Chapter 9
9
S am towel-dried her hair, donned her oldest jeans and a singlet top, and settled down to watch a movie.
Though she enjoyed working late with Dylan most evenings, having a night off was a welcome relief. He told her he had old family friends coming to dinner and she’d leaped at the chance to spend some quiet time alone.
Since his invitation to give her a guided night tour of Melbourne, their working relationship had become fraught with a weird kind of tension. She’d caught him staring at her several times, an unfathomable expression in his eyes.
If she didn’t know any better, she’d almost think he felt the same bizarre attraction she did, though it had to be a figment of her over-active imagination.
Her last date had been ten months ago, and had ended like the rest of them, with her fending off groping hands. Dylan inviting her on a tour of Melbourne shouldn’t be a big deal. He made it clear it was thanks for the work she’d done, not a date. She’d been the foolish one to put that connotation on it.
Wishing she could stop thinking about him, she searched for her grocery bag of supplies. She’d walked to the local shops earlier and stocked up on her favourite ‘stay-in’ food: chocolate cookies, dried apricots, cashew nuts, and cheesy corn chips. Ebony shared her weird taste in snacks and they’d spent many nights curled up on the couch, watching horror movies and scaring themselves silly.
She missed her best friend, their weekly phone chats and occasional texts not the same as sharing every aspect of their lives like they usually did—and had since they met at boarding school all those years ago. Thank goodness Ebony had moved to Brisbane permanently after school finished. Who else would’ve kept her sane all these years if she hadn’t had a friend to off-load her family dramas to?
Sam searched the room, before realising she must’ve left the bag of goodies in the kitchen when she grabbed a light dinner earlier. Thankful the Harmons would be busy entertaining their guests and no one would see her outfit, she darted down the hall toward the kitchen. However, as she rounded a corner near the guest bathroom, she almost collided with a supermodel.
“Watch where you’re going,” the sultry brunette muttered, as she smoothed a hand over her shiny, shoulder-length hair.
“Sorry,” Sam said, feeling like one of the ugly stepsisters standing next to Cinderella at the ball.
The beauty wrinkled her nose. “Who are you?”
Resisting the urge to wipe her hand down the front of her jeans before she offered it, she said, “Sam Piper. I’m Dylan’s personal assistant.”
The other woman’s eyebrows shot up. “ You’re the P.A. he’s been raving about?”
Pride filled Sam, though it was quickly replaced by some strange emotion she could easily label as jealousy. This supermodel look-a-like could only be one of the Taylor’s, the old family friends Dylan had told her about. Funnily enough, when he’d said old, she assumed he referred to their ages as well as the length of their acquaintance.
Sam squared her shoulders, though she fell inches short of the towering woman in front of her. “Yes, I’m very good at what I do.”
“And what’s that?” The woman’s haughty tone echoed in the marble hallway.
Sam didn’t like being spoken down to, never had, and she responded in impish fashion.
“I’m there for Dylan in whatever capacity he needs me. After all, that’s the service a personal assistant should provide, don’t you think?”
The woman’s beautiful features contorted. So Sam’s barb had hit home? That meant the woman had more than a friendly interest in Dylan, and irrationally, the realisation filled Sam with dread.
She couldn’t compete with this stunner—not that she had any intention of doing so. The sooner she realised fantasising about her boss was off-limits, the easier this job would become.
“I think your work speaks for itself, Samantha”
Sam froze as Dylan appeared behind the woman. Mortification filled her as she wondered how much of their conversation he’d overheard.
Raising her eyes to meet his, she was unprepared for the appreciative glow in his gaze as it skimmed her faded jeans with the tear above one knee to the expanse of skin exposed by her skimpy top.
“Thank you.” She didn’t know if her gratitude stemmed from the verbal compliment or the approval in his stare. “I’ll leave you two to get back to dinner.”
“So, you’ve met Monique?”
Sam shook her head. “Not officially. We sort of ran into each other.”
“Oh?” Dylan stared at her, intense, probing, and she had the sudden feeling he could look into her very soul and see her animosity for the other woman simmering below the surface.
Monique laughed, a fake sound to match the rest of her. “Yes, it was quite amusing, actually. No harm done, Miss Piper?”
As the brunette laid a possessive hand on Dylan’s arm, Sam wasn’t so sure about the no harm bit. Right now, she had a distinct urge to harm someone, and she was looking straight at her.
Instead, she schooled her face into a polite mask. “Nice to meet you. Enjoy your dinner.”
She hurried down the hallway and into the kitchen without a backward glance. If that’s the type of woman Dylan wanted, he could have her.
Losing sight of her goal at this early stage into her employment would be disastrous. She had a long way to go to prove a point to her family, and getting ‘ideas’ about her handsome boss would only prove detrimental.
As the memory of his appreciative stare returned, she knew focussing all her attention on her goal and less on Dylan would prove a lot harder than expected.