Page 21 of The Boss's Forbidden Assistant

‘Then I’ll take the other,’ she said. It was right across the aisle from his.Oh, great. That wouldn’t be a problemat all, she thought sarcastically.

‘Fine. The staff will bring your luggage through and take your order. If you need anything, let them know.’

‘Is that code for “don’t bother me”?’ she asked before she could consider the wisdom of being quite so pushy.

He smothered a sigh. ‘No, Harper. It’s not.’ She felt like a silly school girl. Biting into her lower lip, she refused to drop her gaze, though, nor to show him how chastened he’d made her feel. ‘Have a nice flight.’

The expectation being that he didn’t want to see her for the duration, she thought with a little internal harrumph. No shared dinners on board—well, fine. She had stacks of work to catch up on, and her usual video call to her mother as well.

She hadn’t been planning to reply but there wasn’t the chance anyway. Salvador turned and left before she could open her mouth to say, ‘Thank you very much.’

Just knowing she was on board was his undoing. This was getting out of hand. Salvador da Rocha was famed for his control, his willpower, his ruthless determination, but in the last few days he’d come face to face with a slip of a woman who seemed to have the power to undo all of that—just by bloody existing within his airspace!

He shouldn’t have brought her, he realised halfway into the flight. She could have run things from the ground on the island, and he could have got some damned respite from her. Maybe he should send her home immediately.

And pigs might fly, he thought with a grimace.

For, as desperately inconvenient as he found the distraction of Harper Lawson’s presence, he suspected her absence would be even more of a concentration-killer. He stretched the fingers of his right hand wide, remembering the sparks he’d felt when he’d done something as innocuous as touch her back to board the flight. Even that simple contact had made him feel alive with the power of a thousand watts.

This wasn’t going away. He couldn’t ignore her: he couldn’t ignore the way she made him feel.

But it wasn’t really Harper, he consoled himself quickly. It was the fact she was there: a beautiful, intelligent, interesting woman right beneath his nose who’d declared them to have chemistry; who’d made it obvious she was attracted to him; who’d fall into his bed if he allowed it... God. The willpower required to make that not happen!

But what if it did?

What if he gave into this?

A year after burying his wife, one of his oldest friends—what kind of sick son of a bitch did that make him? Only, their marriage hadn’t been quite normal. They hadn’t married for love, but rather because Anna-Maria had fallen pregnant. Salvador had been determined not to be like his deadbeat father, refusing to acknowledge his own child, choosing instead to pay off the mother, to silence her. He would never have done that. He’d wanted to be a family, the kind of family he’d never known.

It hadn’t been a normal marriage for Salvador but his guilt at not being able to love Anna-Maria in the way she’d deserved as a wife—even as she’d lain dying—was a constant source of pain to him. To move on, and with someone so very fit, healthy andalive, would feel like a betrayal of the worst possible kind.

He groaned, pressing his head back against the seat of the plane, scrunching up his eyes and doing his very best not to think of Harper, even as memories and fantasies weaved through his mind like ribbons in a stream.

After the heat of Brazil, Zakynthos was surprisingly cool. Harper had only been away from Chicago for a few days but her body had grown accustomed to the balmy, tropical temperatures. She liked it, she realised. Liked the way the warmth soaked into her skin, her heart, the sea breeze making her feel alive and elemental.

But Zakynthos was stunning, and not just because she was seeing it through the lens of a billionaire’s lifestyle. Though that didn’t hurt, she thought wryly as she stepped into the back of a large black Range Rover with darkly tinted windows. There was a driver and, though Salvador offered Harper the front seat, she demurred, preferring to sit on her own in the back than feel obliged to make small talk with the driver. Besides, she was staff, and it felt somehow more appropriate. So Salvador took the front seat, his arm resting casually along the side of the door, his fingers drumming a slow, rhythmic beat on the luxury interior. She studied him in the side mirror, which gave her a perfect view of his face, but every now and again his gaze would flick to the mirror, their eyes would meet and it was as though she was being electric-shocked.

Yet she didn’t look away.

She couldn’t. Not wouldn’t—couldn’t. It felt physically impossible, despite the stunning scenery of the island that she was aware of in her peripheral vision. Primarily, there was only Salvador and her. Not even the driver entered her thoughts.

After a fifteen-minute drive, the car pulled up onto a sweeping driveway of white gravel, with elegant palms forming lines on either side. At the front of the white-walled hotel, a bougainvillea grew opportunistically, its bright, papery, purple flowers scrambling over every available surface, offering a stark, beautiful contrast to the crisp colour of the walls and the sparkling turquoise ocean beyond.

Everything about the hotel screamed understated luxury, from the grand entrance to the staff waiting by the door dressed in black suits with gold cuffs. They greeted Salvador as though he were royalty, and Harper hovered a little behind, turning to look at the view and inhale, searching for salt and tropical sweetness in the air. While this was beautiful, it was nothing to Ilha do Sonhos, she realised with a thud in the middle of her chest. She’d found heaven on earth, and now even somewhere like this couldn’t really compete.

‘Ms Lawson?’

Salvador’s voice made her spine tingle. She turned to him slowly as a gentle breeze caught at her hair so she had to lift a hand to it, to pull it back over one shoulder. He watched her, frowning, then gestured towards the door, impatient, short and something else. Resigned? Her heart quickened and she took a step towards him with the strangest feeling that she was moving headlong into a fate beyond her control.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ITWASCLEARthat Salvador had no intention of enjoying a single thing about being in Greece. They toured the hotel—he wore a suit, and avoided doing anything so frivolous as even touching the water of the pool. It was a stunning facility. The rooms were clearly luxurious and decadent while still retaining a local character—wide doors, carved windows open to the water and brightly coloured interiors, such as the bed in Harper’s room that was a cheery turquoise and the chair by the window which was a glossy yellow.

The floors were tiled, big, terracotta squares that were cool beneath the feet. Rugs had been added for comfort in some areas. It was sublime. Harper’s room had the most amazing view, but she knew from having arranged Salvador’s accommodation that his suite included a small infinity pool. She could only imagine what the outlook would be from there in the evening. How would the sunsets here compare to those of the Ilha do Sonhos?

Her lips pulled to the side and she realised, with heat rising in her cheeks, that Salvador was looking at her, waiting for her to respond.

Furious with herself for having missed something, she forced her concentration back to the tour. ‘I’m sorry. What was that?’

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