‘What happened to the turret?’
Why did he look so concerned? ‘Poppy’s renting it to someone else.’
‘Your best friend evicted you?’
‘God, no. She’d never ask that. I swapped rooms. Economies of scale.’
‘Economical is right,’ he murmured. ‘I have a linen closet bigger than this.’
She smiled tightly. ‘Are you always so gracious?’
Colour streaked up his jaw and it confused her as much as a rare trace of humility in him always did. ‘I just … It doesn’t fit.’
‘Nothing fits, as you can see.’
He dragged his gaze the very short distance from the left of the room to the right, taking in her pathetic bed and her mounded-up belongings. ‘Is this because you quit the firm?’
Something about the size of him in her tiny room, the male scent swilling into every corner, the sexy accent and maybe the multiple champagnes in quick succession stole all but the most essential air from her lungs. But not so much that she couldn’t protest his monumental ego.
‘The world does not revolve around you, Harry Mitchell, surprising as that may be.’
‘So you chose to live like this because …?’
‘Because I’m careful with my money.’ Oh, such lies. ‘And because it’s easier for Poppy to rent the best room than this one.’
It had nothing at all to do with the fact that despite earning stupid money for the past few years she’d actually managed to put very little of it away for the rainy day that had now come. That she’d gone a bit spend-mad with the first real money she’d ever had at her disposal and then become ridiculously accustomed to it. Reliant on it. Which made the myriad belongings cluttered around them now very quality belongings … but still clutter.
And not the gently shambolic clutter of her parents’ meagre belongings. The clutter of someone with a life rapidly outgrowing her circumstances.
Much like her ambition.
She’d always had a disconnection between what she wanted and what life had given her. The only girl in her childhood estate with big-city ambitions.
Many people might call it denial.
Behind her, Harry leaned on the wall while she began the hunt for her work ID card. It wasn’t in the pile she’d hastily thrown together at her desk. No, that was because she’d been wearing it that day.
Her jacket … Where was Wednesday’s jacket?
She turned back for the door and paused in front of his inconvenient bulk.
‘Excuse me.’
Harry straightened and she squeezed past, the back of her calves pressing against her bed and her front brushing against the expensive fabric of his open coat. His lips twisted as he stretched taller to give her space and politely focused over her head on a point across the small room. Izzy rummaged around in the clothes hanging on the back of the door they’d just come through until she found the cropped jersey jacket she’d worn on Wednesday, and unclipped the security tag still pinned to its lapel.
‘There you go.’ She pressed it into his front as she squeezed past again.
His fingers automatically came up to catch it before she dropped it, but they snagged hers instead, pressing them into his not inconsiderable chest.
Izzy froze. Hard heat soaked through his cotton shirt and charred her skin.
‘Seriously,’ he urged as her eyes flashed up to him, his fingers still holding hers captive, ‘reconsider.’
His voice had dropped down somewhere much more gravelly and, down there, his accent did its best work.
‘Seriously,’ she mimicked. ‘I don’t go back on my decisions.’
‘Ever?’
‘Ever.’
‘Even the bad ones?’
‘Especially the bad ones. There’s no going back from those, only forwards.’ And she knew that from experience.
She glanced up into his fathomless eyes and heard her next words tumble from her lips. Surprised even herself with her candour. ‘That job was killing me. It was time. Regardless of everything else.’
‘You’ve only been in it for a couple of years.’
‘It’s not boredom. It’s—’ me! ‘—the work.’
‘So, go for a different job within the firm.’
She suddenly became aware that her fingers still pressed into his pectoral region and she tugged them gently free and curled them at her side. ‘What is it to you? Why do you even care?’
‘Because you were a good employee,’ he murmured down at her, all smoky intensity. ‘My best.’
Pfff. ‘We fought every day.’
He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and the move effectively pushed him out from the wall and a smidge closer to her. She didn’t step back. On principle. This was her domain, tiny as it might be. The scented heat pumping off him pleasantly consumed her.
‘You challenged me every day,’ he corrected.
It felt odd testing him now, standing this close and peering up at him. Hardly a position of power. Yet she felt as if the cards were all hers. ‘You made some bad decisions.’
It was only when his lips twisted so fully that she remembered what a nice mouth he had. When it wasn’t issuing ridiculous demands.
‘Clearly you thought so. But they were my decisions to make.’
‘If you just want a bunch of yes-men in your department then why are you here, trying to get me back?’
‘Because diversity is apparently healthy in a workforce—’
‘Not if it’s only token.’
‘—and because, surprising as it might seem, I appreciate spirit in women.’
‘Like horses?’ She snorted.
He wisely ignored that. ‘Spirit and brains.’
‘Uh-huh. So all those times you and I ended up locking horns, that was … appreciation making you flush red?’
He did it again now and it added a dangerous kind of gleam to his eyes.
‘You tell me.’
She crossed her arms angrily and it only served to plump her minor cleavage up a tad in the aperture of her blouse when viewed from virtually above. Which, naturally, he took full advantage of. Izzy dropped her hands by her side, instead, to take away his toy. It left his eyes nowhere to go but back to hers, all simmering and smart and way, way too close.
‘Come on, Dean,’ he purred, ‘you can’t say our … discussions didn’t give the daily grind a productive boost.’
There were times she’d have liked to have boosted Harry Mitchell right out of his twelfth-floor window. ‘Strange as it may seem to you, my productivity goes up when I’m respected professionally.’
His eyebrows shot up. ‘You think I don’t respect you?’
‘You don’t respect my opinion. Anyone’s really.’
‘Disagreeing with it and not respecting it aren’t the same thing. Anyway, occasionally I did agree with you.’
She