Sarah Randall - His Irresistible Darling

“Worse,” she told him, “and if I don’t get off now he’s likely to stab me in the loo with the toilet brush.”

At his bemused look she added, “Private joke.” And she moved to gather her belongings together. She stood and her new friend offered a gentlemanly hand for her as he moved into the aisle.

“Oh, here’s my card,” she said, digging it out of her handbag and handing it to him. “Email or call me. If you fancy it, my friend is organising my twenty-first birthday party next weekend. I don’t have all the details about what she’s planning, but I’ll give you her contact details and you’d be very welcome if you like.”

“Sure. That’d be great,” he said eagerly. “Good to meet you, Pip.”

“And you,” she replied, smiling. “Gotta go, see ya,” she called to him, looking back over her shoulder as she jumped off the metro.

***

“Here you go, sir.”

Jumal glanced up from his work as the file of papers landed heavily with a “thwack” on his desk next to his hand. For the last hour he’d been trying to concentrate on a new business proposition but failing miserably.

He sighed inwardly and pulled his chair closer to his desk, trying to hide his body’s inappropriate reaction to her, which was now annoyingly automatic. He reached for his glass of water on his desk simply to give him time to get control.

“What’s that?” he finally asked, his eyes focused back on his laptop.

“My summary of the Dubai government contract as you asked, sir.”

He looked up to meet her eyes and saw her gulp. Christ was he that scary? He sat back in his chair, crossing his arms and tilting his head.

He raised a brow at her. “You’ve done it? Already, after the night we had?” He didn’t bother to try to keep the surprise from his voice.

“Well, er yes. You said you wanted it done. So it’s done. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”

“You couldn’t sleep either huh?”

“What?” she gasped, clearly startled by his disclosure.

Recovering quickly from his slip, he straightened in his chair and cleared his throat. “Nothing. Okay well, I’ll have a read over this today. That’s all.”

Pip gave him a quick nod and walked or rather stormed back to her desk, no doubt pissed off at him now that he had the emotional barrier back in place and hadn’t even uttered a word of thanks for her efforts in completing the task so quickly. What an ungrateful bastard he was.

***

Pip slumped back down in her chair and began typing impatiently on her computer. She needed to file this feeling for the next time her heart when berserk when Jumal walked by her desk…

“You keep mumbling under your breath people are going to talk, sweetie,” Melina said across the desks.

“I hate him. Ungrateful bastard.”

“Ah right, well maybe I can brighten up your day. Reception called for you whilst you were in there. They have a package for you.”

“A package? But I’m not expecting anything—oooh maybe it’s a present for my birthday from Matt and Ana.” She smiled, pushing up excitedly from her desk.

“Maybe.” Melina smiled at her mischievously. Her friend knew something and wasn’t for telling.

Pip felt some trepidation as she stepped into the lift again; she fiddled with her blouse and straightened her skirt on her way down to reception, assuring herself that her luck couldn’t be so bad as to get stuck again. The engineers had assured her that the problem was fixed.

She let out a relieved sigh as she stepped out into the cool, sand-coloured marble-tiled reception area of Jumal’s elegant building and glanced up towards the cloudless sky, visible through the atrium, and offered a silent prayer of thanks.

Those prayers were quickly forgotten as she spotted Jake nervously pacing and swinging her lunch box. The man was no doubt uncomfortable under the snake-like gaze of the receptionist, also known as the office gossip.

She approached him but he hadn’t noticed her yet so she tapped him on the shoulder. “Jake.”

He spun around to face her, hitting her in the leg with the lunch box. “Oh. Shit I’m sorry!” he blurted out apologetically. “Er, hi. You forgot this in your rush this morning,” he said, thrusting the lunch box at her.

Oh good grief, there was no good way for that comment to be interpreted and news would likely spread around the office like wildfire that Pippa Darling had been with a man! She gently took hold of his arm and led him away from the reception area.

“Thanks, it’s sweet of you to bring it for me. I’m forever forgetting and losing things.” She rolled her eyes and smiled at him and decided that he was definitely cute in an all-American clean-cut boyish way—the polar opposite of Jumal.

“No problem.” She watched him shift his weight from side to side. “Actually, I wondered if you’d like to go and have a coffee with me?”

“Oh, erm, sure that would be lovely. There’s a nice café in the mezzanine near the waterfall; it will have some shade.” She took her lunch box from him and swung it as she walked past reception and called back over her shoulder, “Reeta, can you tell Melina that I’m taking an early lunch? Thanks.”

Oh well, she thought, in for a penny in for a pound.

***

The sparkling waters of the Gulf did nothing to lighten Jumal’s mood as he sat back in his chair, steepled his hands and tried to fight the growing unease settling in his stomach, having analysed Pippa’s review of the Dubai contract.

He’d gone over it again and again to try to allay his fears but without success. There was no getting around it. She’d messed up big time. The only question was whether it had been done deliberately and he found it abhorrent that he couldn’t trust his own judgement on this. Never before had he second-guessed his gut reaction to something but the fallout from this could be catastrophic for his business. He needed a second opinion.

“So,” he said, turning his chair to face Malik who had just finished reading. “Do you agree with me?”

Malik looked up from the papers and shook his head, his face giving away his disbelief.

“I just don’t know why she’d do it,” he said, clearly as shocked as Jumal had been on first reading Pippa’s report and cross-referencing the contract. “She couldn’t have missed it by mistake; it’s too obvious.”

He watched his friend run a hand roughly through his hair before throwing the report back on his desk and slumping back in his chair.

“She didn’t miss it,” he declared, confidently. “She knew it was there and didn’t bring it to my attention intentionally. She’s too good to miss it.” He spat out the last words.

“But Jumal, that’s industrial espionage or something. I mean she’s… she’s…”

“I know.”

“Just—” Jumal watched him shake his head again “—wow. So what are you going to do now? Are you going to call the board in?” Malik asked.

“No. I’ll deal with it myself. Privately,” he added to make sure Malik knew it was to go no further than his office.

Picking up his mobile phone, Jumal ran his fingers quickly over the numbers; waiting for it to connect, he sat back again in his chair, swinging back around to face the view.

“We need to talk… No it can’t. My office, now.”

***

“Jeez, Pip Squeak, you landed on your feet when you got this gig. My work experience was at a pig farm in Halifax. This is beautiful.” Pip smiled back over at James in total agreement and tucked her hair back around her ears, securing it under her baseball cap. Drop-tops were great unless you had long hair, but she loved the feeling of the cooling breeze rushing around her as she drove home along the coastal road from the airport. Of course, it had taken her a while to get used to driving on the wrong side of the road and she’d had occasional mishaps that no one needed to know about…