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Kirkuk, Iraq…
“Who sent you? What do you want?”
The policeman’s accent made his words guttural and hard, but they were nothing compared to the granite fist that smashed into Christian Watson’s nose. A geyser of blood gushed over his lips and seeped into the cut on his chin that had come courtesy of the first round of questioning.
Which had been…what? Twenty minutes ago? Two hours?
Time slowed when you were getting the sodding shite beaten out of you.
“My name is Christian Watson. I am a corporal in Her Majesty’s Special Air Service.” He rattled off his serial number before clamping his jaws shut. That was all the information the Geneva Conventions required of him. He would give no more.
Another blow drove deep into his gut, precisely over the spot where the bullet had gone through. The accompanying pain was a living thing that chewed at his intestines with hungry, needlelike teeth.
Dizziness and nausea crashed over him in undulating waves. He might have retched had the chair he was tied to not toppled backward with the force of the blow. When it collided with the floor in the tiny interrogation room, the sound his skull made as it bounced off the tiles was sickening, even to his own ears.
Darkness closed in on him, a malevolent specter hovering at the edge of his vision.
For the first time since he’d opened fire at the roadblock, fear tried to take root in his heart. He could not lose consciousness. Loss of consciousness was a loss of control. Loss of control terrified him worse than any corrupt Iraqi police officer ever could.
He struggled against his restraints, trying not to gag at the iron-rich smell of his own blood. He narrowly opened his one good eye to glare up at the policeman. His assailant wore a nasty smile. The hateful expression reminded Christian of a man from long ago. A man who inflicted pain for the simple pleasure of it. A man who—
The space around Christian shimmered and changed, melting into a new, more terrifying whole. Suddenly he was six years old, inside his boyhood room. Gone were the scents of blood and sweat and dry wind heavy with dust. They were replaced by the smells coming from the hulking shadow that loomed over him: whiskey and smoke, with an underlying hint of rot.
The shadow reached for him. Massive ham-hock hands curved into brutal, inescapable claws. Christian whimpered, scooting backward. But there was no place to go. Nowhere to run.
“Mummy!” he yelled, his voice hoarse with terror. “Mummy, please!”
But she would not come. It was too late. She was too far gone. He knew she would not come.
Orange light flickered in the darkness, licking flames into the brutal eyes of the shadowy man. Now he looked like what he was. Sadistic. Cruel. Evil incarnate.
Christian braced himself for what would come next. Even so, the first sizzle of fiery pain shocked him with its intensity.
Tossing back his head, he screamed…
“Wake up, damnit! Wake up!”
He bolted upright in bed. For a couple of confusing seconds, he didn’t know where he was. When he was. There was only darkness and the lingering memory of agony. There was only… Her. Emily Scott. The woman who had crawled under his skin and made a home for herself. What was she doing here?
Tunneling up his nose was the exotic smell of her shampoo. It caused him to snap back to the here and now as if he’d been fired from a slingshot.
Buggering hell, he thought at the same time Emily said, “Holy fucking shit!”
He might have smiled—the woman had a mouth on her and it never failed to delight him—had the words she’d spoken not been thick with recently disturbed sleep and something more. Something he thought might be fear.
No doubt he’d been screaming his fool head off. Which would scare the piss out of a seasoned operative, much less a pretty pipsqueak of an office manager who had somehow managed to embroil herself in a mission she had no business being part of.
Buggering hell, he thought again, as remnants of the dream—correction: dreams—shuddered through him.
Months. That’s how long it had been since he’d awoken in a pool of sweat, thrashing about as he tried to escape the ghosts of his past. He had hoped that perhaps he might finally have outdistanced them. Embarrassment and shame had him running a hand over his face. The growth of his day-old whiskers rasped against the calluses on his palm.
“Hey,” she shook his shoulder as if uncertain he was truly awake. “You were having a nightmare.” Her Chi-Town accent emphasized the a in all her words, making her sound tough. Which was funny, considering she looked about as dangerous as a baby bunny.
His words were harsher than he would’ve liked when he said, “No shite, Sherlock.”
She drew back, taking the smell of her shampoo with her. His heart immediately hurled itself against his rib cage, as if it was trying to lessen the distance she’d put between them.
She huffed with exasperation, and he knew he should apologize. But the words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t stomach the thought that she’d seen him like that.
