top.
“This woman full of backchat and sarcasm. The one with secrets and a double life. The real you.”
She might have flinched, but her chin quickly came forward to a defiant angle. Her gaze stayed low, showing him a rainbow of subtle shadows on her eyelids. “You’re attributing me with more mystery than I possess. Yes, I’m being more frank with you than I was, but you can’t tell your boss he’s being an arrogant jerk, can you?” She lifted her lashes to level a hard stare at him. “Not if you want to pay the bills.”
He thought about letting this devolve into something serious, but opted to keep things friendly. “I wouldn’t have fired you for saying that,” he assured her, waiting a beat before adding, “I would have said you were wrong.”
Her mouth twitched, then she let the laugh happen and he experienced a sensation like settling into your own sofa or bed. Definitely a bed, he thought as a tingle of pure, masculine craving rose inside him. He let himself admire her painted lips and graceful throat and the exposed alabaster skin on her chest to the swells of her breasts. Why had he never taken her to dinner before?
Oh, right. She had been working for him.
It was freeing not to have that obstacle between them anymore.
Slow down, he reminded himself as she sobered and flicked a glance in his direction. The sexual undercurrents might be acknowledged, finally, but just because he wanted to bed her didn’t mean he should.
Sirena couldn’t take the intense way Raoul was staring at her. Every single day of working for him, she’d longed for him to show some sign of interest in her. Now that he had, it scared the hell out of her. But then, she knew better than to trust he was genuinely interested.
Accosted by harsh memories, she slid off the bar stool and took her wine to the expansive glass windows where the London Eye and the rest of the waterfront stained the river with neon rainbows.
“So is this how you start all your flashy dates? Or do they end here?”
“Flashy?” His image, only partially visible in the dim reflection on the glass, came around the bar to stand like a specter behind her.
“Women line up for the privilege, so I assume a date with you is pretty fantastic. Are they impressed when you bring them back here for a nightcap?” And a thorough seeing to? Don’t think about it.
“I don’t go out of my way to impress, if that’s what you’re implying. Dinner. A show. Does that differ hugely from one of your dates?”
She cut him a pithy look over her shoulder. “Since when do I have time to date?”
He absorbed that with a swallow of wine. “You’ve suggested a few times that I overworked you, but you also want me to believe your private life included a man who could have fathered Lucy. Which is the truth?”
“I was saving face when I said that,” she admitted to the window.
“So I was an ogre who demanded too much? You could have said something.”
Sirena hitched a shoulder, bothered that she felt guilty for not standing up for herself. “I didn’t want to let you down or make you think I couldn’t handle it.” There was her stepmother walking into the room again, tsking with dissatisfaction, setting the bar another notch higher so Sirena would never, ever reach it, no matter how hard she tried. But oh, how she tried, hating to fail and draw criticism. “Some of that’s my own baggage. I’m a workaholic. You can relate, I’m sure.”
He moved to stand beside her. “I thought you were happy with the workload. It didn’t occur to me I was killing your social life. You must have felt a lot of resentment.”
He was jumping to the conclusion that that’s why she’d stolen from him.
“No.” Annoyed, she walked to the far end of the windows. “I never had a social life, so there was nothing to kill.”
“You weren’t a virgin. There was at least one man in your life,” he shot back.
“One,” she agreed, staring into the stemmed glass. “His
“This woman full of backchat and sarcasm. The one with secrets and a double life. The real you.”
She might have flinched, but her chin quickly came forward to a defiant angle. Her gaze stayed low, showing him a rainbow of subtle shadows on her eyelids. “You’re attributing me with more mystery than I possess. Yes, I’m being more frank with you than I was, but you can’t tell your boss he’s being an arrogant jerk, can you?” She lifted her lashes to level a hard stare at him. “Not if you want to pay the bills.”
He thought about letting this devolve into something serious, but opted to keep things friendly. “I wouldn’t have fired you for saying that,” he assured her, waiting a beat before adding, “I would have said you were wrong.”
Her mouth twitched, then she let the laugh happen and he experienced a sensation like settling into your own sofa or bed. Definitely a bed, he thought as a tingle of pure, masculine craving rose inside him. He let himself admire her painted lips and graceful throat and the exposed alabaster skin on her chest to the swells of her breasts. Why had he never taken her to dinner before?
Oh, right. She had been working for him.
It was freeing not to have that obstacle between them anymore.
Slow down, he reminded himself as she sobered and flicked a glance in his direction. The sexual undercurrents might be acknowledged, finally, but just because he wanted to bed her didn’t mean he should.
Sirena couldn’t take the intense way Raoul was staring at her. Every single day of working for him, she’d longed for him to show some sign of interest in her. Now that he had, it scared the hell out of her. But then, she knew better than to trust he was genuinely interested.
Accosted by harsh memories, she slid off the bar stool and took her wine to the expansive glass windows where the London Eye and the rest of the waterfront stained the river with neon rainbows.
“So is this how you start all your flashy dates? Or do they end here?”
“Flashy?” His image, only partially visible in the dim reflection on the glass, came around the bar to stand like a specter behind her.
“Women line up for the privilege, so I assume a date with you is pretty fantastic. Are they impressed when you bring them back here for a nightcap?” And a thorough seeing to? Don’t think about it.
“I don’t go out of my way to impress, if that’s what you’re implying. Dinner. A show. Does that differ hugely from one of your dates?”
She cut him a pithy look over her shoulder. “Since when do I have time to date?”
He absorbed that with a swallow of wine. “You’ve suggested a few times that I overworked you, but you also want me to believe your private life included a man who could have fathered Lucy. Which is the truth?”
“I was saving face when I said that,” she admitted to the window.
“So I was an ogre who demanded too much? You could have said something.”
Sirena hitched a shoulder, bothered that she felt guilty for not standing up for herself. “I didn’t want to let you down or make you think I couldn’t handle it.” There was her stepmother walking into the room again, tsking with dissatisfaction, setting the bar another notch higher so Sirena would never, ever reach it, no matter how hard she tried. But oh, how she tried, hating to fail and draw criticism. “Some of that’s my own baggage. I’m a workaholic. You can relate, I’m sure.”
He moved to stand beside her. “I thought you were happy with the workload. It didn’t occur to me I was killing your social life. You must have felt a lot of resentment.”
He was jumping to the conclusion that that’s why she’d stolen from him.
“No.” Annoyed, she walked to the far end of the windows. “I never had a social life, so there was nothing to kill.”
“You weren’t a virgin. There was at least one man in your life,” he shot back.
“One,” she agreed, staring into the stemmed glass. “His
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