‘Ouch!’
He looked up.
Catherine. Looking horrified.
That was...weird.
Catherine North never looked anything but completely composed. At least she hadn’t until today.
But, then again, Catherine North had never worn figure-hugging black that emphasised every mind-numbingly delicious curve until today. And Catherine North had never let a glossy, finger-luring curl stray out of place until today. And Catherine North had never had the skin of her legs visible until today. And Catherine North—
Was definitely looking horrified.
‘Lunch date stand you up?’ he couldn’t resist asking, wondering if there was a more direct way he could ask her who she was having lunch with without making himself look more of a moron than he already was.
Eyes huge behind the lenses of her tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, Catherine shook her head.
She didn’t seem inclined to add anything, so Max asked, ‘Did you want that report for a particular reason?’
He watched, fascinated, as the tip of her tongue came out to scoot quickly across her bottom lip.
She had the sexiest bottom lip he’d ever seen.
‘No,’ she said, and the bottom lip pinched itself in, in its usual repressed fashion.
Still looked sexy, though.
Max sucked a drop of blood from his wound, waiting to hear what Catherine would add. But it seemed no more information was forthcoming. ‘Then do you think I could have it back?’ he asked politely.
‘It?’
‘The report.’
‘Of course,’ she said, looking down as she hived off some pages from the back and held the rest out to him. She turned quickly on her heel.
Before she could take a step, Max asked, ‘Don’t I get to look at those pages, too?’
She stopped. Her shoulders tightened. And then she shrugged and said over her shoulder, ‘Just some shredding you picked up by mistake with the report. I wanted to take care of it before I left for lunch.’
And then she was running out.
And Catherine North had never run anywhere in this office. Until today.
So... What was so special about today?
Max’s mouth turned down. In short—nothing.
His return to the office had been monumentally disappointing. Not that he’d had any business expecting anything to be different just because he’d been away for two weeks and they’d left things a little...
Ugh. A little nothing! That was how they’d left things.
They’d worked hard that night, and she’d been so gob-smackingly smart, and warm, and energised, and it had been great. Like a revelation. No, not a revelation—a confirmation...of something he’d always suspected. That Catherine was...special.
And then they’d taken the elevator down to the car park and he’d said, ‘Thank you for your help,’ and she’d said, ‘No problem,’ and they’d looked at each other... One, two, three, four beats.
And then they’d gone to their cars and driven off.
And he’d flown to Canada as fast as he’d been able to book and go.
Yep, he really was a moron.
‘Moron’: word of the day. And it was all his.
He went back to page one of the report.
Two minutes later he was cursing and slamming it down again. He was getting nowhere. And all because Catherine was...different. As if something had changed.
Running away to Canada without telling her had obviously been a mistake. But he’d just been...cautious. No, he was never cautious. More like reluctant. Reluctant to mess around with their excellent working relationship by giving in to his curiosity about her. Curiosity about what it would be like to—
No! He shot to his feet. He would not go there, even in his head.
He started pacing around the office, letting out some excess energy.
Not going there. Because it was one thing flirting in the office when you both knew the score, but quite another to hit on a strait-laced virgin who was not interested. Even his father, serial secretary-dater and all-round loser, didn’t go there.
And Ms North was not remotely interested. Ms North did not know the meaning of the word ‘flirt’. Ms North would skewer him with a letter-opener if he laid a lukewarm look on her, let alone a questing finger. Look at the way she’d freaked when he’d held her fingers for a couple of seconds—as if he was an eagle and she was a tiny bird struggling to get free of his talons. And the reception he’d got on arrival today, which had given new meaning to the word ‘unwelcome’. She’d even had it in for his new tie.
He looked down at his tie, decided she was right, and tugged it off. Laughed again as he went back to his desk and sat down.
And then he wondered if he was going mad, laughing about his tie in the middle of this mess. His hands went diving into his hair. It— No, she! She was so...so frustrating.
At first it had been a novelty, having an assistant who wasn’t remotely interested in his body.
But it had moved past that, to another novelty: being seriously attracted to someone who looked as if she’d faint if she heard the word ‘sex’.
Even without today’s hair and top and toenails—even when she was buttoned to the hilt in ill-fitting shirts covered with drab cardigans in shades of porridge and grey and dinge-green—he’d started feeling a little tortured—but in a weirdly good way—being near her.
That lemony fresh perfume she wore combined with her natural scent beneath it—lovely. The way her luminous hazel eyes shone behind her lenses when she was arguing her case—adorable. The habit she had of touching the button at her collar as though reassuring herself it was done up—intriguing. And when her fingers sneaked up to her perfectly shaped ear to touch the discreet gold hoop—demure...and yet somehow not demure.
He cursed under his breath, reached for the report again and saw another tiny bead of blood from the paper cut. He grabbed a tissue from the box on his desk and blotted it. Frowned at his hand as he remembered the look on Catherine’s face. There had been something at the bottom of the report Catherine hadn’t wanted him to see.
