Page 11 of Boss With Benefits

But as for keeping his eyes off her, well, in that he’d failed dismally. When she was on the phone, the throaty timbre of her voice wound through him, a ribbon of fire heating every inch of his body. Every time she sashayed across the carpet to the lift, to the coffee machine, to the photocopier, he found himself tracking the sway of her hips. At one point she’d stretched, lifting her arms above her head and arching her back as she eased out the kinks in her neck, and it had taken every drop of self-control that he possessed to contain his body’s response tothe sight of her breasts straining against the silky fabric of her top.

Even Maggie, his secretary, had noticed his discomfort. ‘Is there something wrong with the way the audit’s going?’ she asked him when she popped up to run through his diary for August.

‘No,’ he muttered. ‘Why?’

‘You’re staring at Miss Green as if you’re trying to vaporise her with the power of your stare.’

Cursing the fact that it was turning out to be far more difficult than he’d expected to keep a grip on the disturbingly intense attraction, he instantly snapped his attention from the woman who was wreaking havoc on his equilibrium to the one who did her utmost to maintain it, and vowed to double down on his efforts to focus by immersing himself in the deluge of emails Ella had started sending him.

The first had dropped into his inbox on Tuesday morning, and thereafter he’d received one virtually every fifteen minutes. Frequently, they contained a single point. He could see no reason why, say, six could not be amalgamated into one, which meant she was doing it deliberately.

But if her aim had been to annoy him, she’d failed. In fact, he found her passive-aggressive attempt at control really rather amusing, and that was another reason he took great care to respond to each and every one with equal gravity.

With two notable exceptions.

Both of which were causing him grief.

First was the flight to London last August that apparently lacked the paperwork to match the log book.

The minute he’d heard that his sister, Charley, was buying a flat with the last of her savings from her ill-fated career as a model, he’d instantly felt compelled to check it out. He hadn’t thought twice about dropping everything and commandeeringthe company plane to get him to her before she signed the contract. His sole concern had been that she was only twenty-one and had a tendency to be reckless—especially with money. She’d had a chequered adolescence, quitting school and getting spotted by an agency, and although she’d managed to pull herself back on track after leaving that world behind, he couldn’t be certain she didn’t still make impulsive decisions.

He’d had nothing except her best interests at heart, but to his astonishment, she had not been pleased when he’d turned up unannounced at the perfectly acceptable two-bedroom flat in an up-and-coming area of East London. In response to his offer of advice, she’d had a go at him about his need to control everything and everyone. She’d railed at his inability to trust her, insisting that she wasn’t a kid any more, that she’d learned from her mistakes, and when the hell was he going to realise that? Would heeverlet her forget the time he’d had to bail her out of a cell in Barcelona for swearing at a police officer? Or the occasion she’d run away from school and had wanted him to send her the train fare to get to London? When would he start taking her seriously and treat her like the savvy businesswoman she was?

He’d been more affected by the confrontation than he cared to admit. It had taken him weeks to get over the sharp sting of rejection. Even longer to accept that she’d made some very valid points.

Not that he considered his deep-seated need for control a problem. It was essential to contain the chaos he knew he was capable of. Without it, he feared being overrun with the personality traits he’d inherited from his father, with recklessness, and then everything he’d worked for going up in smoke.

As CEOs they were polar opposites. Adam hadn’t generated tabloid headlines that crashed the company’s share price. He’dnever appeared in blurry photos indicating rampant drug use. And he’d certainly never indulged in the sort of inappropriate behaviour at the office that ended up in a lawsuit.

But in other respects, they were worryingly similar. He was the spitting image of his old man, a constant reminder every time he looked in the mirror of who he would turn into if he didn’t keep himself in check. As an adolescent screwing around without a thought for anyone other than himself, he’d behaved like him too, and because of that selfishness, his mother had died. On the ultra-rare occasion his willpower failed these days—such as five weeks ago in a cocktail bar bathroom—his true nature roared to the surface with no consideration of the consequences.

And as for controlling his environment and the people around him, well, he was responsible for the livelihoods of quarter of a million employees and revenue that ran into the tens of billions. How else was he to manage that?

