LITMIR.BIZ

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boardroom would be better,’ Ally countered.

      His eyes narrowed in warning and he knew that she’d caught the hint when she wrinkled her nose.

      ‘Okay, here it is, then. Never mind that my nose is going to burn and I’m going to freckle...’

      He looked for freckles and could find the hint of them under her make-up. On her nose, across her cheeks.

      ‘Bellechier is launching a new line—’ Ally’s opening gambit was drowned out by a piercing whistle from a balcony on the second storey of RBM.

      Ross excused himself and walked quickly towards the building. Eli, his friend and number two, stood gripping the balcony railing, an anxious look on his face.

      ‘What’s the problem?’

      ‘Jac-tech have picked up a bug in that app we sent them to test and they are not happy. You need to smooth some ruffled feathers, pronto,’ Eli told him, waving his hands in the air.

      Along with computer games, RBM also designed game apps for smartphones. It was a very lucrative part of their business.

      ‘It’s a brand new app...we told them it would have bugs.’ Ross slammed his hands on his hips. ‘Who has their panties in a wad? The suits or the tech?’

      ‘Suits,’ Eli replied. ‘Who else?’

      Ross yanked the band from his hair and raked his hand through it. ‘Figures. Why can’t they keep their noses out of it?’

      ‘Because they are power-hungry control freaks?’ Eli threw his words back at him. ‘Get your ass up here and deal with it. I’m in development, you deal with the suits.’

      ‘Yeah, coming.’

      Eli jerked his head. ‘Who’s the babe?’

      Ross grinned and dropped his voice. ‘Another co-branding offer. Give me two minutes and tell Grace to video conference Paul at Jac-tech.’

      Eli saluted and turned away. Conscious of the dull headache brewing behind his eyes, Ross spun around and walked back to the source of the pain in his butt. ‘I have to go.’

      ‘But—’

      He should just tell her to get lost, that he wasn’t interested in any branding deals, but there was something about her—apart from her space-high hot factor—that intrigued him. It was those eyes, he realised, the layers and layers of blue. Confidence, sassiness, intelligence, and once or twice a flash of something deeper, darker. Wilder...

      He knew he shouldn’t, but he did it anyway. ‘Where are you staying?’ he asked.

      ‘The Riebeek.’

      Of course she was. Stately, old, rich... His mouth twitched. It suited the boring clothes and the severe hair, but not the shoes. Those shoes intrigued the hell out of him. ‘Be in the lobby bar at seven-thirty. You can buy me a drink and have your five minutes.’

      ‘At least thirty minutes if I’m buying,’ Ally stated, in a don’t-mess-with-me voice.

      ‘Fifteen.’ Ross countered, backing away.

      ‘Twenty.’

      ‘Twenty minutes, two drinks.’ Ross whirled around and walked away. At the door, he glanced over his shoulder and sent her a wicked grin. ‘Kick-ass shoes, by the way.’

      ‘They’re from the new line—the one we want you to endorse. It’s not boring or snooty!’ Ally shouted at his back.

      Ross had to smile.

      He liked women who could think on their feet. And women with dimples.

      * * *

      Sitting at the long dark bar in the hotel that evening, Ally felt out of her depth—and she knew that it was all Ross Bennett’s fault.

      She crossed one leg over the other and stared at her glass of icy white wine. She’d completely cocked up their first meeting and that never happened to her... She was always professional, calm and collected. She just hadn’t expected the CEO of RBM to be playing basketball at noon and looking so...

      Incredible? Amazing? So super-freaking-perfect that her heart had tripped over itself and bounced off the inside of her ribcage? Ally bit the inside of her lip. Within ten seconds of seeing him she’d known that Ross Bennett had the elusive X-factor she needed for the face of the new line. In fact he had it in spades—along with the sexy-factor and the hot-factor and any other damn factor she needed. That meant that Luc and Patric—the know-it-alls—had, essentially, done her job for her.

      Ross would be abso-freaking-lutely perfect as the new face of Bellechier. If she, social hermit that she was, was conjuring up fantasies of ripping his clothes off with her teeth and getting him naked and on top of her as soon as humanly possible, then normal women—and not a few men—would do the same when they saw the commercials. At the very least it would make them buy Bellechier...

      Lots and lots of Bellechier products. Holy smoke. The couple of random pictures she’d found on the net had not done justice to the sheer presence of the guy. He practically radiated charisma and testosterone and heat and sexiness, and that meant...dammit...that meant Luc and Patric were right.

      Blergh.

      Ally glanced at her watch, realised that she still had a while to wait for Ross and returned to the primary source of her aggravation—specifically her brothers. Ally wrinkled her nose, as always uncomfortable with the word. She wasn’t technically their sister—because the Bellechier-Smith family had never formally adopted her—but she had been part of their family since she was fifteen years old so what else could she call them? Anyway, they were the reason she was in Cape Town, and she was not amused because she now had to eat her words.

      She hated it when that happened.

      She adored Luc and Patric, and she knew that they were fond of her, but they weren’t close. When she’d arrived at Bellechier Estate as their foster sister they’d both been at university and living their own lives. To their credit, they had initially tried to connect with her but she’d been distant and wary and had resisted their easily offered comfort and compassion.

      Because pushing people away and stuffing her emotions down rather than expressing them was what she had been taught to do. Her father’s motto had always been: Buck up, don’t cry, deal with it. That was just what he’d done when her mother had dumped on him the six-month-old daughter he’d never known about, and she supposed that was the way he’d dealt with life. How well he had taught her to do the same.

      After losing her dad at fifteen, it had been easier, and far less scary, to withdraw into the bubble of self-sufficiency and emotional independence she’d created while living with her introverted, just-deal-with-it father. Thirteen years later and that bubble now had the thickness of a Sherman tank.

      She’d had some therapy, and had attended sessions long enough to learn that she was ‘emotionally unavailable’—that her father’s insistence that emotions were wrong had, in the therapist’s words, ‘mucked her up’ for life. He had tolerated her only if she was reasonable and unemotional and, despite her foster parents’ encouragement to express and display her emotions, she’d never quite got the hang of it.

      Emotions were messy and ugly. Indulging in them, allowing them to be a factor in her life, was like climbing into a small car the size of a sardine can and playing chicken with a F-17 fighter jet. Something was going to crash and burn and it wouldn’t be the fighter jet. No, it was far better to be sensible and safe.

      Why was she even thinking about her past? Ally wondered, switching her thoughts back to the task on hand. She was good at that, she thought with a twist to her lips. She could always focus on work...it was the best way to distract herself from the memories and to keep her from thinking how empty her life was. Work was where she found silent companionship, where she felt safe, needed and valued. It was a harmless place to invest time and emotions.

      So,

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