Public Relations (8 page)

This morning, taking out one of the two keys Peter had given her, she let herself into his quiet and cavernous main living space. A giant living room with a cathedral ceiling looked out over the city, much higher up than her own view. From this level, today fog obscured the trees of the park, creating a sort of second sky below. Grays and silvers abounded throughout the room, mimicking the weather outside.

“Hello?” Georgia called.

When no one answered, she wandered down the hall. No lights on in the kitchen. An abundance of sparsely framed modernist paintings on the living room walls. Probably an original Mondrian…or two. A sculpture of an apocalyptic-looking horse—more metallic planes and charred holes than flesh—greeted her at the end of the hall where light shone from an open doorway.

Juggling coffees, a bag of muffins, and her laptop bag, she peered into a weight room, beyond which lay an indoor pool. “Holy crap.”

Sure, she knew wealth. Her father’s country estate had an indoor pool larger than this one and a set of stables rivaling the ones she’d personally seen at Balmoral one summer. Still, Manhattan real estate didn’t come cheap, and that pool probably cost more than the GDP of some third-world countries.

“Hello?” she called again, looking around with interest.

Though she had spent close to every waking minute of the last three days with Peter, there was so much she didn’t know about him. Making her way to the hall’s opposite end, she passed a library with an enormous slate fireplace. What she wouldn’t do to spend an evening in there writing and reading. Georgia sighed at the fantasy. Sometimes she really did miss home. Or at least the childhood home she remembered from behind some rather thick rose-colored glasses.

“It’s not your home any longer,” she reminded herself. And it hadn’t been in at least eleven years, ever since she’d chosen to go to a Manhattan boarding school rather than live with her father and his orgiastic lifestyle after her mother ran off to New Zealand without leaving a forwarding address.

A wood-paneled study, the warmest space she’d encountered, and a billiards room, as well as three guest bedroom suites lay between her and the opposite end of a second hall that stretched the width of the building. Warm light cut across the ebony wood floors, beckoning her forward. Shoes tapping against the polished surface, she approached, making as much noise as possible.

“Hello? It’s me,” she said.

Silence answered her call. She pushed the door open fully and encountered the master bedroom suite, also done in smoky grays and silver. Throw pillows lay scattered across the floor, tumbled haphazardly, as if the occupant had pushed them off as he fell into bed the night before. Rumpled sheets and an indented pillow made her belly tighten.

Meaning to flee to the kitchen to wait, she whirled and came a hair from mashing the coffees into Peter’s bare chest. Face freshly shaven, hair damp from his shower, heat and moisture rolled off his skin in spicily scented waves. Her lips parted in the heartbeat she stared up at him, and she wondered again what it’d be like to taste the fullness of his mouth. To feel those muscled arms wrap tight around her, lifting her from the floor as she slid along his erection.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she whispered.

The observation slammed the door on the moment. Ice formed, flash freezing Peter’s features into something distant. Impassive. He stepped away and strode past her as if the electric moment had never happened.

“Well, you found me.”

“I can…” She gestured to the door she’d entered through. Clearly she shouldn’t have gone in search of him.

“It’s fine. I’ll be out in a minute.” He partially closed the door to his dressing area.

A photograph—the only evidence he, and not some other generic mogul, lived here—called to her from an occasional table. Georgia lifted the frame to examine the picture more closely. Three boys and Peter, dressed in identical white T-shirts that emphasized their dark hair and tan skin, sat on a beach. On a driftwood bench behind them sat a man and woman who looked to each other with so much love it made Georgia’s heart ache.

She traced a finger over Peter’s face. He looked amazing when he laughed, his eyes dancing with light and energy. A sound from the dressing area made her settle the frame on the table and step to the window. Hands folded in front of her, she tried to appear as if she hadn’t been snooping.

“You have a really nice place,” she said when she caught his reflection in the window.

He examined her from several feet away. At a loss to reconcile the man in the photo with the cavalier playboy and arrogant boss she knew, she didn’t turn immediately.

As she studied his reflection, he approached the window. At first she thought he moved toward his dresser. Then she felt his body heat behind her and saw his gaze lingering at her nape.

