Page 59 of Blind Date with the Boss

A hell of a lot of dawns. Two thousand pink dawns and fiery sunsets.

Two thousand velvet black nights, which, thanks to his foolproof five year plan, he would spend minus Sally.

He had a lot of thinking to do.

The sound of knocking penetrated Sally’s sleep and she supposed she should try to wake up. She opened one eye tentatively and knew immediately that she was ill. Her head throbbed, her throat was on fire and every inch of her body ached. She was aware of sunlight blazing behind her floral curtains, but she had no idea what time it was.

Had someone really been knocking? Perhaps she’d dreamed it. It didn’t really matter because there was no wayshe could get downstairs to open the door. She needed all her strength to reach for the glass on her bedside table and take a sip of water, couldn’t imagine how she would make it to the bathroom.

As the water forced its painful way down her throat, she remembered that Logan didn’t love her. She remembered everything – his five year plan, her anger and embarrassment, taking off the dress and flinging it at him and slamming the door. Fiery tears seeped beneath her eyelids and burned down her cheeks. She buried her head in the pillow and told herself to forget about her boss, or she might never recover.

She needed to sleep. Needed to sleep for a week.

?CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE next time Sally woke, the telephone was ringing downstairs. There were long shadows in the room, so she decided that it must be late afternoon. Chloe had never had her landline connected upstairs and Sally’s automatic response was to try to get out of bed to answer it, but she was hit by a wave of dizziness and sank back onto the pillows again.

Who could be calling? She had no choice but to lie helplessly and to listen to the shrill bell below, ringing on and on.

It was dark the next time the phone woke her. She didn’t make it downstairs in time, but she went on shaky legs to the bathroom, found some aspirin and replenished her glass of water, crawled back into bed again.

She had only just settled when her mobile phone on the bedside table rang. Blindly, she groped for it. ‘Hello.’

‘Sally, it’s Anna.’

‘Oh, Anna. Hi.’

‘What’s the matter with you? You sound awful.’

‘I’m sick. I think I must have the flu.’

‘Ooh, that’s terrible.’ There was a pause. ‘I was ringing to see if you’d like to come for lunch tomorrow.’

‘Sorry. Too sick.’

‘You poor thing. Do you need anything? How are you off for food?’

‘I don’t need anything. I’m not hungry.’

‘You sound as if you need looking after.’

‘No.’ Sally shook her head and winced when it hurt. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’d hate you to catch this.’

‘I must admit I wouldn’t want to give the flu to Oliver.’

‘No. I’ll be all right. I just need to sleep.’

‘Make sure you take plenty of fluids.’

‘Yup.’

‘What a waste of a weekend though,’ Anna said before she rang off.

There was one distinct advantage to sleeping all weekend, Sally decided, as she drifted off again. She couldn’t think too much about Logan.

The weekend was the most frustrating Logan had ever known. As far as he could tell, Sally had gone away for the entire two days, leaving him to endure hours and hours andhoursin gloomy solitude.

But if he thought the weekend was bad, Monday morning was worse. It began with Sally’s conspicuous absence from the front desk and went rapidly downhill from there.

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