LITMIR.BIZ

       Four

       L ocation?

      Sebastian hit the send button on the text to Missy as the elevator doors opened. It had taken half an hour for him to figure out she’d pulled a vanishing act on him again. He’d intended to spend the morning going over his opening speech for the summit, catching up on emails and checking in with Max and Nathan. Instead, he was cruising through the casino, once again, in search of his wayward assistant.

      His phone vibrated.

      Pool.

      Tucked into a protected hollow created by the hotel’s tall towers, the pool area, with its waterfalls, swim-up bar and assorted potted palms, looked more like tropical paradise than a desert oasis. Two-thirds of the lounge chairs were occupied, but as it had the night before, his gaze went straight to Missy.

      She wore a cerulean blue one-piece with a wide white band around the waist that drew attention to her hourglass shape. Barely a hint of cleavage showed above the suit’s straight, unadorned neckline. In color and style, the suit was unremarkable. Sebastian doubted that anyone would give her a second look with so much skin being bared by the less modest women in her vicinity.

      But she was all he was interested in.

      His mother waved to him from the pool as he neared Missy’s lounge chair. Missy looked up as his shadow fell across her.

      “Are you sure you should be sitting in the sun with your skin?”

      “Don’t worry.” She pointed to the sunscreen label. “It’s SPF 75.”

      The morning sun poured over his head and shoulders, warming the charcoal wool suit he wore and raising his temperature. He tugged his tie loose and unfastened his shirt’s top button. “Maybe you should move into the shade.”

      “I’m fine.”

      “With skin like yours you should be careful.” His gaze trailed down her legs, following the movement of her hand as she smoothed lotion over her creamy skin.

      His fingers balled into fists as memories of the night before intruded. The taste of her kisses. The way she’d moaned his name. How her breath caught as he slid deep inside her. The fact that her hunger for him had matched his need for her.

      “Sebastian?”

      He wrenched his attention back to her face. “Yes?”

      “I said, if you’ve come to drag me back to work, I’m not going without a fight.”

      For a second, the notion of tossing her over his shoulder and carrying her back to his suite blocked every sane thought in his head. “I’m not paying you to sit by the pool.”

      “Then consider this a vacation day. I have plenty to burn.”

      “You picked a hell of a time to go AWOL.”

      She sighed. “Everything is organized. The summit doesn’t start until the cocktail party tonight. There’s plenty of time for me to have a little fun. You should, too.”

      “I’m not here to have fun,” he reminded her.

      She wrinkled her nose. “Yes, I know. But you’re so prepared you could probably do the entire summit in your sleep. Why don’t you relax a little today?”

      “How do you suggest I do that?”

      She stopped in the act of spreading lotion on her arm and brought her gaze to bear on him. The unbridled hope in her eyes twisted his gut. Was he that much of a tyrant?

      “You could start by buying me a drink.”

      “It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

      She snapped the lid of the suntan lotion closed and picked up a beige sun hat, adorned with blue forget-me-nots. Once she set it on her head, the wide brim hid her expression from him.

      “Make it an orange juice.”

      Sebastian held his hand out to Missy and braced himself for the contact with her skin. She wiped lotion from her palms before giving Sebastian her hand. As expected, a pulse of fire sped up his arm and struck below his belt. He released her before the temptation to pull her close gave him away. Instead, he set his palm at the small of her back and nudged her toward the tiki-style bar.

      From beneath her ruddy lashes, she peered his way. “I’m sorry I ran off without telling you this morning.”

      “I’m sorry you felt you had to.”

      “Am I hearing things or did the never-wrong Sebastian Case just apologize to his lowly assistant?” Laughter brightened the green in her eyes.

      “I’m wrong on occasion and am not such an ass that I can’t admit it.” Driven by compulsions too strong to fight, he grazed his fingertips upward until he encountered bare skin. “And you are far from lowly.”

      A faint tremor beneath his hand told him she found the skin-to-skin contact as disturbing as he did. This attraction between them was a distraction he couldn’t afford.

      He directed her on top of the only empty stool and stood behind her. Her sun-warmed shoulder brushed his chest as he leaned forward to order her a drink, increasing his temperature even further. With a dismayed sound, she scooted away.

      “You’re going to ruin your suit if you get suntan lotion on it.”

      “I don’t care.”

      “How can you not care?” she countered. “You spend a fortune on your clothes.”

      He lifted a shoulder. He’d ruin a hundred suits if it meant being close to her. The scent of suntan lotion rising off her skin aroused the craving to strip that boring bathing suit off her body and determine if the sun had marked her gorgeous pale flesh.

      She gasped as he hooked a finger beneath her bathing suit strap and tugged it out of place. “What are you doing?”

      “Making sure you aren’t getting too much sun.”

      “When you touch me, I have trouble thinking straight,” she whispered.

      Her admission awakened a rumble of pleasure. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

      “I don’t understand what’s going on between us.”

      Nor did he. “Nothing is going on.”

      “We made love last night.”

      It took a great deal of effort, but he locked away his erotic musings. “It should never have happened.”

      “But it did.” She met his gaze, her eyes soft with curiosity.

      She wanted to know why he’d made love to her when he’d been so determined it was the wrong thing to do. He hadn’t quite answered that question for himself. He could blame it on intense sexual chemistry, but that wouldn’t be the whole truth. Grasping the whole truth might just lead him into uncharted territory where his assistant was concerned.

      A familiar figure emerged from the pool and reminded Sebastian that he had more problems at hand than his wayward assistant. “Did my mother give

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