So vulnerable.
So exposed.
So…out of control.
“You know,” she said, not attempting to disguise the irritation in her voice, “a normal person would say, ‘Thank you, Emily. Thank you for waking me up before I punched a hole through the bloody wall.’”
She’d donned an English accent. It was adorable. And total rubbish. She sounded more like a New Zealander than an Englishwoman.
“You’re right,” he admitted after taking a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry. Thank you for waking me.”
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness so he could see she was wearing a familiar frayed pullover. Her brown hair was a rumpus of flyaway waves, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup. If he weren’t mistaken, she wasn’t wearing a bra. He was fairly certain he could make out the subtle jut of her nipples through the thick fabric of her shirt.
Oh, bloody hell, he realized he was staring at her boobs.
Stop staring at her boobs.
Right-oh. Problem was, not staring was a tall order since from the top of Emily’s head to the tips of her unpainted toes, she was beautiful. Not beautiful like all those Hollywood starlets with their fake hair, medically enhanced bodies, and gallons of cosmetics, but beautiful in a timeless, effortless way.
Emily’s slim figure was subtly curved. She had a pert nose, big dark eyes, and a lush mouth. If he had to put a label on it, he’d say she possessed an ingénue-esque air. It tended to cause a male stampede anytime she walked into a room.
Unfortunately, since the day he had met her, she’d made it clear she had no interest in him in that way. Certainly she enjoyed teasing him and taunting him. On a regular basis, she took strips out of his hide with the sharpness of her tongue. But when it came to nocturnal activities? Well, it was safe to say that she was the equivalent of a human stop sign. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred quid.
Masochist that he was, that just made him fancy her more. As if to prove the point, his flag had already hoisted itself to half-staff.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. Morning’s first tender light chose that moment to filter in through the crack in the curtains. It glowed over the smooth, unblemished skin of her face, highlighted the beauty mark high on her right cheek, and showed the sympathy in her warm eyes.
“Talk about what?”
“Your nightmare.”
He snorted. “About as much as I’d fancy having my bollocks shaved with a rusty razor blade.”
For a moment she was silent. Then her lips curved up at the corners. “Whatever floats your boat, right?”
A joke. She was trying to tease the tension out of him. Which might have worked had she been anyone else. Had she not had such a hypnotic smile. He was afraid if he stared at it too long, he’d fall under its spell and be helpless to do anything but its bidding.
Glancing through the slit in the curtains, he eyed the sliver of view beyond. The rising sun cast the beach in a pearlescent glow. Golden rays turned the tops of the waves in the harbor pink and silver. It was a scene from his childhood. Back when his childhood had been…if not good, then at least bearable. Before it’d become a string of long, lonely days and terrifying nights.
“What time is it?” he asked, trying not to notice how his thigh touched her hip through the fabric of the quilt.
“Just past oh-six-hundred. You still have time to get more sleep.”
“Not possible.”
Her expression epitomized compassion. “Bad dreams do that to me too. I’ve found it helps if someone stays with me. You know, to sort of guard against the nightmare’s return. Do you want me to stay with you?” Her head tilted innocently.
Good God, was she serious? He wanted her to stay with him more than anything. But he couldn’t have her in his room, in his bed, without touching her. And since in the world of unwritten rules, not touching a woman unless she invited him to was underlined, bold, and in all caps, she needed to leave.
“No. I’m fine. But thank you. Thank you for coming to check on me. To wake me.” He risked looking into her eyes and immediately knew it for the mistake it was. He was used to seeing a mischievous glint in her warm brown irises, used to seeing derision or irritation or, hell, occasionally even grudging respect. But what he was not used to seeing was tenderness.
Not that Emily was unkind. Quite the contrary; beneath her tough outer shell she had an incredibly soft underbelly. Problem was, she rarely showed him her softer side, choosing instead to give him all the sharp edges she had honed while growing up in Chi-Town’s blue-collar Bridgeport neighborhood.
She placed a hand on his thigh and it immediately brought him out in a sweat. “If you’re sure you don’t—”
“I’m sure.” He was quick to cut her off.
“You’re good at playing the tough guy, aren’t you?”
He quirked a brow, made sure his expression was all arrogance. “I don’t have to play at it, darling.”
