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Three

Charles lived in an exclusive, heavily gated and guarded community fifteen miles up the coast in the city of Pine Bluff. His house, a towering structure of glass and stone, sat in the arc of a cul-de-sac on the bluff overlooking the ocean. It was a lot of house for a single man, but that hardly surprised her. She was sure he had money to burn.

Victoria pulled her car up the circular drive and parked by the front door. She climbed out and took in the picturesque scenery, filled her lungs with clean, salty autumn air. If nothing else, the duke had impeccable taste in real estate. As well as interior design, she admitted to herself, after she used her code to open the door and stepped inside the foyer. Warm beiges and deep hues of green and blue welcomed her inside. The foyer opened up into a spacious living room with a rustic stone fireplace that climbed to the peak of a steep cathedral ceiling. It should have looked out of place with the modern design, but instead it gave the room warmth and character.

She had planned to grab the laundry and be on her way, but the bag he had said he would leave by the door was conspicuously not there. Either he hadn’t left yet or he’d forgotten. She was guessing the latter.

“Hello!” she called, straining to hear for any signs of life, but the house was silent. She would have to find the clothes herself, and the logical place to look would be his bedroom.

She followed the plushly carpeted staircase up to the second floor and down an open hallway that overlooked the family room below. The home she had grown up in was more traditional in design, but she liked the open floor plan of Charles’s house.

“Hello!” she called again, and got no answer. With the option of going either left or right, she chose right and peered into each of the half-dozen open doors. Spare rooms, mostly. But at the end of the hall she hit the jackpot. The master suite.

It was decorated just as warmly as the living room, but definitely more masculine. An enormous sleigh bed—unmade, she noted—carved from deep, rich cherry dominated the center of the room. And the air teemed with the undeniable scent of the woodsy cologne he had been wearing the day before.

She tried one more firm “Hello! Anyone here?” and was met with silence.

Looked like the coast was clear.

Feeling like an interloper, she stepped inside, wondering where the closet might be hiding. She found it off the bathroom, an enormous space in which row upon row of suits in the finest and most beautiful fabrics she had ever seen hung neatly in order by color. Beside them hung his work shirts, and beside them stood a rack that must have had three hundred different ties hanging from its bars. She wondered if he had worn them all. The opposite side of the closet seemed casual in nature, and in the back she discovered a mountain of dirty clothes overflowing from a hamper conveniently marked Dry Cleaning.

It was shirts mostly. White, beige, and a few pale blue. She also noted that his scent was much stronger here. And strangely familiar. Not the scent of a man she had known only a day. Perhaps she knew someone who wore the same brand.

Purely out of curiosity she picked up one of the shirts and held it to her face, inhaling deeply.

“I see you found my laundry.”

She was so startled by the unexpected voice that she squealed with surprise and spun around, but the heel of her pump caught in the carpet and she toppled over into a row of neatly hung trousers, taking several pairs with her as she landed with a thump on the floor.

Cheeks flaming with embarrassment, she looked up to find Charles standing over her, wearing nothing but a damp towel around his slim hips and an amused smile.

She quickly averted her gaze, but not before she registered a set of ridiculously defined abs, perfectly formed pecs, wide, sturdy shoulders, and biceps to die for. Damn her pesky photographic memory.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. He reached out a hand to help her up and she was so tangled she had no choice but to accept it.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped when she was back on her feet.

He shrugged. “I live here.”

She averted her eyes, pretending to smooth the creases from her skirt, so she wouldn’t have to look at all that sculpted perfection. “I’d assumed you’d left for work.”

“It’s only seven-forty-five.”

“I called out but no one answered.”

“The granite in the master bath was sealed yesterday, so I was using the spare room down the hall.”

“Sorry,” she mumbled, running out of places to look, without him realizing she was deliberately not looking at him.

“Something wrong with that shirt?” he asked.

She was still clutching the shirt she had picked up from the hamper, and she realized he must have seen her sniffing it. What could possibly be more embarrassing?

“I was checking to see if it was dirty,” she said, cringing inwardly at that ridiculously flimsy excuse.

Charles grinned. “Well then, for future reference, I don’t make a habit of keeping clean clothes in the hamper.”

“I’ll remember that.” And she would make a mental note to never come into his house until she was entirely sure he wasn’t there, or at the very least fully clothed. “Well, I’ll get out of your way.”

She turned and grabbed the rest of the clothes from the hamper, stacking them in her arms. He stepped out of her way and she rushed past him and through the doorway.

“Might as well stick around,” he said.

