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  She looked up as he approached, a question lighting her face. “Mac Brodie?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Ginny Wallace, I presume?”

  Her blue eyes crinkled at the corners. “Yup, that’s me.”

  “May I join you?” A line hackneyed from a fifties film but…

  “Isn’t that why you came here?”

  That and more. Much, much more. Later. “I wanted to meet my newest fiction writer.” He sat down. It beat him how she’d snagged a table this big just for the two of them. “Do you have pull here, Ginny?” He glanced at the crowded cafe. There were groups of three, even four sitting around smaller tables. “Bagging the best table?”

  Her smile lit up her entire face. Nice face, too. “I used to work here when I was at Uni. Plus, my sister’s married to the owner.”

  “Will dropping your name help here?”

  “Always!” She turned and nodded to a dark-haired waiter lounging near the cash register. He was at their table, pad in hand in seconds. Minutes later, they had a basket of breadsticks, a plate of olives and crudités, and a promise their orders would be out as soon as possible.

  And this was a woman who dubbed herself submissive. Lovely. Couldn’t be better. Just looking at her had him hard, thinking about her naked and helpless sent his cock a-waving. Damn good thing he was sitting down. Yes, well…to business. “About your stories…”

  She looked at him. “You really want to buy them?”

  “You bet. You thought I was fooling on the phone?”

  She shook her head. “No, you sounded perfectly serious. It was just…” She hesitated, shrugged and smiled. “I sent them by mistake. Must have grabbed the wrong disk. I never planned on selling them.”

  “Fortunate mistake from my angle.” A flash of uncertainly clouded her eyes. “Something the matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  “About what?”

  “Why you want to buy my stories.”

  “I need all the good fiction I can get. Yours is good. You will let me have them? Pay’s lousy, I admit, but heck, the magazine isn’t a moneymaker.”

  “I realize that… Oh!” She shook her head, again the darn sexy smile, with a hint of embarrassment in her eyes this time. “Didn’t mean that quite the way it came out but, yes. I mean, no, it’s not the money. It’s just I never expected to sell them.”

  “Now you have, Ginny, and will sell many more I imagine. Did you decide on a pen name?”

  “Amy Wise.”

  Interesting. “You just picked it?”

  “While I was waiting. Amy is my middle name and heck, I was sitting here wondering if I’d been wise or foolish and since ‘foolish’ sounded a bit odd as a last name, I went for ‘wise’.”

  “Very wise of you.”

  Even her groans were sexy.

  By the time they’d agreed on the sale, he’d promised to put the first one in the next issue and she’d bargained for extra contributor copies, a carafe of wine arrived with two glasses. Not what they’d ordered. ELQ’s budget didn’t run to wine with lunch. Heck, lunch was stretching it a bit.

  “Roger thought you might like this,” the waiter said. “He wanted you to try it before he inflicted it on the customers.”

  “What is it, Pete, Algerian with antifreeze?”

  The dark-haired waiter shook his glossy curls. “Watch yourself, Ginny! Slandering us.” He tut-tutted and rolled his eyes. “It’s a very nice South African Roger snapped up. Not bad at all, actually.” He picked up the carafe and poured.

  Ginny’s eyes met Mac’s as she reached for her glass. “We’d better risk our taste buds and give it a go. Are you game?”

  You bet! Game for anything that involved Ginny Wallace. He took a sip. Pete had been right. Not bad at all.

  She took her time. Sniffing then eying it with a little crease between her eyebrows before sipping the dark red wine. She let it sit on her tongue before swallowing and taking a second taste.

  Mac sensed the waiter’s anxiety. He really did want to know what she thought. Who was she? Some wine connoisseur?

  He should not be jealous of a smile at a waiter. Hell, he had no right to be, but damn, he was. He wanted those blue eyes turned on him and her smile aimed in his direction. Who was he kidding? He wanted her naked. Just as well she wasn’t looking his way. He half suspected his intentions were plastered all over is face. What was wrong with him? He was the Dominant, the one in control, the one who stayed in command of himself, the one who was falling fast for a pair of blue eyes and a sexy smile that right now was bestowed on a shiny-haired waiter.

