Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 79328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 397(@200wpm)___ 317(@250wpm)___ 264(@300wpm)
Her voice was wrong too. Warm and courteous, exactly what I would have expected from an assistant I didn’t know. But I did know Raina. She was bright and cheerful, even first thing in the morning, and she’d never bothered to hide it. In the beginning, her sunshine personality had grated on me. I wasn’t a morning person, and her relentless cheerfulness had felt like an assault.
Today, her subdued greeting made my chest feel tight.
It was wrong, and I hated it.
“Good morning, Raina.”
She blinked, surprise flickering across her features. It occurred to me that I rarely returned her morning greeting. I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. It was just the way I’d always been.
I couldn’t explain why I was acting differently now.
“I received an email from Mr. Cole’s assistant this morning,” Raina said, her tone carefully neutral. “He’s unavailable for your phone conference today. He’d like to reschedule for next week.”
I scowled, and she probably assumed it was because of the cancelled meeting. Normally, that kind of thing would set me off. Instead, I was irritated by the change in her. Maybe that wasn’t fair, considering I was grumpy as hell most of the time, but I couldn’t bury the feeling.
I rose from my desk and came around to her side. As I approached, Raina held her ground, her chin lifting slightly as she met my gaze. I wondered what she saw in my eyes. Could she tell how badly I wanted to repeat the kiss from Saturday night? Could she sense the conflict raging inside me, the war between desire and professionalism that had plagued me since the night of the gala?
“Sit down,” I said, pulling the chair in front of my desk closer to her.
She tilted her head, hesitating. “I was going to make coffee…”
I shook my head. “I’ve already had too much caffeine this morning.” I gestured toward the chair.
Raina let out a small huff as she sat, folding her arms over her chest and looking up at me like I was wasting her time. Insolent. Defiant.
Infuriatingly tempting.
She was truly the only woman who had ever dared to push back against me. Everyone else—employees, business associates, the women I’d dated casually over the years—they all deferred. Agreed. Accommodated. Raina challenged me, and God help me, it made me want her even more.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, impatience threading through her voice.
I exhaled slowly. “That’s what I want to know. You seem unhappy this morning.”
Raina let out a scoff. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
A grin tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. This was a new side of her—openly annoyed, making no effort to hide it. It was… endearing. Cute, even.
I doubted she’d appreciate hearing that.
“I suppose that makes me the expert,” I said.
“I’m fine.” She shifted in the chair, her fingers drumming against her forearm.
I fixed her with my best no-nonsense glare—the one that had helped me dominate countless boardrooms—but Raina seemed entirely unaffected. She leaned back and raised one stubborn eyebrow, matching my intensity with her own.
“I should get to work, sir.”
Sir. The word landed somewhere low in my gut, twisting into something it had no business becoming. I couldn’t help imagining how it would sound in a different context—breathless, desperate, falling from her lips in the throes of desire.
I shoved the thought aside and leaned forward, placing my hands on the armrests of her chair to cage her in. I was bent over her now, our faces separated by mere inches.
“I told you to call me Simon.”
“Okay, Simon.” There was a bite in her voice, and a challenge in her eyes.
The impulse to bend her over my desk and spank her flashed through my mind. Completely inappropriate, absolutely an HR disaster, and yet the image refused to leave. Maybe we were past worrying about such things. We were supposed to be faking a relationship, after all.
“Can I go back to work now?” she asked impatiently.
“Not yet.” I inhaled, and her perfume hit me stronger than ever before—vanilla and flowers, sweet and intoxicating. It smelled like an invitation. “I think we should talk more about our relationship.”
Something flickered in Raina’s eyes, too quick for me to identify. “We don’t have a relationship.”
Ahhh. There it is.
I didn’t know exactly what was bothering her, but I was certain now that it was connected to the fake dating arrangement. It was the only thing that had changed between us. Based on the edge in her voice, I was on the right track.
“Don’t be like that,” I said, letting a teasing note lighten my tone. “This whole thing was your idea, after all.”
“And I suppose you’re going to hold that against me forever.”
“No.” I meant it. I might not have been thrilled in the moment, but I knew she’d only been trying to help and it had worked like a charm with Alexander, honestly. “I’m just trying to figure out why you’re angry.”