Ellie behaved by the rules and she believed in them. It was just the way she was. She liked them. She liked the sense of order they conferred. She had lived a peripatetic life with her wandering, nomadic, hippy parents. She had spent a childhood that had spanned the continents, from India as a toddler, through Australia with a brief stint in New Zealand, before returning to Europe via Ibiza, Greece and Spain. She had barely seen the inside of any schools because nothing as dull and as institutional as a school had been allowed to cloud the endlessly blue horizons of her free-spirited parents. Routine had been their enemy and she had become the unwitting victim of their scatty, idealised belief system.
For Ellie, being on the move had fostered a deeply ingrained desire for stability.
By the time her feet had hit the ground at fourteen, and her parents had ruefully accepted that their thirst to see every corner of the globe had been sufficiently quenched, Ellie had thrown herself into the joy of going nowhere with a passion that had almost been physical.
She was a stickler for detail but with a creative streak that had been passed down from her arty parents. That combination had won her her first job at a major advertising agency and, from there, she had been invited to take a chance and team up with Stephen and Adam, both ambitious CEOs at the same firm, to form their fledgling agency. It was the biggest risk she had ever taken, and she had taken it after careful consideration, because she had felt confident about their prospects at capturing a niche but significant market with a media-savvy audience. Everything she did was done with consideration, with nothing left to chance. Like the portfolio she was clutching. A portfolio that should have been displayed in the sanitised confines of a designated office space. With the whiteboard. And no treadmills or punch bags in sight.
She eyed Niccolo’s muscled torso as his T-shirt clung to it, the length of his legs, the strength of his arms, the powerful ripple of muscle and sinew, and she shivered. Here was a man who scorned rules and regulations, and now she wondered just how she was supposed to form any sort of rapport with a man who thought nothing of conducting a meeting in a gym. In the world of advertising, rapport was top dog.
Worse. He was now going to conduct his meeting in the changing rooms of a gym.
He opened the door and she shrieked to a stop, nerves all over the place, fingers grasping the briefcase until her knuckles were white.
Niccolo turned around, both hands on the ends of the towel looped over his shoulders.
Under normal circumstances, this was not the venue he would have chosen to conduct a meeting, but he had reached his office later than normal. Eight instead of his usual six.
He had also not been in the best of moods. His last lover had embarked on on a kiss-and-tell rampage in the press after he had broken off their relationship, and his mother and three sisters had seen fit to link arms in a united front, their mission being to subject him to full-frontal verbal assault on his colourful love life.
Where he had gone to see his mother for dinner at her exquisite cottage near Oxford, expecting some light chat and the usually excellent food her private chef was summoned to provide whenever there were guests, he had instead found himself in the company of not just his mother but his three sisters.
Each of whom had very strong opinions on the sort of women he dated.
He had consequently overslept, and the only thing he had wanted to do when he’d reached his office was to work off some of his stress in the company of a punch bag and a gruelling set of weights.
And, in fairness, he hadn’t expected a woman. And certainly not a woman who looked as though she sucked on lemons for fun.
Right now, she was staring at him with a mixture of disapproval and consternation.
Her coat was still on and her brown hair was neatly scraped back into a bun. A pair of heavy spectacles would have transformed her into the archetypal school mistress.
Although, he had to concede, her eyes were a rather interesting shade of hazel and her mouth, dragged into an unforgiving thin line at the moment, could be quite attractive, because her lips were full and pink.
‘You’ve stopped,’ he said politely. ‘Why have you stopped?’
‘I’m afraid I really don’t think it appropriate for me to have a business meeting with you in a changing room.’
‘Oh, dear. As you can see, I’m currently not in my suit, and after an hour and a half in this place I really need to get out of my sweaty gear.’
Two bright patches of hot colour had appeared in her cheeks. Her skin tingled as though she was standing too close to an open flame and, in response to those physical responses, she found herself clutching the briefcase ever harder.
He was lounging against the doorframe with the door only partially open behind him.
‘Perhaps I could wait for you in your office,’ Ellie suggested. She stared at his face, because it seemed the safest place to rest her eyes—the other option being his barely clothed body—but he was so stunningly beautiful that he brought her out in a cold sweat. She desperately wanted to ignore his superior height and the powerful perfection of his muscular frame but it was like trying to ignore a tsunami.
‘Perhaps you could...’ Niccolo mused, eyes firmly focused on her heart-shaped face, which was awash with uncomfortable colour. ‘But no. I’m afraid not. I haven’t got enough time to spare.’ He straightened. ‘If the account means anything to your agency, then regrettably you’re going to have to get past your discomfort with my inappropriate behaviour and follow me.’ He grinned and raised his eyebrows, waiting for her response.
‘This—this is highly unconventional,’ Ellie stuttered in a last-ditch attempt to stay on the safe side of the partially opened door.
‘Stickler for convention?’ Niccolo asked, tilting his head to one side and allowing the silence to trickle between them like an electric current.
‘Yes.’ Ellie didn’t hesitate to set him straight on that score. If there was one thing her eternally unconventional parents had taught her, it was the value of convention.
Niccolo laughed with genuine amusement. How old was she? Somewhere in her twenties, but she dressed like a woman in her fifties, and that prissy approach was more reminiscent of a granny laying down laws than a young woman working in the exciting, hot-shot world of advertising.
The other contenders he had interviewed briefly for this assignment had been trendy to the point of wearisome. Hats, beards and wire-rimmed spectacles on the men and painfully cutting-edge outfits on the women. He didn’t think any of them would have been fazed at having to conduct their interview in a gym. He suspected that the women would have actively enjoyed the experience.
This particular woman looked as though the experience was on a par with being locked in a room with a dangerous airborne virus.
In a world that was largely predictable, Niccolo found that he was beginning to enjoy himself.
‘Well, at least you’re honest,’ he observed. ‘Although, I confess I’m not at my best when I’m around people who tether themselves to rules and regulations. I like people who can think out of the box.’
‘I’m a great believer in rules and regulations.’ Ellie’s mouth tightened, nostrils flaring as she breathed in the heady musk of his masculine scent. Her eyes were drawn to the V of his black tee shirt and then lingered. The tee shirt was tight enough to accentuate the hard width of his chest and the tapering slimness of his waist. She could glimpse some dark hair just where the V of the tee shirt ended, and it was so strangely and intensely masculine a sight that her breath hitched in her throat for a few shocking seconds, then she hurriedly looked away, heart hammering like a sledge hammer inside her chest.
‘But...’ she breathed deeply, steadying the sudden race of her pulses ‘...that’s not to say that I don’t think out of the box.’ She visibly relaxed as some of her