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Praise for Anna Cleary

‘At the Boss’s Beck and Call is simply outstanding! Liberally spiced with wonderful characterisation, wicked repartee, spicy love scenes, brilliant dialogue and a believable conflict.’ —www.cataromance.com

‘Ms Cleary has created characters

who give tons of emotion and a story as mysterious

and compelling as watching a romantic movie.

Thoroughly enjoyable and highly entertaining.’

—www.cataromance.com on

Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin

Also by Anna Cleary

Wedding Night with a Stranger

At the Boss’s Beck and Call

Untamed Billionaire, Undressed Virgin

Taken by the Maverick Millionaire

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

About Anna Cleary

As a child, ANNA CLEARY loved reading so much that during the midnight hours she was forced to read with a torch under the bedcovers, to lull the suspicions of her sleep-obsessed parents. From an early age she dreamed of writing her own books. She saw herself in a stone cottage by the sea, wearing a velvet smoking jacket and sipping sherry, like Somerset Maugham.

In real life she became a schoolteacher, where her greatest pleasure was teaching children to write beautiful stories.

A little while ago, she and one of her friends made a pact to each write the first chapter of a romance novel in their holidays. From writing her very first line Anna was hooked, and she gave up teaching to become a full-time writer. She now lives in Queensland with a deeply sensitive and intelligent cat. She prefers champagne to sherry, and loves music, books, four-legged people, trees, movies and restaurants.

Do Not Disturb

Anna Cleary

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my lovely niece, Linda.

CHAPTER ONE

THE tall, dark-haired guy in the suit strode into the meeting room of Martin Place Investments, and the hum of conversation faded into silence.

Mirandi Summers sat straight in her chair, her pulse-rate a little elevated. Everyone else was in black or shades of grey. She hoped her violet dress wasn’t too pretty for the office.

‘Morning,’ Joe Sinclair said without bothering to glance at his assembled market analysts, too concerned with checking the hardware for his presentation.

‘Morning, Joe.’ The responses came from around the room, some bright and eager to please, others more subdued.

This morning Joe looked authoritative and slightly on edge, something in his manner creating more than the usual tension. How he’d changed in ten years. Hard to imagine him burning up the bitumen on his bike now.

‘Ah, here we go.’ The boyish grin that had the temps drooling made a brief appearance on his lean, tanned face, then vanished.

A brilliant, multi-coloured graph illuminated the screen. On it a number of spiky criss-crossing lines curved upwards, shooting towards infinity.

‘There now. Look at that.’ Joe’s cool blue eyes grew sharp and focused, a line creasing the space between his brows. ‘You see before you the future. Looks good, doesn’t it?’ He sent a commanding glance around at his employees and Mirandi joined the chorus of assent. ‘And it will be good, people, I think I can promise you that. It will, but only if we are willing to learn from the mistakes of the past.’

He frowned and pulled a face. ‘Tomorrow, as you know, I’ll be flying off to this conference in Europe. Before I leave I want to know everyone has a clear view of the factors influencing MPI’s current direction.’

He touched the button again and another graph lit the screen, this one’s projections not quite so sunny. He swept the faces of listeners. ‘I’m keen to hear your ideas. Can anyone suggest—’

Suddenly he stopped in mid-sentence. His frown deepening, he swung around until his acute blue glance lighted on Mirandi at the end of the row.

‘Oh—er…Miss Summers. You’re here. Are you—intending to stay?’

Mirandi felt something grab in her insides. Under the weight of her red hair her nape grew uncomfortably warm. ‘Well, yes. Of course.’ She glanced about her. All the other market analysts were assembled, their laptops at the ready. ‘This is the future projections meeting, isn’t it?’

Joe Sinclair gave his ear a meditative rub. ‘Yes, it is. Just that I was under the impression—Ryan had mentioned something he wanted you to do this morning. Didn’t I hear you say that, Ryan?’

Beside Mirandi Ryan Patterson stirred himself to attention. ‘Oh, did I? Yeah. Yeah, that’s right, Joe. Sorry, Mirandi. I forgot to mention the Trevor file.’

