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I strolled over to her and set my coffee on the empty coaster. “Let me take a look.” Leaning over her, I grasped the back of her chair and took the mouse from her. My fingers brushed hers, and she drew in a short, sharp breath at the touch.
I resisted the urge to look at her and focused on the computer.
There was no denying that Mallory Harper was beautiful. It’d been my first thought when I’d seen her lying on the sidewalk with her coffee cup flattened behind her.
Her brown hair was curly but pulled up into a bun on top of her head. Random strands fell out and curled around her neck and ears, and it was one of those that curled around her ear that bugged her.
She pushed it back again, her knuckles brushing against my chest as she did so. Visibly leaning away from me, she focused intently on the screen.
Her eyelashes were stupidly long. They curled right back so they almost brushed the skin beneath her eyebrows with each blink, and she puckered her full, red lips more than once.
God only knew red lips were my weakness.
They couldn’t be on my assistant. Could I enforce a dress code of no red lipstick? Fuck knows she was hot enough to be a weakness.
Instead of focusing on the way she looked anymore, I swallowed hard and scanned my gaze over the computer. It was frozen, so I did a hard reset.
“Did Casey say the last time she’d done any checks on it?” I asked, shaking the mouse as it loaded up to make sure it was working.
“Checks?” Mallory asked, her voice fading. “What checks?”
“Virus scanning, defragmenting, things like that.”
“What’s defragmenting?”
Dropping my chin, I let out a small laugh. “It’s a process on the computer that scans it and pulls back together fragmented parts of files.”
“That…helps.”
Another laugh escaped me as I tapped the keyboard for her to log in. “Files break up, and defragmenting is basically the process of the computer finding those pieces and putting them back together again.”
“Ohhh. Okay. That makes sense.”
I smirked as the home screen came on and I took back control. “I assume Casey told you absolutely nothing, then.”
“Nope. Not a damn thing.”
“All right. Let’s fix this thing.” I brought up the virus scanning software, trying my best to ignore the way she shivered when my arm brushed hers.
Click. Click. Click.
I set the software doing its own thing and stood back a little. Mallory blew out a long breath and settled back into her chair. The phone rang, the high-pitched sound exploding through the silence of the room.
She scrambled to grab it and held it to her ear, giving her now-familiar greeting. She even said it all with a smile on her face, a fact that made her words sound all the brighter.
“Absolutely, Mrs. Cavendish,” she said, grabbing a notepad and scribbling on it. “My system is currently down for some routine maintenance, but as soon as it’s back up and running, I’ll make sure to send the information for the property to your email… No, it shouldn’t be long. It’ll be by the end of the day, absolutely… Wonderful. Thank you so much for understanding.”
I waited until she finished the call and said, “You know, you can use my computer while I’m doing this.”
“Oh—it’s okay. I mean, I’ve told them, so…”
I stood back as the bar ticked closer to being done on the virus software. “Mallory, it’s fine. You can log in to your profile on the system on it.” I rested against the desk and shrugged. “I’m not using it if I’m fixing your computer. Honestly, go. This could take a while. I don’t need it right now.”
She bit the corner of her lip, and I almost expected her lipstick to scrape off, but it didn’t. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure. Go use it.” I waved my hand in the direction of my office. “Go get your emails sent out. I can handle this.”
“Don’t you have an I.T. guy for this?”
“Yes, but he’s my cousin, and he smokes a little too much weed to be employable,” I mused, taking her seat as she stood. “If it weren’t legal, we’d all be in trouble.”
She covered her mouth with her hand, and I was pretty sure she was hiding a laugh. “Thank you,” she said, casting a glance over her shoulder as she made her way to my office.
“You’re welcome.” I watched her as she went, appreciating the way her skirt hugged her ass.
Look. I was a human. My assistant was hot—I’d already established that, and it wasn’t a crime to eye up someone who worked for you.
Morally wrong, perhaps, but not illegal-wrong, so whatever.
I rubbed my hand down my face and shook my head. Jesus. I needed more coffee if I was justifying staring at my assistant’s ass.
