‘Tired? Why?’
Oh, for God’s sake.
‘Just a...a late night.’
She wondered what Max would say if she gave him the bald truth: A late night transferring a few sexual fantasies about you from my head to the page. Yeah—maybe not.
He let go of her hand—whew!—and folded his arms so his hands were jammed under his armpits.
‘Oh. A late night. I thought maybe—’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing. Must be lunchtime, right? I assume you have...’ Another clearing of the throat. ‘Do you have plans?’
She got to her feet with alacrity. ‘Yes, I do.’
He watched her for a long moment. X-ray eyes.
Catherine’s hand reached for the button that wasn’t there, and at last Max waved her towards the door. ‘Can you be back by one-thirty?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Catherine said, and dodged around him to grab her notepad.
She hurried from the office as Max reefed the report he’d taken from her in-tray off the desk, as though it would bite him if he didn’t subdue it.
Typical Max! He never just picked something up—he had to throttle it.
Back at her desk, Catherine neatened her work area mechanically. Simmering at the back of her mind was the worrying certainty that her working relationship with Max had gone off the rails this morning. That she’d been caught out.
Something’s wrong. Are you ill?
Yes, I’m sick with lust! What are you going to do about it?
He’d bypass the thermometer and go straight for the psychiatrist if he knew the truth.
She heard a curse float out from his office. He always cursed and tore his hands through his hair when something outside his control slowed him down, so he must have seen something wrong in the report.
She caught herself smiling, and pinched her lips to stop it. What the hell was there to smile at? If there was something wrong in the report Max had only himself to blame, because he’d choofed off to Canada instead of sticking around to beat it into shape.
And him choofing off to Canada was none of her business. She wished he’d go back to Canada. She wished he’d relocate to Canada and email his work in. Because it was not ‘our’ resort. It was his resort. And she would do well to remember that. Sharp, clear distinction between work and personal. Because work wasn’t personal. Work was work.
And, now she thought of it, she was going to change that scene in Passion Flower. That scene with Alex and Jennifer working in the office over a Thai meal—which she would make a...a...a Chinese meal. In fact she would delete the whole scene. Because in reality that interlude had ended with a brusque ‘Thank you for your help’ and a drive away—and what was so romantic about that? What did she think she was doing, turning that into a ‘Jenny, do you know how long I’ve wanted you?’ moment, complete with a slow reel in and a soft kiss?
She was a freaking idiot!
And her damned book sucked.
‘Sucked’: word of the day.
Her eyes moved to her in-tray, where her dark secret was buried.
Uh-oh. Where her dark secret was not buried.
Because the manuscript was sitting brazenly on top.
A whoosh of panic had her reaching for the back of her chair to steady herself. Until she remembered that the report had been covering it and Max had taken the report. That was the only reason the book was sitting there exposed.
Nothing to panic over.
Until she reached out to grab the pages so she could stick them in her briefcase...and saw the page on top.
She distinctly remembered scoring a red mark on the page when Max had called her name.
But there was no red mark on the page.
Catherine’s heart stopped, then started pounding. She slid into her chair, boneless. Flicked through her in-tray again. Sat stock-still for one appalled moment.
No red mark anywhere.
So...if the report had been on top of the manuscript, that meant...
No—God, no. Max Rutherford had picked up a few pages of her book along with his report!
And Max had started reading that report as she was leaving the office.
Hot, then cold, then hot. Hyperventilation. Paper bag...she needed a paper bag. Brain not working. Brain dead.
Then adrenaline tore through her veins and her synapses fired—electrified by pure fear—and she latched on to two essential facts: one, if Max had read even one sentence of those pages he would have come screeching out already and, two, she had to get those pages back.
Get them back immediately. But without running into his office, waving her arms and looking like an insane asylum escapee.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
Nope—there was nothing for it. It was physically impossible for her to walk calmly into Max’s office.
She was going in like an insane person.
Max sighed, unwilling to give up until he’d read every page of the report—even if he had yet to take in a single word.
His mind wasn’t on it. His mind wasn’t in the office at all. His mind was at lunch.
But he wasn’t going to acknowledge whose lunch his mind was at, or why it was there. Because he was a moron, and had done nothing right for two weeks, and nothing had felt right the whole time he’d been away, and enough was enough, and it was time to put his mind back where it should be.
So he just sat at his desk, flipping, skimming, flipping, skimming. Counting down pages until he found a word he could take in: ‘Conclusion’.
One rush of air later he found himself holding nothing.
The report had been whisked out of his hands so fast it took a few seconds for him to feel the sting of the paper cut that had just been inflicted in the web between his thumb and his index finger.
‘Ouch!’
He looked up.
Catherine. Looking horrified.
That was...weird.
Catherine North never looked anything but completely composed. At least she hadn’t until today.
But, then again, Catherine North had never worn figure-hugging black that emphasised every mind-numbingly delicious curve until today. And Catherine North had never let a glossy, finger-luring curl stray out of place until today. And Catherine North had never had the skin of her legs visible until today. And Catherine North—
Was definitely looking horrified.
‘Lunch date stand you up?’ he couldn’t resist asking, wondering if there was a more direct way he could ask her who she was having lunch with without making himself look more of a moron than he already was.
Eyes huge behind the lenses of her tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, Catherine shook her head.
She didn’t seem inclined to add anything, so Max asked, ‘Did you want that report for a particular reason?’
He watched, fascinated, as the tip of her tongue came out to scoot quickly across her bottom lip.
She had the sexiest bottom lip he’d ever seen.
‘No,’ she said, and the bottom lip pinched itself in, in its usual repressed fashion.