But while he had no intention of apologising for his need to keep a tight grip on things, he did want to work on trusting Charley. He wanted to get to know her without the guilt he felt at robbing her of their mother getting in the way. Relationships of the romantic kind were out of the question. Indulging the sort of desire that led to impulsivity and left destruction in its wake turned his stomach. Envisaging the chaos caused by emotion made his head ache. And the thought of being responsible for someone else’s happiness and well-being when he was so ill-equipped to care for such things brought him out in a cold sweat. But he hoped to attempt a familial one with his sister.

None of this was up for discussion, however. With Ella or anyone else. Nor was Helberg Holdings, the second item that she was so keen to quiz him about. Even if he had wanted to share details of why the company was so important to him—Montague’s in particular—he wouldn’t know where to start.With his father’s philandering? With his mother’s abject misery in her marriage and the one affair her unhappiness had driven her to? Would he tell her how, in retaliation, a hypocritical, vengeful Edward Courtney had sold the international jewellery business she’d worked for and loved so much to Helberg for a dollar? Would he then move on to his own role in his mother’s suicide and confess to the guilt he still carried?

No.

All of that would remain strictly private. Only he knew the full story. Even Charley, who’d been just a kid when it had happened, was only aware of some of it.

He didn’t particularly enjoy skulking around and disappearing whenever Ella hove into view, her jaw set with resolve. It smacked of cowardice and went against his confronting-problems-head-on approach. This evening’s encounter in the lift had been particularly challenging. Her move had taken him by surprise. Once he’d got over his shock, with awareness suddenly ripping through him like wildfire, he’d been gripped by a ferocious surge of the rashness he fought so hard to contain. He’d wanted to back her up against the wall and kiss her until she couldn’t think straight. To then strip her naked and sink into her, despite the security camera embedded in the ceiling.

How he’d stayed calm enough to de-escalate the situation, he had no idea. It was clear now that the only reason he’d been able to keep the desire he had for her under control was by maintaining his distance.

It was equally obvious that she was turning out to be unexpectedly tenacious, and he did not want her prodding around his psyche, because who knew what she might then get him to disclose in a moment of weakness? He couldn’t stall her for much longer, however. At some point he would have tofigure out how to give her the bare minimum of detail and shut these lines of enquiry down.

But for now, he had a stay of execution. Because he’d just received a call from the office in Madrid with news of potential strike action at a clothing factory outside Valencia, so he was on his way to Spain.

And when he returned, that would not be the only problem he’d have fixed. He’d also have shored up his defences so solidly that, come Monday, he’d be able to stand within a metre of Ella Green and not lose his head.

On Friday morning Ella arrived at the office unsure how to proceed, slightly nervous about seeing Adam again, and wondering how on earth she was going to keep the attraction under control after nearly assaulting him in the lift. Unfortunately, overnight, she’d been plagued by dreams about what had happened, but in them she hadn’t backed down. She’d told him to take her up on her invitation instead and had woken up at four hot and shivery and unable to get back to sleep, which did not help her composure one little bit.

But it seemed she had nothing to worry about because Adam didn’t show up to the office. She had no idea where he was. He replied to her email enquiring into his whereabouts with a vague, unsatisfyingSomething’s come up. After that, radio silence. Even his secretary was cryptically obscure when she probed.

At first, she appreciated the chance to restore her self-possession in his absence. However, by 7:00 p.m. she’d come to the conclusion that none of what had happened in the past few days was a coincidence. In fact, she thought darkly as she pushed through the revolving door and out into the warm evening air, it felt like avoidance. For some reason Adam wasstonewalling her, deflecting her—deliberately, she suspected when she thought of the extraordinary encounter in the lift—and now he was nowhere to be found.

It was pissing her off. Not because she was remotely interested in what exactly was problematic about these particular queries, or what he had to hide. She wasn’t. All that mattered to her was that he was holding things up. He was jeopardising the time frame of the audit and it could not be allowed continue. The schedule was tight as it was, given the size and complexity of the job. It must not overrun. Her promotion depended on finishing on time. The leave she’d booked for the three weeks after—the first she’d taken in over a year—depended on finishing within the allotted fortnight. She was not having both her short-term and long-term future disrupted by him. She wasn’t having anything disrupted at all.

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