Page 11 of Lethal Legacy

“I understand the issue with delivery was my assistant’s error, not yours,” he continues. “There’s an envelope on the desk with your name on it. Hopefully the amount inside is enough to ensure my coffee remains arsenic free.”

I’m so stunned I almost drop the tray.

Roman Stevanovsky, apologizing?

Either hell really has frozen over or I’m still asleep and this is just a fever dream. Both possibilities seem far more likely than the current scenario.

I put the tray down and stare at the indecently thick envelope, my name scrawled across it in a bold hand that could only belong to him.

“I would have given it to you in person at the café.” His voice is coming closer, the sardonic edge to it signaling the end of his apology and the beginning of his daily bid to disturb my body’s peace. “But it appears you have yet to master the alarm app on your phone. You’re slipping, Miss Lopez.”

Oh, game on, CEO Man.

Or it would be. Except that the wordslippingcombines dangerously with the fact that I’m currently bent over his desk. Not to mention the fact that my shorts have ridden up the crack of my ass during my tray-carrying journey, which means I am at present treating him to an eyeful of bared butt cheek.

A treacherous rush of heat between my legs tells me he’s just won the first point.

Hastily I straighten up, willing my nipples to stop their determined swelling beneath the damp sheath of my T-shirt.

I turn to find him regarding me with politely raised eyebrows and an insolent smile that suggests he knows exactly what I was just thinking.

The smile lasts about as long as it takes for him to notice my disheveled appearance.

Then his eyes narrow, and all trace of amusement disappears from his face.

“Well, well, Miss Lopez.” His eyes travel slowly over my body, from the messy topknot to the damp shirt clinging to me like a second skin. “Clearly I interrupted more than just your sleep this morning.”

Wait.I struggle to wrestle my overstimulated body into submission and kick my caffeine-deprived mind into action.Is he trying to imply what I think he is?

His next words remove any doubt. “Doing the walk of shame, more than an hour late, in yesterday’s uniform?” His light tone is completely at odds with the dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Your employer is clearly more tolerant than I am, Miss Lopez.”

I stare at him in astonishment. I don’t know whether to laugh, slap him like some maiden out of an eighteenth-century novel, or put my head in my hands in despair. In the end, all I manage is a strangled “Seriously?”

“Your personal life really isn’t any of my concern.”

There’s no trace of snark, no insolent smile.

Just curt dismissal.

He picks up the envelope from the desk. “I think we’re done here.”

Oh no we’re not, CEO Man. Not even close.

Not least because I have a sneaking suspicion that if I take that envelope and walk out right now, it will be the last time I ever see Roman Stevanovsky. And despite yesterday’s exchange, and the fact that he is currently being a world-class asshole, that thought fills me with a strange sense of loneliness.

Maybe it’s the stolen lockbox. Maybe I’m just so overtired I can’t think straight. Or maybe it’s the fact that his face has haunted my dreams, or more aptly, my fantasies, for months now. Whatever the reason, I don’t like the idea of not seeing CEO Man every day.

I don’t like it at all.

Right now, I need all the escapist fantasies I can get. I need to hold on to them for my own sanity, against the dark night that is my life.

So I decide to give Roman Stevanovsky a dose of his own medicine.

“Do you honestly think,” I snap, “that I spent last night rolling around in some man’s bed?”

He gives me his death stare, sending a thrill straight to my groin. “I’d say that much is perfectly obvious.”

“And I’d say you’re perfectly deluded.” I send the death stare straight back to sender. “It’s been less than seven hours since I finished my last shift, and I have at least fifteen hours to go until the end of this one. I don’t have time for apersonal life, as you call it. And I certainly don’t have time to be delivering your food, answering your messages—or doing whatever this is.”

---