The Billionaire's Intern. Maisey Yates
Читать онлайн книгу.
say anything about you showing up to work hours late, or not at all. And you did not say what I should do in the event that I was left to field things by myself.”
Logan grabbed a towel off the bar to his left and started rubbing it over his chest and back, the action much more interesting than it should have been, all things considered. The man was wiping sweat off himself, for heaven’s sake. There should be nothing interesting about that.
“Then consider this a formal notification and warning,” he said, his tone hard. “No one comes in here.”
“If you feel that strongly about it, you should probably consider locking the door.”
Addison knew the moment the words left her mouth that she’d made a mistake. She never made a mistake. She never said the wrong thing.
Until now. Until Logan.
Logan cast the towel onto the floor, stalking toward her, his blue eyes fixed on hers.
Reflexively, Addison took a step back, then another as he continued to advance on her. She didn’t stop until her shoulder blades butted up against the wall. Logan drew closer, all muscle and heat and angry man. And it all did something to her. Something that she didn’t understand, something she didn’t want.
She should be afraid of him, and really, she was. But the fear was mixed with something else, a low hum of excitement that started low in her belly and radiated outward, spread downward, pooled in places lower. Slick and sweet and wrong. So very, very wrong.
“Or perhaps,” he said, “you should have considered knocking. Even with my limited social skills, I understand that it’s customary.”
She drew in a shaking breath, tried to speak with a steady voice. “You make it sound like it’s a foreign custom to you.”
“I understand what people do. And I even understand why. For me, what civility has lost is its importance.” He placed a hand on the wall behind her leaning in, his breath fanning across her cheek. She looked up, into his eyes, and she could see exactly what he was trying to say. Because there was no spark of humanity there, no facade at all. It was like staring down into a bottomless well, and where she might’ve expected to find a soul, she saw nothing but darkness. “You can only cross so many lines before you’ve gone too far to come back.”
Her throat felt hot, dry and prickly, her skin too tight for her body. And yet again, she could feel words she shouldn’t say pressing against her lips. And yet again, they won. “You’ve crossed those lines?”
He lifted his hand, his palm hovering just above her cheek. She expected him to touch her, expected him to cup her cheek. Found herself anticipating it. But instead he lowered his hand and took a step back as though he’d been burned.
“You don’t want to know about me, Addison,” he said, his voice rough.
For some reason, she wanted to push. Wanted him to come back to her, and look at her with those dangerous eyes. She should want him to stay over there. She should want him to stay away from her. But she didn’t.
“But if you don’t tell me your story, how will you frighten me away?”
A cold smile curved his lips upward. “I’m sure I’ll find a way,” he said, bending over and picking up a T-shirt from the floor, tugging it over his head. She held the sound of disappointment in as he concealed all that gorgeous skin.
What was wrong with her? She didn’t do this. She didn’t…ogle men. Most especially men who seemed to have something essential missing from their makeup. Hadn’t she had enough of men with no conscience?
He has a conscience. He’s not like Jason.
She was not going to listen to her inner voice. Her inner voice had proven to be a very poor judge of character.
Even knowing that, it didn’t change the fact that looking at Logan made her feel slightly breathless and a little light-headed. The simple fact was, she had no experience with men like him. She had no experience with men at all.
All the boys at school were just that—boys. A category Eddie most certainly fell into.
Logan Black was not a boy. Not even close. Logan Black was a man. In every sense of the word.
She wasn’t fortified against the kind of magnetism he possessed, against that caliber of body. Wasn’t fortified against…whatever the feelings were that she was having. Feelings that seemed to have materialized as heat and localized in her face, her stomach and her…oh Lord. It was really hot in here.
She took a moment to look away from him, and regain her sanity, while taking in the rest of the room. It wasn’t a gym in any way she recognized it. There was…scaffolding everywhere. A thick rope suspended from the ceiling. A punching bag. No treadmills or ellipticals. No fancy equipment of any kind. A lot of it looked as though it might have been homemade. It was crude and simple. And looked well beyond her fitness routine, which consisted in a walk down the street to get a bagel and a latte.
Not that walking on the sidewalk was any mean feat. Especially considering these days it meant dodging paparazzi.
“What time is it?” he asked.
His words brought her attention back to him. And she tried to keep her focus on his face, and not his impossibly broad chest and narrow waist, which had now had the veil torn from them, so to speak.
Of course, his face was just as distracting, and now that she’d really noticed his body, it was even more so. And she didn’t even want to know why that was.
“It’s nearly one o’clock.”
He frowned and reached above his head, gripping the bar. “I lost track of time.” He lifted himself, with one damn arm, thank you very much, and curved his legs over the bar, hanging upside down. Then he curled upward, his chest meeting his knees. The world’s most extreme sit-up.
“Oh well.” She tried very hard to look anywhere but at him. “Do you often lose track of time?”
“Does it really matter to you, Addison? After all, you’re just hiding out from the press, aren’t you?”
For some reason, his words caused a rash of annoyance to rock through her body. Maybe that was the underlying reason for being here, but for some reason now she felt driven to do her job. And to do it well. Maybe because the recent events made her feel that she had no direction, no purpose. No father to please. No love interest for whom to transform herself into the perfect society bride.
It all made her feel that she needed to do something for herself. Even if, for now, that just meant doing well at this internship.
Succeeding in this was better than drifting. Anything was better than that.
“Maybe,” she said, “but I’m here. So it seems like I should try to do a little more than just coast through this. Anyway, as interesting as your workout routine is, I feel like we should discuss the job.”
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим