

      Rolling his shoulders, Leo blinked once, twice, rubbed his gritty eyes with the heels of his hands as he struggled to work it out, and then, quite suddenly, he froze. His entire body tensed and his ears pricked because, hang on, what on earth was that?

      It sounded like a breath. To his left. Being released, slowly, carefully, lengthily, as if the owner didn’t want him to hear, and ending in a sigh, a whimper, or maybe a moan.

      Whatever it was, with the adrenalin still pumping through his veins, preparing his body and mind for fight, Leo dropped his hands and snapped his head round. And nearly leapt a foot in the air because there beside his bed, sitting back on her heels with one hand clamped over her eyes and the other clasped to her chest, was a woman. Slim, reddish-blonde and wearing a dark blue dress with a bow thing tied round her waist. Unknown, uninvited and apparently in as much shock as he was.

      Glancing down and seeing the dramatic effect that the dream he’d been having had had on him—which was presumably the reason she’d covered her eyes and explained the harsh, ragged breathing that was making her chest heave—Leo grabbed the sheet and yanked it over his lap.

      ‘Who the hell are you?’ he snapped, his voice rough with sleep and astonishment.

      ‘Abby Summers,’ she said quickly, hoarsely.

      The name didn’t ring any bells, but then maybe that wasn’t surprising because nothing was ringing any bells right now apart from the fact that he was naked and not alone. ‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’

      ‘Looking for you.’

      ‘On your knees?’

      ‘Long story,’ she said. ‘Not important.’

      Wasn’t it? Who knew? Leo could barely think straight, let alone work out what might or might not be of importance here. He was too busy processing the fact that there was a strange woman in his bedroom, on the floor with her eyes covered and her breath coming in tiny gasps, making him think of blindfolds and what her gasps might turn into if he suggested she join him actually on the bed instead of beside it. All of which was so unbelievably out of character, so wholly inappropriate and so crazily beyond the realms of his usually rock-solid self-control, his brain would have reeled had it been up to it.

      ‘How did you get in?’ he muttered, totally thrown by how badly he wanted to grab her and roll her beneath him when he knew absolutely nothing about her or why she was here, and thinking that, damn, that dream had a lot to answer for.

      ‘The lift.’

      ‘It’s locked.’

      ‘Your brother gave me his key card.’

      His brother? Huh? Now what was going on? Leo rubbed a hand over his face in an effort to wake himself up and get a grip on things. ‘Jake did?’

      ‘Yes.’ She nodded and the light caught her hair, making it glint gold—no, copper—no, gold—and, momentarily distracted, he wondered what it would be like to pull it down and run his fingers through it. If it would feel as silky and soft as it looked. How many words there were to describe its colour.

      Flexing his fingers, then folding his arms and shoving his hands into his armpits just in case they got ideas, Leo hauled his concentration—such as it was—back on track. ‘Why?’

      ‘So I could come up and find you, of course,’ she said as if it couldn’t be clearer, which it wasn’t.

      But the mention of his brother seemed to have triggered his memory because snippets of the last conversation he and Jake had had were filtering into his head, slowly lifting the fog of confusion and, ah-h-h, now it was all becoming clear.

      The time of year.

      His mood.

      The mention his brother had made of a gift.

      Evidently Jake had followed up on his promise, and therefore Leo knew exactly who Abby Whoever-She-Was was, and what she was here for.

      ‘Right,’ he muttered, not really up to working out how he felt about what his brother had done. ‘I get it. You’re here to cheer me up.’

      There was a pause, during which he watched her mouth open, close, then open again to emit a slightly startled, ‘What?’

      ‘Jake said he was going to send me something to make me feel better,’ he said flatly. ‘And here you are, all dressed up like a gift. In my bedroom. Virtually in my bed. So who are you? Someone who owes him a favour? One of his desperate-to-please exes? Or a professional?’

CHAPTER TWO

      FOR WHAT FELT like the longest time Abby didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. She couldn’t. She was speechless. Stunned into immobility.

      So much for explaining why she was really here, as she’d been about to. And so much for thinking that she was muddling through what was a hideously awkward situation reasonably all right.

      That assumption had been well and truly shot out of the water because had he really just said what she thought he’d said? Implied what she thought he’d implied? Did he really think that she’d been sent to seduce him? In a professional capacity? Supplied by his brother?

      Her mind was blank with shock and she was reeling all over again because OK, so he didn’t know who she was—the meetings she’d had had always been with Jake, who was the face of the company while Leo very firmly remained in the background, and from what she understood he’d been away a lot of the time anyway—but seriously? Didn’t he recognise her name? Hadn’t he received any of her emails? And was this really the way his supposedly razor-sharp brain worked?

      With her jaw about to hit the floor, Abby quite forgot the purpose of the hand-to-eye combo, which wasn’t just to protect his modesty but also to stop her from ogling his body, lowered her hand and stared at him.

      And immediately wished she hadn’t because prone and passed out he’d been impressive, but sitting upright, radiating energy, tension, and well, sheer presence, he practically robbed her of breath, never mind speech.

      Not that he was exactly waiting for an answer even if she had been able to provide one. No. Now, to add insult to injury, he appeared to be checking her out, looking her over, slowly, lazily and thoroughly, his gaze sliding from her eyes to her mouth to her breasts and lower, lingering over every available inch of her.

      And dammit if her body didn’t begin to respond to his scrutiny. To her appal, she could feel it happening. The heat pooling in her stomach. The tingles prickling her skin. The tension winding through her muscles and the beginnings of desire, intoxicating and heady and so inappropriate on so many levels she didn’t know who she was more disgusted with, herself or him.

      ‘Well?’ he asked, finally raising dark, inscrutable eyes to hers and arching an eyebrow.

      ‘I’m none of the above,’ she said tartly, silently adding you obnoxious jerk and feeling her estimation of him—which had previously been pretty high given everything he and his brother had achieved—plummet through every one of the thirty floors that lay between them and solid ground.

      ‘No?’

      ‘Absolutely not.’

      ‘Well, whatever you are,’ he said flatly, ‘you’ve had a wasted journey because I’m not interested.’

      And, wham, there was another insult.

      Abby swallowed back a gasp and tried not to recoil at the bolt of—what was that? Disappointment?