THE FLAT IN NOTTING HILL

Love and lust in the city that never sleeps!

Izzy, Tori and Poppy are living the London dream—sharing a big flat in Notting Hill, they have good jobs, wild nights out … and each other.

They couldn’t be more different, but one thing is for sure: when they start falling in love they’re going to be very glad they’ve got such good friends around to help them survive the rollercoaster …!

THE MORNING AFTER THE NIGHT BEFORE by Nikki Logan

Dear Reader

There’s really nothing like the friendships created with the people you first flat-shared with when you were freshly out of home. Especially if they were also your BFFs at school.

Poppy, Tori and Izzy come from different worlds, and have different hopes and aspirations, but they get each other completely. And wherever life takes them they know they’re there for each other. Even when their Notting Hill flat starts to fill up with testosterone these girls stick together.

I had a ball researching London and Notting Hill from the other side of the world in Australia, and I’m thrilled that Izzy gets to share her story with a handsome, secretive Aussie rogue.

I hope you enjoy a little workplace romance—Izzy and Harry definitely do.

May love always find you!

Nikki

NIKKI LOGAN lives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves.

Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

The Morning After the Night Before
Nikki Logan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Louisa, Joss and Charlotte.

Thank you for a fabulous few months living with you in Notting Hill.

First round of drinks at Ignite is on me.

Table of Contents

Cover

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Copyright

PROLOGUE

WOULD SATAN WEAR eleven-micron wool?

Izzy Dean could tell, even from this side of her boss’s expensive desk twelve storeys up her firm’s London high-rise, that Harry Mitchell’s flash charcoal suit would be as soft as a kitten to touch. Her fingers practically itched to stroke the expensive fabric.

Maybe she could cop a feel as she leaned in to smack that smug grin off his designer-stubbled face.

‘Careful, Dean, you look like you want to deck me.’

‘Do I?’ Izzy feigned. Not that he’d believe innocence from her for one moment. He was way too used to sparring with her.

Lord, as career-enders went, wouldn’t that be a spectacular way to go? Bunch up all those muscles she’d developed cleaning fast-food kitchens as a kid and—pow—set Mitchell right on his sanctimonious, perfectly sculpted arse right here in his own fishbowl office. She’d storm out amid a standing ovation from the entire downtrodden department.

‘Hello?’

A large face loomed in her blurred vision and she snapped her focus back to steady blue eyes—oasis, according to the ‘what colour are his eyes?’ chart in her favourite battered old chick magazine. With flecks of cougar blue.

Not that she’d looked him up, specifically …*cough*

He even had eyelashes like thick, fringing palm trees to go with the whole oasis thing. Except there was nothing at all quenching about Harry Mitchell’s piercing stare. Instead, it smouldered like a volcanic spring that radiated heat towards her at the most inopportune moments.

Like right now.

‘You’re angry.’

‘And that’s why you get the big bucks, Mitchell,’ she simmered, ‘that incomparable attention to detail.’

‘Funny that you should mention detail—’

‘There is nothing wrong with my report!’

‘Not technically, no …’

She tossed her short hair back and stared him down. ‘Are the numbers right?’

‘You’re the go-to person in the office when your colleagues can’t solve something.’ He glared. ‘Of course they’re right.’

‘Then the report is fine. I see no reason to waste my time doing it again.’

He speared frustrated fingers through his hair and released a waft of something delicious and masculine into the small glass office.

Not delicious smell, she told herself. Boss smell. Bad.

‘Is “fine” really the way you’d like to be thought of up the food chain?’ he asked.

Oh, come on. ‘I’ve worked here a lot longer than you. They know my work.’

‘This work?’ He held up her most recent report. ‘Or this one?’

Izzy glanced at the plain folder he’d picked up with his other hand. ‘What is that?’

Though her bottom lip apparently knew exactly what it was. It snuck in between her teeth and surrendered to their gentle gnaw. Mitchell’s focus faltered for half a heartbeat.

But he was a fast rebounder. ‘I pulled one of your reports from your first months at Broadmore Natále. It’s outstanding.’

Finally! Some acknowledgement … Only twelve months in the making.

But he wasn’t done. ‘It’s nothing like today’s effort. How long do you imagine you’ll be able to continue trading on your early reputation, Dean?’

She flattened her hands on his desk and leaned closer. ‘I don’t recall a Pulitzer Prize being in the essential criteria for this role.’

The folder hit his desk with a thud and his accent grew more pronounced, the way it always did when he was bad-tempered. He moved around the desk to her side and glared down at her. ‘Your report is flat and dull and I want to know why.’