Mirandi gave a small, gurgling laugh. ‘Oh, the Trevor file. Now that’s a mistake from the past if ever there was one.’ Everyone joined in her light-hearted laugh, including Ryan Patterson. Everyone except Joe Sinclair, that was. His black lashes were lowered, as it it pained him to look at her.

Smarting, Mirandi changed position slightly and crossed her legs. ‘As it happens, Joe, I’ve reconciled the Trevor file. It’s all finished and accounted for.’

There was a moment of stunned silence, then the other analysts burst into a round of surprised applause and congratulations. Mirandi couldn’t help but feel gratified. The Trevor file was notorious and had been around for a long time. Perfect material for a new MA to cut her teeth on. Especially if the boss needed something to keep her occupied whilst keeping her at a distance.

Joe smiled too, though Mirandi felt his quick smouldering glance leave a trail of sparks down her legs. ‘Have you, now? Slick work. But have you written the letters to old Trevor and his sons to let them know the outcome?’

Mirandi’s flush climbed higher, but she said in dulcet tones, ‘Well, as you know, Joe, Ryan’s assistant will be back next week and I suspect she’d like to have that pleasure.’

Beneath his lashes, Joe’s half-lidded glance lasered Mirandi from across the room, though he said with silky gentleness, ‘I don’t think you understand quite how we operate here, Miss Summers. Until those letters are in the mail the file is incomplete. I’m sure you don’t want to leave unfinished business for others to deal with.’

Mirandi felt a savage jump in her blood pressure, though she controlled it, surrendering to the command and rising from her chair with cool grace. ‘Unfinished business?’ She threw him a mocking smile. ‘Heaven forbid. What would you know about that, Joe?’

She made a point of giving Ryan and the others a cheeky grin and a wave, then swept from the room, feeling a visceral flash from Joe’s eyes sear through the fabric of her dress.

As she strode back to her desk along the corridor his voice drifted after her. ‘Are you free to give us your attention now, Ryan?’

It took her a couple of hours to get over the latest clash, but she cooled down in time. She was determined not to go home with tears in her eyes this night. In fact, she might have managed to forget all about it by the end of the day if Ryan Patterson hadn’t found something else for her to do. Might.

But he had, and ironically here she was, in the middle of the afternoon, approaching no-woman’s land. Joseph Sinclair’s private residence.

Twenty-second floor. Apartment four.

Leave the folders on the table in the foyer where Joe can easily find them, and hotfoot it straight back to work in time for the three o’clock credit review, were Ryan’s spoken instructions. Unspoken, but lurking under the surface like crocodiles, was his more crucial advice. Don’t linger there hoping for a chance to flirt, sweetheart. Forget leaving any traces of yourself behind to intrigue him. No strands of your flaming red hair or whiffs of your perfume, strategically squirted here and there. He’s no good for the likes of you. He’d use you up without a second thought and break you in the process.

As if Mirandi didn’t know that already. She had personal experience. If eyes were the windows to the soul, the colour of Joe Sinclair’s was a liar. That heavenly blue had already lured her in once only to leave her floundering, and she wasn’t a kid of eighteen any more, naive and willing to be enchanted by a charming young rebel with nothing to lose and everything to prove.

She couldn’t have been persuaded to set foot in Joe’s posh apartment building if her entire floor hadn’t been overstretched with preparations for his big junket to France, and no one else available.

2204. Mirandi paused before the imposing door. Funny how even with a legitimate card key in her hand she felt that prickle of intruder’s guilt. Noiselessly, the lock flashed green, she walked in and…

Whoosh.

Oh, wow. The light. The space. And through those double doors into the spacious sitting room—the views.

So this was who he was now. Of course, if an outlaw’s natural brilliance had skyrocketed him up the corporate ladder to the highest echelon in an investment firm, why wouldn’t he live in a palace at eye level with the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge?

Hypnotised by the grandeur, she stepped through the double doors, still clutching the folders, and tiptoed the couple of miles across Joe Sinclair’s satin hardwood floor to gaze out through the glass. Sydney looked like the postcards from this height, all blue sea, sparkling rooftops and scrapers under a bright azure sky.

She turned and cast an awed eye over the joint, inhaling deeply to soak in the atmosphere. It smelled rich. The furnishings were spare, but tasteful. Mahogany and leather, a richly-hued oriental rug, a couple of paintings…

This glossy apartment was a million miles from that two-roomed flat, their favourite trysting place all those long ago summer afternoons where Joe had initiated her into the delights of passion.