  “Not bad at all, Pete. Tell Roger he can send me a case for my birthday.”

  Pete grinned. “I’ll tell him.” He nodded to Mac. “Wine seems okay?”

  “Would I question Ginny?”

  Pete rolled his eyes. “Not if you’ve any desire to survive with your family jewels intact.”

  “Pete, scram and rustle up our lunches. I’m hungry.” She was also blushing all over her face.

  “She always is,” Pete said with an exaggerated movement of his head and shoulders. But he did what he was told.

  Mac took another sip of wine and set his glass down. This meeting was not going as he’d anticipated. He reached for a breadstick and brushed fingers with Ginny. She looked up, flushed but didn’t draw back. Instead, she smiled, picked up a breadstick and bit into it. Her teeth were strong and white and her neck muscles undulated as she swallowed.

  This was rather getting out of hand. “Tell me, Ginny, do you come here all the time?”

  She shrugged. “Once in a while. It’s not a good idea to sponge off one’s family too much.”

  “You could have suggested somewhere else.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “I could have, couldn’t I? I was so stunned at your call, I said ‘yes’ to everything. Besides, I’m all for sending business my family’s way. Plus it was close and the food’s good.”

  To say nothing of the company.

  Ginny wasn’t too sure about this. Yes, he was pleasant enough and, unexpected as it was, it would be fun to see her stories in print and lunch here was never a hardship. But she’d get the inevitable family inquisition re Mac.

  Yes, Mac Brodie! Somehow, she’d expected him to be fifty, thinning on top and sporting a gray moustache like her managing editor. Certainly not rather attractive, sexy even, with a voice that gave her goose bumps. His would be a good voice to hear in bed and something told her Mac would be very, very good in bed. Good and kinky. He had to be, right? No doubt an expert who could have his pick of women in London.

  But there was no charge for a quiet little daydream about his brown eyes looking into hers while his wide, sexy mouth smiled and touched her lips. Instinct told her he’d be a darn good kisser. She bet his dark hair looked rather tempting when tousled in the morning. She rather fancied his hands, too. Those long fingers curled around his wineglass seemed as if they’d be particularly expert brushing her bare skin, stroking her breast, teasing her nipples to hardness and reaching lower…

  Pity that this was business. Just business.

  After today she’d probably never see anything of him again, apart from his signature on a few modest checks. And she’d remember him by a couple of glossy magazines she’d have to hide when her family came over.

  Shame really. Mac was worth seeing again. Perhaps she’d call him for editorial advice. Already Mac knew things about her that no one else she knew suspected—at least she hoped they never did.

  “Worried about something, Ginny?”

  Was she? “Just thinking you’re not the least like my managing editor.”

  “I though you’d never sent your stories out before?”

  “Not fiction, no,” she paused. What the heck, he knew her name and address after all. “I’m a sports reporter.”

  “Where?”

  She told him and earned the usual amazed look. Funny how even in the twenty-first century, a woman reporting on manly pur
suits like rugger, cricket and snooker got raised eyebrows. “Not what you expected, eh?”

  “You know, Ginny. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Your stories were brilliantly written, that’s the reporter in you obviously. Sexy, heck, they turned me on. But I’ve learned erotica writers come in all ages, shapes and sexes.”

  “Maybe, but Ginny Wallace had nothing to do with that. It’s Amy who writes that naughty stuff.”

  He raised his glass, his dark eyes gleaming like jet. “Here’s to Amy, long may she make me horny.”

  The thought of Mac Brodie, all broad shoulders and wicked smile, being horny sent an odd thrill right through her. And she’d done it to him with a few fantasies put on paper. There were certainly worse ways of wiling away long Sunday afternoons. She raised her glass. “To Amy!”

  He reached across the table and they clinked glasses. Just that brief contact left her very much aware of his hands and his long arms. Good hands, she bet, and those arms would feel wonderful wound around her—

  And right now, she’d better get her mind on due dates and lead times.

