AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m flying out of the UK later today –,”
“Stop.” She lifted a hand then, silencing him instantly. He braced for whatever was coming. “Just – stop.”
He swallowed, but it wasn’t enough. The words were out there now, the neat summation of whatever they’d been doing as ‘just sex’ a title he couldn’t retract.
“You’re actually telling me that this,” she pointed between them, “is just sex for you?”
His heart slammed against his ribs. Deny it. Tell her she’s special. Tell her you’ve never known anyone like her.
And what? String her along until he broke her heart too? Until he cheated on her or proposed and then wanted to back out? In how many ways could a guy like him ruin a woman like her?
He took a step backwards.
“Wasn’t I clear about that all along?”
Her head jerked back as though he’d punched her. He almost felt like he had.
“Yes.” A numb agreement. She wrapped her arms around her torso. “You really were.” She moved to the door, her eyes huge in her face, her expression so laced with betrayal that he wanted to run to her and apologise, to tell her everything he felt, but that would be worse for her, and Bronte had been hurt enough.
“So you’re leaving today?”
Every fibre of his being throbbed in rejection of that. “Yes. At two.”
Another short nod of her head. She turned the door handle, then pulled it inwards. “I’ll organise the car then.”
It was exactly what Bronte would have said a week ago. Before they’d slept together, before he’d blurred all the lines between them. It was a sign that they were going back to normal, just like he wanted. So why the hell did it feel like a death knell?
It felt to Bronte as though ice had taken over her bloodstream. She went through the motions of her weekend, doing everything she could not to think about Luca when he was all she could think about. She tried not to think about the fact he was now in Europe, far enough away from her that she was sure she was completely out of his mind. She tried not to think about the fact she’d fallen in love with a man who’d only been interested in her for sex. She tried not to think, at all, but that was harder than Bronte could ever have known.
She went to work Monday with a dull ache low in her abdomen, and a strange feeling that she was walking back into the scene of a crime. She avoided his office assiduously.
It was harder to avoid him. Emails came in all day – not directly from him, but forwarded from her Italian counterpart, so she could see his writing, read his words, and feel the pulling of a thread deep inside of her. Just after five, she snapped the laptop lid closed and left the office. It set the pattern for the next few days. It wasn’t a job she could easily do in those short hours but, for the moment, Bronte didn’t care. The world continued to turn. Life went on.
On the Thursday afternoon, her office phone rang; it was the HR department.
Bronte’s smile was lacking humour as she made her way to their office, as requested. A slap on the wrist for leaving early all week? Did she care? She didn’t, and that was a wake up call, because her job was important to her, and she’d never once received anything other than praise.
“Come in,” Angela Garret pointed to a seat in her office. Bronte took it with a small nod of her head.
“Thanks for making time to come down; I know how busy you are.”
Bronte smiled uneasily, heat, for a moment, replacing the ice that coursed through her permanently. “Of course. What can I do for you?”
“Sometimes, in a company such as this, things slip beneath the radar. People slip beneath the radar. My predecessor had marked your file with notes suggesting you’d like to move into the corporate finance team, should a role arise, but the notes were never computerised and flagged appropriately. I didn’t realise.”
Bronte’s lips twisted, her brain – made slow by its constant re-playing of her time with Luca – struggled to catch what she was talking about. “Sorry?”
“When you first came to work here it was on the basis that the assistant work was temporary, until a more appropriate position became available.”
“Oh.” Bronte blinked, her heart sinking. Luca. He was trying to shift her from her role? He didn’t want to see her again? Or was it possible he thought he was doing her a favour by moving her to a different team?
“I have a spot that might be available soon. You’d need to interview for it but, to be honest, you’d be far more experienced than any other applicant. There’d be a pay drop,” Angela continued, oblivious to the emotional landslide she was sparking inside Bronte.
“Why – are you suggesting this now?” Her voice was husky.
Angela grimaced. “Orders from the top.”
The top.
