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Not that she should be busting a gut for the man. Throughout their marriage he had treated her with nothing but professional courtesy. All right, maybe that was exaggerating things a little—whenever she had accompanied him to functions they had always had fun together, but it had been strictly platonic fun. Now it was all long, lingering glances and murmured comments that could be twisted into something intimate if she so chose.
She did not choose.
It would be obvious to a blind man what Nico was up to.
Soon he would make his move. And she would be ready for it.
A waft of citrusy musk wafted under her nose and she reached for her cup of cold coffee, washing away the saliva that had formed, Pavlov’s Dog–style, in her mouth.
‘How are you getting on?’ To her intense irritation he placed one hand on her desk, the other on the back of her chair, and peered over her shoulder to see what she was working on.
‘Fine, thank you.’ She didn’t dare move. He was so close his breath was tickling her hair, making her aware of the heat emanating from his powerful body. She could feel it now, that heat, and her whole body was alive and tingling at his proximity.
‘Good. It is time to stop. We’re going out for dinner.’
‘Go without me. I’ve far too much work to do.’ Actually, she didn’t. She had been pleasantly surprised to find there was only a fraction of the expected workload, the reduction assisted by the half-dozen translators Nico had flown over to help her. At the rate she was ploughing through it she could be back in London within a week.
‘Impossible. We are dining with Robert and his wife.’
‘In that case I definitely have far too much work to do. And can you please move back and stop invading my personal space?’
His response to her request was to lean over her shoulder and flip the lid of her laptop shut.
Rosa’s spine stiffened, then froze. She stared at the now closed laptop with widening eyes, her hands curling into fists as fury simmered through her veins. ‘I’ve just spent three hours working on that document,’ she said through gritted teeth.
‘And now you have finished. Your working day is over.’
‘I hadn’t saved it.’
‘Your laptop is configured to auto-save every five minutes. Any loss will be minimal.’
How dared he sound so reasonable? How dared he? ‘I decide when my working day is over. Not you.’
‘Rosa, I do not recall giving you a choice in the matter. You are calling it a day and that is that. Now, go and get ready for dinner.’
Her frustrations spilling over, she deliberately shoved her chair back and ‘accidentally’ rammed it into Nico’s legs. He jumped back.
‘Sorry,’ she lied, hastily getting to her feet.
He did not look in the least perturbed, simply threw her a lazy, knowing smile which she longed to slap off his face.
Keeping a good distance between them, she folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. ‘You do realise Robert King thinks I’m here on a free jaunt? He probably thinks you’ve appointed me as your PA as some kind of tax dodge.’
She had absented herself from the meeting between Nico and Robert that morning in the hotel conference room with the excuse that she needed to ensure all the other translators had settled in. In reality she had left the conference room because if she had stayed another minute she would have been liable to throw her laptop at Robert King. It would not have been half as bad if Nico had not allowed Robert’s misconceptions to continue.
‘Why do you care what he thinks?’ he asked. ‘You’re excellent at your job and he will realise it soon enough.’
‘I don’t like people making assumptions about me.’
* * *
Nico stored this little nugget of information away. It was extremely rare for Rosa to let slip anything personal about herself, however innocuous. He knew she was devoted to her job, knew her favourite food, knew she loved all things Russian, knew she could not sleep when travelling, knew she disliked raised voices and knew she was an orphan. Until now, that had been it.
Now he could add a dislike of people judging her to the list. Briefly he wondered where this dislike had come from, but pushed the thought away. It shouldn’t—didn’t—matter to him. It was the information itself he required.
Know your enemies. Know their weaknesses. The who, what, where, when and why were superfluous.
However, she did have a valid point about Robert’s attitude towards her. Rosa was damn good at her job, and as smart as a whip, which was the main reason their marriage had been such a success—at least from his perspective. She was a good sounding board and able to see the bigger picture with the barest of facts. He had become accustomed to confiding in her about business, had almost come to rely on it.
