frizz ruthlessly tamed and controlled, and a discreet coating of lipstick still covered her overly generous mouth. Her wrap dress wasn’t gaping and she hadn’t spilt anything down it. All that counted as a win. For the umpteenth time in the last two hours Harriet pinned an appropriately pleasant yet professional smile onto her face and opened the door. ‘Welcome to...’ She looked up before she could complete the sentence and her gaze met a pair of hard amber eyes. She faltered, the door swinging back as she stepped back in shock.
Was she dreaming? Imagining things? Tentatively she reopened the door and looked again. No. No imagining. Tall, broad, the body of a street fighter, face of a fallen angel, marred—or enhanced—by the scar that ran right down one side of his face, temple to chin. A face she knew as well as she knew her own—better, she’d seen it every day for the last three years. ‘Deangelo? I mean, Mr Santos, what are you doing here?’
‘You’re holding a party, aren’t you?’
‘Erm...yes,’ she managed.
‘Then aren’t you going to invite me in?’
‘I...of course.’ Harriet was hurriedly running through the many invitations they’d sent and no, she didn’t recall the billionaire businessman’s name on any of them. Aion’s HR staff of course, some of their old colleagues, but not the man himself. He wasn’t exactly the party type—and, even after working in close proximity with him, they weren’t on invite terms. But, invite or not, Deangelo Santos was not the kind of man to leave cooling his heels on a doorstep, not even a Chelsea doorstep. Besides, she would be mad to turn a man with his money and influence away, and the gleam in his eyes told her he was well aware of the fact. Harriet stood back and nervously, as if she were inviting a predator into her home, said, ‘You’d better come in.’
The air seemed to shift as he stepped into the hallway and Harriet was reminded irresistibly of the old vampire movies and the dangers of inviting the powerful over your doorstep. ‘Okay, the party is this way. We’re actually expecting a few people from Aion.’ She smothered a smile at the thought of the shock on their faces when they walked in to see their famously reclusive boss at the party. ‘Let me show you around.’ She started towards the open partition which linked the hallway to the reception area but Deangelo made no move to follow her.
‘Why did you say no?’
Harriet stopped and turned back to face him, startled by the abrupt words. Was that why he was here? Surely not. She was a good PA but not that good. ‘No? You mean to the temping offer? Because I work here now. It was kind of you to think of me...’
He brushed away her words as if kindness was a foreign concept. ‘You are a temp agency. I am in need of a temp. I want to hire you. It makes no sense for you to refuse.’
‘But you have a PA. I trained her myself.’
Distaste flickered across Deangelo Santos’s face. ‘She rustles. And she jumps when I speak.’
‘She rustles?’ Harriet blinked. Maybe she had fallen asleep at her desk and this was some kind of surreal dream. It wouldn’t be the first time she had dreamed about her dangerously distracting ex-boss. But the pinch at her toes from Amber’s too-small shoes and the noise from the office and reception area were all too real. ‘Look, come and get a drink; we can’t discuss this in the hall.’ And there was safety in numbers.
Safety? Where had that come from? She’d never had even a cross word from the formidable Brazilian before. But then she had never thwarted him before either.
Lightly, lithely for such a tall and muscled man, Deangelo followed her into the office and reception room and the hubbub quietened as he entered. Nobody there would know who he was; he shunned all publicity. Not for his gushing newspaper profiles or charity galas—he protected his privacy with the fierceness of a secret agent—but his sure, confident presence was enough to cast a spell over the moneyed gathering. Avoiding her friends’ curious gazes, Harriet led him to a chair in a quiet alcove at the very back of the room. ‘I’ll get you a drink.’
She didn’t need to ask what. It was past six at night which meant no more of the dark, bitter coffee he favoured; instead he’d settle for ice-cold water. No alcohol, not unless entertaining and even then he rarely drank more than one glass. She knew his habits better than she knew her own. She walked quickly into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of sparkling water from the fridge, pouring it into a glass and adding ice and lemon.
Any hope that Deangelo would be on the back foot in Harriet’s own space disappeared as soon as she walked back into the office. He sat at perfect ease, his penetrating gaze raking sharply over every object, person and detail in the room, assessing and adding and coming to goodness knew what conclusion. Harriet had never been able to read him. She set the water down in front of him and leaned against the desk opposite. ‘Welcome to the Happy Ever After Agency.’
Slowly his gaze returned to meet hers. ‘This is a nice house. Yours?’
‘No, it belongs to Alex—Alexandra Davenport?’ She looked down the room until she located Alex. ‘There, by the fireplace. She was your head of media.’
His eyebrows drew together. ‘You set up a company with another Aion employee?’
‘Three, actually.’ Harriet’s incurable honesty had her babbling answers to questions he hadn’t even asked. ‘Emilia Clayton, who headed up events, and Amber Blakeley, who was your client concierge manager.’
For a moment Harriet thought she saw incredulity cross his face, but when she checked again his expression was shuttered as usual. ‘You didn’t earn enough at Aion?’
‘It wasn’t about money.’
‘Everything’s about money,’ he said flatly.
‘We all earned far more at Aion than we will earn here for several years; maybe we’ll never make what we made there. But we all wanted to try to own our own destinies.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I can respect that, I suppose, even if I think the risk foolish.’
‘You set up your own business.’
His expression closed down even further, just like it always did when she inadvertently touched on anything personal. ‘But I had nothing to lose. You had security, a good salary, a good pension. What do you have to gain from this freedom?’
‘A family. The four of us, we’re like a family.’ Harriet snapped her mouth shut. Why on earth had she said that?
Luckily he didn’t press it any further. Why would he—what did family have to do with business? ‘Tell me, Harriet. What’s your price?’
Three years, three long years, she had spent every working hour with this man and not once had he looked at her this way, so intently, as if he could see right into the beating heart of her. She swallowed, fingers itching to grab one of the flutes of champagne Amber was offering round and down it to try and cope with the magnetic focus of Deangelo Santos’s full attention.
What was wrong with her? She’d never felt so wrong-footed, so unsure of herself around him before. But then she’d never been quite so aware of him. Never allowed herself to notice how his shirt strained across the broad planes of his shoulders, the barrel of his chest, how physically imposing he was. How magnificent. Her stomach dropped. Get a grip. Straightening, Harriet sat up as tall as she could, trying to exude authority and wishing she wasn’t perched on a desk. This was her
