course if he had a copy of what she’d been printing he’d be in a better position to know what he was up against. What counter-offer would work.
But there was no paper on the desk. No paper anywhere. Reflexively, his gaze moved to the printer. Clean. Silent. Turned off. The computer, too. Strange.
He sat in her chair. Looked at the computer screen. Turned on the computer and signed in to the system.
A sudden mental picture of how he looked—at Catherine’s desk, in her chair, hunched in front of her computer—made him roll his eyes. Thank God their suite of offices was completely private, so nobody would wander past and see him in this shameful Machiavellian guise. But, even so, this was crazy! What had he come to? He should just wait for her to come back and ask her what was going on! The way a sane person would.
He reached to flick the computer off.
And saw it.
A document. Recovered—the way it happened when you turned off the computer suddenly. Just there on the screen, without him searching or opening anything. A document called... What the hell...?
‘Passion Flower’.
Passion Flower?
Max looked around, feeling a tad uncomfortable now the moment of truth had arrived and it turned out not to be a job application—because nobody called a job application Passion Flower.
Could he really do this?
It took him perhaps two seconds to decide that, yes, he could. He had a right to read any document he wanted—this was his business, these were his premises, it was his equipment. Really, he was honour-bound to look.
Three seconds after that he started reading. But he wasn’t prepared for the reality.
Underneath the title Passion Flower was a line in smaller type. It read: A novel of love, lust and loneliness.
And Max’s jaw dropped.
Jennifer Andrews had been dreaming of her boss for months. Wild, erotic dreams.
Definitely not a job application, Max thought, shell-shocked. No way was he going to stop, though.
He read, scrolled, read, scrolled.
He’d figured out the truth as soon as he’d clapped eyes on that strapline, but somehow it wasn’t until he arrived at page three that the knowledge crystallised into recognisable syllables.
Cathy was writing a novel.
A romance novel.
A sexy romance novel.
He scrolled again, avidly searching, the sentences and phrases beckoning to him like a siren’s call, wrapping around his senses.
She knew Alex would be back soon, but Jennifer was too impatient to sit calmly in the navy leather chair she always occupied.
Navy leather chair! Like the chairs in his office, where Cathy sat.
She was drawn to Alex’s office window. Ten floors down, Jennifer could see the Botanic Gardens. It felt like a scene trapped in time...the immaculate green of the trees...Sydney Harbour shining in the distance, a diamond-sprinkled sheet of blue silk...the sun radiating a heady, hazy aphrodisiac...
Tenth floor. Office window overlooking the Botanic Gardens. Sydney Harbour. Check, check, check.
Alex walked into the office, brown briefcase in hand, and fixed her with his blue-eyed stare.
‘Notepad, Jenny,’ he barked at her.
Max was incapable of stopping his fingers from hitting the down arrow as his eyes stayed glued to the monitor to see what would happen next.
Alex towered over her, six feet two inches from the top of his tousled black hair to his Italian leather shoes. She clutched the red silk of her peignoir against her chest...
Max’s finger kept punching the down arrow, almost obsessively.
A red silk peignoir...
What would Cathy look like in that?
Max breathed out and sat back in Catherine’s chair to recover the breath that had somehow become linked to an almost savage tightening in his groin.
He checked his watch, assessing how much time he had. A twinge of conscience hit him. He should not be reading this. He should stop. This was bad.
But he returned his finger, now a little shaky, to the keyboard.
* * *
Catherine was determined to be back at precisely one-thirty, as ordered, so she hurried her friend and colleague Nell through lunch fast enough to cause dyspepsia.
‘What’s the rush?’ Nell protested as Catherine all but grabbed a passing waiter by the apron to demand the bill before they’d finished their coffee. ‘Max isn’t going to mind if you’re late.’
‘I’ll mind. And would you stop staring at me? I’ve had enough of that from Max!’
‘Well, it’s such a change.’ Nell gulped a mouthful of coffee. ‘What did he say? Max? About the new you?’
‘Nothing of consequence.’
Which was the truth. Not that it was really the ‘new’ her; it was the old her—not that anybody at Rutherford Property could possibly know that.
‘And, anyway, remember the girlfriends? Susie, Maria, Leah? All tall, all blonde, all dressed in tight, short dresses? And that was just in my first month. And the parade of starry-eyed PAs before me? All tall, blonde, blah-blah-blah?’
‘Haven’t seen any of his famous blondes for a while.’
‘Oh, he’ll have one stashed somewhere. And, regardless, he wouldn’t notice me—not in the way you mean—if I burst into his office doing the Dance of the Seven Veils.’
Catherine delved into her purse and laid some notes on the table without waiting for the bill. ‘I’m paying—the least I can do after rushing you into a bout of indigestion. But can we go? Like...now? Right now?’
‘All right,’ Nell said, ‘but I still don’t get why we have to hurry. We’re not late.’
Catherine didn’t plan on enlightening her—because she couldn’t explain, even to herself, the unformed sense of panic that had been racing through her veins ever since she’d left the office. Telling herself that everything was fine and she was merely suffering from a guilty conscience and an over-active imagination didn’t seem to be working. And the panic just kept growing.
Catherine bade Nell a preoccupied farewell at level eight and, the moment she was alone in the elevator, jabbed irritably at the button for level ten. Although she knew the elevator wouldn’t ascend any faster just because she hit the button a thousand times.
She
