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Zeph slowly straightened, that languidness disappearing as he sauntered into the room. And with each step, he took another large chunk of her concentration while making her intensely aware of his magnetic presence. ‘Everything is fine,’ she said with a forced smile. ‘I’ll be in touch when I’ve looked through the emails.’
He looked as if he wanted to push for more, but, feeling a little guilty, she ended the call.
Silence throbbed in the room.
When it got too much, she lifted her head and met his gaze head-on.
‘Another demanding client?’ he enquired, a bite in his voice.
She shook her head. ‘Noah isn’t a client. He’s a colleague at Callahan Shipping.’
Midnight-blue eyes narrowed into serious slits. ‘A colleague who invites himself over to lunch as and when he pleases?’ That edge had intensified, even though his body remained relaxed. Deceptively languid.
‘I work long hours most days. I’ve learned to be flexible with my working hours.’
‘And he’s been here to the apartment from the sounds of it. How accommodating of you.’
‘He’s an invaluable asset.’
That mocking eyebrow went up. ‘Is he? Enlighten me how,’ he invited bitingly as he reached her desk, and promptly perched on one corner.
Immie struggled not to glance down at his muscled thigh so close she could reach out and touch it. Touchhim.
‘Why do you want to know?’
His lips twitched but the humour from before was absent now. ‘I didn’t spend all three hours “resting” this morning. After almost a year of dealing with a blank space, I’m sure you’ll understand how curiosity is difficult to resist. I have the broad strokes of my life. So if this Noah works for Callahan Shipping, which is a semi-independent company I happen to own, then he’s technically my employee. So answer the question, Imogen.’
She swallowed, an abstract part of her wondering why the hell she was so on edge. ‘He has a brilliant business mind. I was lucky he was willing to relocate from the States to Athens to help me run the company.’ When he continued to level a stare at her, she added, ‘He went to Harvard, graduated at the top of his class at Harvard Business School.’
When that didn’t elicit more than an intensely bored expression, she bit her lip. ‘You do know what Harvard is, don’t you?’
One corner of his mouth quirked. ‘Surprisingly, yes.’
‘Then...?’
‘You want to know why your little puppy’s credentials don’t impress me?’
Unlike her other emotions, she let him see her irritation. ‘He’s not my little puppy.’
‘No? Sycophancy isn’t undetectable with memory loss, you know,’ he said. And while his tone was dryly amused, there was an edge to it.
Much as there’d been on the yacht when he’d talked about her trip to the nightclub.
Why that sent another fizz of electricity through her system, Immie was absolutely not going to accommodate. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
His lips thinned for several seconds before he rose to his feet. ‘The pilot is waiting. It’s time to go.’
She opened her mouth to put forth a myriad objections. But when her gaze, which seemed incapable of not running over him, tracked him from head to toe, the words that emerged mildly stunned her. ‘You want to leave already?’
Zeph’s eyes glittered at her. ‘I see no reason to remain here.’
‘But...the things I ordered for you are on their way. You don’t want to change?’
‘You object to what I’m wearing?’
‘Yes... I mean, no, but...’ Her treacherous gaze tracked him again. ‘It’s just I thought you’d have found something here in the meantime.’
‘I didn’t. But I made a curious discovery though,’ he mused.
