He narrowed his eyes and gave her an approving nod. ‘Okay. Good answer. You’re an excellent ambassador for yourself and that’s a skill I rate highly.’
Her eyes seemed to take on an odd shine in the bright mid-morning light, as if they’d welled up with tears.
Surely not.
Breaking eye contact, she looked down at the papers in her hand and blinked a couple of times, giving the floor a small nod. ‘Well, that’s good to hear.’ When she looked back up, her eyes were clear again and the bravado in her expression made him wonder what was going on in her head.
Not that he should concern himself with such things.
An odd moment passed between them as their gazes caught and he became uncomfortably aware of the silence in the room. He’d been on his own in this house for longer than he wanted to think about, and having her here was evidently messing with his head. Which was exactly what he didn’t need.
Cara looked away first, turning to open one of the lower filing cabinet drawers. After dropping the documents into it, she turned back to face him with a bright smile. ‘Okay, well, it won’t take me too much longer to finish this so I’ll nip out in a bit and get us some lunch from the café a couple of streets away. When I walked past earlier there was an amazing smell of fresh bread wafting out of there, and they had a fantastic selection of deli meats and cheeses and some delicious-looking salads.’
Max’s stomach rumbled as he pictured the scene she’d so artfully drawn in his mind. He was always too busy to go out and fetch lunch for himself, so ended up eating whatever he could forage from the kitchen, which usually wasn’t much.
‘Then, if you have a spare minute later on, you can give me access to your online diary,’ Cara continued, not waiting for his response. ‘I’ll take a look through it and organise any transport and overnight stays you need booking.’
‘Okay. That would be useful,’ he said, giving her a nod. It would be great to have the small daily inconveniences taken care of so he could concentrate on getting this report knocked into shape today.
Hmm. Perhaps it would prove more advantageous than he’d thought to have her around for a while.
He’d have to make sure he fully reaped the benefit of her time here before letting her go.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE WAS A terrible liar.
The expression on Max’s face had been sceptical at best when she’d reeled out the line about leaving her last job, but Cara thought she’d pulled it off. At least he hadn’t told her to sling her hook.
Yet.
She got the impression he was the type of person who wouldn’t tolerate any kind of emotional weakness—something she was particularly sensitive to after her last boyfriend, Ewan, left her three months ago because he was fed up with her ‘moaning and mood swings’. So she was going to have to be careful not to let any more momentary wobbles show on her face. It was going to be happy, happy, joy, joy! from here on in.
After slipping the last document into the filing cabinet, taking care not to let him see how much her hands were still shaking, she grabbed her coat and bag and, after taking a great gulp of crisp city air into her lungs, went to the café to pick up some lunch for them both, leaving the door off the latch so she wouldn’t have to disturb Max by ringing the bell on her return.
Inevitably, she bought a much bigger selection of deli wares than the two of them could possibly eat in one session, but she told herself that Max could finish off whatever remained for his supper. Judging by the emptiness of his cavernous fridge, he’d probably be glad of it later.
This made her wonder again about his personal situation. Poppy had told her very little in the email—which she’d sent in a rare five minutes off from her crazy-sounding filming schedule in the African desert. Cara didn’t want to bother her cousin with those kinds of questions when she was so busy, so it was up to her to find out the answers herself. For purely professional reasons, of course. It would make her working life much easier if she knew whether she needed to take a partner’s feelings into consideration when making bookings away from the office.
Surprisingly, Max didn’t put up much resistance to being dragged away from his computer with the promise of lunch and came into the kitchen just as she’d finished laying out the last small pot of pimento-stuffed olives, which she hadn’t been able to resist buying.
‘Good timing,’ she said as he sat down. ‘That deli is incredible. I wasn’t sure what you’d prefer so I got just about everything they had—hopefully, there’ll be something you like—and there should be plenty left over for tomorrow, or this evening if you don’t already have dinner plans.’