Five Exotic Fantasies: Love in Reverse, Book 3 (6 page)

So his comment about the cocoa hadn’t been a coincidence. She glared at him. “How did you know?”

“I saw your necklace in the photo on your desk.”

He was observant, this one. She would have to be careful around him. Now she could see how he’d got his reputation, and exactly why he was such an excellent lawyer.

But now she was confused. He’d teased her and flirted with her, and then told her he never did that with women he worked with, which made her feel special, but she had no idea of his scruples—whether he was a man of his word, or whether he’d use any information he came up with to control her and turn it to his advantage, which he’d be used to doing in the courtroom. She needed to know. It suddenly felt very important to establish.

She bit her lip and raised her eyes to his. “Don’t tell anyone my nickname,” she said softly. There. She’d unzipped her fly, metaphorically speaking, and allowed him to see the vulnerable side of her, which she didn’t do very often, especially at work. What would he do with it?

A frown flickered across his brow. For a moment he didn’t speak, and she could imagine him processing his thoughts, weighing up the options. Although his astuteness made her uneasy, it also attracted her in equal measure. She liked clever men, liked the play of words, the fact that so much was going on beneath the surface of conversations. Suddenly she wished she could be in the hearing. She’d love to see what Felix made of Peter Dell.

He was still studying her, but now he pushed himself off the desk and walked toward her. Gosh he was tall, several inches taller than her and she had her high heels on today. She had to look up to meet his warm brown eyes.

She’d half-expected to see them lit with sarcasm or interest as he calculated what he could do with the little snippet of information he’d discovered she didn’t want made common knowledge. But all his gaze held was kindness, such an unexpected emotion that she caught her breath.

“Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.” He smiled, his words echoing hers back in the coffee house.

She swallowed. “Thank you.”

They were only inches apart. She could smell his aftershave again, such a manly, clean smell, and he was all width and breadth, with strong, powerful shoulders and big, gentle hands. Her heart raced, and when she moistened her lips his gaze dropped to her mouth.

He was going to kiss her—right there in the middle of the office where anyone could walk in, and God help her but she couldn’t do anything about it. Her feet felt stuck to the floor, her body frozen. More than anything in the world she wanted to feel his lips on hers. It had been a lifetime since she’d been kissed, and she yearned for it, to be that close to another human being.

He didn’t, though. His gaze roamed over her face and desire sparked in his eyes, but he didn’t move.

“Come out for a drink with me tonight,” he said instead, his voice husky.

A date? She blinked, her mind clearing. That was out of the question. For heaven’s sake, he was investigating a case of sexual harassment. Maybe this was all a ploy to see if women from Wellington reacted to his flirtations. What the hell was she doing, talking like this with another member of staff?

She moved back and dropped her gaze, wrapping herself in Veronica’s cool efficiency once again. “Sorry, Mr. Wilkinson, as I said, I don’t date people at the office. Now, I need to get back to work. It’s my first proper day on the job and I want to do well, get some things sorted. Please excuse me.”

She stepped around him and walked out without looking back.

Felix turned to watch her leave and blew out a long, slow, frustrated breath. Man, that had been close. He’d been inches—fractions of an inch—from kissing her, which would, quite possibly, have been the absolute worst thing a lawyer investigating a charge of sexual harassment in the office could do to the office manager he’d only just met. She would have had every right to slap him, maybe even to march up to Christopher and tell him, and demand Felix be sent back to Auckland.

But somehow he didn’t think she would have done that. Maybe afterward she would have regretted it, but at that moment, he was convinced she’d wanted him to kiss her.

He’d been so incredibly tempted to slip a hand behind to cup her head, another arm around her waist and hold her tightly as he lowered his lips to hers. They would have been sticky from the red lipstick, and he would have smeared it slightly as he moved his lips across hers, tasting her. Maybe he’d have ended up with a lipstick kiss on his collar. The thought made him feel lightheaded.

