Marisa blew out a breath. Nope. She didn’t. She wasn’t glass these days, she was bloody plastic. Un-freaking-breakable.
Logging on to her PC, she reflexively opened up her e-mail program, wondering if Leonard had gotten her message yet.
But there was no e-mail from Leonard. Instead, she’d received a message from Luke bloody McNamara.
What the hell? Why was Luke sending her messages? She thought she’d been pretty clear the night he’d kissed her at Christie’s wedding. Keep the hell away from me. And he had. Which was great because God knew she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. It was bad enough having to come into work every day, wondering if she’d run into him on the way to the magazine’s offices, let alone have unexpected e-mails from him turn up in her in-box.
Not after that kiss. The kiss she definitely didn’t want to think about. Ever.
Scowling, Marisa opened the e-mail and squinted at the screen. And a painful sense of realization stole through her. Oh bloody hell. Of all the e-mails to be sent to the wrong person it would have to be that one, to that person.
Freaking fantastic. Nothing much embarrassed Marisa these days, but a blush burned in her cheeks now. She’d sent a stupid, sexy e-mail to uptight Luke McNamara, the top boss of the whole damn company. The only thing worse would have been sending it to the entire company.
How had it happened, anyway? She could have sworn she’d put Leonard’s name in the box. Then again, the e-mail program usually auto-completed the address line so she didn’t have to type in the whole thing. She hadn’t bothered to check that it was actually Leonard’s address.
Crap and double crap.
She kept frowning at the screen, reading the e-mail over a second time. E-mail is for work purposes only.… Confine your correspondence accordingly. What a pompous ass. What the hell right did he have to tell her what she did with her e-mail anyway?
Uh. Perhaps the fact that he owns the magazine you work for? And that stupid speech he gave the day he took over about the new e-mail policy?
Well, yes. Apart from that…
Marisa scowled at the screen. She knew the intelligent thing would be to ignore Luke’s prissy e-mail. Hit the delete key, send it into oblivion, and forget all about him.
Him and that kiss that had rocked her little world on its axis. That had left her breathless and speechless and shocked. And almost trembling. All of which she hated. Not to mention the fact that he was telling her off.
A tiny ember of anger shot out a spark.
She stared at the screen a moment more. Then typed out a reply.
Dear Mr. McNamara,
Many apologies for the below e-mail. You were obviously not the intended recipient. It was to go to one of the IT staff. However, I can assure you that my e-mail was totally work-related. The licking of one’s hard drive can apparently make it go faster. Also, the color of my underwear is vital to the maintenance of my PC, which is what I was trying to communicate in the first place.
Yours sincerely,
Marisa Clair
Work purposes only, huh? That’ll teach him.
Marisa hit send with not a small amount of satisfaction.
…
Luke’s lunch meeting went on for longer than he’d anticipated, which was annoying. A longer lunch meant less time to study the figures for the Gibson Group portfolio. Annoying, because if there was one thing he liked to do, it was to make sure things were done properly and in the correct order.
So to come back to his office to find yet another e-mail from Marisa Clair only made him even more annoyed. Because it would mean reading it and that would eat into the time he’d set aside for the Gibson portfolio and he had to read the e-mail because if he didn’t…
Yes, tell yourself it’s the OCD.
Of course it was the OCD. What else would it be? He wasn’t curious. Not in the slightest. Why would he be? He wasn’t interested at all in her.
Tapping a key, he opened up the message, read it, frowned.
He was pretty sure licking a hard drive and the color of her underwear were not work-related in any way, shape, or form.
He sat back in his black leather executive chair. Sarcasm. That’s what it was. She was being sarcastic. Again. Well, he didn’t find anything amusing in sarcasm. Oh, he understood the concept. It just wasn’t one that particularly appealed to him.
Women who understood the significance of a decent investment portfolio on the other hand, now that appealed to him. Women who were serious about their careers rather than a relationship, because he couldn’t manage to keep the OCD in check long enough to have a relationship. At least not if he wanted to keep the OCD secret. Which he had to. He was hugely successful and had enough business rivals who would exploit the hell out of it if they ever found out. So he kept it under wraps.