“Agreed.” He wouldn’t argue. She was right. Completely apart from the fact that they didn’t like each other, he couldn’t be kissing an employee. Especially one in a junior role. No matter that the kiss was a minor aberration. A moment of insanity.
One that he would make damn sure he forgot.
Her gaze had fixed on something. His mouth.
“You’ve got…” She stopped, touching her lips again.
Lipstick. He had lipstick. On his goddamned mouth.
Luke growled. Then, without a word, he turned and made his way out of the ballroom. He had to get home. Get this bloody shirt off. Wipe his damn mouth.
And forget about kissing Marisa Clair.
Chapter Two
Marisa regarded her computer with dislike. She’d have thought that two years working at a gadget magazine would have given her at least some kind of technical knowledge, but no. She was as clueless as ever when it came to technology.
Tentatively, she pushed a button and was rewarded by the sound of the motor thingy, or whatever it was inside a computer that made it go, turning on.
So far so good, since last night it had been dead as a doornail. Leonard, the cute tech guy, had come through. Man, she owed him an e-mail. A saucy one. He was hot in an adorable, geeky kind of way and they’d had a little thing going on between them—at least they had until stupid Luke McNamara’s rules had come into force and she’d been sent that warning from HR. But still, one naughty e-mail wouldn’t hurt, right? No one would know. After all, someone had to keep the IT guys sweet.
A damn shame her computer wasn’t as easy to deal with. Men had the virtue of being simple at least. Flash some thigh, a bit of boob, and they were good to go. But sadly, one couldn’t flirt with a computer. Show off some thigh, and the computer only sat there, completely uninterested.
The screen finally came on and yes, thank God, everything was going for a change.
Lucky Leonard. His e-mail was going to be very saucy indeed.
Marisa whipped open her e-mail program.
“Mar? You in?” Ben, her immediate boss and editor in chief of Total Tech, called through the open door of his office. He sounded impatient.
Great. And she was so in the mood to deal with that today. Not.
“Yeah,” she called back, quickly beginning a new message.
“I need to talk to you about tomorrow’s schedule.”
“Okay. Just a second.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she quickly typed out Leonard’s e-mail.
Dear Sex Bomb,
I could lick your hard drive all day long. As a special reward for your cleverness, if you can guess what color panties I’m wearing, I’ll give you a flash (and I’m not talking computers now).
Wet sloppy kisses,
The Saucy Woman Upstairs.
P.S. If you hadn’t guessed, this is a thank-you.
Marisa grinned and hit send. Poor Leonard. He’d probably self-combust with embarrassment. Still, he was cute. And each time she had the slightest problem with her PC he was there within seconds of her call.
“Marisa!” Ben bellowed.
“Okay, keep your hair on,” she muttered, grabbing her notebook and a pen. Then, louder, “Coming.”
Some days she wondered what the hell she was doing in this job. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Ben—even when he was grouchy—or even the work. It was that being Ben’s PA didn’t satisfy her in the way other people’s careers seemed to satisfy them.
Like being a gadget journalist satisfied Christie, for example.
As she got up to go into Ben’s office, she cast a glance at Christie’s empty desk and pulled a face. She and Christie had bonded over being the only female staff members in the entire magazine and it wasn’t the same when she was away. But her best friend was still on her honeymoon with her gorgeous tech billionaire husband.
Yep, her friend was happy and going places, while she…
While you’re drowning in debts you STILL haven’t paid off.
That was true. Yet was it her fault that her pay was crappy and she barely scraped by as it was?
Her gaze dropped, as it always did, to the hand-blown glass vase on her desk. The one her father had made and given to her just before he died. The one she kept there as a reminder of her own dreams. Dreams as small and as fragile as the vase.
Marisa bit her lip and turned away.
…
Luke’s PC chimed with another e-mail and he couldn’t help muttering a curse. Because now he would have to stop fiddling with the spreadsheet he was working on and open the e-mail. Because he always had to read a new message whenever he got it. Another one of the things he had to do to keep his life running like clockwork.
Irritated, and not for the first time that day by the relentless demands of his compulsions, he clicked on the message as his intercom buzzed and his PA’s voice came through.