“I heard, but that doesn’t mean I believe him,” she retorted sharply. Jim, the computer guru, had assured Elise that the destruction of her computer hadn’t been her fault, but the result of a direct hit to the transformer outside the building. Jim had gone on to say that since her computer was the first one set up on the network, it’d been the first to go. And the only one. Jim had called it luck. Whatever.
Elise knew it’d been Gaia’s revenge. She’d been singled out by Mother Nature for doubting Her ability to help Moonbeam. Rule number one when dealing with Pagan gods and goddesses: Don’t irk them. Pay back is heck. None of this waiting around mumbo jumbo. They were swift and direct. Elise was paying for her blasphemy and then some. Having to work with a grumpy Luc was a punishment all unto itself. She wished he would just go home and take a nap. His bad mood was rubbing off on her.
The tab of a vanilla folder peeked out from underneath a mound of papers. “There it is. Lift those and—” Elise touched the folder and the precarious stack on his desk shifted. “No!”
Luc uttered a curse and scrambled to catch the pile as it slid for the floor. “Got it. Pull out the folder. Do it slowly, Elise.”
She sucked in a deep breath and eased the Hayworth notes out. “Luc, it would be safer if I just went home. Gaia is punishing me.”
“As much as I’d like to send you home, you can’t leave yet. We’ve got to organize this mess. Tomorrow I need you to sit in on a meeting with Andersen.” He righted the stack and held out his hand for the notes. “Just go over there and sit down. Next time I ask where something is, point.” He must have noticed her annoyance, because he added in a sugar sweet, Southern drawl, “Please.”
Elise glared at him, then spun on her heel and stalked back to her seat. When Lucien Masters resorted to his country boy charm, she knew she was in trouble. In trouble of melting. When she’d been asked to move from Roger Dill’s boring office to Luc’s temporary one, Elise had been an idiot to agree. Luc was an overachieving, work-a-holic. Oh sure, he was vocal in his appreciation of her help, but the work was grueling. Not only that, but he was tall, lean, and sexier than he had a right to be. And he knew it. Arrogant man. He didn’t flaunt his sex appeal. Luc didn’t need to. It showed in the way he carried himself. The confidence in his walk, the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw, the arch of his brow, the knowing gleam in his sinfully wicked eyes, the firm, sensuous lines of his mouth, the velvety roughness of his… voice.
Elise swallowed hard and summoned forth an irritation she no longer felt. It did little to erase the heat her errant thoughts had caused. Blasted man. Thinking about him as a man instead of a boss never failed to elicit a response which both excited and mortified her. Having an infatuation for Luc was one thing, but being attracted to a man who was engaged to another woman was completely unacceptable and downright annoying.
She plopped the laptop onto her thighs and settled her fingers over the keyboard. “The next time you ask for something, I’ll draw a danged map.”
Luc sighed and dropped into his seat. “Do that.” He swiveled his chair and returned to pounding numbers on his keyboard.
Her fingers flew over the minuscule laptop and she stifled an exclamation each time her fingernail hit the wrong key then snagged in a groove. The wretched thing was out to rip her nails. She wouldn’t be having this problem if Luc would let her use a computer which was normal sized. But noooo, she drawled sarcastically in her mind, Luc was afraid she might summon up another electrical storm and blow up another computer. That and every twenty minutes he made her save the file to a flash drive and hand it to him. Glancing at her watch, it was almost time for another annoying, ‘Save it, Elise.’
She didn’t need Raven to take out Luc. She’d do it herself. Working her like a… lowly minion of hell. Maybe he didn’t have a personal life, but she did. She had a stack of books at home waiting to be read along with countless shows recorded on the DVR that were probably no longer on the air.
He was so smug and arrogant and… demanding. Elise get me this. Give me that. Make a copy of this. Did you call for that? She conveniently left out the fact that he’d remembered her birthday with flowers and he’d taken her out to lunch several times to thank her for helping him.
Her nail snagged in the keyboard and ripped. “Damnation,” she uttered with feeling.
Elise was more upset with herself for ignoring his good deeds—such as, walking her out to her car every night they worked late, listening to her comments on his project, complimenting her on her efficiency and accuracy when typing up his notes, bringing her breakfast on those early mornings before a day full of meetings, and, probably the best of all, noticing when she bought a new dress, or earrings, or trimmed her hair. As much as she would like to make him into the evil boss she wanted him to be, he wasn’t. He was, she sighed to herself, the best darn boss she’d ever had.