Page 7 of The Boss's Forbidden Assistant

So it was with some trepidation that he entered his office the next morning and only exhaled when he realised she wasn’t there yet.

Good.

He moved quickly, shutting the blinds to separate their workspaces, needing to see more of her like he needed a hole in the head.

Harper knew he was there, behind the curtains, because he’d had multiple online meetings and his voice had carried. It was deep, sensual and capable of making her knees tremble even through a wall of glass and hidden behind a curtain.

Holy heck.

What was happening?

Last night had been surreal and strange and, while she knew she should be flooded by indignant rage, she wasn’t. He shouldn’t have barged in, and he surely shouldn’t have stayed staring at her like he’d never before seen a woman in his life. He’d been completely transfixed, his expression something she’d never forget.

He’d looked at her as if she was the most desirable woman on the face of the earth. He’d looked at her as if he’d wanted to eat her up then and there, and she couldn’t get that out of her mind. She couldn’t forget the way he’d stared, the way his breath had snagged between his teeth, hissing into the room. She couldn’t forget the way her own body—traitorous, treacherous body—had responded to him, her breasts tingling, desperate to be touched, moist heat building between her legs, her heart in overdrive, her mouth not working properly, her lips full and heavy, aching to be kissed.

It had been a moment of madness for both of them, a strange removal of sense and sanity, the replacement of those things with a primal, physical response that defied logic.

With a pulse that was still none too steady, she flicked up the cuff of her shirt to reveal a tiny tattoo on her inner wrist, a black heart, a reminder to herself that she was her own first love, that she alone was enough. She’d got it after Peter. She still shuddered to think of what a fool she’d been to be taken in by his suave seduction. True, she’d been entirely innocent, with no experience whatsoever in the romance stakes, but she wasn’t devoid of all sense, so how come she’d let him make her think she was falling for him? The tattoo was supposed to serve as a reminder that she couldn’t trust anyone else with her heart.

Salvador wasn’t a contender for that anyway, but it was important to remember her commitment to remaining single. To remember that no man was worth her time—even really, really hot ones.

CHAPTER THREE

‘COMEWITHME.’

The words, his voice, pierced her shield of concentration. Harper blinked, disorientated at first, pulling herself, comprehending, out of the documents she’d spent hours reading and back into the office with the beautiful views of the sea. Except there were no views now, because it was night, and she hadn’t realised. The office was dark, except for the ultra-bright screen of her computer. It felt like being woken from a long afternoon nap after jet lag, not knowing where she was or when it was.

‘Ms Lawson?’ His impatience conveyed itself in the tone of his words so she pushed back her chair quickly, moving towards the door, but as she got closer she heard it again—the same hiss of air from between his teeth. And suddenly it all came rushing back to her. The way he’d looked at her. The way his gaze hadfelt.That might seem ridiculous but his gaze had run over her body and had the same effect as if he’d reached out and trailed a finger over her skin.

‘I’m here,’ she said, voice croaky from misuse.

He flicked on the lights, which should have made things better but instead made them so much worse, because she realised how close they were standing. She stared up at him and the same sense of disorientation wrapped around her, so it was almost impossible to remember where she was and why she was there. For a moment, the briefest moment, she was just a woman, and he a man, and nothing else had any importance.

His mouth tightened, forming a grim line, but a muscle moved in his jaw. He was feeling what she was, fighting it—this strange, drugging wave of attraction threatening to sweep them both up if they weren’t careful.

‘You wanted me?’ she asked, then cringed inwardly at the unintendeddoubleentendre.

‘I have to talk to you. I also have to eat. Have you eaten?’

Eaten?She frowned. ‘Hmm, no.’ Not since breakfast, in fact, when she’d grabbed a croissant and coffee and scurried into her office, breathing a huge sigh of relief to have avoided Salvador so successfully.

‘Fine. Come with me then.’ His eyes pierced hers for a moment longer than was necessary before he turned on his heel and stalked out of her office, into the larger shared space and beyond it to the corridor that led to the rest of the house. She fell into step behind him, glad he didn’t wait, glad he didn’t look at her, because it gave her some precious, vital moments to pull herself the heck together and remember she was a calm, successful professional in her own right.

The lighting in the house was cosy and ambient, creating a warm, golden glow. He walked down a corridor Harper hadn’t seen before, then onto a terrace set with a table and a single chair, an image that struck Harper right in her centre, filling her with a tangle of emotions.

It just seemed solonely.This man, this house, were so solitary and isolated. Even the house’s position, in the middle of a private island surrounded by mountains, rainforest then miles of beaches, made it almost impossible to reach. Everything about his life seemed designed to push people away. Why?

‘Ms Lawson will be joining me,’ he said, and Harper blinked as the efficient, kind-seeming housekeeper Catarina bustled onto the terrace. She nodded, flicked a small smile in Harper’s direction then set to work, placing a second seat at the table and, a moment later, returning with extra cutlery and napkins.

‘Dinner won’t be long,’ Catarina explained to them both, before leaving the terrace.

Harper swallowed. It was ridiculous to feel that the walls were closing in on her when there were no walls out here, yet she felt an oppressive sense of something: emotion; awareness of her own attraction to him; fear of doing something really stupid and showing him how she felt...

It was a balmy, warm night and the air hummed with something like magic. The forest whooshed quietly, the ocean rolled towards them, the moon cut a gleaming path across the dark water, the stars shone and the air was heavy with the fragrance of the island: salt, sand, night-flowering jasmine... It was a wonderful, heady scent, quite unique to this part of the planet, and so, so far removed from the long winter she’d left behind in Chicago.

‘Sit down.’

It was impossible to pretend to herself that she didn’t find his command even sexier, but Harper couldn’t dignify that very primitive response with acknowledgement, and could certainly not leave his tone unchallenged.

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