She stopped and turned to him, saw that he was leaning casually in the closet doorway. She struggled to keep her eyes from wandering below his neck. “Why?”

“I was going to call my driver, but since you’re here, I’ll just catch a ride into work with you.”

He wanted to ride with her? “I would, but, um, I have to stop at the dry cleaners first. I don’t want to get you to work late.”

“I don’t mind.” He ran his fingers through the damp, shiny waves of his hair, his biceps flexing under sunbronzed skin. She stood there transfixed by the fluidity of his movements. His pecs looked hard and defined, and were sprinkled with fine, dark hair.

He may have been an arrogant ass, but God, he was a beautiful one.

“Give me five minutes,” he said, and she nodded numbly, hoping her mouth wasn’t hanging open, drool dripping from the corner.

“There’s coffee in the kitchen,” he added, then he turned back into the closet, already loosening the knot at his waist.

The last thing she saw, as he disappeared inside, was the towel drop to the floor, and the tantalizing curve of one perfectly formed butt cheek.

Charles sat in the passenger side of Victoria’s convertible two-seater, watching her through the window of the dry cleaner’s. He would have expected her to drive a more practical car. A sedan, or even a mini SUV. Not a sporty, candy-apple-red little number that she zipped around in at speeds matched only on the autobahn. And it had a manual transmission, which he found to be a rarity among females. Sizewise, however, it was a perfect fit. Petite and compact, just like her. So petite that his head might brush the top had he not bent down.

She was full of surprises today—the least of which was her reaction when he greeted her wearing nothing but a towel. To put it mildly, she’d been flustered. After her chilly reception last night in the office, he was beginning to wonder if she might be a bit tougher to seduce than he had first anticipated. Now he was sure that she was as good as his. Even if that meant playing dirty. Like deliberately dropping his towel before he cleared the closet door.

Victoria emerged from the building with an armload of clean clothes, wrapped in plastic and folded over one arm. She tucked them into the trunk, then slipped into the driver’s seat. Her skirt rode several inches up her thighs, giving him a delicious view of her stocking-clad legs.

If she noticed him looking, she didn’t let on.

“They got the stain out of your jacket sleeve,” she told him, as she turned the key and the engine roared to life. She checked the rearview mirror for oncoming traffic, then jammed her foot down on the accelerator and whipped out onto the road, shifting so smoothly he barely felt the switch of the gears.

She swung around a corner and he gripped the armrest to keep from falling over. “You in a hurry?”

She shot him a bland look. “No.”

She downshifted and whipped around another corner so fast he could swear the tires on one side actually lifted off the pavement.

“You know, the building isn’t going anywhere,” he said.

“This is the way I drive. If you don’t like it, don’t ask to ride with me.” She took another corner at high speed, and he was pretty sure she was doing it just to annoy him.

If she drove this way all the time, it was a wonder she was still alive. “Out of curiosity, how many accidents have you been in?”

“I’ve never been in an accident.” She whipped into the next lane, cutting off the car directly behind them, whose driver blared its horn in retaliation.

“Have you caused many?”

She shot him another one of those looks. “No.”

“Next you’ll try to tell me you haven’t gotten a speeding ticket.”

This time she stayed silent. That’s what he figured.

She took a sharp left into the underground parking at his building, used her card key to open the gate, zipped into her assigned spot, and cut the engine.

“Well, that was an adventure,” he said, unbuckling his seat belt.

She dropped her keys in her purse and opened her door. “I got you here alive, didn’t I?”

Only by the grace of God, he was sure.

They got out and walked to the elevator, taking it up to the tenth floor. She stood silently beside him the entire time. She could never be accused of being too chatty. Since they left his house she hadn’t said a word that wasn’t initiated by a question. Maybe she was in a snit about the towel. She had enjoyed the free show, but didn’t want to admit it.

The elevator doors opened at their floor, and as they stepped off he rested a hand on the small of her back. A natural reaction, but she didn’t seem to appreciate his attempt to be a gentleman.

She jerked away and shot lasers at him with her eyes. “What are you doing?”

He held his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Sorry. Just being polite.”

“Do you touch all of your female employees inappropriately?”

What was her problem? Here he thought she’d begun to warm to him, but he couldn’t seem to get an accurate read on her.

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Well, you did.”

A pair standing in the hallway outside his office cut their conversation short to look at him and Victoria.

“Why don’t we step into my office and talk about this,” he said quietly. She nodded, then he almost made the monumental error of touching her again, drawing his hand away a second before it grazed her shoulder.

He couldn’t help it; he was a physical person. And until today, no one had ever seemed to have a problem with that.