She stiffened, breaking the quiet moment, when he lifted his fingers toward the back of her neck. “If you asked me here to make me one of your conquests, Mr. Wells, I’m afraid you’ll be sadly disappointed.”

“Your tag is showing.” He turned away. “Tuck it in; then let’s get to work.”

She faced him, one hand going to the label as she fought a surge of disappointment and embarrassment. Goddamn him for making her want him despite everything she knew. Despite knowing he’d probably rather sleep with Gigi than with her. If only to get the name of that stupid columnist.
Her
name, in fact.

“Are you trying to kill me?” he asked, his voice strangled.

One arm raised, fingers at her tag, she followed his gaze to where her low-cut, though fully buttoned, wide-collared blouse gaped, exposing the curve of one breast. She moved her hand slowly to her side. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Let’s go into the kitchen. You can meet me in there from now on.” He didn’t wait to see if she followed when he made his way down the hall.

They went over his schedule for the day as he drank his coffee. Determined to follow the letter of his law if not the spirit, she’d gotten him decaf and a bran muffin for breakfast.

He took another sip of his coffee and grimaced. “Where did you get this?”

“I’d think the label on the cup would’ve given that away.”

“It’s weaker than they usually make it.”

She shrugged and opened his briefing notes for an eleven a.m. conference call.

The door chime rang, and Peter stood. “I’ll get it.”

“I should hope so,” she muttered.

“Heard that,” he shot back.

When Peter returned, a man whom she might’ve called handsome if it weren’t for his shaggy hair and owlish glasses bustled in with him, heading straight for the coffeepot.

The man stopped, hand hovering over the cold device, and looked back to Peter. “Where’s Mrs. Simms?”

Georgia studied the new arrival with a bemused frown. “Who’s Mrs. Simms?”

“My cook.” Peter lifted his morning paper and sat at the table again. “Georgia’s bringing my breakfast this week. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.”

He had a cook, and he made her pick up breakfast? Well, bugger that. She vowed to get him a zucchini-and-flaxseed muffin tomorrow.

“Thanks. Annie’s on strike again.” The man stuck his head in the fridge.

“I keep telling you to break up with her,” Peter said. “Georgia, this is Carl. Carl, Georgia.”

“Some people believe in commitment,” Georgia quipped.

In her peripheral vision, Peter slowly put down his paper coffee cup. It was his turn to say, “Excuse me?”

Georgia rolled her eyes without looking directly at him. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“Not that you know Carl or me, but I have no problem with commitment.”

She focused on some papers without really seeing them. “If you say so.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Peter sat back and cast Carl a look that asked
Can you believe this?

His friend rubbed a hand along the back of his neck and looked away.

Peter straightened, his arms falling to his sides. “Et tu, Brute?”

“Well, it has been a long time since—”

Peter narrowed his gaze at Carl.

“Since you focused on anything other than money,” Carl finished in a rush, then turned away to pour some orange juice.

Finally! Someone who stood up to the man. Georgia chuckled, looking between Peter and Carl. “He completely pegged you.”

Carl’s shaggy bangs came down over the bridge of his nose as he raised his brows. He returned to the table with a plate of fruit and some leftover, cold hash browns, mumbling something about being pretty sure Peter wasn’t into that sort of thing. Georgia gave him a confused look, and Carl cleared his throat.

“I’m saying he should date someone he doesn’t have to pay,” he said more audibly as he sat. “Spend time on something besides growing a fortune that practically grows itself.”

Seizing the opportunity to distance herself from any suspicions Peter might or might not harbor about her identity, Georgia gaped at Peter, and pretended not to know anything about the facts behind the story he didn’t know she’d written. “You mean the column was true?”

“I don’t believe I gave you permission to examine my personal life, Ms. Whitcomb.” Peter’s glare should’ve frozen her bottom to the chair.

Georgia wiggled to situate herself more comfortably. “What are you going to do when you catch the columnist?”

He gave her a look she read as saying he’d like to ruin her life. Make certain she never wrote again. He’d like to discredit her, then sue her. Maybe even entertained, then discarded thoughts of hiring a hit man.