Her eye fell on a photo, frozen in time inside a glass prism. It showed a decrepit motorbike leaning against a wall. It was Joe’s old motorbike, before he’d rescued it from rust and made it shine. His pride and joy.

Regret for that long ago summer welled up in her, and, like the sentimental fool she was, even while she smiled in remembrance tears misted her eyes. For a minute she was back in the magic time, the summer she turned eighteen.

It had been late spring, for the jacarandas were in flower, purple carpets underfoot all over Lavender Bay. As sweet and glowing in her mind as if it had been yesterday she was there, standing under the spreading boughs of the Jacaranda in the churchyard after morning service, fresh out of school and in love after one brief, world-shaking encounter. There she was, dreamily listening to Auntie Mim chat with friends while her father, who was Captain of the Lavender Bay chapter of the Christian Army, was still engaged in farewelling his flock at the church door.

She could still see her old love-struck self. Nodding, smiling, pretending to listen, holding her secret clutched to her heart until her romantic radar, newly alert, pricked up its ears at the approach of a motorcycle.

A wild hope bloomed inside her, and she swung around just as the big bike roared into the paved entrance and skidded to a halt, its racket idling down to a low, predatory growl.

Astride the mean machine was Jake Sinclair’s wayward son, Joe, looking long, lean and darkly satanic as his cool blue gaze combed the little clusters of friends and families in their Sunday uniforms and pastels. Black jeans outlined his powerful thighs, while a black leather vest left his bronzed, sinewy arms bare and highlighted the glossy raven black of his hair and two-day beard.

‘What’s he doing here?’ Auntie Mim frowned. ‘What could he be wanting?’

Though Mirandi had often noticed him about—who among the females of Lavender Bay hadn’t?—she’d only spoken to him for the first time the day before when he’d helped her retrieve her books from a puddle outside the library.

After years of steeping herself in romantic sagas and grand passions played out on the Yorkshire moors, Mirandi knew instinctively what he wanted. Who. And to her intense and terrified joy, his bold blue gaze lit on her with an electric summons that sizzled across the paved churchyard and straight to her ovaries.

She was gripped with the purest excitement she’d ever experienced. For a second she vacillated. On the one hand there were her friends, her father, Auntie Mim, the entire church gathering, and on the other the bad boy on the big bike.

Then Joe Sinclair cocked his handsome head at her and grinned. A primitive urge as deep and irresistible as a cosmic force blazed to life inside her. She took a step in his direction, faltered, took another step, then, thrusting her hymnal into Auntie Mim’s grasp, so as not to worry the innocent woman, breathed, ‘Auntie, I think I can guess. He’s in search of salvation.’

Then she walked across the yard.

‘Well, hello, Joe,’ she said, every inch the pastor’s gracious daughter, though her excited pulse was effervescing through her veins like raspberry fizz. ‘Why don’t you come in and join us?’

Joe Sinclair flicked a glance across the goggling congregation, then his black lashes made a sleepy descent over his smiling gaze. ‘Or you could come for a ride.’

This was only the second time she’d had a chance to dwell on his face up close for any length of time, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He had a strong straight nose, sexy, chiselled mouth and jaw and gorgeous cheekbones. He was all lean, hard and angular, except for his black lashes. They were amazingly long and luxuriant, but in a masculine way that caught at her lungs and melted her very bone marrow.

‘Oh…’ she faltered, plunged into a dilemma ‘…I don’t think… Well, my friends are all… And there’s—there’s my auntie…’

He broke into a grin then that illuminated his lean face and made him so handsome her insides curled over. ‘I haven’t come for your auntie.’

She didn’t hesitate very much longer. With a hasty, placatory wave at Mim, she climbed onto the passenger seat, tucked her skirt primly around her knees, let her fingers sink into his lean ribs and was swept away on the most exhilarating ride of her life.

Oh, it had been thrilling. Clinging to Joe on the bike was the closest intimate contact she’d ever had with a raw, vibrant man.

And, unbelievably for a lanky girl with red hair and no boyfriend experience—hardly even a first kiss to boast of, unless she counted Stewart Beale and a clumsy pash at the school dance—he’d taken her back to his flat and kissed her until her insides melted like dark chocolate and her brain turned to mush.

