was go through with it.
Battling a surge of bitterness, she picked up her pace, rounded a corner and caught her first glimpse of the mansion.
Absolutely breathtaking.
She’d devoured Jane Austen novels as a kid, and standing in the shade of towering hedges, staring at the grandeur, she could have sworn she’d stepped into the pages of Pride and Prejudice.
The house—though how anything this size could remotely be called a house—sprawled across a halfacre, its polished windows glittering in the morning sun, its pristine cream walls were blinding. Balconies dotted the upstairs rooms—elaborate twisted iron that accentuated the simplicity of the façade.
Classic, elegant, a grand old dame you couldn’t help but admire. If the house was a dance, it would be an elegant waltz, gliding into the present from a bygone era, demanding recognition, admiration.
I could work here, she thought, wriggling her backpack into position before continuing down the path, hoping this interview went well.
She might not want this job but she needed it—desperately.
Admiring the shining marble of the front steps, she traipsed up to the front door, stabbed at the intercom button. A crackly voice filtered through the speaker, ‘Around the back.’
Great. He wanted to make sure she knew her place right from the start. With a resigned huff, she followed the sandstone paved path to the rear.
If the front of the house had left her gob-smacked, the rear came a close second as she spied an Olympic-sized in-ground pool, a tennis court, a gazebo, and a terrace twice the size of the stage at the Sydney Opera House.
A lone figure sat a table on the terrace, phone glued to one ear, free hand hovering over a laptop keyboard.
He didn’t glance up as she dumped her backpack and tripped up the steps. She waited for him to finish his call, forcing her feet to settle as she realised she was en pointe, a nervous reaction she’d had since she’d first started ballet at five years of age.
When he flung the mobile on the table and didn’t glance up she cleared her throat, took several steps forward, hating how her knees wobbled a tad.
‘Thanks for seeing me.’
Callum stood, turned towards her, his lips thin, compressed, at odds with her memory of how warm and soft and sensual they’d felt against hers.
‘Good to see you again, Starr.’
His low, modulated tone reeked of formality, without a hint of what they’d shared.
‘Though I must say I’m surprised you called.’
‘Why? You gave me your business card, offered me a job.’
‘One you scoffed at, if I recall.’
Hating his coolness, she squared her shoulders. ‘Circumstances change. I’m interested in the position.’
His mouth quirked. ‘Oh, really?’
Heck, she had stepped into a Jane Austen novel, complete with her very own Mr Darcy: pompous, arrogant, and way too gorgeous despite the urge to slap him upside the head.
‘Is the job still available?’
‘Very available.’
There it was—the first hint of something more than a job interview, a subtle reminder of what they’d shared laced through his smoother-than-caramel voice.
And in that instant it all came flooding back. Every magical moment of their night together. Every cataclysmic, erotic detail.
How he’d stroked her to orgasm with his fingers, his tongue.
How he’d made her feel wanton and wicked and alive for the first time in for ever.
How he’d made love to her standing and sitting and in front of the bathroom mirror.
How she hadn’t slept over the last week, replaying every moment of that life-altering night.
Technically, that wasn’t right. Needing a job so badly she was now willing to work with the man she’d had an unforgettable one-night stand with rated right up there with life-altering.
Pressing her fingers to her eyes, she squeezed them shut in an attempt to block him out, blot out the enormity of all this. Spots danced and shimmered before them, and when she finally opened them, peeked between her fingers, her heart sank lower than the splits.
It was impossible to stand here and pretend to only view him as a prospective boss when she’d seen him naked.
‘Shall we start the interview?’
His mouth kicked up into a semi-smile—a simple action that slammed straight into her, its impact just as brutal as she remembered.
‘Yes, right. The interview.’
Inwardly cringing at her awkward response, she dropped her hands to her side, flexed her fingers, shook them out, mustered her best stage face.
‘What do you want to know? My typing speed? PC skills? Microsoft literate? Multi-tasker?’
Heck, she was babbling, sounding more moronic by the second, while his expression remained impassive. His gaze focussed on her with frightening clarity, and she suddenly knew she’d been a fool to mistake this man for anything other than an imperturbable, composed businessman who’d let nothing stand in his way of getting what he wanted.
‘I need you.’
‘You need me?’
She laughed—a harsh, humourless cackle that startled a nearby magpie, which squawked in protest.
‘By the looks of this place you don’t need anybody. You’re doing quite well on your own.’
His eyes narrowed, appraising, and she squared her shoulders and tossed her hair, glad she’d gone to the trouble of blow-drying it straight.
She needed to present a confident front—something she had no trouble with on the stage. Yet here, now, standing in front of this powerful man, she felt something deep inside quiver at the enormity of what she was doing: aiming to work for a guy who’d initiated her into the joys of sex. In a big way.
‘I need a PA. Desperately.’
And she needed money. Desperately.
A win-win for them both.
If she could just forget the fact she’d had the best sex of her life with him.
She’d weighed her options and chosen to follow up his job offer when she’d withdrawn twenty bucks from an ATM this morning and seen her bank balance slip to under a hundred dollars.
Time for further job-hunting wasn’t a luxury she could afford, and his offer had niggled at the back of her mind—so tempting,
