Free Partners by Contract by Kim Lawrence

in this situation? As senior partner, it would have been simple for him to veto Will’s idea.
    ‘Alan is an excellent junior, but he was never a possibility. For one thing, he doesn’t have the experience. Besides, he’s not interested in anything permanent. He fancies the idea of travelling. We need someone who has got all that out of their system.’ Will smiled hopefully.
    ‘Some people never get travelling out of their system,’ she countered.
    ‘You?’
    Con’s sharp contribution made her start.
    ‘Maybe,’ she conceded cagily. ‘And actually, as corny as this sounds, I do need to wash my hair.’ To prove the point she gathered a hank of the dark silky ends in her hand and held it up for their inspection. ‘Perhaps you could take Ellen?’ she suggested with a sweet smile. I’m sure she’d be very willing, she thought darkly.
    Connor watched the ebony strands fall back and wasgripped by an almost visceral need to bury his face in the fragrant cloud. His nostrils flared, anticipating the scent of it, the texture as it ran through his fingers...brushed against his skin. As his erotic absorption increased so did the depth of his inhalations.
    ‘It looks fine to me.’ Will turned to his friend for backup on this point and found that Connor was looking unusually tense, quite grim actually, and not a good colour under that smooth tan.
    ‘It looks perfect, perfectly fine,’ Connor confirmed abruptly.
    Some indefinable note in his terse voice made the fine hairs on Phoebe’s nape stand on end and the warning bells in her head began to jangle loudly. She sent a compulsive covert glance in Connor’s direction from under the sweep of her lashes, and received the disturbing impression of an explosive kind of tension coiled in his big powerful body. The hollow, achy, fluttery feeling low in her tummy promptly kicked up several notches and became a sharp pain.
    ‘Maybe I should have a word with Becca, get her to go a bit gentler with the physio. Are you taking your analgesia, Con?’ Will rambled gently, totally oblivious to the escalating tension in the atmosphere.
    Connor’s impressive chest lifted as a low hiss emerged from between his clenched lips.
    ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, Will.’ Nothing that could be fixed by physio, gentle or otherwise, and nothing that Will could be held responsible for, he thought, moderating the vicious snarl in his throat to a slow, patient growl.
    ‘Glad to hear that,’ Will came back uncertainly. He switched his attention back to Phoebe. ‘We can’t tempt you?’
    Phoebe’s cheeks flamed. The ease with which she could be tempted was the heart of the present problem.
    ‘Sorry, Will, I’ve not made any decisions about the future yet.’
    ‘Well, don’t expect me to give up...we’re pretty desperate.’
    ‘Not an altogether flattering statement, Will,’ Connor pointed out languidly.
    ‘Oh, hell, I didn’t mean... Phoebe knows what I mean, don’t you?’ Will paused uncertainly in the doorway, looking worriedly at her.
    Phoebe took pity on him and smiled reassuringly. ‘Of course I do.’
    Will’s motivations or intentions weren’t what she was finding hard to interpret. Wondering what Con was up to made her overtaxed brain ache.
    Will clicked his case shut and grabbed his raincoat from the coatstand behind the door.
    ‘Is it still raining?’ he asked nobody in particular. Without waiting for a reply, he added, ‘I’ll go and fetch the car around to the front for you, Con.’
    They were left alone. It wasn’t a situation Phoebe thought it wise to prolong.
    ‘I’d better be off, too,’ she announced brightly. ‘It’s been a long day.’ Actually, her earlier weariness had been replaced by a tense adrenaline-fed high.
    Connor watched her retreat with a cynical expression of frustration on his hard-boned face. He’d waited four years for this conversation. Another twenty-four hours wasn’t going to kill him. Frustrate the hell out of him, maybe,