Read Fierce for Free Online

shook my head. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. Note One. You radiate calm. Poise. Assurance.
    Oh, man. I so did not.
    Note Two. Fake it. 
    I’d never been on 51 before, needless to say. An expanse of white marble, glass, and black leather greeted me as the doors whispered open, and the scent of lilies was strong in the air. A sweeping circle of a receptionist’s desk, a mighty display of flowers on one side, the source of the scent, and a perfectly groomed African-American man in a gray suit sitting behind it.
    “Yes?” he asked, his gaze sweeping down my body, pricing my outfit, and dismissing it. 
    “Hope Sinclair. Mr. Te Mana is expecting me.” All right, maybe he was expecting to fire me, but he was expecting me. 
    “One minute, please.” He picked up a phone and spoke a few words into it, gestured to one of the leather sofas and said, “Please have a seat.”
    Before I could, another man was there. Fairly young, curly dark hair crisply cut. “Josh Logan,” he said, and smiled, looking much more human than the last time I’d seen him at the photo shoot. “I remember you, of course. Please follow me.”
    So I did. Through yet another outer office with three women sitting behind desks, then down a short corridor to a pair of tall, pale doors at the end. A quick knock, and Josh was opening the door and saying, “Hope Sinclair.” 
    You are as good as he is. Quite the thought to hold in your mind when you’re walking across acres of gray carpet, past a seating group of more black leather on one side, a pale conference table surrounded by eight chairs on the other, toward an almost-bare desk that was more like Command Central, set in front of wall-to-wall windows looking out over the Manhattan skyline. 
    All of which I barely noticed, because I was looking at the man who’d stood as I entered, whose eyes were locked on mine for the entire interminable journey. 
    Breathe. Walk. Don’t you dare trip. You are not a deer in anybody’s headlights. You are a woman. A soon-to-be-unemployed woman who can at least keep her dignity.
    At last, I was there and able to stop. “You sent for me?” I asked, as coolly as I could manage. 
    The faint suggestion of a smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “Good on ya,” he said, surprising the breath right out of me. “Please.” He gestured with one hand. “Sit.”
    I stopped for one frozen second. Once again, he wasn’t wearing his suit coat, and the sleeves of his tailored white shirt were rolled up to reveal most of his bulky forearms. And one of them had a tattoo.
    Not a tattoo. A Maori tattoo. Surely that was what it was. I’d done some research on the Maori before my interview. Polynesian adventurers who’d rowed, incredibly, across the unknown expanse of the Pacific in an age of celestial navigation to inhabit New Zealand. A fierce, proud warrior culture of handsome men and beautiful women. 
    And those tattoos. Intricate, curling, stylized things of great personal and cultural significance that covered an entire bulky upper arm, and sometimes more. More in this case, because Hemi’s started a full four inches below his elbow, the deep blue of the inked patterns a contrast to his bronzed skin. 
    It was only half a second’s hesitation, and then I was sitting down again, looking resolutely at his face, which wasn’t much of an improvement in the keeping-my-composure department. The hint of a smile was still there, letting me know he’d noticed me checking out the ink. And his eyes still held me. I might not be a deer in the headlights, but I was a deer in the wolf’s sights, for sure. 
    No, you aren’t. You are strong.
    He didn’t move. He was the least fidgety man I’d ever seen. “We had a date,” he said. 
    “Did we?” I lifted my chin again. “Or did you issue an order and not stick around to see how I responded?”
    “I wasn’t aware that my orders were optional,” he said softly. 
    “Perhaps I’m laboring under a