So Howington had sent an underling. Annoyance hiked Sydney’s chin up another fraction. “Send him in,” she repeated, and flicked off the intercom with one frosted pink nail. So, they thought she’d be pacified with a junior executive. Sydney took a deep breath and prepared to kill the messenger.

It was years of training that prevented her mouth from dropping open when the man walked in. No, not walked, she corrected. Swaggered. Like a black-patched pirate over the rolling deck of a boarded ship.

She wished she’d had the foresight to have fired a warning shot over his bow.

Her initial shock had nothing to do with the fact that he was wildly handsome, though the adjective suited perfectly. A mane of thick, curling black hair flowed just beyond the nape of his neck, to be caught by a leather thong in a short ponytail that did nothing to detract from rampant masculinity. His face was rawboned and lean, with skin the color of an old gold coin. Hooded eyes were nearly as black as his hair. His full lips were shadowed by a day or two’s growth of beard that gave him a rough and dangerous look.

Though he skimmed under six foot and was leanly built, he made her delicately furnished office resemble a doll’s house.

What was worse was the fact that he wore work clothes. Dusty jeans and a sweaty T-shirt with a pair of scarred boots that left a trail of dirt across her pale carpet. They hadn’t even bothered with the junior executive, she thought as her lips firmed, but had sent along a common laborer who hadn’t had the sense to clean up before the interview.

“You’re Hayward?” The insolence in the tone and the slight hint of a Slavic accent had her imagining him striding up to a camp fire with a whip tucked in his belt.

The misty romance of the image made her tone unnecessarily sharp. “Yes, and you’re late.”

His eyes narrowed fractionally as they studied each other across the desk. “Am I?”

“Yes. You might find it helpful to wear a watch. My time is valuable if yours is not. Mr….”

“Stanislaski.” He hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his jeans, shifting his weight easily, arrogantly onto one hip. “Sydney’s a man’s name.”

She arched a brow. “Obviously you’re mistaken.”

He skimmed his gaze over her slowly, with as much interest as annoyance. She was pretty as a frosted cake, but he hadn’t come straight and sweaty from a job to waste time with a female. “Obviously. I thought Hayward was an old man with a bald head and a white mustache.”

“You’re thinking of my grandfather.”

“Ah, then it’s your grandfather I want to see.”

“That won’t be possible, Mr. Stanislaski, as my grandfather’s been dead for nearly two months.”