Tossing her head back, she laughed. The sight of her exposed throat combined with the low, husky roll of her amusement had his flag hoisting itself to full-staff. Bloody stupid appendage!
Emily lowered her chin to regard him, that hypnotic smile still on her lips. “Let no one ever accuse you of a lack of confidence, Christian.”
He considered pretending he hadn’t heard her, so she’d say his name again. The way she pronounced it always hit him like a shot of aged whiskey—warm, potent, and intoxicating. But instead he went with, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“It’s not. I like a confident man.”
“Careful.” He lifted a brow. “That sounded suspiciously like you just admitted to liking me.”
She shrugged. It was a delicate, unconsciously graceful gesture. “Well, I don’t dislike you.”
Warmth unfurled in his belly. To distract her from the heightened color in his cheeks and the predatory gleam that had no doubt entered his eyes, he donned an expression of annoyance. “Damned with faint praise.”
“Oh, it’s praise you want? Well, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong woman. I’m bad at compliments.”
“That’s the understatement of the century.” Although, truth be told, he’d heard her compliment their coworkers on many occasions. She was just beastly bad at flinging admiration his way.
Which was probably why his jaw slung open when she took a deep breath and blurted, “You have really pretty eyes.”
Scriiiiiitch. That sound was a needle scratching across his mental record player. Did Emily Scott just say he had pretty eyes? Backup. Reset. Not just pretty eyes but really pretty eyes?
How odd she should think so. He’d always thought his eyes a bit…spooky. They were a strange color, somewhere between green and gold. Too light when paired with his tan skin and dark hair. Hadn’t he been told as much? Hadn’t his spooky eyes caused—
He crushed the memory and glanced around the room as if furtively searching for something. “Hang on a minute,” he said.
A frown tugged at her pretty mouth. “What is it? What are you looking for?”
“The white bunny. I seem to have fallen down the rabbit hole.”
She swatted his arm, not attempting to be gentle. “See? And that’s why I don’t compliment you. You don’t know how to take it.”
“I’m sorry. You’re absolutely right. Let’s try this again, shall we? You think I have really pretty eyes?” He fluttered his eyelashes for effect.
She groaned and pushed up from the bed. He felt the loss of her weight, the loss of her hip against his thigh, the loss of her exotic-smelling shampoo, in a place he dare not name. “And besides,” she added, “your ego is big enough without me giving it the occasional stroke.”
His breath caught on the last word. It seemed to hang in the air, pounding like a heartbeat.
If she noticed his sudden tension, she gave no indication as she sauntered toward the door. Turning at the threshold, she said, “Since you’re not going to get any more sleep, how about you cook breakfast for the ravenous hoard, huh? I could use another hour of shut-eye.”
She stretched her arms over her head and let out a mighty yawn. Her older-than-the-hills pullover inched away from the waistband of her pajama bottoms. A flash of pale, silky skin turned his mouth into a desert.
“Speaking of the ravenous hoard,” he said, or rather rasped, “are they still asleep? Did I wake them?”
She glanced down the hall, her dark hair falling over her shoulder in a silky curtain he longed to touch. “The lights are off in their rooms. I think I was the only one who heard. You know, since we share a wall.”
Ah, yes. The shared wall.
The wall he had stared at for the last five nights while they waited for things to get sorted so they could come out from hiding and return to Chicago. The wall he might have, just maybe, pressed his ear against a time or two in the hopes of hearing her…what? Snoring? Breathing? Pleasuring herself?
He stifled a groan.
“So?” She cocked a brow. “Will you?”
“Will I what?”
She frowned like his IQ had dropped fifty points in the last five seconds. Which, if he was being honest, it had. It did. Anytime she was in the room.
“Breakfast. Will you make breakfast? I know it’s my turn, but—”
“Say no more.” He lifted a hand. “It’s done.” Because even if breakfast duty was at the top of exactly no one’s list, he was glad to assume the responsibility if it would get Emily out of his room. After having her so close for so long, he definitely needed some alone time with his John Thomas. “A traditional English breakfast it is,” he added when she seemed to need additional reassurance.
She wrinkled her nose. “I can get on board with the sautéed mushrooms and the roasted tomato, but I’ve never understood beans for breakfast.”
“They’re good for your heart.”
