And her damned book sucked.
‘Sucked’: word of the day.
Her eyes moved to her in-tray, where her dark secret was buried.
Uh-oh. Where her dark secret was not buried.
Because the manuscript was sitting brazenly on top.
A whoosh of panic had her reaching for the back of her chair to steady herself. Until she remembered that the report had been covering it and Max had taken the report. That was the only reason the book was sitting there exposed.
Nothing to panic over.
Until she reached out to grab the pages so she could stick them in her briefcase...and saw the page on top.
She distinctly remembered scoring a red mark on the page when Max had called her name.
But there was no red mark on the page.
Catherine’s heart stopped, then started pounding. She slid into her chair, boneless. Flicked through her in-tray again. Sat stock-still for one appalled moment.
No red mark anywhere.
So...if the report had been on top of the manuscript, that meant...
No—God, no. Max Rutherford had picked up a few pages of her book along with his report!
And Max had started reading that report as she was leaving the office.
Hot, then cold, then hot. Hyperventilation. Paper bag...she needed a paper bag. Brain not working. Brain dead.
Then adrenaline tore through her veins and her synapses fired—electrified by pure fear—and she latched on to two essential facts: one, if Max had read even one sentence of those pages he would have come screeching out already and, two, she had to get those pages back.
Get them back immediately. But without running into his office, waving her arms and looking like an insane asylum escapee.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Nope—there was nothing for it. It was physically impossible for her to walk calmly into Max’s office.
She was going in like an insane person.
Max sighed, unwilling to give up until he’d read every page of the report—even if he had yet to take in a single word.
His mind wasn’t on it. His mind wasn’t in the office at all. His mind was at lunch.
But he wasn’t going to acknowledge whose lunch his mind was at, or why it was there. Because he was a moron, and had done nothing right for two weeks, and nothing had felt right the whole time he’d been away, and enough was enough, and it was time to put his mind back where it should be.
So he just sat at his desk, flipping, skimming, flipping, skimming. Counting down pages until he found a word he could take in: ‘Conclusion’.
One rush of air later he found himself holding nothing.
The report had been whisked out of his hands so fast it took a few seconds for him to feel the sting of the paper cut that had just been inflicted in the web between his thumb and his index finger.
‘Ouch!’
He looked up.
Catherine. Looking horrified.
That was...weird.
Catherine North never looked anything but completely composed. At least she hadn’t until today.
But, then again, Catherine North had never worn figure-hugging black that emphasised every mind-numbingly delicious curve until today. And Catherine North had never let a glossy, finger-luring curl stray out of place until today. And Catherine North had never had the skin of her legs visible until today. And Catherine North—
Was definitely looking horrified.
‘Lunch date stand you up?’ he couldn’t resist asking, wondering if there was a more direct way he could ask her who she was having lunch with without making himself look more of a moron than he already was.
Eyes huge behind the lenses of her tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, Catherine shook her head.
She didn’t seem inclined to add anything, so Max asked, ‘Did you want that report for a particular reason?’
He watched, fascinated, as the tip of her tongue came out to scoot quickly across her bottom lip.
She had the sexiest bottom lip he’d ever seen.
‘No,’ she said, and the bottom lip pinched itself in, in its usual repressed fashion.
Still looked sexy, though.
Max sucked a drop of blood from his wound, waiting to hear what Catherine would add. But it seemed no more information was forthcoming. ‘Then do you think I could have it back?’ he asked politely.
‘It?’
‘The report.’
‘Of course,’ she said, looking down as she hived off some pages from the back and held the rest out to him. She turned quickly on her heel.
Before she could take a step, Max asked, ‘Don’t I get to look at those pages, too?’
She stopped. Her shoulders tightened. And then she shrugged and said over her shoulder, ‘Just some shredding you picked up by mistake with the report. I wanted to take care of it before I left for lunch.’
And then she was running out.
And Catherine North had never run anywhere in this office. Until today.
So... What was so special about today?
Max’s mouth turned down. In short—nothing.
His return to the office had been monumentally disappointing. Not that he’d had any business expecting anything to be different just because he’d been away for two weeks and they’d left things a little...
Ugh. A little nothing! That was how they’d left things.
They’d worked hard that night, and she’d been so gob-smackingly smart, and warm, and energised, and it had been great. Like a revelation. No, not a revelation—a confirmation...of something he’d always suspected. That Catherine was...special.
And then they’d taken the elevator down to the car park and he’d said, ‘Thank you for your help,’ and she’d said, ‘No problem,’ and they’d looked at each other... One, two, three, four beats.
And then they’d gone to their cars and driven off.
And he’d flown to Canada as fast as he’d been able to book and go.
Yep,