He shook his head and walked back to the window. He had to start concentrating. This was a serious business, and filling his brain with thoughts of kissing and where that might lead to wasn’t going to get him anything except a raging hard-on that nothing except some self-administration was going to get rid of.

Someone knocked at the door and he turned. Rob Drake stood in the doorway. The lawyer walked up to his desk, hands in his pockets. He looked amused.

“What?” Felix asked, already knowing what was coming.

“You do have a death wish don’t you? Chatting up the Dragon?”

“I’m pretty sure her first name’s Veronica.”

Rob grinned. “I wouldn’t go there. She’ll eat you alive.”

Chance’ll be a fine thing.
“What do you know about her?”

Rob shrugged. “What do you want to know? Christopher told you how good she was at her job.”

“I meant personally.”

“Is this part of the investigation?”

Felix huffed a sigh, knowing he shouldn’t be asking about personal details and embarrassed because Rob was obviously as sharp as himself and had caught him out.

He gave Rob a wry smile and sat in one of the armchairs. “Fucking lawyers, we’re as bad as psychologists, always answering a question with another question and avoiding the answer. Okay, cards on the table. I do like her. I’d like to know more about her. But yes, I’m also investigating the office and she’s the office manager in charge of the secretary who’s accused Dell of harassment. Did Sasha De Langen merely misconstrue something that other women would have regarded as okay? Because generally it’s seen as acceptable? Miss Stark has already made it clear that I’m not supposed to dally with any of the girls while I’m here. It seems pretty plain to me, but I want to know if she’s as strict with the permanent staff—if she would have given Dell the same speech at some point. I need to know what’s considered acceptable here and what’s not—innuendo, physical contact, that sort of thing. I don’t know the answer to these questions and you’re supposed to be helping me.”

It was a long speech and he finished slightly breathless, only then realising that actually, in spite of years spent in court developing ways to deal with people and get them to tell him what he wanted, he was actually a little nervous about this hearing, and about investigating his peers. He was flattered that Christopher had chosen him, but also aware that Christopher might have thought him expendable—what did it matter to his boss if the Wellington staff disliked Felix? Lawyers weren’t exactly notorious for their altruism. He wanted to do this hearing properly and achieve the right outcome by upsetting as few people as possible. And some niggling sixth sense was beginning to tell him that wasn’t going to happen.

He also now worried that he might have alienated his only ally, but Christopher had obviously chosen someone to help him who wasn’t quick to take offence. Rob merely held up his hands in surrender, sat in one of the armchairs to the side and put his feet on the coffee table. “All right. Let’s get started. What do you want to know?”

Chapter Seven

Coco walked down the corridor, through the workroom, continued along the next corridor to the human-resources department and threaded her way through the labyrinth of desks to Amy’s nook in the corner. She occasionally took refuge here if she needed to get away from her desk, as few people knew of their friendship, and nobody would have thought to track her down there.

Amy was in the process of logging sick days onto the old and rather slow computer system. Coco thought briefly about Felix’s intimation that their network was out of date and groaned silently. She’d come here to get
away
from him.

Her friend looked up and beamed when she saw who it was. “Hey you!” She patted the seat in the corner that Coco used as her thinking and hiding spot. “Can you believe that the annoying Mr. Hotshot Fancy Pants is actually Mr. Sexy Cool Dude from the coffee shop?”

“No.” Coco sank into the seat and put her face in her hands. “What am I going to do?”

“Oh dear. What have you done?”

“Nothing! Nothing.” Coco rubbed her nose. “I almost kissed him.”

“I’m sorry, pardon?”

“It was nothing. He was just…nice.” Her eyes met Amy’s and she groaned at the leap of triumph in them. “Don’t look so smug. Really, it was nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like nothing. Where did you nearly kiss him?”

“On the mouth.”

“Sweetie, I meant where in the building. Are you feeling okay?”