Max thought back again to his arrival that morning. He’d been so shocked at how she looked he’d been blinded to anything else at first. But if he dug past that there had been...dismay. No, more than dismay. She hadn’t wanted him anywhere near her. Because of...
The printing!
She’d been on edge because—and the truth was slapping him in the face now—he’d disturbed her printing something she shouldn’t have been printing. She hadn’t wanted to tell him what the document was—not that he’d really cared; he’d only asked because she’d looked so guilty. He’d wanted to goad her a little, get one of those mind-your-own-business glares out of her that just cracked him up. But now...?
What would a personal assistant be printing that her boss shouldn’t see? What would have her running in and snatching it out of his hands? Hmm...
Oh. Oh! Well, of course. A job application!
But she’d been printing reams. Too long for a letter and CV.
So not just one job. More than one. Which meant she wasn’t attracted to a special job she’d just happened upon but wanting to leave this job and going all-out scattergun to do it. God knew how many emails she’d sent to complement so many snail-mail CVs.
It was like an arrow between the eyes, and for a full minute he couldn’t think straight.
And then he could think. But his poor benumbed brain seemed willing to accommodate only one thought: Catherine wasn’t allowed to leave.
He forced himself to put that ironclad fact to one side. Because if his bogged brain didn’t start working how was he going to figure out a way to make her stay?
Just ask her to!
Okay, that seemed logical—although how he c
ould do it out of the blue, when she hadn’t actually indicated she was unhappy with her job, was not immediately obvious.
Except... Damn. She’d said today she couldn’t afford to go to Kurrangii. Had to be a message in that. He wasn’t paying her enough.
Well, he could give her a pay rise. It was his company—he could pay her whatever he wanted. Whatever she wanted!
Good. Perfect solution.
Without further ado he was out of his chair and heading for the door. ‘Catherine!’ he bellowed, before he reached it.
Silence.
He bolted through the doorway, searching.
Empty.
Max leaned against the doorjamb, running both hands into his hair. Why hadn’t he asked her where she was going for lunch? Hello? Earth to Max? Irrelevant! As if he could invade her date to offer her a pay rise! He’d look completely deranged.
Dammit. He was going to have to wait until she got back. He hated waiting.
He checked his watch. Forty minutes.
Feeling he should be doing something, he circled her desk. Looking at its almost stately tidiness made him smile. It was strangely comforting to see the evidence of her fastidious little habits.
His brain went stubborn on him for the second time: Catherine wasn’t allowed to leave.
Of course if he had a copy of what she’d been printing he’d be in a better position to know what he was up against. What counter-offer would work.
But there was no paper on the desk. No paper anywhere. Reflexively, his gaze moved to the printer. Clean. Silent. Turned off. The computer, too. Strange.
He sat in her chair. Looked at the computer screen. Turned on the computer and signed in to the system.
A sudden mental picture of how he looked—at Catherine’s desk, in her chair, hunched in front of her computer—made him roll his eyes. Thank God their suite of offices was completely private, so nobody would wander past and see him in this shameful Machiavellian guise. But, even so, this was crazy! What had he come to? He should just wait for her to come back and ask her what was going on! The way a sane person would.
He reached to flick the computer off.
And saw it.
A document. Recovered—the way it happened when you turned off the computer suddenly. Just there on the screen, without him searching or opening anything. A document called... What the hell...?
‘Passion Flower’.
Passion Flower?
Max looked around, feeling a tad uncomfortable now the moment of truth had arrived and it turned out not to be a job application—because nobody called a job application Passion Flower.
Could he really do this?
It took him perhaps two seconds to decide that, yes, he could. He had a right to read any document he wanted—this was his business, these were his premises, it was his equipment. Really, he was honour-bound to look.
Three seconds after that he started reading. But he wasn’t prepared for the reality.
Underneath the title Passion Flower was a line in smaller type. It read: A novel of love, lust and loneliness.
And Max’s jaw dropped.
Jennifer Andrews had been dreaming of her boss for months. Wild, erotic dreams.
Definitely not a job application, Max thought, shell-shocked. No way was he going to stop, though.
He read, scrolled, read, scrolled.
He’d figured out the truth as soon as he’d clapped eyes on that strapline, but somehow it wasn’t until he arrived at page three that the knowledge crystallised into recognisable syllables.
Cathy was writing a novel.
A romance novel.
A sexy romance novel.
He scrolled again, avidly searching, the sentences and phrases beckoning to him like a siren’s call, wrapping around his senses.
She knew Alex would be back soon, but Jennifer was too impatient to sit calmly in the navy leather chair she always occupied.
Navy leather chair! Like the chairs in his office, where Cathy sat.
