Out of Hours...Boardroom Seductions: One-Night Mistress...Convenient Wife / Innocent in the Italian's Possession / Hot Boss, Wicked Nights. Anne Oliver
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his history with Natalie.
Not that there was a history. There had very determinedly—on his part—not been any history at all.
Except for that one disastrous totally spontaneous kiss.
He scrubbed his hands over his face now, remembering it.
He had never done anything so stupid before or since. He’d always been absolutely impeccable in his workplace behavior. And if the parking garage had not been precisely part of the workplace, that was pretty much legal hairsplitting and Christo knew it. Natalie had been working at the firm, and if he wasn’t her boss he was certainly senior on the totem pole—and he damned well should have known better.
He had known better.
It had simply been a combination of joy and relief. And desire.
Time to call a spade a spade. But doing so didn’t make the desire go away. Old memories welled up. He squashed them. Memories of scant hours ago took their place. He resisted them, too.
He prowled some more. He cracked his knuckles, then pressed his palms down against the desktop, hunching his shoulders and staring blankly down at the paper he’d given up trying to make notes on. He couldn’t even see what he’d written so far. Visions of Natalie teased at the corners of his mind.
“Stop it,” he told himself sharply.
It was perverse, this desire he felt for Natalie Ross’s slender yet curvy body—as perverse now as it had been the first time.
Christo didn’t do rampant desire. He liked women—in their place. Which was not in his mind or in a relationship. Only in his bed.
He hadn’t lusted madly after any female since his teens. Now, at the age of thirty-two, he should be well over that sort of thing. He was well over it!
He’d walked away from Natalie Ross once, for God’s sake. He’d done the right thing. The sensible thing. The only thing.
Now he gave up trying to work. He went out the front door and crossed The Strand, dropping down onto the path along the beach and beginning to run.
So, fine. The words pounded in his head as he picked up the pace. He’d resisted Natalie Ross before. He’d simply do it again.
FOR three days Natalie didn’t see Christo at all.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. She caught a glimpse or two of him in the morning as he headed off to work while she was taking her time, deliberately not venturing out of the apartment, staying in to feed the cat and do some scheduling work on her laptop for the rent-a-wife business she ran with her cousin, while she incidentally kept one eye on the window so she could see when he had left.
In the evening of the second day she saw him down on the patio of the garden sanding the boards that had been delivered for her mother’s bookcases.
That had been more than a glimpse. In fact, she’d stood there, unable to tear her eyes away from the sight of a shirtless Christo Savas bending over a board, a sheen of sweat glinting across his bare muscular back as he sanded the wood vigorously, then straightened and smoothed his hand along the grain.
She’d lingered in the window until his cell phone rang and in answering it, he turned and his gaze lifted to meet hers.
Instantly, Natalie stepped back, face burning at being caught out ogling him. She nearly tripped over Herbie in her haste to retreat to the kitchen where she poured herself a tall glass of ice water which she drank right down.
She stayed well away from the window after that, not venturing near until the sun had set and the world was completely dark.
The next day she didn’t see him at all. She got back to the apartment shortly before suppertime, expecting that she might run into him in the patio and steeling herself for the encounter. But he was nowhere to be seen, and the boards were stacked in the garage, still awaiting stain.
The next evening she didn’t see him, either.
Her mother rang that night. “I would have called sooner,” she said, “but I didn’t want you to think I was hovering.”
Natalie smiled. “Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“So how are things going? Does Herbie miss me?”
“Of course. But things are fine. Herbie is thriving. The plants are surviving.”
“Of course they are,” her mother said with quiet satisfaction. “I knew I could count on you. How’s Christo?”
“What?” The unexpectedness of the question made Natalie’s voice crack.
“I wondered how Christo was coping,” Laura said. “I know you aren’t feeding him dinner, but I thought you might have talked to him, found out how things are going.”
“He doesn’t appear to be starving,” Natalie said drily. “So I assume he’s getting nourishment.” But then, because she knew her mother would wonder at her edgy tone, she said, “I really haven’t seen him to talk to, Mom. Only once, the day I got here.”
“Well, I hope things are going all right at work,” her mother said. “The temp who usually helps out is working elsewhere. So I had to train another woman before I left. It should be fine,” she said, but her voice trailed off and she sounded a little worried.
Natalie steeled herself against it. “You’ll have to ask Christo about that,” she said briskly.
“I have,” Laura said. “I called him tonight. He said everything was under control.”
“Then you should believe him.”
“I know. I do.” A pause. “But he sounded—I don’t know—stressed. I hope he’d let me know if it wasn’t all right,” Laura added pensively. “Oh, drat. There’s the bell again.”
“Bell?”
Her mother let out a weary sigh. “Your grandmother has a bell. She rings it when she wants something.”
“Let me guess. She wants things often.” Natalie smiled at the thought of her imperious grandmother ringing a bell to make her mother jump. It would delight the old lady no end.
“Every other minute,” Laura concurred. “Coming, Mother. I’ll give you a call in a few days,” she said to Natalie. “Wish me luck.”
Natalie hung up and was silently wishing her mother luck when there was a knock on her front door.
She opened it to find Christo standing there, still in the dark trousers and long-sleeved dress shirt he would have worn to work. The top button was undone, his tie was askew, and he had his suit coat slung over his shoulder.
“Your mother says you run a rent-a-wife agency,” he said without preamble.
Natalie blinked in surprise. But she stopped herself before she wetted dry lips. “That’s right,” she said.
“Do you rent office personnel, too?”
“Office…”
“I need someone to take your mother’s place.” His jaw worked.
“I thought everything was under control?”
When he narrowed his gaze at her, Natalie shrugged. “I just got off the phone with my mother. She said she’d talked to you and that you said everything was fine.”
“I lied.” He dropped his jacket over the porch railing and raked fingers through already mussed hair. “They didn’t work out.”
“They?”
“The first one was bossy to the kids. Acted like she was some damn mother superior.”
Kids?