Izzy fought hard not to let the sexy Aussie twang distract her. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to write you a report on the subject?’

On that piece of comeback brilliance, she turned and slammed out of the glass door of Mitchell’s office—everyone in the place had probably lip-read the entire discussion anyway—and crossed straight back to her desk, slumping into her comfy chair, where she did her best thinking.

Infinitely better than whenever she was caught up in Harry Mitchell’s orbit, anyway.

Autocrat.

No one in this office was spewing out works of sublime prose in the endless reports he tasked them to produce. Maybe, once, she’d been about the technique of it all but she was all about bottom lines and pound symbols now. The facts and only the facts, because that was what got the job done and the salary paid, right?

Her shoulders slumped.

Since when was adequate enough for Isadora Dean? She hated that her malaise was clearly starting to leak through in her work but she absolutely loathed that it was Harry Mitchell calling her to attention on it.

As if he needed anything further to pick at.

She glanced around the office at all her fellow employees doing a dreadful job of pretending they weren’t interested. Mitchell was right: they all brought their documents to her for a quick check over. Because she was good.

But good did not automatically equal happy.

No matter how many times you did the maths.

She flicked the little ornamental hedgehog on her desk and sent its head nodding madly. Then she snapped off the ID card pinned to her jacket and stared at it. At the bright, optimistic, enthusiastic, first-day-in-a-new-job face that stared back at her. And she remembered how she’d once felt about what she did. How grateful she was to have a good job at such a prestigious firm. How she’d totally ignored her parents’ concerns when they’d replied to her emailed news. How drunk she’d got with the girls to celebrate.

What had happened to all that enthusiasm?

She clipped her ID card back on her jacket. Next to the hedgehog, her phone dinged to let her know she had a message. She absently flicked it open and scanned to the top.

WHEN YOU’RE THROUGH SULKING COULD YOU RETURN SO THAT WE CAN FINISH OUR DISCUSSION, PLS?

The whole building pitched as if London were built on a fault line, and her free hand clutched the edge of her desk. But, with those few typically supercilious and irritating words, something indefinable shifted in Izzy’s brain. Everything just went … left … an inch and a half, and she saw her life more clearly than she had in years.

This wasn’t petulance. This was pure, unadulterated misery.

Mitchell was right. She had lost her mojo. And she didn’t even notice it going.

No one wanted a lacklustre employee on their hands. Maybe she should just suck it up and go in there and promise to do better. Work on ways of getting a bit of reward back in this job.

Her phone dinged again.

She lifted her focus past her colleagues and straight to Mitchell’s office. All six feet of him leaned, ankles crossed, on his desk-edge, his phone still in his hand, those blazing eyes fixed steadily on her. And, as it always did, his regard boiled her blood even as it heated less willing bits of her, too. And she realised that this was part of why she even bothered coming to work.

The daily zing she got from sparring with Prince Harry through the glass of his high-altitude corporate eyrie. Or on email. Or in team meetings.

Like a caffeine hit for her soul shooting straight through the numbness of the eight-till-six grind.

Reminding her that she was, in fact, still alive.

Part of his job involved telling her how to do hers. It wasn’t personal. So why was she making it that way? Yes, he was a pain and, no, he wasn’t the most supportive leader she’d ever had but it was hardly Mitchell’s fault that she’d cast him as her own personal defibrillator.

For the numb days.

Maybe she could work with him instead of against him and find a happy place again deep within the relentless wheel of corporate finance.

Maybe he’d make a better ally than enemy?

But, as she stared, something in the way she was regarding him—or the reluctant acceptance he could see in her, maybe—caused three little lines to appear between his brows and he pushed away from his desk slightly, one hand half reaching towards her.

Almost beseeching.

Her gaze dropped to her phone.

BEFORE THE ICE AGE RESUMES, DEAN!

Her fingers began trembling immediately and she eased the phone onto her desk before it slipped onto the plush carpet.

So much for allies …

Then, as she sat there, seething, the most brilliant idea bloomed to life in her mind.

So brilliant, she couldn’t for the life of her think why it hadn’t struck earlier. She’d wasted so much time and energy.

And all the time she could be doing this!

She pushed to her feet a little unsteadily, smoothing her pencil skirt demurely down her thighs, and lifted her gaze back up to Mitchell’s. Then she channelled every bit of Scarlett Johansson she could muster into the slow-motion glide over to his office and up the carpeted steps to the glass wall where he still stood, tense with irritation, and she stopped the toes of her strappy heels directly in front of his Italian leather. So they’d be touching if not for the glass divider.

