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FORTHEFIRSTtime in years, Grace approached the glass and steel building where she worked with trepidation.
She had left the bar two evenings before on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Only on the bus back to her apartment had she got her thoughts in order enough to reflect on just how much Nico had managed to kick ajar the door that had always been closed between them, and all because of a chance encounter, and, wow, had he kicked that door in grand style.
She’d felt like a swooning Victorian maiden when he’d put that hand on hers, softly stroking...his eyes fastened to her face, dragging responses out of her she’d been so careful to hide.
Would her charming, charismatic and way too sexy boss suddenly decide that if a couple of barriers had been broken down, then why not have a go at knocking down the whole edifice? When she had first started working for him, she could remember the way he would look at her, with those dark, slumberous eyes coolly speculating, wondering what lay beneath the controlled, calm façade. He did that sort of thing without even realising it. She was sure of it. It was all part and parcel of his magnetic personality. He was the son of a Greek shipping tycoon and he would have grown up with the sort of bone-deep confidence that came so naturally to people born into wealth, a casual assumption that wherever their interest happened to alight, the recipient of said interest would be flattered to death.
Grace was honest enough to admit to herself that she would find it difficult if he suddenly decided to infiltrate her private life. She didn’t want the lines between them to be trampled. She couldn’t let her barriers down with him. She was far too aware of her boss asa manand one whose casual approach to relationships she found personally distasteful.
Yes, he was the smartest guy she had ever met. Yes, he treated his staff fairly and was generous to a fault when it came to paying them. And yes, she had seen enough of his business practices to know that he played it straight down the line without taking any of the sort of financial shortcuts she knew some business tycoons were guilty of doing.
But he played the field and he did it without any trace of a conscience. Grace had grown up alert to the dangers of people who played the field, who moved on from one relationship to another without stopping to work out what the collateral damage might be. Between marriages, her mother had seldom been on her own, without a guy. Caught on a treadmill of always needing to be needed, always looking for distraction, she had been a part-time parent, even after Tommy had had his accident and had needed her to be a full-time mother. At least for a while. She was vivacious and beautiful and vain and fun, but she had never realised that there was more to life than that when it came to the people around her. Grace had realised because, after Tommy’s accident had put him in a coma and then, when he had surfaced, confined him to a wheelchair, she had been the one to do the coping and it had been agonising.
Grace never uttered a word when Nico asked her to order expensive flowers to mark the end of a relationship and she showed no emotion when, a handful of days later, she was on the phone reserving seats at the theatre for his next conquest.
But that love ’em and leave ’em attitude? That ability to take like a kid in a sweet shop and then move on when the sweets got boring? No, those were traits she had no time for. Even her mother had at least moved in and out of men in search of Mr Right. Nico moved in and out of women because he was committed to having a good time.
Yet still her disobedient eyes surreptitiously followed him as he moved with lazy grace in his office, walking and thinking aloud while she did her best to keep up with the lightning speed of his thoughts...and her disobedient mind? It bypassed common sense to have fun with all sorts of taboo thoughts and images that made her quiver when she lay in bed at night, waiting for sleep to get a grip.
In an attempt to bolster her defences, she had chosen a particularly uninspiring outfit to wear. A tweedy grey knee-length skirt, a white blouse neatly tucked into the waistband of the skirt, tights and flat black pumps. She had dragged her hair behind her ears to clip severely into place and, with her laptop bag in one hand and her handbag in the other, she looked and felt as carefree as a teacher employed to keep order in a class of rebellious teenagers.
Of course, he was there before her even though it wasn’t yet eight-thirty. She stopped only to dump the handbag, remove her laptop from its bag and was already flipping it open as she strode into his office, briefly knocking to announce her arrival.
She didn’t look at him.
Shecouldn’t.
And yet, shestillmanaged to note that he was in a pair of pale grey trousers and a striped shirt that was cuffed to the elbows and with the top couple of buttons undone, revealing just enough of a hard sliver of brown chest to send her imagination whirring in heated response. She was used to this sort of nonsensical reaction...indeed, it was one of the very reasons she had decided to try her hand at Internet dating, because she finally accepted just how much she needed to remind herself that the world was full of other guys and not just this one unsuitable one. That said, she was hypersensitive to every nuanced heated response racing through her now because of what had happened. For a moment in time, she hadn’t been his secretary. She had been a woman without the suit and the computer, for once not transcribing emails or arranging his appointments or discussing whatever deals he had in the melting pot. She had been a woman in a slinky flowered dress on a date.
‘I’ve collated all those emails,’ she said, automatically sitting in her usual spot on the chair in front of his desk and peering at her computer, ‘on the supplies issue with the freight ship from South America. I can send them off to the lawyer at your say-so? Also...’ brow furrowed, she continued without break ‘...Christopher Thomas wants you to call him urgently about the takeover of his company. He says he wants to add some further clauses about maintaining staff levels for a certain length of time. Shall I set up a conference call? I’ve checked your diary and you have a slot between two and three-thirty this afternoon but only if we can shift your overseas call to Australia by half an hour.’
She finally risked looking at him and their eyes met.
‘And breathe...’ Nico murmured.
Grace pursed her lips. ‘I have a huge amount to get through today. I thought I’d get the ball rolling because I... I have to leave early this afternoon, I’m afraid...’
‘How early?’ Nico frowned.
‘Three-thirty. I have a dental appointment. I’m sorry. I should have texted you to let you know this morning, but a free slot’s only just come up on my way in...’
She didn’t have an appointment. Nerves had got the better of her and it was infuriating because it was the first time it had happened. Her quiet, predictable world had shifted on its axis and now she felt as though she had to get it back to where it had been as fast as possible, and being here all day, dealing with Nico and that alarming inquisitive glitter in his dark eyes, wasn’t going to help matters.
‘It’s crucial that we take care of our teeth,’ Nico murmured by way of response.
He stood up, unconsciously flexing his muscles before strolling to the floor-to-ceiling glass pane to briefly peer out before turning to look at her.
Grace reluctantly looked at him. She refused to rise to the bait. She intended to do her utmost to move on from what had happened in the jazz club but she could tell from the gleam in his dark eyes that her boss might not be that interested in playing ball.
‘So shall we get down to work, Nico?’ she asked coolly. ‘I know you’d probably like nothing more than to talk about...what happened...but I would really rather not discuss it. It was unfortunate that you showed up when I was there with...with Victor, but these things happen. Best we put all that nonsense behind us.’ There. She’d faced down the elephant in the room because it was pointless trying to tiptoe around it and pretend it didn’t exist.
Her gaze held his, as calm and cool as always, but it wasn’t hard for Nico to spot the simmering defiance there. She had come, he’d realised just as soon as she had walked through that door, with all her defences back in place. Outside the sun was already warning of another hot, unbearably sticky day and yet here she was in her best protective gear.
Previously, Nico would have been amused, but things had changed and he was frustrated at just how determined she was to pretend it was all back to business and let’s forget about that blip. He was even more frustrated at just how keen he was to fight against that, as though now that he had happened to find his foot wedged in the door, he wanted to kick open the door and discover what lay beyond it.
Why? What had changed so much? He had retreated successfully for years from trying to prod and poke a response from her, intrigued against his will by a woman who was so immune to him. He had backed away and settled into a routine of working with someone who’d shaped up to be the best PA he’d ever had. He’d told himself that curiosity was not worth the hassle of having to source someone comparable because he had ignored herHands Offsigns.
But now...