Even from across the dim room, he saw her eyes ignite with mischief. Emily liked to push buttons, do the unexpected, say things hysterically crass. He assumed it was because she enjoyed keeping the people around her off balance. “The more you eat, the more you—”
“For heaven’s sake!” he scolded before she could finish the hideous children’s rhyme. “Grow up, will you?”
Although, the truth was, he wouldn’t change a thing about her. She drove him completely crazy. That was true. But she also made him laugh. And in his line of work—bloody hell, in his entire sodding life—laughter wasn’t something that came easily.
“So stuffy,” she complained. It was a familiar accusation.
“I’m not stuffy. I’m English, darling.”
“My point exactly.”
“Hurtful.” He crossed his arms and thrust out his chin. If he weren’t mistaken, her eyes alighted on his bare pecs, then traveled briefly over the sleeves of black, winding tattoos that covered his arms from his shoulders to wrists.
Is that interest I see in her eyes? he wondered hopefully.
He wasn’t bad to look at. He knew that. Not that he had to fight the women away with a stick or anything, but neither did he have to look quite hard for a willing bed partner. Alas, whatever brief flicker of intrigue he thought he saw in her eyes disappeared before he had the chance to study it.
“Will you be happy to leave home today?” she asked, still lingering in his doorway.
“England isn’t home,” he assured her, his mood dropping into the loo. The only good to come of that was that his John Thomas followed suit. So, apparently there were two cures for his flag flying at full-staff. One, a swift rub and tug. Or two, talk of the country that had betrayed him. “It hasn’t been for a long time.”
She considered him for a moment more, then nodded and turned to go. Before she disappeared down the hall, she got in a parting shot. If he had known just how portentous her words would turn out to be, he might have stayed in bed with the covers over his head. “Someday you’re going to tell me what happened here.”
* * *
Port Isaac, Cornwall, England
Emily Scott was having a good day.
She’d pawned breakfast duty off on Christian. She was wearing her favorite sweatshirt, the one Paulie Konerko had signed after he helped the White Sox win the 2005 World Series. And she was on her way home. Back to the world of baseball and deep dish pizza, towering skyscrapers and a lake so big and blue it looked like an ocean.
Add to that the fact that she would no longer have to stay cooped up in a tiny cottage with four of the most testosterone-packed males on the planet, and she’d go so far as to say her day wasn’t just good; it was Tony the Tiger grrrreat. Which was why she should have been prepared for things to start circling the drain. Long ago, it’d come to her attention that life liked to rise up and bite her on the ass when she least expected it.
Case in point: she found herself blinking in slack-jawed astonishment when two hours after she’d finished scarfing down Christian’s delightful English breakfast—minus the baked beans, natch—he opened the front door of his uncle’s cottage only to have a microphone shoved in his face.
“Are you Corporal Christian Watson?” a redheaded woman in a yellow pantsuit demanded. “Is it true you were the SAS soldier captured during the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
“Where have you been, Corporal Watson?” a man in a raincoat and cabbie hat demanded, holding up a digital recorder. “What have you been on about since you left Her Majesty’s Special Air Service?”
Emily got a glimpse of half a dozen other people gathered on the cottage’s front stoop—a honking big camera was on the shoulder of one man—before Christian slammed the door shut and twisted the lock. His face was a thundercloud when he swung back into the room.
“Bloody fecking hell,” he snarled, then followed that up with a string of profanity so blue it would make a sailor blush.
Why did curse words sound better coming out of his mouth? Oh, right. Because everything sounded better coming out of his mouth. That accent! She was hard-pressed not to fan herself.
Turning to the trio of men behind her, she found their expressions mirrored her own. In a word: shock. In two words: rampant curiosity. And in three words? Well, what the fuck? came to mind.
“What in the ass?” Ace asked, adjusting the straps of his backpack more comfortably on his broad shoulders.
They all had backpacks stuffed with the essentials needed to flee the country: basic toiletries and a change of clothes. Usually included in their “essentials” was an array of handguns, knives, and other pointy or bangy things which, when used correctly, resulted in death. But they’d had to leave their arsenal behind during their initial attempt to hop the pond a few days prior. Emily had wondered if the men felt naked without their customary repository of combat blades and sidearms.
“I mean, seriously, what in the ass?” Ace repeated. Colby “Ace” Ventura was a former U.S. Navy pilot turned operator for Black Knights Inc., the covert government defense firm Emily had gone to work for after she bugged out of the CIA. Although, in reality, it was probably more appropriate to say the Black Knights had taken her under their wings after the fiasco with her former boss forced her out of the CIA.