  Lunches arriving were a definite distraction—for a good ten seconds. Hell! Even the way he picked up the saltcellar was sexy. Or was that a clear sign she needed to get out more and spend a little less time with Amy?

  “Ginny,” Mac said. “About pay. It’s lousy, I know, but I could comp that personal ad you sent in.”

  She almost choked on a mouthful of ratatouille. Reaching for her wine and taking a gulp wasn’t the best idea either. “You mean not pay for it?” Duh! Wasn’t that what “comping” meant?

  “Yes.”

  Would be so much easier if he didn’t smile. Or would it?

  “Thanks.” Second mouthful of wine a big mistake—perhaps.

  “My pleasure.”

  Yeah, she bet he knew all about pleasure. His voice was sending warm thrills down below the waist. She really did need to eat up and go home.

  “Thanks.” Sheesh, her vocabulary wasn’t usually this sparse but heck…

  “Do we have the business settled? Anymore questions re the stories?”

  She shook her head. Better than saying “thanks” a third time.

  “Good, let’s enjoy lunch then.”

  Brilliant idea. Assuming she could still swallow and chew. He was having no such problem, but thinking about Mac and swallowing in the same thought was not a good idea. She was being ridiculous. Just because the man was sexy as blazes was no reason to go bonkers. Bad choice of words there. Bonking him was a lovely prospect. Oh, hell, better stop thinking. She took another mouthful of ratatouille.

  “Where did you first learn of ELQ?”

  This time she swallowed without recourse to wine. She even managed a little breath. “I found it in…er…” Might as well admit it. He knew where it sold after all. “In a little shop in Soho. Great Compton Street, I think.”

  His mouth twitched at the corner and made a little dimple in his chin. “Go there often?”

  Her breath caught. Good thing she was between bites. “From time to time.”

  He nodded. “I guessed as much from your writing. It definitely had the ring of authenticity.”

  Why did her face have to burn at that? Cripes, she bet even her neck was blushing. “I’ve read widely in the genre.”

  “Just read?”

  “Why wouldn’t reading be enough? I bet nobody ever asked Agatha Christie how many murders she’d committed.” Testy, but he was making her nervous and she was irritated to find she enjoyed it.

  “True.” He reached for the wine, tilted the neck of the carafe over her glass and met her eyes. She nodded. He refilled her glass then his own, and put the now three-quarters empty carafe on the table. “But I wonder how realistic most of her nice, tidy, middle-class murders really were. No drive-by shootings, mob killings, no blood or gore.”

  “There’s blood in Lord Edgware Dies.”

  He grinned. “You’re right! Read a lot of them have you?”

  “Almost all of them. One summer I was visiting an aunt and broke my leg. I was semi-immobile for weeks and read my way through her bookshelves. Lots of medical romances and murders.”

  “And you preferred slaughter to sex?”

  “I was nine!”

  He threw back his head and laughed. His Adam’s apple bobbed as the laugh came from deep in his belly. A wildly sexy laugh, a laugh to keep you warm at night and…

  “I see.” She doubted he did but never mind. “Too young to appreciate the finer points of the opposite sex.”

  “Back then there were no finer points. My brother and his friends teased me mercilessly.”

  “But now you read my outrageously kinky periodical and write the most deliciously pervy tales.”

  “Yes!” She tried hard for unflustered and composed, and failed miserably.

  Mac held back the smile. She was lovely. He’d gone a long way beyond professional but why not? His thoughts toward Ginny Wallace were decidedly unprofessional. If he could only convince her… “So, when did you start reading kinky magazines?”

  She was silent a good thirty seconds while she broke off a corner of bread, put it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. A nice mouth, rather tempting lips and a definitely fine neck. He waited. She was going to be worth waiting for. He knew it in his gut—or maybe his cock.

  “At Uni.”

  Interesting. “Not part of coursework I presume?” If so, he wished he’d gone wherever she had.

  “No.” The giggle had to be nervous. “I found one. Nicked it actually. Someone dropped it, instead of being a good girl and giving it back, I held onto it. I read it so much, I just about memorized it, then I got up my courage and went looking for more.”

