“I’m surprised you’re encouraging this. After last night, I thought you’d tell me to turn him down.”
“I can’t tell you what to do with your business.”
“Oh, but you can tell me when it’s time to go home? You can tell me I drink too much coffee?”
“That’s about personal safety and wellbeing, not business.”
“I fail to see the distinction,” she lied, just to defy him. He was so bloody frustrating, staring at her with that impassive, unbothered expression.
And then he tilted his head a fraction, and a single brow went up, that stray lock of hair falling across it. “Speaking of: did you eat anything this morning?”
“I’m not answering that,” she said, icily, smiling in a way she’d been told was terrifying. “You absolute tit.”
He shrugged again, unfazed.
“Did you know that you’re very unpleasant to be around?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever thought of doing something about that?”
“No.”
“You–” She swallowed her retort – it was a waste of breath anyway – and closed her eyes. Counted silently to ten. When she opened them, she found that he’d risen, silently, and stood now at the coffee cart. He returned a moment later, and set something on her desk, just beside her hand. One of the high-protein granola bars she supplied for the office lounge.
She sent him her frostiest glare.
In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You can hate me. You can curse at me. You can insult me and you can call Maverick and tell him you wish I was dead. But I’m going to do my job anyway.” Something in his gaze shifted, stubborn and intense. “You’re a strong woman. Used to getting your way. But you have no idea where I come from. You can’t get your way with me. You can’t shame me or guilt me or force me to do anything. My president told me to keep you safe. To look after you. So.” He nodded to the granola bar. “Eat your breakfast.”
She entertained a very vivid, satisfying fantasy of standing up and whipping the granola bar at his head. Envisioned the red dent it would leave between his brows and the way, even if he didn’t flinch, he would at least blink when it struck him.
But that would accomplish nothing save making her look like a petulant child.
She had to close her eyes again, and count to ten once more. Even grip her hands together, under the desk where he couldn’t see.Nobody speaks to me like that, she thought, and didn’t say, the words getting stopped up in her throat. He’d just told her nothing she said would make a difference; that he would continue to be a dictatorial gobshite. Would probably even enjoy it.
She opened her eyes, and he was still watching her…some indecipherable glint in his eyes. Relish? Determination?
She picked up the granola bar and tore the wrapper on one end. Took a massive, undignified bite and spoke around it. “Happy?” It came outhaffy.
He took a slow sip of coffee, maintaining eye contact the whole time. “Da.”
Eight
The rest of the day proved uneventful. Meetings with her designers about the menswear line, which included a Skype call up on the projector with Ian in “Jean-Jacque” mode, smoked glasses, ponytail, and flawless accent included. She nearly laughed and ruined the whole thing, but turned it into a polite cough instead and pressed on.
Then it was a fitting with one of her most dependable and popular models; the forwarding of contracts and signing of others.
At one, after enough deliberation to leave her dizzy, she fired off an email to Donovan before she could think better of it, agreeing to provide fittings and stylings as a silent auction prize.
Lunch was a kale salad and seared salmon, which she ate grudgingly beneath Toly’s steady, unnerving attention. They hadn’t spoken since his declaration that morning, and that was fine by her. She’d beckoned him over with a flick of her fingers, once, to play at assistant, but otherwise they didn’t interact.
At two-thirty, she bagged up her laptop – she never left it behind when she was out of the office – donned her coat, and prepared to go pick Cass up from school. She’d already paged Melanie to have the car brought round in the parking garage, and Toly fell automatically into step behind her as she headed for the door…
Which echoed with a knock just before she reached it.
She pulled up short, heart leaping. She’d gone all day without feeling so much as a twinge of anything like panic, but with one knock, the now-familiar fear prickled up the back of her neck.
She was really fucking sick of it at this point.
