Great, yet another black mark against me with Tabitha. Clearly, Felix had once again pulled her out of something important to have to come and sort me out. My eyes started stinging. I really wasn’t that great at the whole people being mean to me thing. It had never been my jam, even as a child. But back in Little Buckingham, I’d been allowed to live in my dream world. If anyone even looked at me wrong, Mike or Emily would be on them like a ton of bricks. If this was the real world, then the real world sucked. Big time.
“Tabby,” Frank said in a warning tone, and I was surprised that he was so familiar with her. She rolled her eyes.
“Whatever,” she snapped. “Just bugger off,yeah?”
“Right, okay,” I managed to croak out, on the verge of tears but managing to swallow them down just about. I let Frank lead me out of the office and down to Felix’s town car, which was absolutely boiling inside with the heating blasting.
“Jesus, Frank,” I said as I slipped into the passenger seat, loving the warm air around me. “Do you always leave your heating running?”
Frank turned to me and raised his eyebrows. “Mr Moretti was very specific about what temperature the car should be at in order for me to drive you home,” he explained. “Above twenty-five degrees, closer to thirty if possible.”
I blinked and looked out of the window as Frank negotiated his way out of the car park. Molly-coddled was the word that came to mind. Well, I didn’t want Felix to molly-coddle me. I wanted him to do X-rated, dirty things to me – not view me as a careless child that he had to look after. “Bloody bossy,” I muttered under my breath.
“He cares about you,” Frank returned, and I snorted. Felix cared about what my mother thought, not me. “You don’t believe me? I’ve never driven any other employee home ever before. I’ve certainly never been instructed about the car environment before. Even with his—” Frank broke off and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“With his what?”
Frank cleared his throat. “Nothing,” he said in a strangled voice.
“With his what, Frank? Tell me, or I’m getting out at the next set of traffic lights.”
“With hislady friends,” he muttered, looking acutely embarrassed. “Even when I’ve driven them home, he’s never given me a ten-minute lecture on how to do it.”
The mention of Felix’s lady friends made my chest feel tight. Of course, I’d seen him in magazines. I knew he’d datedall sorts of women, some of them famous in their own right, all of them glamorous in the extreme. I sank down into my chair, feeling very small and more than a little stupid.
As if Felix would be interested in me. The reactions I thought I’d seen were probably just acute embarrassment that the kid with a crush on him was now haunting his working life as an adult.
Chapter 13
“Why wouldn’t I buy my own clothes?”
Lucy
“What the—?” I jumped in my seat as everything went dark, then blinked when my head popped out of a jumper. Felix was towering over me with a grumpy expression as he pulled one arm then another through the sleeves of the massive jumper he’d just dumped over my head. I must have zoned out again as I hadn’t heard his approach. The jumper smelt of him – clean, masculine with a hint of his expensive aftershave, and the warmth from it enveloped me immediately. I was in my new uniform, as I thought of it: thin tights, silk shirt, small, tailored jacket and matching skirt. And I was bloody freezing. I’d contemplated sitting in my puffa again but, however fashion backwards I might be, I did have insight into how weird that would make me look. Plus Will had called me a “deranged hobo” when I wore it yesterday, so I’d thought better of it.
Felix’s jumper wouldn’t be much better, to be honest. As I stood, the damn thing reached nearly to my knees, and I had to bunch the sleeves up to a ridiculous degree to even find my hands.
“Why are yougoing around shoving jumpers on unsuspecting women?”
“You were shivering,” Felix said in an accusatory tone, as if my shivering in his office was a personal insult to him. “You do know it’s twenty-three degrees in here now? I asked them to yank up the thermostat. Pete from accounting is about to pass out with heatstroke. I’ve had to come up with another solution. It’s not raining today, so even if Will did send you out, which he better not have done, I can’t understand how you’ve got this cold.”
I bit my lip. “Oh dear. Don’t boil everyone alive, Felix. Honestly, I’d be fine if I was in my old stuff. It’s just these fancy outfits are so flimsy.”
Felix huffed and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why didn’t you say anything when I asked you to change your clothes? Your mum would kill me if I let you freeze to death in my office.”
I narrowed my eyes at Felix and put my hands on my hips (unfortunately, the effect was slightly ruined by the bloody sleeves falling down over my hands again and dangling almost to my knees). “Felix I’m twenty-seven years old, not a child that you’re looking after for my mother.”
Felix totally ignored me as he looked over his shoulder at Tabitha who was at her desk a few feet away.
“Tabitha, the stuff you got for Lucy. It’s not warm enough. She needs to get some?—”
“Woah, woah, woah!” I said, jumping forward to block Felix’s view of an increasingly angry Tabitha. I stepped closer to him and tried to lower my voice so that Tabitha wouldn’t hear me. “I can sort the clothing sitch, Felix. You’re making me look like a right numpty.”
His eyebrows went up, and he gave me a doubtful look. “Lucy, no offence, but I’m not sure that?—”
“I’ll sort it,” another voice clipped from the doorway.
I peered around Felix to see Victoria behind him with Lottie in her wake. Felix turned to them and put his hands on his hips.
