Page 9 of Boss With Benefits

Ella’s stomach clenched. What? No. Absolutely not.‘That would be highly irregular,’ she said, refusing to be distracted by the play of muscles she could see going on beneath the crisp white cotton of his shirt and instead mentally running through the consequences of such a strategy, the regulations surrounding neutrality and the headache of having to deal specifically with him.

‘In what way?’

‘Regardless of the questionable ethics of going through you for everything, your intended degree of involvement would not only add another layer of complication to an already complex investigation, but it would also make the process way more inefficient.’

‘I disagree.’

That was his prerogative, but his opinion was irrelevant. ‘You’re not the expert here.’

‘Do finance departments jump to attention the minute you tell them to?’

‘Well, no, not always, but—’

‘They will if it’s me doing the telling,’ he said bluntly. ‘As will everyone else. They won’t be able to work fast enough. I’ve cleared my diary for the next two weeks. I will be available to you and anyone else who needs me twenty-four-seven.’

In response to that, Ella’s head began to throb. Once again, he was trampling over her every objection, only this time his counterarguments didn’t make any sort of sense. ‘Why?’

Up shot his eyebrows again. ‘What do you mean, why?’

‘Most CEOs don’t take such a personal interest in something as prosaic as the annual financial audit.’

‘I’m not most CEOs.’

That was certainly true. He was by far the sexiest CEO she’d ever come across. Tall, lean, powerful... And his forearms—long curves of hard muscle dusted with a smattering of dark masculine hair—really were something else. What would it feel like to be enveloped by all that strength? To have his strong hands on her body, his clever fingers coaxing her to the dizzy heights of pleasure? To be wrapped up once again in heat and passion and excitement?

‘I don’t see you as the enemy,’ he said, bringing her back to the conversation with a bump. ‘I believe in working together. Which we can, and will, do.’ He tilted his head and regarded her coolly. ‘You seem to be under the impression that you can influence what’s going on here Ella. But you can’t. This is my company and my audit.Imake the rules, not you. So, if you have a problem with that, I’ll just have to find someone to run it who doesn’t.’

As his words hit their mark, Ella’s blood chilled and her stomach fluttered. The heat whipping through her system fled. The heady desire vaporised. Adam looked calm enough, but there was a trace of steel behind his words. A glint of ruthlessness in his eyes. The ripple of tension in the air told her that he would stop at nothing to get what he wanted and that if she knew what was good for her, she’d surrender.

Suddenly simmering with outrage, she burned with the urge to march up to him and inform him that not only did henotmake the rules that he was breaking left right and centre, despite his apparent wish to avoid trouble, but also that threatening the auditors was not a good move.

But she couldn’t, dammit. Because, for one thing, when she got too close to him, her brain malfunctioned. And for another,whatever the reason for his stubborn insistence on the status quo, whether he saw this as some kind of a game or was simply a control freak, the truth was he held all the cards. She couldn’t afford to antagonise him. If he acted on this power trip of his and got her thrown off the job, she could wind up unemployed, her career in ruins. She’d instantly lose everything. The condo she’d just bought would be repossessed. The security and empowerment that earning her own money gave her would disappear overnight. What would she do then? Where would she go? How would she survive?

She wasn’t going to throw away everything she’d worked so hard for and jeopardise the future she deserved over a tussle for control. The late nights of study, the exhaustion, the doubts that she was good enough to make it weren’t going to be for nothing. Like him, she would do whatever it took to get what she wanted, and right now it was clear that that meant keeping him onside until the audit was done and the financial records signed off.

So no matter how much she hated that he kept forcing her to make decisions that challenged her integrity, no matter how churned up he made her feel inside, she had no choice but to acquiesce. Somehow she would maintain the audit’s independence. She would never let him see how bothered she was by the idea of the two of them working up here together alone. She could certainly contain the attraction she still felt for him. She had far too much at stake to let that get the better of her.

‘Fine,’ she said, with a cool smile and a deliberately casual shrug, as if she weren’t bothered by the outcome of the conversation—or him—at all. ‘You win.’

Once she’d wrestled her frustration at being thwarted under some sort of control and checked the regulations concerning impartiality, Ella headed downstairs to greet the team and make sure that everyone knew what they were doing—which they did because, unlike her, they’d had weeks to prepare. Then she returned to the penthouse, set herself up and turned her attention to work, determined to put her infuriating client firmly from her head.

Unfortunately, however, this turned out to be easier said than done.

By virtue of the fact that she’d been parachuted into this assignment at the last minute, she was going to have to work doubly hard and longer hours to keep on top of things. So she could not afford to waste even a second, let alone great chunks of time.

Yet that was precisely what happened. More calls than she cared to count went to voicemail. Files that should have been opened instantly weren’t. And all because, whether he was at his desk or wandering around his office on the phone, the man up there on the mezzanine was just too darn distracting.

To her despair, the ruthlessness she’d witnessed earlier hadn’t diminished his appeal in the slightest. On the contrary, every time she thought about it, shameful thrills of excitement shot through her.

In spite of her best efforts to stop it, her gaze slid in his direction with frustrating predictability. Her imagination, which had never troubled her before she’d met him, had gone into overdrive. She kept envisaging heading up the stairs and sidling into his office, where he’d invite her to come on over and make herself comfortable on his lap. Or perhaps he’d make his way down to her, clear the table with one sweep of his arm and lift her onto it. Either way, they ended up in a wholly unacceptable clinch.

This disruption to her concentration did not bode well for a trouble-free audit to be completed within the specified time frame, so after lunch Ella attempted to do something about it.

First, she shifted her position so that he wasn’t in her direct vision, in the hope that out of sight would be out of mind. But that didn’t work because, apparently, her awareness of him was all-encompassing. Then she tried loitering downstairs with her team, but the unproductivity of such a move was just too annoying to pursue.

She hated that controlling her response to him was proving such a challenge. She hated even more that he didn’t appear to be remotely bothered by her, which was insane, because the last thing she needed was the added stress of the attraction turning out to be mutual.

But she would not allow another man she’d slept with to mess with her head and jeopardise her career, so she eventually figured she’d just have to double down on her efforts. If she was to stand any chance of not screwing this job up, she had to get a grip and focus. She had to keep what was at stake for her at the forefront of her mind and start acting like the professional she was.

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