Off Limits

Oh, really? my brain prompts sarcastically, rolling its eyes with such force that my head starts to throb. Really?

Really.

I jab my finger onto the lift’s ‘down’ button and wait. As I step in I see Jack emerge from the boardroom, looking every bit the confident billionaire bachelor.

Ugh.

I press the button for the car park impatiently, and slam my palm against the ‘door shut’ button, holding my breath and praying I can avoid a shared lift ride with Jack to the basement. I’m not sure if I’d shout at him or jump him but neither is advisable.

I tell myself I’m glad when he doesn’t arrive, jam his hand in the closing doors, out of breath from racing to catch me like men do in movies. The lift cruises downwards, taking my plummeting stomach with it.

Hughes is waiting in the limousine. I smile at him tersely as he steps out and opens the door for me, grateful to slide into the luxurious leather interior. I stare at the screen of my phone and that ridiculous sense that I might cry is back.

What the hell is happening to me?

I tap out a quick email to Sophia, asking her to clear the rest of my afternoon—from memory I had a phone conference scheduled and I’m really not in the mood. Nothing won’t wait until tomorrow.

I double-check the itinerary I’ve been sent for the Australia trip—it’s jam-packed, but that makes sense. Jack’s too busy—and so am I, come to think of it—to go halfway around the world on holiday.

He’s setting up an office in Sydney, which will start with a staff of almost four hundred to oversee two of the companies he’s recently acquired there, as well as a winery in New Zealand that he’s bidding on, should he be successful. It’s a huge venture, and it’s the first time I’ve been involved in anything like it.

Challenges like this are another reason I love working for Jack. Really, I was hardly qualified for this kind of job when I started working for him—my background in law and then banking give me excellent corporate insights, and yet this just works. He’s always challenged me. Trusted me. Thrown down gauntlets and stood back to watch me pick them up.

He’s doing it now, isn’t he? Pushing me in ways I could never have imagined. But instead of meeting his challenge I’m acting like a terrified child.

A frown tugs at my lips. Why have I just run away from him? He wants to fuck me and I want that, too.

The car door opens abruptly and I tilt my head upwards, expecting to see Hughes’s face. It’s Jack instead, and he’s visibly pissed off.

Ignoring the way my pulse immediately starts to fire in my veins, I send him a look of barbed curiosity. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

He doesn’t answer. Instead he leans forward and taps on the glass that separates Hughes from us, then settles back into the seat beside me. The car glides out of its parking space, moving through the underground car park with finesse.

‘Jack?’ I snap, angling in my seat to face him fully.

‘Not now.’

My eyebrows shoot upwards. Even for the dictatorial side of Jack, this is a tad too much. ‘“Not now”?’

‘No.’ He turns to face me, and there’s such a searing...something in his expression that I blink several times, trying to understand him. This—us.

But I get nada.

‘Okay, but I think we need to talk,’ I respond after a moment.

He glares at me and my temper bubbles. ‘I don’t want to talk. I want to fuck.’

My jaw drops. ‘You don’t just get to say that!’

A muscle jerks in his cheek. He turns away from me, sits back in the seat, his body rigid, his face tight.

‘Not another word.’

I’m not afraid of Jack. Not even a bit. Many times I’ve gone up against him, arguing my case until he either sees it my way or at least understands my perspective. I won’t do that now. I’m too fond of Hughes, and the idea of subjecting him to the tirade I’m about to unleash doesn’t appeal to me, so I bite my tongue—literally—curling my fingernails into my palms as I stare out at the City.

It takes me a moment to realise we’re not going towards Hampstead.

‘I want to go home,’ I say coldly.