Then he’d gently but firmly unbuttoned her modest little blouse with his beautiful lean hands and stroked her breasts until she trembled with a delicious fever. And then he’d unzipped her Sunday skirt, and with artful, virile skill had demonstrated things to her about riding she’d only ever read about in trashy magazines.

Oh, it had been a golden time. Joe was cynical and mocking about serious things like church, but tender and affectionate with her. He didn’t mock her when she tootled her recorder on Saturday mornings in the mall with the church band, though she felt so self-conscious she frowned the whole time so as not to be tempted to laugh.

Every day with him was an adventure. He made her listen to songs, really listen, and in between his university studies and part-time work introduced her to writers and ideas she’d never before encountered.

He was passionate about music, rock especially, and animals, and could be so enchanted by the beauty of a wren or a honey-eater he would make her stand still for minutes so as not to scare it.

She could still hear his voice, urging her to take her time. ‘Look,’ he’d say. ‘Look properly.’ Joe’s mother was a painter, he’d once told her, and had taught him how to really look at birds and natural things from when he was a tiny little boy. And he was an artist himself of a sort. Once in the flat she stumbled on some poems he’d composed. Vivid little pictures painted in just a few bright words.

She was supposed to be enrolling in uni, but how could she concentrate on such mundane stuff as her future when she was intoxicated with love? So she deferred her enrolment, and told Auntie Mim and her father she needed a gap year to experience life.

Mim was unimpressed. ‘He’ll never amount to anything. He’s nothing but trouble, that lad. Why can’t you find some nice, steady boy from the church?’ She’d have been surprised to learn he could find beauty in simple things. That often when Mirandi was in danger of pushing the limits of recklessness too far, it was Joe’s steadying hand that restrained her.

When he wasn’t fixing up motors he took Mirandi fishing in his father’s old dinghy in the little estuary at the head of the bay. How she remembered those lazy afternoons, drifting in the boat, dreaming about the future. Joe in his ancient blue tee shirt that reeked faintly of machine oil no matter how often it was washed.

And she’d loved him. Oh, how she’d loved him.

Shame it had all had to end so miserably. But she’d learned from it. As the song said, life was a bittersweet symphony. And after she’d lost him, once she was over the heartbreak, she’d come to the realisation her happiness depended on herself and not another person. Every woman was a goddess in her own right and was honour bound to walk like one.

She cast a wry glance around at the glossy apartment. Did that mocking, irreverent, irreligious Joe Sinclair still exist somewhere, deep down under the layers of his Italian suits and the corporate skin he now inhabited? Or was this new sophisticated Joe the animal he’d truly been all along?

She paused at an antique sideboard, where a crystal decanter stood among a selection of lethal-looking bottles. A few familiar labels. Whisky, gin, and there was the vodka, her old favourite and first acquaintance with the evil stuff. She could have laughed to think of herself then. How easily she’d succumbed in the name of sophistication. Anything to impress her lover, who’d been so worldly-wise in her naive eyes. Older by a whole six years, though way older in the hard lessons of grief and loss.

She could imagine what her father would think of it all. After a lifetime of caring for the homeless and manning the city soup kitchens, he wouldn’t be any more impressed than he’d been ten years ago when he’d scraped Joe’s father off the pavement and driven him home because he’d gambled his last dollar and couldn’t afford the bus.

It popped into her head that if Joe knew she was here now, invading his private domain, he’d have every right to be furious.

She was conscious then of a vague sensation she hadn’t experienced since a time in her childhood when her father had inadvertently left her alone in the house while he rushed to tend some distressed person. A reckless, almost irresistible desire to make the most of her freedom and do something wicked, like raid the freezer for ice cream.

Not, of course, that she’d do anything like that now.

However, with Joe ensconced in meetings with the board for the rest of the afternoon, along with Stella, his EA, surely there was time for a little tour of appreciation?

CHAPTER TWO

JOE SINCLAIR directed his long stride back towards his chief executive office, then on an impulse made a left swerve and took the lift down, loosening his tie. Would the day never end?

Something was wrong with him.

