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“I heard.” Emma grinned, and Patrick chuckled. “Nice speech. Very inspiring.”
Was she teasing him? Patrick suspected so. Strangely, he didn’t mind at all.
“Thank you. I do what I can. How are you enjoying your first day here?”
“Oh, it’s going great.” Her grin widened. “I got a complimentary chocolate croissant and met the CEO, so it’s been a pretty good first morning.”
“I rate lower than the chocolate croissant, I see.” The comment came out more flirtatious than Patrick had intended. For what felt like the thousandth time in the past five minutes, he reminded himself that it would be a terrible idea to flirt with an employee, even if she was gorgeous. Even if she seemed to be flirting with him.
“I do love chocolate.” Emma shrugged.
“Then you’ll like Fridays. I always have some pastries delivered on Friday mornings to help build team spirit.”
“I can’t wait.” She winked. “What else should I know about working here? Do you have any tips?”
Patrick considered, torn between giving her actual advice and continuing their light flirtation. He decided on a mix of both.
“If you get here early enough, you can see the sunrise from the terrace on the roof.”
“That sounds beautiful. I’ll have to try it.”
“You should.” Patrick held Emma’s gaze for another moment, then, with an internal sigh, looked away. “I’d better be going.”
“Of course. I’m sure you’re busy. I hope I’ll see you around.” She widened those big brown eyes and Patrick felt another wave of inexplicable attraction. Something about this woman was different, although he couldn’t put his finger on what. He found himself hoping that he would see her around, even though the temptation to flirt would probably make things difficult.
“I’m sure we’ll run into each other again. Enjoy your first day.” He nodded to Emma and left the room.
As he walked back to the elevators, Patrick couldn’t shake the image of Emma’s chocolate brown eyes and the light smattering of freckles he had noticed across her cheeks. If he’d met her at a coffee shop or a bar, he might have torn up his usual rules about dating and asked her out to dinner — he’d felt that much of a connection, even in the short conversation they’d shared. But the fact that Emma worked for him made that out of the question.
It would be for the best if they didn’t see each other again. And they were unlikely to. Several thousand people worked at LWC Capital across the different departments. Emma would probably melt into HR or Accounting or Advertising, never to be seen again. If only the thought of that didn’t fill Patrick with regret.
Instead of melting into the background, though, Emma seemed to be everywhere over the next few days. Patrick caught sight of her through the glass doors of a meeting room the next day, a pile of papers in front of her, deep in conversation with a group of people. The day after, he spotted her at the cafeteria eating lunch when he went down to grab a coffee. And the day after, Patrick was pretty sure he saw her disappear around a corner, her long hair swishing after her. Each day, she looked more gorgeous than the last.
It was very frustrating.
No matter how beautiful Emma was, she was off-limits. That was why on Friday, when he spotted her in the office kitchen preparing a cup of tea after lunch, Patrick turned around and went back to his office without making coffee as he’d planned. He could have stopped to talk to her, at least casually, but he knew it would be a mistake. It was better to put Emma out of his mind over the weekend.
By Monday, he probably would have forgotten all about her.
Wouldn’t he?
CHAPTER 5
EMMA
Emma took a deep breath and met her reflection’s eyes. It was early on a Monday morning. The sun had just started to peek over the horizon and the beams that reached through her window were still weak and dim.
“You can do this.” She gave herself a firm nod.
It had been a full week since Emma had started working at LWC Capital. A full week that she’d made absolutely no progress on her plan to become close enough with Patrick to be invited to his house. A full week less to steal the painting before Aleksander would report her to the authorities for corporate espionage.
“You can do this,” she repeated. She wasn’t sure how, though. All week, she’d been trying to run into Patrick. She’d seen him a few times, in the cafeteria and once in the hallway, but each time he’d left before she was able to strike up a conversation. Short of chasing him through the office and tackling him, Emma wasn’t sure what else to do.
The chase-and-tackle plan was starting to sound pretty good.
With a sigh, Emma pulled her hair back into a simple bun and secured it. As she did, she turned away from the mirror. Without a solid plan in place, giving herself a long pep talk was unlikely to be helpful.
What was going well — surprisingly well — was Emma’s cover job. Her coworkers were friendly and helpful, and the orientation in the first week went more smoothly than she could have hoped. This week, she was assigned a market research task. It was simple and straightforward, the kind of thing she could have done in her sleep, but she found herself excited to work on it. It was a huge change from the often boring administrative work she usually did while undercover.