Penelope was already sitting at her desk, tapping away at her keyboard. The only hint of a reaction as he ushered Victoria to his office door was a slight lift of her left brow. He liked that about his secretary. She was always discreet. He also knew exactly what she was thinking. He’d lost another assistant already. Not all that unusual, until he factored in that he hadn’t even slept with this one yet.

“Penelope, hold my calls, please.” He opened the door and gestured Victoria inside, then closed it behind them. “Have a seat.”

Her chin jutted out stubbornly. “I’d rather stand, thank you.”

“Fine.” He could see that she wasn’t going to make this easy. He rounded his desk and sat down. “Now, would you like to tell me what the problem is?”

“The problem is that your behavior today has been completely inappropriate.”

“All I did was touch your back.”

“Employers are not supposed to walk around naked in front of their employees.”

He leaned forward and propped his elbows on the desk. “I wasn’t naked.”

“Not the entire time.”

So, she had been looking. “Need I point out that you were in my house? When I walked into my closet I had no reason to expect you would be there. Sniffing my shirts.”

Her cheeks blushed pink, but she didn’t back down. “And I suppose the towel accidentally fell off.”

“Again, if you hadn’t been ogling me, you wouldn’t have seen anything.”

Her eyes went wide with indignation. “I was not ogling you!”

“Face it, sweetheart, you couldn’t keep your eyes off me.” He leaned back in his chair. “In fact, I felt a little violated.”

“You felt violated?” She clamped her jaw so tight he worried she might crack her teeth. She wasn’t easy to rile, but once he got her going…damn.

“But I’m willing to forgive and forget,” he said.

“I’ve read your e-mails and listened to your phone messages. I know the kind of man that you are, and I’m telling you to back off. I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to, but you have done such a thorough job of ruining my family that I need this position. The way I see it, we’re stuck with each other. If you’re trying to get me to quit, it isn’t going to work. And if you continue to prance around naked in front of me and touch me inappropriately I’ll slap a sexual harassment suit on you so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

He couldn’t repress the smile that was itching to curl the corner of his mouth. “I was prancing?”

Her mouth fell open, as though she couldn’t believe he was making a joke out of this. “You really are a piece of work.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment! You have got to be the most arrogant, self-centered—” she struggled for the right word, but all she could come up with was “—jerk I have ever met!”

He shrugged. “Arrogant, yes. Self-centered, occasionally. But anyone will tell you I’m a nice guy.”

“Nice?”

“And fair.”

“Fair? You orchestrated the deal that ruined my father. That stole from us the land that has been in our family for five generations, and you call that fair? We lost our business and our home. We lost everything because of you.”

He wasn’t sure where she was getting her information, but she was way off. “We didn’t steal anything. The deal we offered your father was a gift.”

Her face twisted with outrage. “A gift?”

“He wouldn’t have gotten a better deal from anyone else.”

“Ruining good men in the name of the royal family doesn’t make it any less sleazy or wrong.”

This was all beginning to make sense now. Her lack of gratitude toward the royal family and her very generous employment contract. And there was only one explanation. “You have no idea the financial shape that the Houghton was in, do you?”

She instantly went on the defensive. “What is that supposed to mean? Yes, my father handled the financial end of the business, but he kept me informed. Business was slow, no thanks to the Royal Inn, but we were by no means sinking.”

Suddenly he felt very sorry for her. And he didn’t like what he was going to have to do next, but it was necessary. She deserved to know the truth, before she did something ill-advised and made a fool of both herself and her father.

He pressed the intercom on his desk. “Penelope, would you please bring in the file for the buyout on the Houghton Hotel.”

“What are you doing?” Victoria demanded.

Probably making a huge mistake. “Something against my better judgment.”

Victoria stood there, stiff and tight-lipped until Penelope appeared a moment later with a brown accordion file stuffed to capacity. She handed it to Charles, but not before she flashed him a swift, stern glance. Penelope knew what he was doing and the risk he was taking. And it was clear that she didn’t approve. But she didn’t say a word. She just walked out and shut the door behind her.

“The contents in this file are confidential,” he told Victoria. “I could be putting my career in jeopardy by showing it to you. But I think it’s something you need to see. In fact, I know it is.”

At first he thought she might refuse to read it. For several long moments she just stared at him. But curiosity must have gotten the best of her, because finally she reached out and took the file.

“Take that into your office and look it over,” he said.

Without a word she turned and walked through the door separating their offices.

“Come see me if you have questions,” he called after her, just before she shut the door firmly behind her. And he was sure she would have questions. Because as far as he could tell, everything her father had told her was a lie.