Georgia tried not to blanch as she broke Peter’s stare.

Silent for a long moment, he tore off a piece of the muffin Georgia had brought him. She shot him a glance as he popped it into his mouth, then made a face and washed the morsel down with the decaf.

“Do you know her?” he asked a little too carefully.

She bit into her chocolate-chip muffin and spoke around the food. “We should really go over your schedule.”

He blinked at her as she backed away from the ledge. Already she toed a line of dishonesty that flirted with her moral standards. Sure, she went undercover—so to speak—to get a story, but she’d never had to actively lie about her identity afterward.

She redirected the conversation and pushed his tablet toward him. “Did you remember about the Lincoln-Jones acquisitions meeting today?”

“I remember asking you to cancel it yesterday.” Peter swore under his breath and punched numbers into his cell.

“Oh, that’s right. I did that,” she said, pretending absorption in some charts on her laptop.

Peter slowly took the phone away from his ear and gave Georgia what she was coming to think of as
the look.

“Hey, I think I found you a date for your family birthday-holiday thing to throw them off the scent of the gossip piece,” Carl said from behind a copy of the
Times
. “Real nice girl. Good family. Went to Radcliffe.”

Peter dumped out his coffee and pulled a cola from the fridge. The
pop fizz
of the opening can delayed his reply. “I doubt a socialite could handle my family.”

“Was that them? In the picture?” Georgia asked.

Peter leaned back against the counter. “In the photo on the end table?”

“Y-yes.” His gaze followed the flush from her chest up to her hairline.

He gave her a small smile. The first she’d really seen from him, and it warmed her in places the blush hadn’t touched.

“Yeah. I have three younger brothers.”

“They seem nice.” She pushed the remainder of her chocolate-chip muffin toward him as a reward for not going surly with her. “Why wouldn’t someone like them?”

The offering drew him closer.

“Because,” he said, the muffin lifted to his lips, “they’re worse than the Inquisition.”

“Three brothers,” Georgia mused, breathless with the idea of one sibling, much less a trio. How different her life might have been if she’d been insulated and protected by older brothers. Or maybe even been able to commiserate with a sister or two.

Peter nodded solemnly, though the spark of humor never left his eyes. Laugh lines crinkled the skin there after a moment, and his smile made her heart sing. Georgia felt Carl’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t look away from her boss as long as the joyful expression softened the planes and angles of his face. He was gorgeous. A man so beautiful shouldn’t have been allowed to have any other talent.

For long seconds, she and Peter stared into one other’s eyes until his gaze darkened with something other than humor or anger. Passion sparked, fanning sexual interest to life between them. Mutual and unguarded.

Carl coughed. Peter blinked. Georgia snapped out of her lunatic haze and returned her attention to her laptop.

“You could invite Gigi to your parents’,” she said, the devil on her shoulder goading her into the suggestion.

Peter crossed to the sink and poured his soda down the drain. Georgia tried not to watch the play of his back muscles under his shirt and failed miserably.

“You must not like her very much,” Peter observed.

“I think you underestimate her,” Georgia said.

“Perhaps if I could get a date with the woman, I might know better what she could handle.” Peter looked to Carl. “Maybe she’d accompany me to the Ninth Street Gallery opening?”

Pushing his eyeglasses up, Carl shrugged.

“I’ll ask her,” Georgia said. “You seem to rub her the wrong way.”

That elicited a wry snort from Peter. “Understatement of the century.”

“Well, you have to admit it’s not flattering to be asked out by someone who only wants to pump you for information.” Georgia went on a fishing expedition. “It’s not like you’re really attracted to her or anything.”

Red points of heat drew her attention to Peter’s cheeks, and he looked away. Jealousy raked its ugly claws across Georgia’s midsection, and she struggled to get a grip on her emotions. The man was attracted to her alter ego. Not to someone else.

Visions of firm lips, tangling tongues, and bodies pressed together made her gaze go soft and hazy. “I…um… When’s the gallery opening?”

“Tonight,” Peter answered.

Shit. She had that report to write for him, and it was due tomorrow. On impulse she said, “I’ll ask her.”