If it wasn’t weird enough to have been tossing and turning in his sleep these past weeks like a criminal with a conscience, now he had developed the disease most fatal to bankers.

Astonishing this could happen to him, a guy with a gift for finance, but in the last couple of months—ever since the casino development had been floated, in fact—board meetings had become excruciating. When had the musical chink of money flowing into the coffers of Martin Place Investment started to fall so flat?

He nearly had to pinch himself. Wasn’t he the guy who’d pursued his career with such single-minded zeal his colleagues called him the Money Machine? Nothing ever interfered with his core business. No distraction, no interest, no woman. All of his passions lived in their separate compartments and life was a velvet ride. No collisions, no dramas.

Down in the street, he breathed the open air and lifted his face to the afternoon sun. His first time AWOL in years, he considered how best to make the most of his stolen afternoon. In the absence of a helicopter to lift him out of the business world and drop him somewhere clean and pure, like Antarctica—or what remained of it—he tossed up between a gym and a bar, and the bar won.

Not for the alcohol, per se, so much as the possibility of finding some luscious lovely decorating the venue with a view to entertainment.

One who didn’t want to buy him. He tried not to think of Kirsty, his sometime lover. Way back then those first few weeks had been amusing, but now.

Now, a familiar feeling of ennui lurked around the edges of her carefully groomed image. He could tell, the signs had been there for weeks, an unpleasant crunch was looming. Her father’s offer of the house in Vaucluse and an honorary directorship had been the clincher. Every one of his instincts was shouting at him to run like hell before the prison gates clanged shut.

Ironic, wasn’t it, that these days society guys wanted to buy him for their daughters? Him. Jake Sinclair’s son. One-time rebel and seducer of innocent virgins. Did he really come across now as the sort of guy who would trade his soul for connections?

Between them they’d tried every trick in the book. Kirsty had even attempted to make him jealous, flaunting some silver-tailed Romeo in front of his eyes to make him care. What she didn’t know—what each of his women had to learn—was that Joe Sinclair didn’t have a jealous bone in his body.

He paused at the entrance to the Bamboo Bar, then strolled into its dim, cool refuge and ordered a Scotch. The lunch crowd had diminished. A couple of leggy women perched on barstools glanced his way, but instead of welcoming the signals he was swept with a wave of weariness.

Suddenly it all seemed so predictable, the conquest dance. He’d advance, they’d retreat. He’d advance a little further, they’d take a flirty step in his direction. He’d play it cool, they’d come on strong. It was all too easy.

But, God, he loved meeting women. What was wrong with him? He must be sick.

He should be feeling upbeat. Here he was at the top of his game, the world his own personal pomegranate. Tomorrow he’d be flying to the south of France. A change of scene, the possibility of picking up some new contacts, useful information from some of the masters of the game before he decided whether or not the firm should risk its shirt on the Darling Point casino project.

So why should his heart sink at the prospect? Good old reliable Stella would be along to smooth the way and attend to all the little details of his comfort. Well, most of them. And Stella was—well, she was risk free.

Unlike some.

An apparition reared in his mind, one that burned in his thoughts a time too often, in fact, for a highly disciplined CEO with responsibilities.

Was it a whole five weeks since HR had floated her name before him as the potential candidate for the new Market Analyst position the firm was creating? His first reaction had been incredulity. A more unlikely MA he couldn’t imagine. Why had she applied? Was she hoping to glean some advantage from their past acquaintance? Had she forgotten how things had played out?

Mirandi Summers, his one-time squeeze. His first instinct was to give her the thumbs down. Last thing he ever wanted was to revisit that final scene where betrayal hung acrid in the air like smoke after a massacre. So why hadn’t he blocked her application?

It wasn’t guilt, exactly. He’d done the right thing in the end, hadn’t he? The only thing. He could hardly believe he was still wasting his time even thinking about it.

All right, so these days she wasn’t quite the shy, sweet little honey who’d tied his guts in knots. She’d grown up. Her green eyes had acquired the glitter of experience. Where once they’d reflected every passing emotion with honest fervour, these days they were guarded. Wary. But in the competitive jungle of office politics—a girl like her…

The bad taste this morning’s meeting had left returned to him with full force. Why the hell was she so keen to swim with the sharks? If only she knew it, he was trying his best to protect her. Given half a chance some of those others would cut her to shreds.

