Hero(13)

I placed his latte carefully on his desk and eyed the large L-shaped sofa by the window.

It needed cushions.

Eyeing the uncomfortable-looking sofa as I passed it, I decided a throw wouldn’t go amiss either.

I finally allowed myself to relax a little as I settled at my glass desk outside his office. I looked down at it and grimaced. There’d be no hiding a tabloid magazine I wasn’t supposed to be reading under this thing, then, huh? Caine was a stick-in-the-mud. Even his furniture prevented me from having fun.

Booting up my computer, I sipped at my espresso and sighed with relief.

Coffee.

Sometimes I thought it might be better than sex.

According to Rachel, I didn’t know what good sex was, though, so apparently I was unqualified to make that comparison.

I was only sitting at the desk a few minutes when I heard footsteps approach. I looked up, my stomach doing that flippy thing again when Caine appeared around the corner. This morning he was wearing a light silver-gray suit that fit him to perfection and carrying a black leather briefcase. A white gold cuff link winked at his wrist as he reached up to straighten the thin dark blue tie that didn’t need to be straightened.

He stopped by my desk with one eyebrow raised.

It was really appalling that any man could look that good at this time in the morning. Or anytime, for that matter.

“You made it.”

“Yes, sir,” I said breezily. “And your latte is on your desk.”

Caine gave me a short nod, his eyes dropping to my torso. “Stand up.”

I attempted not to bristle at the clipped demand and slowly rose to my feet. He waved his hand to the floor in front of him and I took that to mean he wanted me to go there. Although blood heated my cheeks, I pretended I was completely unaffected by this demeaning crap, because I could tell by that gleam in his eyes that he wanted me to be pissed off. Once I was standing in front of him for inspection, Caine’s face remained blank as he appraised my appearance. He made a circling motion with his forefinger and I spun slowly around for him.

You cannot kill your boss on the first day, you cannot kill your boss on the first day, you cannot kill your boss period …

I remained outwardly impassive as I stopped, turning to face him.

He gave me another short nod. “You’ll do.”

Are you finished making me feel like a prized poodle? That was what I really wanted to say. Instead I said, “May I get you anything?”

“I’ll e-mail you what I need. Ethan went over your duties regarding calls et cetera?”

I looked over my shoulder at him as he stood waiting in the doorway of his office for an answer. “He did indeed.”

“Good. If there’s something you really don’t know the answer to, ask, but please exhaust all other possible avenues by using common sense and a little intelligence.” That haughty statement was finalized by the slamming of his office door.

“Oh boy,” I muttered, and slipped back into my chair, hand reaching for my espresso.

I had a feeling this was going to be a long day.

And as the e-mails started pouring in from Caine, I wasn’t wrong.

The tasks he wanted me to do ranged from setting up meetings, arranging business lunches, setting up conference rooms, mail, answering e-mails on his behalf including work and personal, to calling to check when his dry cleaning would be ready for collection, canceling lunch with Phoebe Billingham (the woman I knew from society pages he was currently dating), and running out to the store to buy food. Apparently he was out of milk and granola.

Every request was asked with curt impatience. It was only day one and I wanted to slap some manners into Caine Carraway. It wasn’t until around four o’clock when one of his company lawyers was leaving his office and I heard Caine call out, “Thank you, Arnold,” that I realized my boss did have manners.

He just didn’t think I was worth the effort of using them.

Getting Caine to see me for who I really was was proving more difficult than I had first thought. I was going to have to climb over his insurmountable arrogance and perverse sense of justice where I was concerned if I was ever going to convince him that we really weren’t that different.


I stood openmouthed in Caine’s apartment.

Holy …

The penthouse.

Caine had a penthouse on Arlington Street. Like in his office, there were floor-to-ceiling windows everywhere, giving him awesome views of the city. The apartment was open-plan living with a stunning state-of-the-art black-and-white kitchen with an island in the middle. White leather stools lined the front of the island.

White leather. In a kitchen.

Clearly the man either didn’t eat there or was the cleanest guy in the whole wide world.