Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

lunch or dinner, right?
    The wall to my right displayed framed photographs of things, the endless expensive things that my boss owned – skyscrapers in Beijing, a mall complex in Toronto, the stadium where the Super Bowl was played two years ago, antique Bentleys, racing yachts, and assorted private islands.
    There were no photographs of people.
    In front of me, the empty floor stretched off into the distance until it met up with the one piece of furniture in the room – Mr. Killane’s desk.
    I’m calling it a desk, but it was more like an aircraft carrier sailing the hardwood sea. The thing must have weighed a ton, and it couldn’t have been hewn from a single titanic redwood trunk or anything, but it sure looked it. The glass-covered desktop was as bare as the floor – not a single monitor or keyboard or phone or anything on it, just a gleaming emptiness. Did he not use The Desk That Crushed Tokyo to do actual work? Or it was here just to intimidate the crap out of visitors, like everything else in the room?
    And seriously, not a single chair for a tired and worried big girl to park her luscious ass on?
    Beyond the desk, the far wall was all of glass, a giant floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the downtown skyline like the eye of Sauron. The late afternoon light poured in through the glass wall, giving the room its only illumination.
    Devon Killane stood in front of the window.
    His back was to me. Silhouetted against the fading light, he stood there staring out at the city. His hands were clasped behind his back. He didn’t move, he didn’t speak. He had to know I was there, had to have heard my heels clicking on the bare floor when I entered the room, but he didn’t respond. As far as he was concerned, the room was still empty.
    “Mr. Killane?”
    Nothing. The stark lines of his body might have been those of a statue. Traffic rumbled along the streets far below, distant airplanes droned through the sky, and he stared out at it all without moving a single muscle.
    “Sir?”
    Still no response. Geez, it was enough to make me wonder if I was really there.
     “Ah, Mr. K?”
    He turned to face me.
    His hands remained behind his back. He cocked his head to one side and he stared at me like some mad collector staring at a bug he had pinned to a board.
    He didn’t move towards me, he still wouldn’t speak, but now that he was looking at me, his imposing presence, his absolute command of his own personal space, made me feel like that scared, shivering mouse again.
    I stared right back at him – well, at his forehead, actually, because I was still way too gutless to look him in the eye – and I kept my trembling mouth firmly shut. I had no idea just what was going on here, but I figured the best play was to let him be the one to break the silence. 
    A minute passed as we stared each other down, and then Mr. Killane shook himself all at once, like a man startled out of a nap, and sauntered forward. He crossed over to his desk, sat down on the front edge of the redwood behemoth, and extended his long, long legs in front of him. He crossed his legs at the ankles, he crossed his arms, and he stared at me for one more beat of silence before he spoke.
    “I’m not interested in shouting across the room at you, Ms. Daniels, so please come here.” He pointed an imperious finger at the bare hardwood floor in front of him, and then crossed his arms again.
    I hurried across the floor to present myself to him before I could even think about it. I wanted to argue, wanted to stroll over to him all slow and bored and Ashley-doesn’t-give-a-shit, but there was no denying the air of command in that voice.
    Once I stood right in front of him, there was also no way to deny my body’s response to this man.
    He rested against the desk like a lazy, confident tiger. The flawless tailoring of his suit did nothing to hide the sleek, toned muscles of his towering body. His broad shoulders stretched against his suit jacket, his