Page 53 of The Boss's Forbidden Assistant

‘Thanks.’ He didn’t look up and Harper was glad. She couldn’t imagine how pale her face would have looked if he’d given her a moment’s thought. She needed to escape: now.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SALVADORHADNEVERparticularly liked the way he was treated when he travelled to his offices. As the head of a billion-dollar company that employed tens of thousands of people worldwide, he understood it a little, but being deified wasn’t his idea of a good time, so he avoided this sort of thing as much as possible.

Meetings could be done offsite or online.

But this wasn’t really about a meeting, so much as a chance to see Harper on her terms. Tosee her, he thought with a clutch in his chest. Though how the hell he could see her without reaching for her, without kissing her senseless, without blurting out everything he’d realised since she’d left the island, was beyond him.

His hands formed fists at his side as the lift whooshed towards the executive level of his Chicago high-rise. Blessedly, he was alone. He needed the few moments to steel himself for this, for seeing her at her desk, just as she’d been on the island for so much of the time.

What he wasn’t prepared for was the doors opening directly into the foyer and Harper standing waiting for a lift. She was looking at the numbers on the top of the panel, so he had a few seconds to study her before her gaze swooped down, a few seconds to see how pale she was, how pinched were her features, how dark were her eyes. And in those few seconds he died a slow and torturous death, because he understood why she looked like that—he was the cause.

It was because of him.

Unless something else had happened. Something with her mother? Worry pushed aside his own feelings for a moment, and then her eyes met his and once more he understood. Thiswasbecause of him. Nothing else could explain the jolt of emotions that flooded her face as comprehension dawned and she recognised him.

She looked like a terrified animal, haunted and hunted, and he groaned, pain stabbing his side.

‘Harper...’ He held up a placating hand but she could only shake her head, her lips moving without making sound, her fingers trembling as she lifted one hand to her handbag strap and yanked on it hard. It was excruciating to see her react like this, but this was Harper Lawson—she was made of steel—so she closed her eyes and, when she opened them again, she looked more like herself. The shock was gone, or at least concealed behind a look of bored impatience.

‘Jack’s waiting for you,’ she said crisply, gesturing to the foyer.

Salvador swallowed. The meeting had essentially just been a ruse to get close to Harper again, but he stepped out of the lift, noticing the way she moved away from him and took a circuitous route to the cubicle he’d just occupied, jabbing the button for the ground-floor lobby impatiently, her face pale once more, her eyes showing shock. He stared at her and imagined the doors closing, imagined her disappearing, and realised he didn’t know where she lived and he didn’t have her mobile number. He had only her work email address, which was a pretty inadequate way to contact someone about a personal matter.

Just as the doors began to close, he made a split-second decision and slipped through them, eyes meeting hers, challenging her to say something, his expression carefully contained so she wouldn’t know just how terrified he was of the next few moments.

‘Mr da Rocha,’ she said sternly, but the impression was hampered by the fact her voice trembled slightly. ‘Jack is waiting for you. You should go.’

He couldn’t relax until the lift doors closed. He figured he had maybe thirty seconds to say what he wanted to say before they reached the ground floor. Harper closed her eyes, blocking him out.

Thirty seconds would never be enough.

‘I came here to see you.’

It wasn’t the most elegant place to start but it was something.

Her jaw worked overtime as she computed that, swallowing and feeling without emoting anything.

‘I should never have spoken to you the way I did on that last day. What we shared was...’

The lift slowed, stopped and the doors pinged open, admitting four more people, talking and laughing until they saw Salvador da Rocha, and then they were silent, awestruck. He glared at them mutinously—did they have any idea what they’d just interrupted? His eyes shifted to Harper but she was looking ahead resolutely, staring at the metallic underbelly of the doors as if she could will the carriage to the ground faster, if only she concentrated hard enough.

The lift reached the foyer without making any additional stops and Harper stepped out in front of him, walking quickly across the tiled entrance. He walked after her, ignoring the looks people sent him, ignoring anyone who came close to thinking they might start a conversation.

She said goodnight to the security guards then pushed through the swirling glass doors, so he followed in a vacant space behind her. Only once they were in the cold night air—so frigid compared to the island—did Salvador call her name.

Harper didn’t turn. The pavement was bustling with people leaving the office, beginning their commutes home. Frustrated, and terrified of losing her now he was so close to her, he reached out, catching her wrist and pulling her to a stop. She didn’t fight him. She paused, an island in the midst of the swirling sea of people. But he had to tug on her wrist again to get her to turn to him and, when she did, it felt as if every part of him was cracking apart.

Tears filmed her lashes and she just looked so inconsolably sad, so awfully hurt, that he groaned.

‘I’m sorry.’ He said the only thing he could think of in that moment, and it was an apology that was dredged from the very bottom of his soul. ‘I had no right to talk to you the way I did. Nothing I said that day was true, Harper. You know that. You know that in here.’ He pressed a hand to his own heart, remembering how she’d touched him there and he’d felt as though they were connected on a cellular level.

She blinked quickly, trying to look in control, but she couldn’t, so she gave up. ‘Let me go.’

God, he knew he should. He knew he had no right to hold her like this, to keep her here, but he couldn’t risk losing her. ‘Will you come with me?’ he asked urgently, wiping his thumb over her inner wrist.

‘No.’

---