It was the final “uh” that broke the camel’s back—that, and the tap on his door that told him his terrified and definitely temporary assistant was about to step into his office.
Marco swung toward the door as it opened, his patience, what little remained of it, shot to hell.
“What in the name of God do you want now?” he roared at his PA. Except it wasn’t his PA.
It was the woman who had kept him awake most of the night, the woman he’d hoped he’d never see again.
Emily Madison.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emily’s day had got off to a truly hideous start.
Well, why wouldn’t it? Her night had certainly been a mess.
She still couldn’t believe what she’d done. Losing her temper, losing her job…
Nola wasn’t home. She had a boyfriend, an actor, and she often stayed at his place. That was fine with Emily but last night; she’d have given anything to have Nola there so she’d have had someone to talk to. She’d have told her about the disaster at the Tune-In. And she’d have broken the news that she wasn’t going to come up with her half of this month’s rent.
The sooner she got that over with, the better.
And then there was what had happened with that man. Marco Santini.
That kiss.
Exhausted as she was, Emily still hadn’t been able to fall asleep. She’d gotten up, made a cup of tea, paced the tiny apartment, turned the TV on, stared at it blankly and then paced some more.
At five, she’d crawled into bed, dragged the blanket over her head and decided she just wasn’t going to think about any of it. If she just got an hour’s sleep…
Which was why she’d pretended not to hear Nola come in and climb into her bed on the other side of the curtain they’d hung between the two beds in the pathetic pretense that they each had more than four feet of privacy.
Within minutes, she’d heard Nola’s breathing turn slow and even.
If only hers would do the same, but then, she had weighty things on her mind. No money. No job.
Marco Santini.
And wasn’t that ridiculous?
He had kissed her. So what? She wasn’t a child. She’d been kissed before.
But not like that.
Or maybe the truth was that no kiss had ever affected her that way. She liked kissing. Liked sex. Even though she’d always thought it was a little overrated.
Lissa and Jaimie sometimes teased her about her attitude.
Or her lack of one.
Always gently, of course, because they were her best friends, but she had never been the one to come home after a date flushed from what had gone on in the back seat of somebody’s Chevy.
On the other hand, she had never been the one to sob from the pain of a broken heart.
“Why would any woman in her right mind get involved with a man?” Jaimie had demanded in a tight voice during a three-way Skype session a couple of weeks ago.
“A damned good question,” Lissa had said.
Emily had looked at her computer monitor, from one sister’s face to the other’s.