Chapter 34
Nika
When he didn’t register anything I was saying or showing him, I was tempted to glance around and check how the others were reading the situation. But inhaling his scent had misfired something in my brain entirely. Every nerve alert. Every muscle pulled taut without permission.
Do not react. We are not going down like this, Bad Girl repeated.
I studied his face instead.
The green of his eyes seemed deeper at this distance—darker, almost, like colour that only revealed its full depth up close.
I hadn’t noticed before how perfectly manicured his eyebrows were.
Precise without being fussy. My gaze dropped.
The dark stubble framed those slightly pink lips that were—well.
Perfectly formed. I hadn’t looked at his hair because I’d already spent considerable effort not reaching for those thick waves, and I wasn’t about to start now.
Do not react.
“I could show you what I’m working on,” Carla simpered from across the desk.
My head snapped across.
Follow her home tonight, Bad Girl snarled. Let me rip her face off. Let them try to stitch it back like patchwork.
Conrí cleared his throat.
“I’m here for Ms Horvat. Ms Horvat alone.”
I gasped.
How could he just—say that. Out loud. In front of everyone.
I glanced around.
Claire’s eyes had gone wide and whatever she began to stammer dissolved before it reached a full sentence.
She turned and practically sprinted across the floor to her office.
Andy’s head moved between us, working through what this meant for his managerial position in real time.
Francis had both thumbs up behind Conrí’s back and the expression of someone watching their favourite television programme reach the best part.
Graham’s eyebrows had disappeared beneath his hairline. He turned to his monitor and began typing with the focused urgency of a man with news to share.
The entire floor would know before lunch.
Who cares? Bad Girl said. Females have been accused of aligning themselves with powerful males for ranking since the beginning.
I rested my hand on his lapel. Stroked the fabric once, slowly, before raising my eyes to his.
“Is that right?” I whispered.
He didn’t smirk. He didn’t smile.
Just a promise.
“Always,” he murmured.
“I guess Carla can live with her current face then,” I said, dusting his jacket down before returning my attention to my screen.
Something settled between us.
I could breathe easier.
Yes, he looked good and smelled even better, but Bad Girl was right.
If instinct took us down.
It would be by our choice.
??
??
??
We watched him do his obligatory tour of the floor.
No one on my team said a word. Francis was dying to find out more—I could feel it radiating off her—but she held it together, which under the circumstances was an act of genuine self-restraint.
My phone buzzed against the desk.
Conrí: Dinner?
My eyes flicked up.
He was supposed to be listening to whatever Catherine was telling him. Instead he was looking at his phone. A beat passed. He tapped again.
Conrí: Or I could come down for another visit tomorrow.
Is he trying to blackmail us? Bad Girl asked. Diabolical. A pause. We could learn from him.
Me: My place at 7pm.
He glanced across the floor.
Not victory. Contentment. The quiet, settled kind that had nothing to prove.
He was about to risk me cooking for him. Knowing what he knew about us. That was either bravery or very poor judgement and I hadn’t decided which yet.
Bad Girl chortled.
My smile faded when I remembered the last time someone had come to my door uninvited.
I’ve got you, Bad Girl murmured.
I’m here for Ms Horvat. Ms Horvat alone.
His words settled back into my mind, warm and certain.
This could easily be construed as inappropriate—a CEO singling out a junior member of staff in front of the entire floor.
But I’d watched him carefully during the tour.
The way he avoided contact with bare skin.
The measured, professional distance he kept with everyone else.
Cool and consistent and entirely deliberate.
Which made the heat between us, when it came, entirely our own.
It only made it worse.
??
??
??
It wasn’t until I placed the bags on the kitchen counter that a few things occurred to me. My arms were no longer weak—the bags that would have had me making two trips before Croatia barely registered now.
I wanted to see how someone like Conrí would react to my simple home, full of the knick-knacks and collected odds and ends of a life lived in small, deliberate increments.
I opened the bags, found the chilled items and began ferrying them to the fridge. Such a mundane task. One I’d done countless times at my parents’ house and now here, in my own kitchen, in my own flat.
Today was different.
I had a wolf coming for tea.
I chuckled as I tucked the fresh parsley into the salad drawer.
An actual wolf.
I had absolutely no idea what he was going to do with his legs trying to eat dinner on the couch.
Bad Girl sniggered.