Girl Behind the Scandalous Reputation

Oh, for the love of God.

He blew out a breath and lifted his free hand to her hairline, stroked her brow. The frown eased instantly from her forehead and transferred to his own. If he wasn’t careful this whole situation could get seriously out of hand. He could just feel it.

Five minutes. He’d give her five minutes and then he’d move. Get back to the waiting e-mails on his smartphone.

Twenty minutes later, just as he was about to ease his fingers from her tangled tresses, his chauffeur announced that the car had stopped. Well, of course he’d noticed.

‘Drive us to the rear entrance, Bert,’ he said, trying to rouse Lily. She rubbed her soft cheek against his palm in such a trusting gesture his chest tightened.

God, she really was a stunning woman.

How could someone born looking like she did throw it all away on drugs? He knew she must have struggled, losing both her parents at a young age, but still—they all had their crosses to bear. What made some people rise above the cards life dealt them while others sank into the mire?

According to Jordana, Lily was sensible, reserved and down to earth. Yeah, and he was the Wizard of Oz.

‘You okay, Boss?’ Bert asked, concern shadowing his voice.

Great. He hadn’t noticed the car had pulled up again. He had to stop thinking of Lily as a desirable woman before it was no longer important that he neither liked nor respected her.

‘Never better.’ He exhaled, manoeuvring himself out of the car and effortlessly lifting the comatose woman into his arms. She stirred, but instantly resettled against him. No doubt a combination of shock and jet lag was laying her out cold.

A security guard opened the glass-plated door to his building, looking for all the world as if there was nothing out of place in his boss carrying an unconscious woman towards the service lift.

‘Nice afternoon, sir.’

Tristan grunted in return, flexing his arms under Lily’s dead weight.

He exited the lift and strode towards his office throwing a ‘don’t ask’ look at his ever-efficient secretary as she hurried around her desk to push his door open for him.

‘Hold all my calls,’ he instructed Kate, before kicking the door closed with his heel.

He tumbled Lily gently down onto the white leather sofa in his office and she immediately curled into a fetal position, pulling his jacket more tightly around her body while she slept.

Scratch laundering it, he thought. He’d just throw the bloody thing away.

CHAPTER FIVE

LILY was hot. Too hot. And something was tugging on her. Pulling her down. Jonah?

She blinked and tried to focus, and found herself lying in an unfamiliar room.

‘Missing your boyfriend already, Honey?’ An aggravated male voice she instantly recognised drawled from far away.

Lily tentatively raised herself up on her elbow to find Tristan seated behind a large desk strewn with leatherbound books and reams of paper.

For a moment she just stared at him in a daze, unconsciously registering his dark frown. Then the events of the morning started replaying through her mind like a silent movie on fast forward.

The flight, the drugs, the interrogation, Tristan—

‘You called his name,’ he prompted. ‘A number of times.’

Whose name?

Lily didn’t know what he was talking about. She didn’t have a lover and never had. She smoothed her fingers over her flushed face and wiped the edges of her mouth. It felt suspiciously as if she had drooled. Urgh! She was grimy and sweaty, as if she’d been asleep for days. Of course she hadn’t been—had she?

Lily peered at Tristan more closely and noticed the same white shirt he’d worn earlier, the sleeves now rolled to reveal muscular bronzed forearms. The same red tie hanging loosely around his neck and the top button of his shirt was undone. Okay, still Friday. Thank heavens. She glanced around his impressively large and impressively messy office.

For some reason she had expected someone so controlling to be a neat freak, but his desk was barely visible behind small towers of black, green and red legal tomes and spiral-bound notebooks. A set of inlaid bookcases lined half of one wall, with books stacked vertically and horizontally in a slapdash manner, and what looked like an original Klimt dominated another.