Page 6 of Suddenly Desired
Ellie spotted the car, an ancient Toyota that she’d borrowed from her boss Lissa, and wound her way around a few bonnets to get to it.
Oh. My. Gosh,she thought as she climbed in.Whatwasthat?
She sat there for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, playing the scene over and over in her head. Her heart raced. That was Blake Fielding, one of the richest men on the planet, one of the cleverest tech entrepreneurs in the business.And there she was wittering on about things being easy. She slapped a hand to her forehead, imagining him laughing at her stupidity. If the headlines were anything to go by, he’d be doing just that — mocking her for being an incompetent female — but she couldn’t match those rumours with the honest and open man she’d just met.
He’d seemed sincere, hadn’t he? Like he genuinely cared about what she thought. But men like Blake Fielding didn’t care about people like her. They didn’t stop in the middle of a crisis to explain themselves to nobodies.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told herself, firmly. It wasn’t like she’d ever meet him again, or get her dream job at Heartbook. She’d chalk this whole day up as a disaster, as another example of the Ellie Mae Curse, and then go back to work with a smile on her face and a hole in her soul. She hadn’t even told him her name.
Ellie started the engine, feeling like she was about to cry. The rumble of the vehicle cut through the car park as she wound down the window to get some fresh air. She was about to put the car in gear when her phone buzzed. She groaned, fumbling through her bag.
The screen lit up with her mum’s name. Ellie hesitated, her thumb hovering over the green answer button, but she didn’t have the energy to explain what had happened. Not now.
“Sorry, Mum,” she muttered, letting the call go to voicemail.
She threw her phone back in her bag and something caught her eye. Or, rather, the absence of something. Her notebook — the one she carried everywhere, full of the most intimate details of her life — was missing.
Her breath hitched.
“Oh no, no, no, no,” she whispered, frantically rifling through the bag again as if her notebook would appear by magic.
But it wasn’t there.
And Ellie knew exactly where it was.
Chapter 5
BLAKE
Blake stood by the river, hands shoved into his trouser pockets, feeling like his pulse was humming. He’d been dead set on leaving the campus immediately, planning to head back to his penthouse apartment and start going over the code behind his hacked account. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to start walking again. His mind was sparking.Who was she?
A complete stranger was one answer. He met dozens of people every day, mostly with surface-level charm and hidden agendas. He usually felt drained by the effort of meeting new people, their smiles loaded with expectations: money, influence, validation . . . anything. But for some reason this woman had been something else entirely. She was open, uncomplicated, like she had no idea how much light she was throwing around. And she had lit something in Blake all right.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, trying to figure it out.
He’d forgotten what it was like to talk to someone without all the noise getting in the way. And for a few, sweet moments the scandal and hacked account had just fallen away. It had just been Blake and the cute woman with pencil-stabbed hair and a body that made his own stir in ways he hadn’t felt for a long while, completely flummoxing him in the process. He’d left the conversation totally and utterly tongue-tied, yet somehow more alive than he had felt in months.
It made no sense, but weirdly that made it matter more.
Two men were walking in his direction, and he ducked his head and turned to the water to avoid their stares. Blake could overhear them laughing about the comments being on the money, how people were just too afraid of the ‘woke’ to sayit anymore, and his stomach churned with the idea that if he reacted, he’d be adding fuel to a fire he would rather douse. He wanted to shout at them for being neanderthals but knew it would cause trouble.
Instead, he focused on what the woman had said to him as he watched the water trickle over itself, the hot sun reflecting on the surface.Whatever this is, it will be okay.There was no way she could possibly know that, of course, but she’d believed it — she’d believed him. How much kindness did it take for her to say that to him? Fifteen minutes ago he’d convinced himself that he’d lost everything, that the world would turn against him and force him into hiding, but this one show of trust from a young woman who’d accidentally barged into him by the river had given him hope.
It helped, too, that she was so attractive.
Are you insane?Blake laughed to himself. That was the last thing he should be thinking about. He was in enough hot water as it was. If the press even caught wind of him talking about women in that way then they’d hang him out to dry, quite rightly. He’d have to put the way that strands of her hair had tickled her face in places he wanted to out of his mind. And he definitely couldn’t start thinking about the way the hearts on her dress looked as she’d walked away from him. And if he even dared to remember the way she’d bitten her bottom lip as she’d gazed up at him with eyes he could lose himself in, then he had no hope of retaining control over his own body.
Blake cleared his throat and shook his head, turning to see if he was alone again. The men had walked on, seemingly oblivious to who they’d passed. Luckily, because Blake could feel the heat in his cheeks and needed to cool off before he bumped into anyone else.
Ungentlemanly thoughts aside, he was kicking himself that he hadn’t even asked for her name.
He shook his head, heading for the secure car park beneath the security gate. He’d only taken a few steps before he caught a glimpse of something pink lying in a clump of long grass. Curious, he bent down and picked up a small, hardback notepad. Brushing the dirt from the cover, he opened it up and flicked through the pages. There were shopping lists, appointment times, at least three notes saying,Call Mum!There were lists of resolutions, lists about how to improve posture and gain stamina and increase confidence, lists about how to attract the perfect man. It was like an issue ofCosmocondensed into a notebook, complete with cute little illustrations and doodles. There were what looked like diary entries too, but he didn’t read them because it felt like an intrusion. He skipped to the last page and couldn’t help but smile as he read through what was written there.
Notes on Interview!!!!
1. DON’T MESS IT UP.
2. Talk about Heartbook. Duh, I mean, it’s an interview at Heartbook, so you’re obviously going to do that.
