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Lena swallowed, and I saw the muscles in her neck move a bit.
“You heard me,” she said and started for the door. “Now, I have a lot of work to do.”
I stood and reached out. I realized I’d gone too far and yet there was nothing I could do. Lena’s face had gone red and her eyes were fiery, their hazel green seeming to burn all the brighter.
“Where are you going?” I asked and gently caught her wrist in my hand.
She froze, tense, and looked at me. Suddenly there was softness, a vulnerability in her, and her head tilted back, revealing her open mouth. I inched a step closer to her mouth and she to mine. Then, I let her hand drop. I couldn’t. It would just be too wrong.
“I … I have to go,” she said. “I’ll see you after lunch.”
Then, she was gone. I could hear her high heels clicking away, across the floor of the restaurant.
We got off to an incredibly bad start, and I felt sure that Lena Chambers was going to last less than a week as my PA. And yet, for a moment, I was sure that we were about to kiss one another. I know she felt it too.
Chapter Three
Lena
Ofallthearrogantassholes I’d met during my life, I was pretty sure that Alex Alson was the biggest. No longer did I associate the tall, admittedly gorgeous man who’d recently become my boss with civility and the manners of an old-fashioned gentleman. Now I recognized him for what he was—a cruel, cynical sourpuss with a penchant for humiliating junior employees. And yet, for some reason, I didn’t walk out of the office for the last time that day.
For one, I was determined to prove Alex wrong. I wasn’t just going to dump this job at the first sign of some modeling work. Just because this wasn’t the career I’d chosen, didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do my damndest to excel at it either. I was going to prove to him that I wasn’t the kind of modeling girl who laid around by the poolside all day working on her tan and going to the gym. There was more to me than that, and I was going to make Alex see that. And rue the day.
The truth was, I knew things were more complicated than that. I’d kept the truth from Alex about my modeling career because I wanted to keep the whole truth about my past from him. And part of the reason why I’d gotten so upset when he deduced (quite accurately) that I’d moved out to Hawaii after a breakup, was out of nervousness.
Did the hot, hunky man who’d recently come to employ me have any inkling that I was his younger brother’s ex-girlfriend? Alex hadn’t mentioned Jared yet, and I got the feeling that they weren’t exactly close. But I wasn’t going to take any chances and decided to keep that fact to myself.
So, for the rest of the week, I put my nose to the grindstone. I showed up twenty minutes before work each day and stayed on past the point when the receptionists had gone for the day. This caused no end of annoyance for Alex, who among other things was a diehard workaholic. He arrived at 6 a.m. each day and went to the gym in the hotel, before beginning his day at 7 a.m. So, when at 7:40 a.m. he left his office and found me hanging up my coat, he sneered.
“What? Getting in early this morning?” he said.
“Sure am,” I replied coolly. I wasn’t going to let him or his bullshit distract me from doing my job.
“Something you forgot to finish yesterday?”
“Nope. I just wanted to get a head start on your calendar for today,sir.”
He scowled and went back into his office. I loved calling himsirlike that, mostly because I knew he hated it. Alex wanted to pretend he was on everyone’s level as one of the office buddies—we all got asked to call him by his first name. And yet, he enjoyed lording it over people, being the boss, and playing the role of the arrogant alpha male whose decisions are final. So, it was funny to call him sir. It also made him feel older, you know, his age.
Was there more to it than that, though? I knew things weren’t as simple as love and hate. There was friction between us that shouldn’t have existed. And I knew it had everything to do with that moment in the restaurant on Tuesday when he’d taken a grip on my arm, and suddenly the world behind us had receded. When that happened, I was faced with a dark reality: as much as I disliked him, I wanted to kiss him there and then.
It couldn’t happen. Not just because I hated him, and not just because he was my boss. Because he was my ex’s brother, for goodness’ sake.
But the bounds of possibility were about to be stretched and tested when, that Friday, I got an email from Alex.
Lena,
I want you at the open house for the apartment complex tonight. You’ll be responsible for greeting the clients. Go home and change and meet me there at 5 p.m. Dress appropriately.
J.
I gritted my teeth when I read it, of course. It was unreasonable. That was a job for the property manager or someone on Alex’s marketing team. They occupied their own office on the other side of the hotel’s top floor, and spent all day milling around in smart suits, talking into earpieces. It was unreasonable of him to expect me there. And worse, I’d already made plans with Krista, a girl I’d met in the lobby of one of the modeling agencies here in Honolulu. She was just about the one and only friend I’d made since arriving on the island and I didn’t want to disappoint her.
But, if I wanted to prove Alex wrong about me, I had no other option except to show up. Besides, it would be fun to take in the view from the top floor of a condo building on Waikiki Beach.
“Thankyouforcoming,ma’am,” I said politely to the old lady in front of me. She was the last of the investors who’d attended the event this evening. She nodded at me and continued talking in hushed tones with her business partner on the other side of her as she passed. I swiped them out of the building, using the special key card that connected the penthouse suite and its private parking lot downstairs.
The setting sun was burning a deep crimson shade in the east, and the floors of the penthouse suite had already started to grow dark. I turned on the huge, glass lights that were on the 30-foot ceiling above and looked around for Alex.