  “And…?”

  She took a sip of wine. Only a sip. Obviously unwilling to drink too much but needing to moisten her dry lips and mouth. “I found them. Used to have to hide them when I went home, but I loved reading them.”

  “Gave you a wicked, illicit thrill?”

  She nodded. And blushed again. He hoped the blush went lower than he could see with the damn high-neck sweater she was wearing. “Why the personal ad? Hasn’t life sent a nice pervy man your way?”

  She shook her head. “Not any ‘nice’ ones. There’s a lot more frogs and toads than princes out there.” She reached for her glass but didn’t drink. “Maybe fiction suits me better.”

  Chapter Three

  He didn’t think so. “Maybe not, Ginny. I own a pair of velvet manacles and I’d be more than happy to add a few silk scarves.”

  She jumped and knocked over her glass. Damn! He’d jumped her too soon. Or had he? She leant toward him. “Are you serious?”

  “Every bit as serious as you were when you sent in that ad.”

  Pause while she pondered that one. She nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “You really mean it, don’t you?”

  “You will learn, Ginny, that I mean everything I say.”

  Her mouth tightened. She was scared but willing. Lovely. But one wrong move on his part and he’d lose her. He waited. Smiled. And waited. Seemed the noise around them had receded and they were enclosed in a force field composed of their mutual needs. Needs he understood only too well, and needs she longed to have met.

  “I want to say ‘yes’ but I’m scared witless!” Her eyes widened and held his. “Mac?”

  There were a hundred questions in the single word. He understood them. Every last one. He reached over and took her hand, drawing it to him while keeping his eyes latched on hers. Slowly he brushed her fingertips, one by one over his lips. “I’ll never harm you, Ginny. I can offer you velvet manacles, all the silk scarves you can imagine and more, much more, than your wildest dreams.”

  “My dreams are pretty damn wild!” Her voice was tight with anxiety and excitement.

  “I know, Ginny. I read them, remember?”

  She nodded. “When?” There was a trace of fear in her words. He bet her heart was racing, too.

  “To
morrow.” The flush drained from her face. She waited, watching him. Not for a second did she try to pull her hand away. He reached into his jacket with his free hand and pulled out a business card. “This—” he pushed the card toward her “—is my home address. Before you come, let a friend know where you will be. You should make that a rule for yourself anytime meeting a contact. Come over tomorrow for Sunday lunch. How about one?”

  He let go of her hand as she reached for the card and read it. It was a respectable enough address after all. She read the card slowly, as if memorizing the address. He righted the overturned glass and split the last of the wine between them. “Shall we drink to tomorrow?” he asked.

  She nodded and after a couple of seconds hesitation reached for the glass. “Tomorrow!”

  He called her an hour after they parted in front of Tarantella. He called and promised wicked things with velvet and silk scarves and a flogger with tresses of fur. That conversation had her resorting to her handy-dandy vibrator after he rung off and she spent the entire evening giving herself a face pack, plucking her eyebrows, shaving her legs and generally agonizing over what to wear, or not to wear, in the morning.

  He called again Sunday morning, ten minutes or so before she left, and asked if she could please bring some silk scarves. He was all out of them.

  He hung up before she could ask where exactly he thought she’d find silk scarves on a Sunday morning.

  She rummaged though drawers, discarding her nylon, Terylene and cotton scarves, and ended up with three—two head scarves and one long, Isadora Duncan sort, she’d seldom worn, but would be perfect for tying her hands to the bed. She almost shoved it back in the drawer, but wasn’t that what she’d fantasized about for years?

  Why chicken out now?

  She put the lot in her bag, grabbed her coat and set off for the tube. He didn’t live far—just as well. If she’d had to stand about and change trains, she might well have flaked out—or at least reconsidered the option, but it was a short ride and she knew exactly where he lived—on a side street not far from Sloane Square. She’d found it yesterday evening, taking a taxi and having the driver pass very slowly. He probably thought she was a stalker or looking for somewhere to burgle, but Ginny wanted to be sure he didn’t live in a lock-up storage under a railway bridge.