Natural Blond Instincts Read online

  He put his hand on her arm. “You do realize that the report was done by me only because I’ve been here since the beginning, and that point of view is crucial.”

  “Maybe my point of view is crucial.”

  “Tell me when you’re done and I’ll read what you’ve got.”

  Knowing he meant it somehow added to the pressure to get it right, to actually have a crucial point of view. “Thanks,” she said, liking it better when she’d thought him a jerk.

  THE NEXT DAY was a scheduled managerial meeting. Wes showed up a few minutes early, wanting to be alone long enough to breathe without an audience, but when he entered the conference room, he wasn’t alone at all.

  Kenna had beat him there.

  Engrossed in reading, she didn’t even look up when he entered. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “What are you up to now?”

  Her expression closed itself off, and he wanted to kick himself for sounding so antagonistic.

  Not surprisingly, she said, “Nothing.”

  Nothing…Kenna was never up to nothing. He wondered what she was tackling and would have asked her about it, but Serena swept into the room.

  “Your latest staff memo on the importance of customer service was brilliant,” she informed Wes. “I thought we could discuss your strategies—”

  “Strategies?” Josh came into the room behind her. “I’ve got strategies. Want to discuss them with me?”

  Serena lifted a brow. “Not in this lifetime.”

  “Baby, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Believe me—”

  “Children,” Wes chided. “Wait for recess.”

  With a snort, Josh turned away and poured a cup of coffee.

  Serena smiled sweetly at Wes. “So…where were we? Oh, yes, your memo—” She broke off when Josh handed her a mug of coffee. She stared down at it, then blinked at him.

  “Say ‘Thank you, Josh’,” Josh said.

  “Thank you, Josh.” She sounded confused.

  Josh just smiled.

  Kenna had buried herself back into her reading, making the occasional note, studying fiercely, and Wes wondered if he should be excited about their next confrontation…

  Or worried.

  She glanced up at him and moistened her lips, which caused his body to jerk to attention. Damn, but the line between work and feelings was being crossed.

  And double crossed.

  Worried, he decided. He should be very worried.

  THE CLOCK in the huge, gleaming hotel kitchen chimed the hour. Twelve times. Midnight took a good long time to sound off, and since the place was empty, and also dark, the sound of it echoed eerily.

  “Good thing I’m not Cinderella,” Kenna muttered around a huge bite of chocolate cake. She stood in front of the large island, fork in hand, digging through a leftover cake with abandon.

  It was what happened to frustrated, confused, over-stimulated and unfulfilled women, she supposed. Women who were frustrated at not being quite as good as they’d expected to be, women who couldn’t tolerate their own learning curve, women feeling just a little pathetic because she…because she wanted her co-VP in an entirely inappropriate way.

  In the name of comfort, she took another four-thousand-calorie bite of cake.

  And then another.

  WES WORKED LATE that night, hunched over his computer, hitting the keys hard, trying to keep his mind focused, but it kept circling back to Kenna.

  When his phone rang, it startled him. Who could be calling at…He checked his watch. Midnight. “Mallory Enterprises.”

  “Weston Roth?”

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “Ray Panziera, a friend of Kenna’s. Listen, she’s not in her room, I was wondering…is she there in the offices?”

  “Hold on.” He jogged down the hall but Kenna’s office was dark. He went back to his. “She’s not at her desk.”

  “Well, who in their right mind would be?”

  Wes sighed. “Would you like to leave a message?”

  “Oh, just wanted to see if she was up for a late-night drink. We do that sometimes.”

  Wes had no idea why that bugged him, but it did.

  “It’s no biggie,” Ray said. “If I know Kenna, which I do, she’s got the late-night munchies and is somewhere in the hotel stuffing her face. If you happen to see her, you might mention she could have called me to share, the bitch. Ciao.”

  Wes stared at the phone, then hung up. Kenna’s friends were as crazy as she was. He tried to put the call out of his head, tried to get back into work, but it was no good. With a sigh, he walked out of the offices and into the elevator. Downstairs, he moved through the lobby and headed for a house phone. He had no idea why really, but something in him wanted to check on her, to make sure everything was okay. It really was late, and maybe she was sick—

  Just as Ray had said, she didn’t answer her room phone.

  He’d now officially done his best to check on her. No way was he going to search this huge place, not at this hour.

  Nope.

  Dammit. There were two restaurants in the hotel, both closed. He could have tried the bar, but somehow he didn’t think Kenna would go to the bar for a late-night snack.

  He headed for the hotel kitchen.

  The lights at the far end were on, and he strode around huge stacking trays that tomorrow morning would be loaded with baked goods, and came to an abrupt stop in front of the large wooden island.

  Kenna stood on the other side of it, one hand holding a fork, the other steadying an entire sheet cake as she leaned over an opened magazine, engrossed in her reading. If he wasn’t mistaken, her mouth was rimmed with chocolate.

  When she saw him, the fork dropped with a clatter.

  Not the magazine, he noticed, which she pressed to her chest.

  Curious now, he stepped closer, not knowing what he expected. Maybe an article on “How to Drive Your Partner Insane.”

  Hell, even voodoo exercises wouldn’t have surprised him. Pushing his glasses closer to his eyes, he leaned in. “You’re reading…”

  “Nothing.” She hugged the magazine closer, which he could now see was Cosmopolitan. “I’m reading nothing. Why are you here?”

  “Ray called looking for you.”

  “At the office?”

  “At the office.”

  “Oh. He probably wanted to go out, we do that sometimes when neither of us can sleep.” She loosened her arms and started to back away. “Thanks.”

  “Uh-huh.” He blinked in disbelief. “You’re reading…” He cocked his head to get a better look. “‘How to Get Your Sexy Partner from the Board Room to the Bedroom’?”

  13

  UNDER THE GLOW of the harsh lights, Kenna’s cheeks glowed. With heat, embarrassment…Wes had no idea, but he couldn’t stop looking at her.

  “It’s just a magazine,” she said. “I subscribe. It means nothing, honestly. In fact, I read all the articles. Here, look, I just finished this one—” She flipped through the magazine. “See? Right here. ‘How to Get Your Yoga Instructor to Fall for You’, and I don’t even have a yoga instructor.”

  Then she backed away from the island, doing nothing to get rid of the chocolate on her mouth.

  He stared at her lips and reminded himself that eating that chocolate off her mouth would be a very bad move. A very, very bad move. “We need to talk.”

  “I don’t know, I really had my heart set on eating this cake.”

  “Kenna…what are we doing?”

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m eating. I heard this thing calling my name all the way from my hotel room.”

  “Kenna.”

  “Look…why do you care?”

  “That you were eating cake? I don’t. Why do I care that you stay in an office that was never meant for you? That one I’m not sure about. Or that you’re trying so hard at this job, harder than half our employees, which I’ve got to tell you, is impossibly att