Intimate Seduction - Brenda Jackson [13]
“Yes, she was in the bed upstairs,” he responded and watched as Bronson’s eyes widened.
“What did you do?”
Not what he’d wanted to do, Donovan thought as he sighed deeply. “I woke her up…after checking her out first. I liked what I saw.”
Bronson smiled,. “Regardless, you caught her sleeping on the job, and with your stern work ethic I’m surprised you didn’t fire her on the spot.”
Donovan was surprised, as well. But there had been something about his Goldilocks that had given him pause…as well as a hard-on that still had her name wrapped around it. How could he explain to his best friend that when he had gazed down at Natalie desire as hot as it could get, as deep as it could go, had blazed through him? And he doubted he could explain why he wanted her back in his bed with an intensity he hadn’t felt in years, if ever.
“I could have fired her but I didn’t,” he decided to say after taking a sip of his beer right out of the bottle.
Bronson chuckled. “And that, my friend, says it all.”
Donovan raised a brow. “And what exactly is it saying?”
Bronson leaned back in his chair. “The extent of your interest. That finding her in your bed—that particular bed—has given you what you see as a vested interest in her life.”
Now it was Donovan’s time to chuckle. “Not her life, Bron, just her body.”
There. He’d spoken out loud the very thought that had been running through his mind ever since Natalie Ford had walked out of his door. She was a woman, a good-looking woman, a very hot and enticing woman.
A woman he wanted.
He had decided the moment he’d stared down into her open eyes that he wanted her. Sexual chemistry between them had been thick, the air surrounding them charged. Dangerously so. He would go so far and admit he didn’t particularly understand that part of the equation, but he would accept it now and dwell on it later. He knew what he wanted and would act on it. In a way, he already had. She would be in his home at least once a week for the next six weeks. A strategic move that he was pretty damn proud of.
“So what do you know about her?”
Donovan didn’t say anything for a moment, thinking about Bronson’s question. And then he said, “In addition to having a nice-looking body and a beautiful face, she’s twenty-six. Her aunt, my regular housekeeper, hurt her ankle and will be laid up for at least six weeks, and she’s filling in to help out.”
He then fell silent for a moment as he remembered her in his home. The most prominent memory was how she’d folded her arms beneath her breasts and stared at him with defiance in her eyes. But still, there had been something about her that certainly had his insides simmering in heated longing. He rarely gave any woman a lasting consideration, definitely never thought of plotting the sexual downfall of one, but all afternoon he’d been doing that very thing.
“And I know, by her own admission,” Donovan spoke up to add, “that she is currently not seeing anyone. In fact she says she’s taking a break from dating.”
Bronson lifted his brow. “Why?”
“We didn’t cover the details, not that it matters since she will start dating me.”
“Good luck.”
Donovan took another pull from the bottle and then asked, “Good luck?”
“Yes, I’ve never known you to get so interested in any woman. The next six weeks should be rather interesting.”
Donovan held back the urge to laugh out loud. Instead he said in an amused voice, “And I assume you think that you can talk?”
It was a known fact between the two of them that Bronson had fallen hard for a woman named Sunnie, the oldest of the St. Claire triplets from Florida and sister to the wife of Myles Joseph. Sunnie, unfortunately, was playing hard to get, but Bronson was determined to get her anyway.
Just like Donovan planned to get Natalie Ford.
The difference was that Bronson, by a decision of his own, which still had Donovan utterly confused, had allowed himself to get snarled without even putting up a fight. That