“That’s one way of putting it,” she said to Ace before turning back to Christian. “Another way of putting it would be to steal the timeless words of Ricky Ricardo.” She exaggerated her expression. “Christian…you got some ’splainin’ to do.” All those hours parked in front of the television as a kid watching reruns of I Love Lucy while her parents had been out doing who-the-hell-knew-what had apparently paid off.
Unfortunately, her flippancy was wasted on Christian. “Shite,” he hissed, followed by, “Bloody fecking hell.”
“You said that already,” she informed him helpfully, trying to lighten his mood. When she thought of the vulnerability she’d seen in his eyes in that first second after she’d woken him from his nightmare, her silly, squishy, far-too-soft heart turned over. “Try something else. I like to go with bugfucking dickmunch or son of a bee-stung bitch. But I might also suggest—”
“Sod off, Emily.” He glowered at her.
Really, Christian could glower like nobody’s business because, and there was no subtler way to put this, he was a stone-cold fox.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t handsome. At least not in the traditional sense. His looks were more those of the high desert. Harsh. Dangerous. Stark. And like an oasis in the sand, his eyes glittered and shone.
Intensely masculine, that’s what he was. Carnal. Primal. Six foot three inches of big bones and Superman hair. The kind of guy who was attractive not because he had perfect features, but because he oozed confidence and testosterone and power. A breaker of hearts. A slayer of vaginas. The kind of guy who got most women sweaty just by breathing.
Lucky for her, she wasn’t most women.
Okay, so maybe she was. Because, seriously, not lusting after his hot bod was kind of like saying to herself, See that fat, furry little bulldog puppy? Do not think he’s cute. Still, whether or not she wanted to jump his bones was neither here nor there since she’d learn not to mix business with pleasure. Once bitten, twice shy, baby.
“Now is so not the time for your scathing wit,” he added.
“No?” She lifted a brow. “And here I was thinking any time was a good time for my scathing wit.”
“There are bloody reporters outside.”
“Yep. Saw ’em with my own two beady eyes.”
This time he gifted her with a put-upon grimace. Really, the man seemed to have a vast arsenal of sexy sneers and bone-melting scowls. And truth? She enjoyed each and every one of them. They gave her a glimpse of the real man beneath the carefully styled hair, the designer clothes, and the expensive whatnots. The man who was down and dirty, gruff and gritty. The man a part of her couldn’t wait to meet.
It was the wild part of her. The careless part. The crazy part that didn’t have a thought in its ditzy, horny little head except, Yowza! Gimme, gimme, gimme!
That was the part of her she tried like hell to ignore, choosing instead to focus on the other part of her. The sensible part. The reasonable part. The practical part that didn’t dare give him any more sexy ammunition to use against her already panting libido.
“What do we do now?” Ace asked.
“Back door.” Angel said, already turning. Angel was a former Israeli Mossad agent turned fellow BKI badass. Emily didn’t know much about him; his past was even more shadowed than Christian’s.
“Right. Good idea.” She hustled after him. Unfortunately, before they reached the back door, they heard the sound of voices coming from beyond it.
“Trapped,” she whispered, her heart kicking into overdrive. She would have liked to think the sudden uptick was a product of their increasingly alarming situation. But the truth was, it was at least partly due to Christian having followed and come to a stop directly behind her, close enough that she could feel the blast of his body heat.
“This is bad,” he muttered, taking a step back. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that he’d moved away.
“We need to stay calm,” Angel insisted in that precise way he had. Jamin “Angel” Agassi’s diction was perfect. But his voice? It was a wreck. Likely due to the fact that he’d had his vocal cords scoured to avoid voice recognition software after he left Israel. Talk about ew, not to mention ow.
“Right.” Ace nodded. “Before we get too excited, we need to know what we’re dealing with.” He lifted an inquiring brow at Christian. “Is it true? Were you the one captured during the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Emily turned to study Christian’s face and saw the muscle twitching beneath his right eye.
“Yes,” Christian said after a five-second beat. “That would be me.”
“Holy hobbling Christ on a crutch,” Ace swore, running a hand through his blond hair.
