weren’t excluded,’ he thrust. As if staff communiques usually came with small print.
‘So, now even my party invites are sub-standard?’ she parried. ‘Common decency excludes you.’
Yeah, this was more the Isadora Dean he recognised. Uptight and defensive. And all pink and breathless when she was riled. Which he took care to do often. ‘Well, I’m here now.’
‘You’re not welcome,’ she pointed out, as if there was any question at all. And not the rudest thing she’d ever said to him. His memory filled with her offensive departure and then overflowed with the memory of those lips sucking on her finger.
He cleared his throat.
‘Could be worse. At least I’m not moving in.’
Dean blinked at him. ‘What?’
‘There’s a guy out there with two full duffel bags. At least you know I’m only here for a few hours.’
Poppy’s face creased. ‘Out there?’
He cast her a sideways look. Gentler, because he quite liked her and she’d genuinely tried to save him from Matahari earlier. ‘Go see for yourself.’
Poppy threw Dean an apologetic look and then excused herself, the party noise surging until the doors swung shut again as she stomped through.
One down, one to go. He needed Dean alone for this conversation. If he was going to demean himself it wouldn’t be with an audience.
‘He was pretty buff, too,’ he added casually, looking right at Tori.
To her credit she stood firm. For about four seconds. Then …
‘Sorry, Iz,’ she whispered before hastening out after Poppy.
Dean’s eyes darkened even further when his returned to her. ‘This is my home, Mr Mitchell.’
‘Harry.’
The indignation on her face did what it usually did to him and stirred around in places he tried not to disturb. Righteousness leaked out of her like wayward passion.
‘You weren’t invited.’
‘I hardly broke in. The downstairs door was wedged open. I think the law would back me on this one.’
‘Employee harassment laws might not.’
‘You’re not my employee.’ Not currently. The only reason he was letting his hormones off the chain just a little.
She grabbed the champagne bottle and refilled her glass, spilling it over in her haste. Liquid gold ran down her long, expressive fingers where she clutched the glass stem. ‘You truly expect me to believe that you were so bereft of something to do on a Friday night in London that you came along to the farewell party of an employee who’d just told you to—’
‘Careful, Dean. Do you really want to say it twice?’
Her anger subsided like the fizz in her champagne. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Isadora, how can we improve if we get no feedback?’ he asked reasonably.
‘Izzy!’ she gasped. ‘No one calls me Isadora.’
‘It’s on your file.’
‘But that doesn’t mean I like to be called it.’
And, just like that, he had her permission to call her by her familiar name, and hostilities between them cranked down a notch. Though not so far that he didn’t make a mental note for later to poke around a bit in the sore spot he’d just uncovered.
‘Fair enough. Izzy. If you call me Harry.’
‘I won’t be calling you anything for much longer. You’re not staying.’
‘I’ve not had my drink yet.’
She glared at him. ‘If I get you a drink, you’ll leave?’
‘Probably. I just let my strongest chance of hooking up walk out the door, after all.’
His dig had exactly the right effect. Izzy flashed fire again. ‘She is nobody’s hook-up. Tori is in a relationship, actually.’
‘Could have fooled me,’ he shot back.
She passed him an open beer as though it were a grenade. Icy cold, as a beer should be.
‘Interesting place,’ he finally said, swallowing down his umbrage with the amber nectar. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to achieve it while she was still angry. That was why she’d quit in the first place.
‘We like it.’
Okay, not giving an inch. ‘Old factory?’
She took a long, deep breath and seemed to finally realise how rude she was being. Even if he wasn’t quite a guest. ‘Fire station. We have the top floor and turret. There are several smaller flats downstairs and the café down on the street.’
Oh, so grudging. And he’d be damned if he’d let her do that to him. So he started poking.
‘You have a turret?’
‘It’s my bedroom.’ Then her pale skin forked between her eyes. ‘Used to be.’
He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. ‘That is not an invitation.’
‘I’m very happy with my place overlooking the Thames, actually.’
Her hair swung in silky pieces around her angular jaw. ‘Swanky river view; why does that not surprise me?’
‘Why is it swanky to overlook water?’
‘It’s just such a cliché.’
He let that one through to the keeper. Better than admitting he needed the sounds and smells of the water splashing the sides of the embankment to keep himself sane. Awkward silence fell again.
‘How are you enjoying the sleep-ins?’ he finally ventured.
‘All two of them? Lovely. I could get used to it.’
Just part of what baffled him about Izzy Dean: apparently miserable in her job yet a work ethic strong enough to have her at her desk before everyone else arrived. Brilliant operator until the day she just … stopped trying.
He leaned one hip on the kitchen island and kept his voice as casual as he could so she wouldn’t remember that he’d virtually promised to leave when she gave him his beer. ‘When do you start your new job?’
Her pupils flared enough to see from across the island. ‘Not … immediately. I’m looking forward to some time off.’
‘Nice for some.’
‘Please
