Below the Surface

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Marcus Storm stared in disbelief at the memorandum sitting in the centre of his obsessively clean, disturbingly organised desk. His dark blue eyes flew over the page, widening with each word read.

Tessa Sheridan fought the urge to grin and tamped down the glee she knew shone in her eyes. Just seeing the frown gracing that strong, uncomfortably handsome face made her want to crow with victory. Finally. She’d gotten a rise out of ‘Cool Blue’, as half the women in the firm referred to the unconscionable playboy.

He glanced up from her latest memo with icy disdain. “You can’t believe I’ll simply accept these cutbacks?”

Much as she would have liked irritating him for the sheer hell of it, the cutback proposal she’d slaved over for a solid week was necessary if they wanted to keep his newest client profitable.

“Excuse me, Mr. Storm,” she said with exaggerated politeness. “But if Craiger-Mim Incorporated is to have a future with our firm, i.e., turn us a profit, we have to rid ourselves of some unnecessary costs which unfortunately, with Craiger’s downsized budget, can no longer be considered practical.”

He stared at her, and she could feel his gaze in the depths of her being. Just one look from him and her insides turned to mush. It had been like that from the beginning. The raven-haired, blue-eyed jerk was of the tall, dark and mouthwatering variety. He roused in her a combination of lust and dislike she had yet to reconcile, even after six months of working with him.

Correction, she mentally adjusted, as he looked at her like some kind of bug he’d like to squash. She’d worked near him for five months. Only recently had she been assigned to work with him. And her boss, Jonas Chase, knew she planned a just revenge for his complicity in partnering her with the conceited project manager.

Jonas had thought it would be funny, the Amazon versus Casanova. She still wasn’t laughing.

“Ms. Sheridan,” Storm bit out her name like an epithet. “You’re telling me I have to get rid of half my staff in order to keep Craiger-Mim profitable?”

“Yes. But by ‘cut’ I mean reassign them to other campaigns.” She could see he planned to remain firm against her proposal, and only her desire to resolve the situation enabled her to say her next words with a straight face.

“It’s no secret you’re the ‘eighth wonder’ when it comes to marketing and financial strategies,” she grudgingly conceded. “But my forte is logistics. Trust me when I say that Mr. Conklin won’t agree to your present numbers for Craiger-Mim. Much as I like the company and respect their services, Conklin won’t keep them as a client unless we can show a generous profit.

“The work we’ve been doing for them demands recompense, and though I’m sorry about their own losses, we can’t afford to be nice simply because you slept with their head of advertising.”

There. She’d said what everyone on the floor had been talking about for days.
His answer, delivered with icy composure, unnerved her. “Listening to rumours, Ms. Sheridan?” He stood up from behind his desk and rounded to face her. Despite her own formidable height, he stood at least five inches taller, putting him at an intimidating six foot four.

“I would have thought a woman who has an extraordinarily friendly relationship with her boss, who wears the most provocative clothing,” he paused dramatically as he ran his gaze over her body with a searing intensity, “and who consistently manages to rank at the head of the logistics department in Tomanna Consulting, would be loathe to put two and two together in the off-chance she might get five.”

She stared at him, openmouthed. Had he just inferred she’d made her way to the top of the logistics branch using her body?

He smiled, a shark’s grin that blurred her vision with fury.

She closed the distance between them, seething. “You want to accuse me of something, do it in plain English.” She stood so close she had to tilt her head back to see him, and when she did she felt his breath fan her face.

His eyes seemed to darken as he stared down at her, their dark, ocean-blue colour flooding with navy. “You might want to watch your step,” he threatened in a curiously deep voice. She saw him swallow, was close enough to see his chest swell with an indignant breath.

And then it happened like it always did. Her loins flooded with longing, her nipples tightened and her entire body ached—for him. Damn, damn, damn. Arguments with Marcus Storm always managed to arouse her.

But for the first time, she saw an answering response spark his eyes.

“Well, well,” he murmured and stepped so close his chest brushed her breasts. “It appears I was wrong to ignore the rumours about you.”

“Look, Storm. I—”

“Davis mentioned you’ve a redhead’s temper and the passion to match. And since he supposedly screwed your brains out last weekend, I assume he’d know.”

Speechless, she stared at him, unable to think of anything but punching the arrogance off his full lips. And just wait until she got a hold of that lying, scheming Davis…

“Now, now,” he tsked, grabbing and holding her clenched fists by her sides. “Violence isn’t the answer. Let’s try this instead.”

He covered her mouth with his own, an aggressive mating of the lips and tongue that belied his cool exterior. His lips turned hard, and the iron ridge that prodded her stomach only made him that much more tempting.

Copyright © 2010 Marie Harte

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