The Case of the Missing Secretary by Diana Palmer

process! He can’t get over the fact that his ex-wife left him.”
    Kit began to see the carefree Emmett in a new light, and he didn’t seem quite so carefree anymore. “Poor man,” she said quietly. “Poor man, the devil. He isn’t your problem. Go home!”
    Her eyebrows arched defiantly. “I don’t work for you anymore. You can’t tell me to walk to the corner!”
    “No? Let me show you what I can get you to do, Miss Morris,” he said, and started toward her. Chapter Four Kit froze. She’d never been alone in this kind of intimate setting with Logan, not even when she’d had to accompany him out of the country and they’d stayed in hotel suites together. Then, it had been all business and he’d never noticed her, no matter how she dressed or looked.
    But now, the gown she was wearing might have been transparent as his dark eyes slid over the bodice and seemed to see right un-derneath it. He had a sophistication that was vaguely alarming. A woman’s body was no mystery to him. She’d seen enough women come and go in his life in the past three years to know that he was experienced.
    Her fingers grasped the cover and drew it up sharply to cover her breasts. She flushed as he paused by the bed and looked down at her.
    Something changed in his face. He lifted one bushy eyebrow and deliberately let his eyes fall on her softly parted mouth.
    He’d never wondered what it would feel like to taste Miss Mor-ris’s pert little mouth. But suddenly, he wanted the knowledge with a longing that corded his powerful body. Betsy was pushed to the back of his mind quite suddenly while he grappled with unbelievable desire for his ex-secretary. “Will you please get out of here?” she squeaked.
    He made an odd, hesitant movement and sat down on the bed beside her. His big hand, half the size of a dinner plate, folded

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    Diana Palmer
     
    around both of hers and detached them from their death grip on the coverlet. “What are you afraid of?” he asked.
    It was a tone he’d never used with her, a deep, husky pitch that was like warm velvet. She looked into his eyes closer than she’d ever seen them and became lost in their dark brown depths.
    She wasn’t breathing quite naturally. Neither was he, if the rise and fall of his broad chest under its charcoal-gray suit and white shirt was any indication. He smelled of some exotic cologne that appealed to her senses, and he was clean-shaven. The elegant Mr. Deverell was never disheveled or less than immaculate. Kit couldn’t imagine him wearing jeans and chambray shirts as Emmett did. “Answer me, Kit.”
    That was new, too-her name on his lips. It was always Morris this, Morris that. She searched his eyes helplessly. “I’m not afraid of you,” she said absently.
    Her vulnerability had a devastating effect on him. Their fights had become legend in the office building where he worked. Kit had a fiery temper and a stubborn nature, and he enjoyed the explosions that resulted from his prodding of both.
    But she wasn’t fighting now. She was sitting in his grasp like some exotic kitten, her big blue eyes wide and afraid and yet… almost welcoming. She had a beautiful complexion, he thought, and a mouth that looked as if it would feel like warm silk.
    His body tautened with longing. He wasn’t even thinking of consequences or other commitments as he captured her face in his big, warm hands and slowly bent to her upturned mouth.
    She gasped as she felt his breath, coffee and mint scented, and the tentative brush of his mouth on her parted lips.
    He felt her body jerk instinctively. His nose drew against her own. All he could see, think, breathe was the shape of her mouth under his. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered, moving closer. “I can be gentle, even if I’ve never given you cause to believe it.”
    She felt his mouth touching hers, and it was like electricity. So many dreams, and here was the incredible, pulsing reality of his mouth against her own, his body so