Silk Confessions by Joanne Rock Page A

here.”
    “Yet you arrived bearing prophylactics.” She shrugged into her jacket before retrieving her scarf. “You were well-prepared for a man who didn’t expect to get carried away.”
    Busted.
    “Okay. Correction—I wanted something to happen, but I didn’t think it would happen in the middle of your conference room.” He watched her wind the scarf around herneck, carefully tucking the ends into her jacket to cover those incredible breasts of hers. Desire slugged through him as hot as if he hadn’t just held her naked in his arms. “Nice view, by the way.”
    She glanced up, brown eyes wide.
    Jerking a thumb toward the wall of windows high above any other building nearby, he dragged his gaze away from her centerfold curves to the panorama of downtown. “You’ve got great offices here. I can’t imagine many buildings in the city rivaling this kind of view.”
    “You’re full of it.” She fluffed her dark curls around her face and then pushed a few strands behind one ear. “But thank you.”
    Her tone seemed different. Remote. Wes watched her, searching for a clue to her mood. She shuffled through some papers on her desk before slamming her appointment book closed.
    “I guess I’m done here for the day if you want to walk down with me. I’ll have to make up my missed appointments another day.”
    That was it? They’d just had the best sex of his life and now she wanted to dismiss him like one of her employees? He knew he had no right to be insulted since he’d been wondering how to avoid awkward after-sex conversations himself, but damn, even he wouldn’t have tried rolling out the door that fast.
    Still, he didn’t have any intention of letting her out of his sight just yet.
    “I’ll walk you down. Better yet, I’ll give you a lift back to your family’s home.” He would make sure she didn’t try to stay at her apartment tonight, not until the security system was up and running. “You said Park Avenue, right?”
    “Wait a minute.” Tempest held out a restraining hand, blocking his exit with a manicured hand to his chest.
    “What?”
    “I thought you didn’t want any part of the public eye.” She slid her hand down and away. It surprised Wes how much he mourned the loss of that fleeting touch.
    “I’m a cop escorting you home. That’s the NYPD doing a damn fine job, and believe me, the good stuff never makes its way into the papers.” When rumors had flown about the possibility of his former partner turning bad while undercover, however, the media couldn’t shovel up dirt fast enough.
    “You know as well as I do that no journalist in the world is going to take that angle.” She shut down a coffee machine and flicked off the harsh fluorescent lights. It was only late afternoon, but already the late winter sky outside was hazy and gray. “As soon as they find out who you are and that we come from different walks of social life, they’ll either paint a picture of me as a gullible heiress getting taken by a studly fortune hunter, or they’ll intimate that I must be slumming it for a little while. I guarantee neither version is going to flatter us.”
    No kidding. He could feel his nose already out of joint, his shoulders tense. “And you don’t like being viewed as gullible or slumming, I take it?”
    “Frankly, I don’t care. I’m used to it, and I’ve learned not to buy any newspaper besides the Wall Street Journal so I don’t have to see things that upset me.” She moved from the conference room into her office and straightened a few papers while shutting down her computer. “But I don’t want to subject anyone else to that kind of scrutiny without ample warning.”
    “Consider me warned.” He appreciated the heads-up,but even knowing the downside of dating her, he couldn’t seem to talk himself out of it. He wanted her anyway.
    On the plus side of things—Tempest didn’t seem to care about media flack for her own sake. She wasn’t embarrassed to be seen on the