But he wasn’t supposed to be here! Why was he here? He’s supposed to be in Chicago!
Drake looked at her soft, elegant hand and took it in his larger one, swallowing up her pale hand and feeling the shock as he looked into her pretty, blue eyes. He felt her start to tremble and every instinct inside of him wanted to pull her into his arms and kiss her, tell her that everything was going to be okay and she didn’t need to be frightened of him.
There was something about this woman that struck him deeply. Something that told him that she was going to be his, no matter what it took to convince her. Even the possibility that he would need to convince any woman was a foreign concept to him. Women tended to be embarrassingly obvious, sometimes obnoxiously aggressive, in their interest.
So why was this woman trying to pull her hand away from his? He could see that she was interested, felt her pulse with his fingertips as he shook her hand. He wanted to pull her close, ask her questions, find out what made her tick. But it seemed that all she wanted to do was run away and hide.
No, he almost chuckled out loud. That wasn’t the way this was going to go down. He looked at her stunning features, keeping his eyes on hers as he planned out his seduction. He instantly knew that he wanted this woman. He wanted her badly. Why she was pulling away, he didn’t understand, but very soon, he would know all her secrets. In fact, he planned to be one of them!
Sierra glared at the man, her excitement at seeing him so healthy fading as her awareness of him as a man, a very large, very muscular and, apparently, very arrogant man increased and scared her. Why wouldn’t he release her hand? Why was he drawing this out? Couldn’t he understand that she wanted space? She hated arrogant men.
Didn’t she?
So why was her stomach fluttering? Why was she having a hard time catching her breath? It definitely wasn’t because this man’s touch was firing her blood.
Actually, she’d never been around arrogant men. Most of the men she ran into were soft and flabby. They would never impose on her personal space if she sent the right signals. And she was definitely sending the “stay away” signals to Mr. Harrison, so why wasn’t he backing up? Why wasn’t he giving her the breathing room she needed? She felt flustered, irritated and…yep, there was that word again: vulnerable.
No, she was just nervous about meeting strangers. She wasn’t a good people pleaser, not able to play the political office games well. She preferred to stay in the background, do her work and enjoy the thrill of watching her buildings come to life. She enjoyed speaking with her clients, but generally left the glad-handing to Todd and the others.
She tried once again to get her hand free, but he only held onto her hand more tightly, his other hand actually coming up to cover hers, trapping her fingers in his large palm with the roughened calluses that had always seemed so sexy when she’d held his hand before.
Why wouldn’t he release her hand? Unless she wanted to have an embarrassing tug of war, she had to just stand here and endure his irritating touch while Todd droned on about her accomplishments, going into awkward details about her ideas and how they’d been implemented on various projects.
When her hand was finally free, she took a deep, calming breath and looked down. She suddenly remembered the designs Todd had mentioned she should show to Drake Harrison and jumped on that as an easy excuse to step back slightly. She bent low over a cabinet to find the file. “Here’s the file Todd mentioned. I’ll just leave this with you and if you have any questions, feel free to give me a call. I’m sure you’ve seen much more impressive designs from your more experienced architects and designers. This might be a bit of a letdown from what you’re used to,” she replied, desperately wishing Todd would stop talking and this man would just walk away. She felt like she needed an ice pack to recover from the heat stealing up her arm after his touch. The whole episode had probably lasted seconds but to her befuddled mind, it seemed like hours, hours upon which she didn’t understand why Todd couldn’t see the tension, couldn’t sense her nervousness.
“On the contrary,” his deep voice countered. “I’ve heard about you and thought your work was excellent. I’m eager to work with you.”
“Work” with her? Why would he be working with her, or any of the architects in this firm? He was one of the big guys. He was the one that set the standard in the industry. Todd’s firm took on national projects, but most of their efforts were very small, very niche oriented.
Sierra’s startled glance pulled away from his dark eyes and glanced over at her boss. “I don’t think I can take on another client right now,” she said to Todd, nerves coming out as she frantically tried to think of a way to avoid working too closely with this man. She needed to be as far away from him as possible. For so many reasons! “I have four houses in various stages of completion at the moment.”
It was no longer just about him discovering who she was, but that was definitely a part of it. With Todd’s words, her new worry was more about working closely, spending long hours with this man to discuss his project needs. She spent hours discussing a project with her clients, ensuring that she captured exactly what they wanted in their home or office space. She didn’t want to do that with this man.
There was something about this man that, in Sierra’s mind, made him dangerous on a more personal level. She had no idea how she knew that, but something inside of her told her that he wasn’t the kind of man who would be satisfied with a chaste kiss at the end of the night.
Now why would she think about kissing him when he was simply going to be a client?
Her eyes accidentally moved to his lips and her breath caught in the back of her throat. She thought she might have gasped as her eyes took in his firm lips that were smiling slightly. Her mind immediately jumped to what those lips would feel like…on other places of her body instead of just her mouth.
What?! How had she gone from not wanting to work with him, to not wanting to kiss him and…? Where in the world had that come from? She could feel her face flaming and took a deep breath to calm herself down.
Focus, Sierra! This man was not interested in a date! He was a potential client. She never dated any of her clients! She barely even went out to lunch with them unless it was the only time she could get answers on questions. End of project celebrations? Yes, certainly. But that included the whole staff who had worked on the project.