AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Was there anything else?”
The touch was light. So light she could almost have told herself she imagined it. The feeling of fingers brushing the back of her leg. Had it been an accident? She almost startled as though electrified.
“No. Thanks.” Fiero looked up at her, oblivious to the explosion of awareness that had paralysed Bronte. “I’ll buzz you if that changes.”
She couldn’t move. Her body was liquid. She nodded jerkily and finally stumbled back. At the door, she risked a look at the table. Fiero’s dark head was bent, scanning the papers. Luca was staring at his hand.
Of all the short-sighted, messed up things to have done. Luca stared at his hand in a mix of outrage and disbelief. What the hell had he been thinking?
That was the problem. He hadn’t been thinking. He hadn’t been thinking since he’d come to the office and heard Bronte crying, and he sure as hell wasn’t thinking thirty seconds ago when he brushed his hand over the soft flesh just behind her knee. Flesh he’d been kissing only four nights earlier.
Jesus Christ.
None of that mattered. Her agreeing to have sex with him on the weekend gave him no goddamned right to touch her leg while she was at work – or ever. He knew that. He knew that.
His fingers had moved of their own volition, and before he could stop them. He’d drawn his hand away quickly, but not fast enough.
Merda. He needed to get the hell out of England.
Her cheeks felt as though they were burning up. She stared at the whiteboard, trying to seem normal even though no one else was around to witness her spectacular performance. But she was far from normal. Her heart was clutching inside of her so that if she didn’t know better, she might have thought she was having a heart attack.
Her light was still on when he left the office. It was stupid, but again, without his approval or intention, his legs moved, dragging him to her office. He paused at the door then opened it, just wide enough to push his head through the gap.
He didn’t know what he’d been planning to say, but the words died on his lips.
She was gone.
She’d simply forgotten to switch the light out.
She should let it go. She knew she should let it go, but overnight, frustration had morphed into anger and it was now an uncontained force beating through her, a livewire of electricity she couldn’t control.
Nothing calmed it.
She checked her emails, triaged them as usual, responded to only the most essential, and then, a little before nine, gave up completely on going through the motions of her usual day. This was her job and she needed – clarity. Or something.
Before she could second guess herself, she stood up and moved to Luca’s office. Only the thought he might not be alone had her pausing on the threshold, knocking once and pushing the door inwards. Her eyes swept the table – it was empty.
Luca was the sole occupant of the office, his back turned as he pushed a coffee pod into the machine.
Good. Alone was perfect.
“Bronte.” His smile didn’t ring true but that was beside the point. She clicked the door shut behind her, locking it for good measure.
“I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”
His expression gave nothing away.
“You touched me yesterday.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and then he nodded, once. “Yes.”
“You can’t do that.” To her frustration, her voice wobbled. “You c
an’t – you don’t – that’s not –,”
He made a sound, a gruff, impossible noise and shook his head. “I know.” His fingers pushed through his hair. “Believe me, I know. I goddamned know, and yet I did.”
Anger was better than anything else so she held onto it hard. “Is that your way of apologising?”