Coco touched her brow, not surprised to find it warm. “I think I may be coming down with something. And it was in his office. Not in the middle of the workroom or anything. He’s found out my nickname. I asked him not to tell anyone and he said he won’t.” That one nice gesture brought a lump to her throat. He didn’t know her from Adam, or Eve, or the snake for that matter. As far as he knew, she was the Dragon, the strict office manager who—if they were in a TV show—would be the one to know all the dirty secrets about the office and who, as a long-serving, devoted and loyal employee, would feel honour bound to cover them up. He was there to carry out an investigation and he could have used that snippet of information to force her to tell him whatever he wanted.

But he hadn’t. And his eyes had been kind.

“Oh…” Amy drew the word out, her face softening.

“What?” Coco blinked, heart still pounding from the memory of nearly having his firm lips touch hers.

Amy smiled. “Nothing. So what happened? He went to kiss you?”

“Yes. No. Sort of. Well, he looked like he was going to, but he didn’t. And then he asked me out for a drink tonight.”

“I hope you said, ‘Absolutely, Mr. Fancy Pants, just tell me when and where and I’ll be there.’”

“I said no, of course. And I walked out.”

Amy sighed. “There really is no hope for you. He’s young, obviously rich—did you see his watch? He didn’t get that from the two-dollar shop. He’s tall. He’s smart. He’s frickin’
gorgeous.
Seriously, girlfriend, I think your cheese has slid off your cracker.”

“I can’t,” said Coco. “He’s only here temporarily and then he’ll go back to Auckland.”

“So shag him senseless while he’s here and then wave him goodbye. What have you got to lose?”

Coco closed her eyes and shook her head. “Amy…”

“Seriously, Coco. You don’t have to sleep with the guy. I mean,
I
would but then that’s me, but I know what you’re like. You haven’t been out in ages. I know you don’t like leaving your mum, but she keeps telling you she wants you to have a life and this is the kind of thing she means. Just go out with him. Have a drink. Be sociable. Have a bit of fun, for God’s sake. You’re only twenty-seven, you work hard and you deserve it.”

Coco bit her lip and stared at the floor. This was exactly the argument she’d been having with her mother lately—minus the shagging part—almost on a daily basis. Eleanor Stark had got it into her head that it wasn’t fair for a bright, pretty woman of Coco’s age to be tied to a mother in a wheelchair.

Unbidden, her father’s words the last time she’d seen him in hospital before he died rang in her head: “Promise me you’ll always look after her, Coco. She’s not a strong woman—she needs you. Promise me you won’t ever leave her.” It was a harsh instruction to a fourteen-year-old girl, one that had haunted her ever since. She already had to deal with the guilt of having someone else look after Eleanor during the day so she could earn enough money to keep them—and now Eleanor wanted to move into a respite home so her daughter could have a social life. Coco didn’t want a social life at the expense of her mother’s happiness. It was her responsibility to care for her mother, and she’d die rather than see her go into a home.

She stood, brushed down her skirt, adjusted her glasses and blinked away the tears of self-pity. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

Amy sighed, used to her friend’s abrupt changes of persona. “Yes, Miss Stark.”

Yes, she was Miss Stark in these offices, Coco thought as she walked away. She had her Veronica hat on now, and she wasn’t going to let Coco out while she was at work.

“Multiple Sclerosis?” Felix raised an eyebrow as Rob described Coco’s mother’s condition. “That sucks.”

“Yeah.” Rob had brought his muffin with him and now proceeded to tuck into it. “I met her once in town. I get the feeling Miss Stark doesn’t shop here much—maybe she usually goes out of town so she doesn’t bump into anyone she knows. She’s a very private person. Anyway, she was pushing her mother in a wheelchair. She introduced us out of politeness, but she wasn’t happy about it.”

“What did she look like?”

“The mother?”

“No, Miss Stark. Out of work clothes, I mean.”