I waited at the passenger side for him, mortified that I’d just called him hot. I heard the beep of the immobilizer, climbed in and put my seat belt on. I really,reallyneeded to get my car back, this lift club was becoming weird. We drove in silence once more, and I kept wondering if he’d figured out that my glasses had been fake—or if he’d bought my little miracle. Probably not, he was far too smart to be fooled like that. And I was starting to wonder when he was going to ask me about them.
He suddenly spoke. “When you get back, I need you to type up the notes from the meeting yesterday and email them through to me and the others. You have their email addresses?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “I’ll get onto that immediately.”
“Good. I need that sent off before the end of the day.”
“Absolutely,” I replied and looked out the window at the passing traffic. I hoped I could type fast enough.
We fell into another awkward silence and didn’t say a word to each other until we pulled into the parking lot. I went to take my seat belt off but, for some reason, couldn’t. I struggled with it a few times.
“Sometimes it sticks, I need to get it fixed,” I heard him say, and then, before I could move my hands out of the way, he reached over and grabbed the seat belt. It felt like it happened in slow motion . . . the way his fingers brushed against mine, the way my fingers swept across his open palm, the way our fingertips touched and seemed to stay there for a second longer than they needed to. I flinched and pulled my hand away quickly when I felt the shock. He flinched too as the bolt of electricity took us both by surprise.
“Static,” he quickly mumbled as he went to work on the seat belt and finally unclipped it.
“Static,” I agreed, even though it had felt like something more than that.
I reached for the door and started climbing out when his voice stopped me. It was soft. Almost inaudible. But I definitely heard it.
“You look nice without glasses.”
I swung around to look at him, but he was already gone. Out the door and striding towards the building.
CHAPTERTWENTY-SEVEN
Ryan
He was trying not to look up at her, but he couldn’t help it. And, no, it wasn’t because she looked good—which he should never have fucking said to her—it was because her typing was appalling. He’d known she was highly under-qualified when he’d hired her, but surely not this unqualified? She was typing with two fingers, for heaven’s sake, and it was clear she was never going to get her work finished.
And to top it all off, she’d let two staff members slip by her today and both had come walking into his office unannounced and uninvited. It had pissed him off. She’d also left the mayonnaise on his sandwich, had missed two calls and put one through to the wrong extension. And all the while, she’d been scratching her head like she had lice. It made him want to scratch his head too.
But then she’d also called him “hot” and had been seductively nibbling the end of her pencil all day and licking her lips while concentrating. She never stopped fidgeting either, which had caused her to drop her pencil twice, meaning that he’d watched her crawl under her desk on her hands and knees far too many times today. At one stage, when she’d been down there, he’d fantasized about things he knew he shouldn’t! God. She was seriously bad news for him. She was making him crazy.He put his head back down and tried to work, but another interruption made him look up. This time it was his phone. He didn’t recognize the number, but answered immediately.
“Hello, is this Mr. Stark?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Yes. And who are you?” He didn’t recognize the voice and hoped it wasn’t going to be some telemarketer selling him insurance. Because that would piss him off even more.
“It’s Madeline Brown, headmistress at Holy Trinity.”
He sat up straight. “Uh . . . what can I do for you?”
“I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but Emmy didn’t come to class after recess, and one of the teachers said they saw her climbing into a taxi and driving away from the school property.”
“What?” he screamed down the phone.
“I’m so sorry,” the headmistress said.
His heart plummeted to his feet and a cold sweat prickled on his forehead. “Where was she going?” he asked, his mouth feeling dry as panic set in.
“I don’t know,” she replied, sounding solemn.
“I can’t believe you could let this happen!” he snapped back at her as panic now gave way to a more familiar feeling—anger. “I pay a lot of money to send her to one of the best schools in the country and you can’t even make sure my niece stays on the property! I mean how on earth do you lose a student?”
The headmistresses changed her tune and he could hear she was panicking now. “I’m very sorry, Mr. Stark, this has never happened before, and we will be reviewing our security policy after this. We are not sure how a taxi even managed to get into the property, as we have very strict security at the main gate—”
“Well, obviously not!” he grunted angrily.
“What can we do to help find her?” the woman asked.
