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I feel the oddest impulse to laugh. ‘Like your legs?’
She purses her lips, her eyes narrowing.Clearly a tease too far...
‘Are you trying to wind me up more?’
‘No.’ I blow out a breath. ‘I’m trying to fix things so that we can have a positive start to our working relationship.’
The high-pitched laugh returns, her brows arching over her eyes that sparkle and blaze and bring back that crazy fire deep within.
‘Apositivestart?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have to be joking!’
The wind picks up, whipping the rain into my face, and I duck beneath her umbrella, my only thought to escape it. Big mistake.
She scurries back, losing her footing on those silly, impractical heels—Now you say silly, but what you really mean is...
‘Careful!’ I clutch her elbow to steady her and quit the inner spiel that really isn’t helping.
‘Don’t you...’ She snatches her arm back, glares up at me. ‘A bit presumptuous, don’t you think?’
She eyes the umbrella now shielding us both and I sense she’s fighting the urge to move away fully and take it with her. ‘Why would I share my umbrella with a man...a man...?’
‘Olivia!’ I blurt out, my exasperation getting the better of me. ‘Will you stop behaving like a child and just listen to—?’
‘I’mbehaving like a child?’ Her eyes widen into mine.‘Me?’
Her laugh is even more manic. ‘You just appeared inmyboardroom, summoned by the board ofmycompany, to effectively put me in my place, and still have the gall to tell me to stop behaving like a child when that’s exactly how I’m being treated.’
I’m listening to her rant, I am, but seriously, the way her skin flushes and her lips move, that luscious red lipstick marrying so well with the flush to her cheeks and the over-bright blue gaze...it’s hard, real hard, to focus on responding.
Not in a way that would improve matters, at any rate.
I take a deep breath, eye the passers-by that I sense are starting to hover at our little scene and give her a grim nod.
‘I know we met under unusual circumstances...’
I watch her cheeks colour even further; her lashes flicker and her mouth opens as though she would say something but nothing comes out, other than the smallest of squeaks, and the foolish urge to kiss her intensifies.
I try and breathe through it, watch as a lock of her blonde hair makes a bid for freedom across her cheek and feel my fingers itch with the need to brush it behind her ear...
‘It’s funny you mention those circumstances—’ she pierces my reverie with a scowl ‘—because I find it a huge coincidence that you were also in the club that night. And when I say huge, I mean it was no coincidence at all. Was it?’
Swallow. ‘No.’
She startles, flustered. She clearly expected me to lie or to delay the truth at least.
‘I went to see if the rumours about you were real.’
‘The rumours?’
I feel the space around us closing in, too many people, too many ears. I don’t want to air my would-be client’s dirty laundry in a bustling city street.
‘Can we do this somewhere private?’
‘What?’ She fists her free hand on her hip. ‘So I can give you another show?’
