LITMIR.BIZ

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Lust spiked straight to his cock. Sean didn’t know Mark, didn’t care, but right now, he hated the man. The photo in the newspaper had missed all her good parts, and Cleo Hollings had good parts in spades. The lethal strength inside her. All that emotion simmering, pressure building, waiting for the right spark to explode.

      Wisely he kept that thought from his face. She knew her own appeal. Men fell all over her and she didn’t tolerate it. He’d heard the stories. Some approaching mythic proportions.

      “Your neck. I can rub the kink out if you want.” He glanced at the clock, heard voices outside. Ignored them.

      “Don’t even think of touching me. What’s the name of the bar?”

      “Prime. There’s an outline of the whole mess on your desk. It’s short. I know you’re busy. I need help.”

      “I’ll check into it,” she promised, then moved to leave.

      Sean grabbed her arm again. Not exactly smart, but he liked feeling the current shoot through him. As a kid, he had stuck his finger in a light socket and lived to tell about it. There were certain parallels. “Why don’t you let me take you out for dinner?” he asked.

      With efficiency she shrugged into her coat, the black leather skimming her body, her breasts, her hips, riding down to toned thighs. “You’re coming on to me, aren’t you? It’s not even eight o’clock, and we’re running through every move in the playbook.”

      Well, duh. Did he look stupid? “Absolutely, I’m coming on to you. Men are very visual, simplistic creatures. Give us something to look at, and we’re happy. I’d be some eunuch-man if I didn’t come on to you, and I’m not a eunuch.”

      “No. I didn’t think you were,” Cleo murmured. “I’m not having dinner with you. Too busy.”

      It’d take more than a transit strike to keep Sean from what he wanted. “You don’t eat?” he persisted.

      “We’ve ordered in for the past four days. Deli food.”

      “You’re disappointing me,” he said, simply content to stare at her. He’d recite the entire New York State case law if he could stay here, staring, breathing. She was different, so different from anyone else. The tension crackled through her, tempting him all over again.

      “Life’s full of disappointments. I bet you’ll survive,” she told him, and yeah, he would, but if she thought he was giving up, uh, that was a big no. “Speaking of work. Need to get back to it. I’m sure you’ll understand. Eight million commuters and all that…”

      “I’ll check in with you in a couple of days—”

      She tightened her jaw, as if ready to correct him. Sean jumped in before she could.

      “—of course, that’s assuming you can resolve the strike in a couple of days.”

      It was an inflammatory comment, designed for one purpose only. To get her as worked up as he was, to see her eyes shoot flames. Not pretty, but Sean was driven by simple needs.

      She quirked one brow, high and full of contempt. “Are you doubting my ability to whip ten thousand unionized transit workers into line?”

      Entranced, Sean stared at her. “There was never one second of doubt in my brain that you could whip a whole army of men into line. Unionized transit workers or not.”

      She nearly smiled. He saw it. “Don’t make me like you. I don’t like people. Especially non-eunuch-men who need things from me.”

      He shrugged helplessly. “I have to. It’s who I am.”

      Cleo headed for the door and he followed, down the stairs, out the building. The entire way he fought the urge to touch her. He wanted to feel that surge again. At the front gate, she paused where her driver was waiting.

      “Hey,” Sean called out and she turned.

      “What?”

      “Who’s Mark?”

      She tensed, those magnificent amber eyes lasering in on him. “I don’t know a Mark. I don’t want to know a Mark. There are no Marks. None. No. Marks. Ever.”

      Sean watched her leave, and then kicked up the leaves that were littered along the pavement. He didn’t care who Mark was. He’d made up his mind.

      Sean was going to have her.

      All he had to do was figure out how.

      CLEO STARED AT HER NOTES and tried to concentrate, but as her driver maneuvered through the thick traffic, she was still feeling defensive, which was never a good thing. Especially now. Union negotiators weren’t Little Bo Peeps. If they smelled blood in the water, she’d be hitting the streets tomorrow, looking for a new job, and that was an option she couldn’t afford.

      It was all Sean O’Sullivan’s fault. She knew his type. Hot, arrogant, used to getting what he wanted. Used to wrapping women around his finger, wrapping women around other parts of him.

      No, all she had to do was remember that she’d been cruising on four hours’ sleep for the past four days, that the media was hammering the mayor’s office, blaming her for the slow resolution (did they think the city printed money in its spare time?), that she hadn’t had sex in over eight months and—no, strike that—inappropriate.

      Her secretary called, reminded her of the press conference at noon. Cleo thanked her and hung up, focusing on the scenery of New York at a standstill. The transit workers walked the picket line outside a bus depot. Red brake lights crawled along Broadway.

      It didn’t help.

      The idea that somebody had watched while she slept rankled her, especially because of that dream. Normally her dreams weren’t that explicit. Normally when she fell into bed, there was no time for dreaming, much less anything else. Usually that didn’t bother her, but today, she felt that loss in every lonely inch of her skin, her brain, her nerves.

      She wanted to blame it on Mark Anthony and the Nile, but that wasn’t the entire truth. No, Sean O’Sullivan was partly to blame. Mostly. Completely. With his dark eyes, that silky brown hair and the musky cologne that tickled her nose—among other places. He was a walking, talking, live-action orgasm.

      The suit had been tailored. She had noticed it along with the broad shoulders and the killer thighs. Cleo had a fatal weakness for killer thighs. Helplessly she licked parched, Sahara-dry lips.

      “Miss Hollings? We’ll be there in ten.”

      “Thanks, Chris.”

      Her phone rang. The mayor, Bobby McNamara, i.e., her boss.

      “Yeah?”

      “You’ve talked to the transit authority negotiators, right? We can fix this?”

      “Of course,” she answered, shocked that he was doubting her skills. She, Cleo Hollings, who had worked one term under the current administration, one term under the previous administration and, before that, had worked her way up through the office of public housing. Cleo had earned her stripes at an early age and knew how to yell.

      “I’ll take care of it, boss. We’re golden.”

      She hung up, looked out at thousands of cars trapped in bumper to bumper traffic and sighed wistfully. Union strikes did that to her. Frayed nerves or not, she needed no man.

      Cleo Hollings, Wicked Witch of Murray Street, was back. No one, absolutely no one, would ever know she’d been gone.

      THE LAW OFFICES OF McFadden Burnett were the largest in New York. Fourteen stories of attorneys, all in one building. It should have been a bad lawyer joke, but lawyers weren’t very good at making fun of themselves. Within the walls of the 1937 art deco building worked old lawyers, new lawyers, fat lawyers, skinny lawyers, neat lawyers, schlub lawyers, men lawyers and women lawyers, but they all had one thing in common no matter their differences: the responsibility to do whatever it took to zealously

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