Nikki Logan - The Morning After the Night Before

‘Nice for some.’

‘Please …’ The word bloomed mist on the edge of her glass as she took a sip. His whole body tightened at the reminder of her spectacular performance in the office. ‘You can’t tell me your management salary doesn’t buy you whatever leisure time you want.’

‘Not if I want to keep making that salary,’ he muttered. ‘I haven’t had a decent break in five years.’

That, at least, was true. He spent nearly as much time at home researching the business as he did in the office delivering it. Downtime was lost time in his book.

‘Well, that explains a lot.’

‘Such as?’

‘Perhaps if you had a holiday now and again you would be a little easier to work with.’

With champagne came courage, apparently.

‘You think I’m hard to work with?’

She didn’t miss his emphasis. ‘I do, actually. I’m more of a more flies from honey kind of person.’

Yeah. He’d bet. Pretty much anything to do with honey fitted Isadora Dean. Her skin tone, her voice. His eyes drifted straight to her lips.

Honey. Definitely.

‘You think a manager should be nice to his staff, all the time?’ he said, to distract himself from that line of thought.

‘I think a working relationship is a partnership, not a tyranny.’

‘A partnership in which I pay you to work.’

‘Just think how much more productive I’d be if I was interested in earning your respect.’

Ouch.

But he at least took some solace from her use of the present tense. Maybe this whole thing was just a ploy for more money from an ambitious employee. Effective: he was authorised to up her pay packet by ten grand.

‘I have thirty-three direct reports in this role. Not too sustainable to be buddy-buddy with each of them.’

Especially not when he kept finding reasons to haul a particularly sexy and recalcitrant one into his office.

‘Boohoo.’ She tossed back the last of her champagne. ‘Anyway, officially not my problem since I’m not your employee anymore and never will be.’

He shifted closer. And he liked it. He’d never allowed himself to get this close to her before. Too dangerous.

‘Never?’

She stood her ground. ‘Nope.’

‘You have no price that you’ll eventually come to after a day or two of faux deliberation?’

Insult blazed heavily in her pretty eyes. ‘Nope.’

She pressed her hand to her breast and all it did was remind him she had them. His eyes went straight to those long, champagne-sticky fingers pressed against her blouse and the slight curve beneath. But he fought it.

‘Everyone has a price.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ She gaped. ‘To see what it will cost you to get me back?’

He wasn’t about to let her start thinking that she was special. ‘We invest a lot in our staff. I don’t like to see anyone walk away with that investment. Or our corporate knowledge.’

‘I signed your confidentiality agreement. Broadmore Natále’s secrets are safe with me.’

Actually, he believed her. She might be a princess but she’d always been a discreet and professional princess. Wednesday excepted. And peering up at him as she was—all enormous-eyed and unflinching—she certainly looked very sincere.

And he was through begging.

Rifkin be damned.

‘I told them you’d tell me to go to hell.’

Realisation dawned in her eyes. And with it, a hot little smile. ‘Oh, I see … You’ve been sent. ’

He just glared.

She shifted onto one hip and the move changed the angle of the classy outfit she was wearing, highlighting the line of her body. ‘That must really pain you.’

You have no idea.

‘I gave it a shot,’ he breathed. ‘I need to get your keycard back, then.’

All warmth from their sparring drained from her eyes like the dregs from her glass. ‘Security can’t just disable it?’

‘They’re ten-quid access cards.’

She flushed and actually looked a little hurt that he didn’t even consider her worth ten pounds.

Really? That was her hot button—devaluing her? Handy to know.

‘Whatever. Follow me.’

The sudden distance she put between them was almost like a cool chill after the warmth of their heated discussion. Exactly when had it stopped being business and started being flirting? He took one final tug on his beer then left the three-quarters-full bottle on the kitchen bench and trailed her back out through the doors, being sure to appreciate the round sway of her arse.

Now that he could.

‘WATCH YOURSELF,’ IZZY murmured exactly as her ex-boss ducked sideways and down to avoid clipping his egotistically big head on the steel frame of the mezzanine stairs going up to the bedroom above them. Though a scar would probably only make him more handsome.

She shoved her shoulder against her door.

‘You’re kidding me,’ he said over the party music. ‘This is you?’

Spinning revealed him to be much closer than she’d expected. And it only served to remind her how tiny her new room really was. And how chaotic.

‘Much as I’d like to lock you in the store room as a hilarious prank and listen to you beating at the door while no one else could hear you, I do, in fact, need to sleep in here tonight. So I’ll just find my ID card and you can be on your way.’

‘What happened to the turret?’

Why did he look so concerned? ‘Poppy’s renting it to someone else.’

‘Your best friend evicted you?’

‘God, no. She’d never ask that. I swapped rooms. Economies of scale.’

‘Economical is right,’ he murmured. ‘I have a linen closet bigger than this.’

She smiled tightly. ‘Are you always so gracious?’

Colour streaked up his jaw and it confused her as much as a rare trace of humility in him always did. ‘I just … It doesn’t fit.’

‘Nothing fits, as you can see.’

He dragged his gaze the very short distance from the left of the room to the right, taking in her pathetic bed and her mounded-up belongings. ‘Is this because you quit the firm?’

Something about the size of him in her tiny room, the male scent swilling into every corner, the sexy accent and maybe the multiple champagnes in quick succession stole all but the most essential air from her lungs. But not so much that she couldn’t protest his monumental ego.

‘The world does not revolve around you, Harry Mitchell, surprising as that may be.’

‘So you chose to live like this because …?’

‘Because I’m careful with my money.’ Oh, such lies. ‘And because it’s easier for Poppy to rent the best room than this one.’

It had nothing at all to do with the fact that despite earning stupid money for the past few years she’d actually managed to put very little of it away for the rainy day that had now come. That she’d gone a bit spend-mad with the first real money she’d ever had at her disposal and then become ridiculously accustomed to it. Reliant on it. Which made the myriad belongings cluttered around them now very quality belongings … but still clutter.

And not the gently shambolic clutter of her parents’ meagre belongings. The clutter of someone with a life rapidly outgrowing her circumstances.

Much like her ambition.

She’d always had a disconnection between what she wanted and what life had given her. The only girl in her childhood estate with big-city ambitions.

Many people might call it denial.

Behind her, Harry leaned on the wall while she began the hunt for her work ID card. It wasn’t in the pile she’d hastily thrown together at her desk. No, that was because she’d been wearing it that day.