Passion and Scandal Read Free Page A

containers from the desk. "But I've had a real busy couple of days and my last secretary quit over a week ago, so—" he picked up the metal trash can by the desk and began cramming the debris into it as he spoke "—things have kind of gone to hell around here. I'm not much of a housekeeper," he added unnecessarily, flashing his dimple in a self-deprecating, aw-shucks grin meant to charm and disarm.
    "No, I can see that you aren't," Willow mumbled in a strangled voice.
    It wasn't his dimpled rogue's grin that got to her this time—she wasn't even looking at his face—it was his body. He'd taken off his pizza-stained T-shirt to wash up and had apparently forgotten to replace it with a clean one. The white towel he had slung around his neck didn't even begin to do a decent job of covering him.
    He was wide through the shoulders and well muscled without being the least bit bulky. His torso narrowed to a flat, washboard belly and practically nonexistent hips. Crinkly blond hair gilded his well-developed pectorals like gold dust on a living statue—Michelangelo's David came immediately to mind—before narrowing into a tempting arrow of silky blond hair that disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.
    "There, that should be good enough for now," Steve said as he set the trash can back on the floor beside the desk.
    "Mmm?" Willow mumbled, unable to think of anything more intelligent in the face of so much glorious masculine pulchritude.
    "Just let me get these out of your way—" he grabbed the boxing gloves off of the chair by their laces and tossed them on the sofa "—and you can sit down. Go ahead," he urged when she just stood there. "Take a load off. I'm just going to put these away—" he lifted a stack of file folders up off the desk with one beefy hand "—and grab a clean shirt. It'll just take a second and then we can get started. Okay?"
    "Okay," Willow echoed weakly, her gaze following him as he moved away from her toward the filing cabinet.
    His back was as appealing as his chest, with long smooth muscles that flexed and rippled under his golden skin with every little movement. Fascinated, her mouth all but hanging open, Willow watched the play of his muscles as he unlocked the top file drawer, dropped the folders in and relocked it. When he bent over to pull open the lowest file drawer, her mouth went dry. He had a better butt than Brad Pitt. Better than George Clooney. Better, even, than the anonymous male model whose jeans-clad fanny was currently plastered on billboards all over the country.
    Willow forced her gaze away from his rear end. Perfect or not, it was undignified and unprofessional and just plain not nice to ogle him. Not to mention blatantly sexist and politically incorrect. She certainly wouldn't like it if he ogled her like that, she assured herself, staunchly ignoring the insidious little voice in her head that suggested she would probably like it very much, indeed, politically correct or not.
    She looked down at the top of his still-littered desk, seeking something, anything, to focus her attention on besides Steve Hart's gorgeous body. There was an open ledger book in the center of the desk, its neat columns marred by dark smudges and eraser crumbs. Willow's smooth forehead crinkled up in a disapproving frown as she surveyed the mess he'd made of the ledger. Why on earth, she wondered, would anyone in business for himself in this day and age still be doing his books by hand when affordable PCs and great accounting software had been available for years now? Surely the computer sitting on the chair in front of his desk wasn't his first?
    And then the file drawer slammed shut with a loud bang and Willow automatically turned her head toward the sound. Steve had taken the towel from around his neck, leaving it in a damp heap atop the filing cabinet, and was pulling a clean T-shirt on over his head. There was a delicious ripple of sinewy muscle as he reached up behind him to draw the soft yellow