He ran a finger round the inside of his collar. How could he ever be expected to concentrate with her in the room like a woman-sized pack of dynamite?

It had been the same since the day she started. That first morning when he’d strolled down to the coffee room and she’d wafted into view his lungs had gone into cardiac arrest.

Old memories, old guilts had rushed to the surface, and for a guy as fit as himself his blood pressure had made a surprising leap. He’d had to close his eyes a second to reorient himself.

She still radiated the same animal vigour that had sucked him in and driven him wild in his twenties, but now her leggy, coltish beauty had matured into sensuous, smooth-flowing curves and long, silken limbs that had rocked through him like a warm, sultry samba. Limbs he’d once enjoyed to the utmost draped around his neck.

Her bright hair showed none of its old tendency to curl. Now it hung smooth and silky down her back. But surely that purple dress she’d worn today was a little snug? He could see what other guys would make of her. Hot.

He was seized with a maniacal desire to rush across the room and drag some covering around her.

As usual, just thinking of the womanly handful she’d become lit a dangerous simmer in his blood. Clearly, hiring her had been a mistake. He’d arranged for her to be tucked under Ryan Patterson’s wing for a few weeks while Patterson’s EA was on leave, just so she could at least find her feet before she was thrown in with the pack, but it didn’t help Joe Sinclair’s problem one bit. She was a burr in his imagination. In the end, unless he could work her out of his system, nothing else for it, he’d have to sack her.

Not that he gave a damn about her now, one way or the other. Although, all right, he had taken the time to check out her personnel file just for interest’s sake.

She still lived in Lavender Bay not far from the old neighbourhood, and still not married, apparently. Surprising really, considering the course her old man had mapped out for her.

His mouth tightened in a grimace, though the insult had long since ceased to sting. Hell, if he’d been her father he’d probably have done the same thing. She’d been so soft, so tender and giving. Malleable. Too malleable to be at the mercy of a villain like himself. He should probably thank the old guy. It was probably the insulting lack of faith in all things Sinclair that had spurred him on to show the captain and the rest of Lavender Bay that he could rise to any height he set his mind on.

But as for Mirandi in this world.he still couldn’t get over it. Did she have any idea of some of the cutthroat decisions she’d have to make? Perfectly good, useful projects she’d have to reject in favour of other, more lucrative investments? The hearts she’d have to break? She was as suitable for the job as a baby. Hell, with her upbringing, if she had any idea of what the board was contemplating at this very minute her tender conscience would send her running in the other direction.

Once or twice he’d been unable to resist an impulse to stroll by Patterson’s office. Just to check she was settling in. He’d caught a few glimpses of her, once frowning in concentration at her desk, another time chatting on the phone. To a client, he hoped. She looked perfectly relaxed and confident, though sometimes people had no idea they were struggling and in need of help.

The last time he’d given into that impulse he’d caught her laughing at something Ryan Patterson said, and she’d glanced around and spotted him strolling by. Instantly her laugh had died and her face had assumed that cool, mysterious façade that could drive a man crazy.

He was used to his employees behaving with caution when he was around, it came with the territory, but sometimes he couldn’t help wishing he’d gone easier with her on her first day.

He’d resisted checking on her after that, but knowing she was there, her honeyed temptation fragrancing the air along there—the same air breathed by Patterson—flavoured every minute of his every day. In fact, he wondered now if it had been such a good idea awarding Patterson the pleasure of easing her in.

He’d chosen the guy because Patterson was mild and well liked, but the choice might have backfired.

If only the bloke would stop raving about her abilities as if she were his own personal discovery. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of probability he was in lust with her, if a pale, blond milksop of a guy could conjure up enough red blood cells to experience anything so turbulent.

Joe was no stranger to turbulence. Even during his recent bout of disturbed nights, those times when he was torn from his sleep in a cold sweat, as if in search of further punishment his mind had immediately turned to her. How she looked, her expression on her first day in the job when he’d been forced to show her her place.

There’d been something in her face. Ridiculously, it brought back to him with violent force the stricken look he’d seen in her eyes that last time she’d come to his flat. How vulnerable she’d been back then. He’d seen something like that look again this morning.