man was all chiselled angles. Sharp jaw, close-shaven. Hair darkly curling and a mite over-long. The reading glasses he refused to admit he needed to wear did nothing to soften the impact of the most formidable pair of dark-hazel eyes that had ever been seen.
Even the tendons in his neck were a sight to behold.
Then he shifted. Slowly. Like a big cat stretching in the sun. The lines of his charcoal suit moved with him, cut as they were to make the most of his…everything. Each one cost more than she’d spent on her car. She knew. She paid his bills.
Then she spotted his socks. Peeking out from the top of his custom-made dress shoes was the merest hint of a wolf motif. She’d given him those socks for Christmas.
Her heart gave a little flutter, releasing a gossamer thread of lust that wafted from throat to belly to places less mentionable.
She squished the thing. Fast.
Angus Wolfe might be able to read a room, but if anyone dared claim that Lucinda Starling—his long-time executive assistant, his right-hand woman, his not-so-secret weapon—was a teeny, tiny little bit in love with him, he’d have laughed till he split a kidney.
Either she kept her cards closer to her chest than she realised or he had a blind spot when it came to her. The fact that he had no clue was a gift. And she planned to keep it that way.
For the sake of her job. Her self-respect. Her mental health.
When her phone went off in her hand—Lucinda. Pick up—she flinched.
Then she pulled herself together. She held her phone at arm’s length and said, “Really?”
A beat slunk by before Angus turned in his chair, mouth kicked to one side in the kind of half-smile that always meant trouble.
“When did you even get access to my phone?” she asked.
He tapped the side of his nose. “I have ways,” he said, his voice deeper in person than in the recording, the words unhurried, the effect magnetic. “Ways and means.”
“So they say,” she sassed.
No one else would have noticed Angus’s pause. The infinitesimal shift in his eyes. But Lucinda noticed it all. It was her job to do so. It was what made her so good at getting him what he needed before he even knew he needed it.
It was also why she mentally kicked herself for the flirty bass note in her voice.
Their relationship, as it was, was a finely tuned, perfectly balanced thing. There was sass, and plenty of it. And banter. There was also brutal honesty. And respect. A little flirtation was within the rules. Part of the game. For they worked really long hours and had to do what they had to do to keep it fun. It took work to keep the balance right. Work to make sure the guy had no clue how she felt about him.
Lucinda feigned resignation as she cocked a hip and waggled her phone in his general direction in order to deflect his attention. “Were you calling for a reason or were you just bored? Because I have plenty of admin I can sling your way if you’re looking for something to do.”
Angus blinked, breathed deeply through his nose and dragged his chair closer to his desk. “Thank you, but no. I wanted you.”
“I was busy,” she said, even while his words skipped and tripped through the unguarded parts of her subconscious.
“Doing what?”
She moved around behind his desk, turned the sleek monitor to face her and called up the screen that mirrored her own, where a bright-yellow computer-generated sticky note said, Read me.
Angus rubbed a single finger across the crease below his bottom lip. Lucinda tried not to stare at his mouth, she really did—but there she was, staring, as his face split into a grin. “Anyway, now I have you, sit.”
His voice had dropped. A fraction. Enough.
She glanced up at his eyes. Imagined a bookshop full of self-help books taking her to task for allowing herself even a brief moment of fantasy.
Gritting her teeth, Lucinda walked back round his desk, taking the time to change her ringtone to something less likely to make the hairs on the back of her neck flutter and tickle. Where was a funeral dirge when you needed one?
She pulled up her chair, the rose-pink velvet tub chair he’d bought her for Christmas. The fact he let her keep it in his office, the absolute best part of the gift.
She sat then pulled out the notebook and pencil she’d grabbed without thinking when she’d picked up her phone. She scratched the pencil a few times to warm it up and settled in preparation for Angus’s labyrinthine mind to shift, sway and touch on more bright ideas than any one person had the right to keep in their head.
“Ready?” he asked, that slight lift on one side of his mouth.
“Always.”
Angus clapped and like that he was in work mode. One hundred and ten percent. “Right. The Remède account.”
For the next ten minutes, Angus went on a wild and woolly stream of consciousness about the rebranding of the Remède cosmetics company, once upon a time a global force, now attempting a last-ditch about-turn in its fortunes before it sank.
It didn’t matter if it was a lipstick maker, a political party or a department-store chain. Angus knew what made people connect with a product. What made them want.
Angus jumped from thought to idea, from grand plan to fine detail. Pausing rarely, never forewarning the shifts. Using Lucinda as a sounding board, a mental stress ball, a repository for the pyrotechnics that had built up inside his brilliant head throughout the long working day.
And Lucinda wrote. The adrenaline high of keeping up with Angus’s mental gymnastics was cushioned by the tactile bliss of a dime-a-dozen 2B pencil tip gliding over quality note paper.
“And…?” she said, her voice a tad breathless, when he’d gone quiet for longer than a second.
“And we’re done.”
“Super.”
She figured it would take about another half an hour to pour the notes from the page into the right files and to-do lists and then she could head home.
“Plans tonight?” Angus asked.
“Not much.” Beyond the funny smell coming from the laundry that she’d promised herself she’d investigate.
Not that Angus would understand. His apartment was a sleek, temperature-controlled monument to earning big bucks.
While her cottage was…in need of a lot of TLC. But it was hers. Which made it wonderful.
“You?” she asked.
Again the small smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth. It told of fine dining, decadently expensive wine, all while looking across the table at a beautiful woman.
She rolled her eyes.
A
