Page 9 of Covert

He smiled, the rare flash of teeth alleviating the tension perpetually bracketing his mouth, and sending her heart hammering in her chest.

“How so?”

Ignoring her pounding pulse and wondering how she could control her treacherous reactions to her handsome boss, she said, “I don’t know the hours I’ll be expected to work. Your mother suggested I discuss it with you.”

“So, if I say I need you tonight, you’re mine for the evening?”

Crap, she didn’t need this sort of encouragement. Her overactive imagination was doing fine on its own, thank you very much, without help from him.

“As your butler, I would’ve expected to work evenings. As your P.A., I assumed most work could be accomplished during the day?”

His smile broadened. “Not for what I have in mind.”

Thankfully, the intercom buzzed on his desk, saving her from answering. She took a deep breath and wondered if he played word games with all his staff.

Was Dylan Harmon flirting with her, or was her limited experience with men creating fanciful wishes?

5

Dylan tapped the speaker button. “Yes, Mother?”

Liz Harmon’s voice filtered through the intercom. “I was wondering if you could spare Sam for a moment? I need to discuss a few things with her.”

He looked at his new personal assistant, who had her head bent over the stack of invoices, sorting them into several neat piles as if her life depended on it.

“Sure, as long as it doesn’t take too long. I’ve upgraded her position from butler to P.A. and we have a mountain of work to get through.”

His mother chuckled. “This, from the man who said he didn’t need help?”

He studied the way Sam’s hair fell in loose curls around her face, the slight frown that marred her smooth forehead, the flicker of her tongue as it darted out to moisten her top lip. He noticed she’d done that earlier, when he first strolled out of the bathroom and seen her standing in his bedroom. He assumed it was a nervous reaction, though it sure as hell drove him crazy every time she did it.

How could such an innocuous movement elicit the wayward thoughts about what gorgeous Sam’s tongue could be doing to him?

“Dylan, are you still there?”

Wrenching his thoughts out of the gutter, he replied, “Yes, Mother. I’ll send Samantha right up.”

“Thanks. And by the way, you’re welcome.”

He smiled as his mother’s chuckles petered out and he disconnected. “Leave those invoices for now. You can get back to collating them later.”

Sam looked up, and once again the luminous green of her eyes hit him like a blow to the solar plexus. It wasn’t the colour so much as the clarity that shone like a beacon, beckoning him to challenge her, taunt her, anything to get her looking at him with more than passing interest from an employee for her boss.

That’s what had prompted him to offer her the job as his personal assistant—the more time she spent in his company, the more chance she might look at him with the spark he glimpsed earlier in his bedroom.

With one, fleeting flare of fire in her eyes, she’d aroused him more than any other woman had in a long time.

She stood, and he had a chance to admire the snug fit of the uniform. He had a real hankering to see her without it. Hell, he wished he could see her trim body with nothing at all, but right now he’d settle for anything else in her wardrobe.

For some strange reason, she had too much poise, too much class, to be wearing a uniform, and he didn’t need a constant reminder of her status as his employee.

His thoughts were inappropriate enough without inviting an harassment suit.

“What about my working hours? We didn’t resolve how long I’ll be working each day.”

He resisted the urge to shake his head. Ever since she walked into his life this morning, his mind had been enveloped in a fog that clouded his every thought. Even now, he could barely remember what they’d been discussing before his mother had interrupted.

“We’ll discuss it later.” He waved her away, noting the stiffening of her shoulders, the straightening of her spine.

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