She was drawn to Alex’s office window. Ten floors down, Jennifer could see the Botanic Gardens. It felt like a scene trapped in time...the immaculate green of the trees...Sydney Harbour shining in the distance, a diamond-sprinkled sheet of blue silk...the sun radiating a heady, hazy aphrodisiac...
Tenth floor. Office window overlooking the Botanic Gardens. Sydney Harbour. Check, check, check.
Alex walked into the office, brown briefcase in hand, and fixed her with his blue-eyed stare.
‘Notepad, Jenny,’ he barked at her.
Max was incapable of stopping his fingers from hitting the down arrow as his eyes stayed glued to the monitor to see what would happen next.
Alex towered over her, six feet two inches from the top of his tousled black hair to his Italian leather shoes. She clutched the red silk of her peignoir against her chest...
Max’s finger kept punching the down arrow, almost obsessively.
A red silk peignoir...
What would Cathy look like in that?
Max breathed out and sat back in Catherine’s chair to recover the breath that had somehow become linked to an almost savage tightening in his groin.
He checked his watch, assessing how much time he had. A twinge of conscience hit him. He should not be reading this. He should stop. This was bad.
But he returned his finger, now a little shaky, to the keyboard.
* * *
Catherine was determined to be back at precisely one-thirty, as ordered, so she hurried her friend and colleague Nell through lunch fast enough to cause dyspepsia.
‘What’s the rush?’ Nell protested as Catherine all but grabbed a passing waiter by the apron to demand the bill before they’d finished their coffee. ‘Max isn’t going to mind if you’re late.’
‘I’ll mind. And would you stop staring at me? I’ve had enough of that from Max!’
‘Well, it’s such a change.’ Nell gulped a mouthful of coffee. ‘What did he say? Max? About the new you?’
‘Nothing of consequence.’
Which was the truth. Not that it was really the ‘new’ her; it was the old her—not that anybody at Rutherford Property could possibly know that.
‘And, anyway, remember the girlfriends? Susie, Maria, Leah? All tall, all blonde, all dressed in tight, short dresses? And that was just in my first month. And the parade of starry-eyed PAs before me? All tall, blonde, blah-blah-blah?’
‘Haven’t seen any of his famous blondes for a while.’
‘Oh, he’ll have one stashed somewhere. And, regardless, he wouldn’t notice me—not in the way you mean—if I burst into his office doing the Dance of the Seven Veils.’
Catherine delved into her purse and laid some notes on the table without waiting for the bill. ‘I’m paying—the least I can do after rushing you into a bout of indigestion. But can we go? Like...now? Right now?’
‘All right,’ Nell said, ‘but I still don’t get why we have to hurry. We’re not late.’
Catherine didn’t plan on enlightening her—because she couldn’t explain, even to herself, the unformed sense of panic that had been racing through her veins ever since she’d left the office. Telling herself that everything was fine and she was merely suffering from a guilty conscience and an over-active imagination didn’t seem to be working. And the panic just kept growing.
Catherine bade Nell a preoccupied farewell at level eight and, the moment she was alone in the elevator, jabbed irritably at the button for level ten. Although she knew the elevator wouldn’t ascend any faster just because she hit the button a thousand times.
She breathed a sigh of relief when the doors opened at her floor—only to choke on it as she rounded the corner from the lift lobby.
Max was sitting in her chair, eyes glued
to her computer screen.
Ohhhhhhhh.
Not much of a thought, but all she could manage initially.
She reminded herself that she’d turned everything off, that the flash drive was in her drawer, the printed pages shoved in her briefcase, and there was no way he could be looking at Passion Flower. He was probably looking for the Queensland report to make some changes.
So breathe. Breathe and be normal.
‘Is there something you wanted urgently?’ she asked, forcing herself not to run to her desk but to walk slowly, calmly.
Max raised his head and looked at her—slack-jawed, marvelling, astounded.
And Catherine knew.
Max’s voice, when it finally came, was unbelievably husky. ‘You wrote this?’
THREE
Catherine’s brain was limping around the edges of semi-formed words, refusing to fasten on to any of them long enough for her to string a response together.
Max shook his head, as if he’d sustained a blow and was reeling. ‘You wrote this.’ This time it wasn’t a question.
Automatically Catherine’s hand moved to where her top button should have been primly done up.
Max’s stunned eyes followed her hand—could he see her pulse throbbing there?—moved lower, lower. Until every inch of her had been examined.
Catherine was lost—no button, no earrings. Coping the next best way, she whipped off her glasses and started polishing them ineffectually.
Thinking. Thinking. Thinking.
‘“His fingers slid through the heavy chestnut silk as he looked down at her, his vivid blue gaze on Jennifer’s hazel eyes through the round tortoiseshell rims of her spectacles...”’ Max recited, watching her as though spellbound.
He knew it by heart! Catherine put her glasses back on and took the only route open to her: she threw herself on her sword with an unvarnished ‘I’m sorry.’
Turning the Good Girl Bad Page 3