Hero (Hero 1)

Caine stared at me like I’d grown two heads. “It’s none of your business what happened. Just do it.”

I was outraged. Actually outraged. I struggled to berate him as politely as possible. “Shouldn’t this be something you do yourself?”

He stood up abruptly and it took everything within me to keep my chin jutted out in defiance at his sudden change in demeanor. His expression was hard, his words clipped. “If I do it myself, that suggests to her more than I’d like to suggest. This way she gets the message loud and clear and it will, furthermore, make her feel better that she’s shot of me, a guy who didn’t even bother to break things off with her himself.”

“You’re just …,” I sputtered.

“I’m just?” he taunted, almost goading me to do something to mess up my job.

I held out my hand, palm up, in answer. “Card.”

Satisfied, Caine pulled out his wallet.

Almost an hour and a half later, I stood in the doorway of Phoebe Billingham’s office, a doorway I wished was closed for privacy, considering that her office abutted an open-plan office shared by many.

Phoebe was of average height, but nothing else was average about her. She had gorgeous, huge brown eyes, creamy, pale skin, full lips, and a cute button nose. She was also slender in a way that if she’d been taller she could have been a model. Clothes just molded perfectly to her body. Aside from how gorgeous she was, she was clearly a smart woman, and when I first made myself known to her she’d been all friendly smiles and happy to meet me.

Now those brown eyes were filled with angry tears as she glared down at the necklace. I wanted to die. I wanted the floor to swallow me and just suffocate me so I could escape this situation.

Phoebe closed the Tiffany box and looked up at me. Something I didn’t like crept into her hurt gaze as she raked those eyes down my body and back up to my face. She sneered. “Oh, I understand this situation perfectly,” she said, her voice carrying behind me into the open-plan office.

There was a hush in the air as the people nearest us heard the bitter anger in those words.

“Do me a favor.” She thrust the necklace at me. “Tell your boss not to send a whore to do a man’s job.”

There was utter silence behind me. My cheeks burned with indignation at the insult.

It took everything within me to hold off my humiliation and cling to my compassion. Stiffly I took the box from her and marched out of there with my head held high despite the undesirable attention focused on me.

Forty minutes later I stormed through the building and straight into Caine’s office without knocking.

I stumbled to a stop at the sight of him and Ms. Fenton sitting across from each other at the sofas by the window. Caine was not happy at my interruption. He heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Linda, go back to your office. I’ll be there in a second to continue our discussion.”

Ms. Fenton frowned at my lack of etiquette as she passed, but I could give a crap.

I’d had forty minutes to stew in my rage.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Caine snapped, standing up and striding over to me to do his intimidating “I’m bigger and taller and scarier than you” thing.

But I was too mad to be intimidated.

I threw the jewelry box with the necklace in it at him, and he blinked in surprise before somehow managing to catch the damn thing. “Don’t you ever make me do that again.”

He tensed, suddenly alert. “What happened?”

“Well, the entire office of the Harvard University Press now thinks I’m a whore.”

Caine’s jaw clenched and his face clouded over instantly. “What?”

I shook my head at the fact that for a smart man he could be pretty stupid. “What did you think would happen when you sent me, a woman, to dump your girlfriend? Phoebe told me to tell you—and I might add how very junior high this all is—not to send a whore to do a man’s job.”

His dark eyes blazed. “She called you a whore?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

Caine marched to his desk and picked up his phone. A few seconds later he growled into it, “I got the message you gave Alexa … Yeah, well, your method of delivery was shittier than mine.” If it was possible he looked even angrier at whatever she had to say. “For that you can kiss good-bye that dream position of yours on the art institute’s board of directors … Oh, I can and I will.” He hung up and threw his phone on the desk with irritation.

I stood there, unsure what to do or how to react to the fact that he was pissed on my behalf.

Caine lifted his brooding gaze to me, but he started at my feet and slowly worked his way up my body so that by the time he hit my eyes I felt like I was going to come out of my skin. “I didn’t think,” he murmured.

What? Was he just now realizing I was a woman who, if I may say so myself, was attractive? So I wasn’t a knockout like Phoebe Billingham, but I was still a good-looking female employee he sent over to dump her.

Not good.

“It won’t happen again.”

Okay, that was as close to an apology as I was going to get out of him. And it was more than I’d expected.

I nodded and we held each other’s stare until I started to feel like all the air was going out of the room.

I wrenched my eyes from his and immediately felt like I could breathe again. “Would you like coffee?” I asked, my way of saying I accepted his nonapology.