“What?” Rusty Parker, aka the only civilian in the group, asked. “What was the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Rusty was a former Marine who had worked one summer as a CIA asset before he up and moved to England to become a charter boat captain. Poor guy, she thought now. She wouldn’t have dragged him into this if she’d known just how much trouble she was going to cause him.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “I’m with Rusty. What was the Kirkuk Police Station Incident?”
Christian shook his head. “We don’t have time for this.”
Christian, like so many of the Black Knights, was stubbornly closemouthed about his past. Most times, she didn’t press. In her world, a smart woman allowed men like them their secrets. But this time, she felt compelled to push.
“Sure we do. Since our only exits are blocked by reporters, we have all the time in the world.”
Christian blew out an exasperated breath that caused a whorl of hair to fall over his brow. It tried to distract Emily, but she refused to let it.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “But let’s bloody well make this quick, okay?”
“We’re all ears,” she assured him. “Fire away.”
That muscle twitched beneath his eye again. It was joined by one in his jaw. “It was near the end of the Iraq War, after major hostilities had ceased and before the incursion of ISIS into the country. I was sent in to keep an eye on a group of Iraqi policemen who were running a crime unit with rumored links to corruption and brutality in the city. My job was to gather enough evidence against them to warrant a takedown.”
“Oh, I remember reading about this.” Rusty narrowed his eyes in thought. “There was a shoot-out at a roadblock, right?”
Christian nodded. “The policemen I was tasked with surveilling somehow found out about me. When I was leaving the city to deliver a situation report to my commanding officer, I was stopped at a roadblock. At first I thought I could talk my way out of it, yeah? But they pulled their weapons and started shooting. I pulled mine and did the same. Took a round to the gut that put me in bad shape. But before they managed to overwhelm me, I slotted two of the wankstains.”
He said it so casually. Before they managed to overwhelm me. But Emily knew Christian. It must have been one hell of a fight.
“They took me to the police station where they questioned me for eight hours,” he added. Questioned. Ha! A nice way of saying he had been interrogated and tortured. Visions of bludgeoning, waterboarding, and thumbs shoved into his wound bloomed in her mind. It was enough to have her breakfast threatening to reverse directions.
“Is that what you were dreaming about this morning?” she asked. If the hoarse screams that had jolted her from a dead sleep were any indication, Christian’s eight hours in the hands of the Iraqis had been brutal.
The look he shot her was quick and definitive, the facial equivalent of shut your trap. But it was too late. Ace glanced back and forth between them, a shit-eating grin spreading across his handsome face.
“How would you know what he was dreaming about this morning, hmm?” Ace widened his blue eyes. “Is there something the two of you would like to tell us? Like, maybe you’ve finally had enough foreplay and it’s time to get down to the main event?”
“Foreplay?” Emily scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, sure you do. All that one-upping? The verbal sparring? That’s foreplay, luv.”
She waved a hand through air still tinged with the smell of bacon and buttered toast. “Whatever. One-upmanship is nothing more than good clean fun. And maybe a little ego management on my part.” She gifted Christian with a squinty-eyed stare, indicating his height with a gesture. “I mean, you’ve seen him, right? The clothes. The hair. The smile. Someone has to keep him grounded.”
“Rrrright,” Ace said, nodding his head.
She rolled her eyes and turned to Christian. “Tell him.”
Christian lifted a brow that asked Tell him what?
She thinned her lips and widened her eyes. Her expression said Tell him I’m right.
Instead of siding with her, Christian said, “Can we please get back to the bloody subject? In case you’ve forgotten, there are reporters outside preventing us from catching our flight and getting the hell off this sodding rock!”
Did he think their bickering was foreplay? She didn’t delude herself when it came to Christian. And despite her protestations to the contrary, she did want him. I mean, who wouldn’t? But he’d given no indication he felt the same. In fact, he found her as annoying as a housefly. His words. Not hers. Which was just fine and dandy.
It was!
After all, there was that whole “not mixing of business and pleasure” edict she was determined to live by. And even if there wasn’t, the two of them were oil and water.
He wore designer clothes and drove a Porsche. She preferred yoga pants and sweatshirts, usually from the discount rack at Target. There was an air of mystery surrounding him, depths she dared not plumb. And she? Well, she was pretty much an open book.
If she was simple, he was complex. If she was day, he was night. A dark and stormy one.