She held his gaze the whole way.

Every person in the room watched her, not least Harry Mitchell, whose frustrated annoyance had been replaced by suspicious confusion. And something else. He’d watched her Scarlett-walk with incredibly satisfying interest.

Izzy wet her lips, knowing he was the only one who could see, and then leaned more closely into the glass and let her breath mist over on it.

Mitchell’s voice box lurched.

She lifted her index finger to her lips and sucked it gently into her mouth, then dragged it back out down her full, moist bottom lip.

His chest rose and fell. Blue eyes remained riveted on hers. Full of the usual heat. Full of new speculation and anticipation.

And she wrote seven letters backwards in the mist on the glass.

Just two words.

One of them bad. One of them very bad.

Mitchell’s smouldering gaze flickered down to the glass and then flared as he read her backwards statement.

‘I trust that is prosaic enough for you, sir,’ Izzy said without raising her voice.

His left brow arched high. No question that her latest written submission was unambiguous in its brevity. And no question that she was through at Broadmores regardless of whether she’d just quit.

Which she had.

She erased the misty evidence with her jacket sleeve and turned from all the sex simmering between them, ignoring the open-mouthed stares of her stunned colleagues, and crossed back to her desk on winged feet.

Three bits of scrunched-up paper tumbled out of her upended waste-paper basket and bounced across the floor only to be replaced with her phone, keys, hand lotion, still-nodding hedgehog and a photograph of herself, Tori and Poppy at school.

And then she just … walked out.

There was no ovation from her fellow downtrodden, and if anyone said goodbye she didn’t hear it through the furious rush of blood past her eardrums.

She stepped into the lift and turned to the front, giving her a direct view of Harry Mitchell, still standing, agape, in his glass fishbowl, staring at her with a complicated mix of creases on his face.

Disappointment—the kind she was used to from her parents.

Stunned disbelief—the kind reserved for anyone who stepped off the rooftop of their career as she just had.

Loss—the kind …

She frowned. The kind she felt right now, for something she couldn’t begin to understand, as the lift doors whispered shut on everything she’d thought she’d wanted from life.

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT AM I?’ Izzy murmured, wedging her shoulder and elbow in closer to the mirror propped up next to the tiny boxroom window to finish applying her mascara. ‘A flipping boy wizard?’

She wouldn’t mind a few magical skills if it meant she could just wave a wand to make herself beautiful in moments. Or her boobs bigger. Or her bank balance bigger. But the only part of the whole wizarding deal she had was the ‘tiny room under the stairs’ thing where, up until three days ago, she and her sibling flatmates had kept their miscellaneous junk.

Never mind that they were quite fancy stairs leading up to a delightful mezzanine floor she’d once adored. Never mind that it had, in fact, been an actual room before it was their boxroom. It was unquestionably tiny.

A poor girl’s room.

Bad enough that she’d had to ship most of her belongings to her parents’ council house back in Chorlton, but her impulsiveness had put everyone out because Poppy and Alex had to relocate their thirds of the overflow, too, and couldn’t move it into Izzy’s old room because that now needed to be let to meet the repayments.

Sigh. Her room … Her beautiful room.

Someone else’s soon.

She swapped the mascara to the other hand and tried for a better result from the left.

‘The price of freedom,’ she reminded herself aloud.

And of self-respect. Everything she’d done in her life was about treating herself with more respect than the world had ever treated her.

‘Izzy …’ Poppy rapped on the door then stuck her head in, skilfully avoiding taking an eye out on the various clothes hangers hooked over the door frame. ‘How much of your own party are you planning on missing?’

Was all of it a wise thing to admit?

She normally loved a party, loved being the centre of attention—she had a lifetime of non-existent parties to make up for—but Congrats, you’re unemployed was not her preferred theme. Even if Poppy had typically gone with the more positive, Congrats, you’re out of the job that was draining your soul. There certainly was something to be said for spin. Izzy pushed back from the ridiculously ornate dresser wedged awkwardly between the wall and the single bed.

Single …

This was what she’d become—a half made-up pauper sleeping on a child’s bed.

The price of freedom.

‘Did I hear Tori’s laugh?’ Izzy quizzed, brightly. And by ‘laugh’ she meant the carillon of flirtatious bells that was their best friend’s weapon of choice. ‘How long has she been here?’

Poppy arched a single, elegant brow. ‘I think the more pertinent question is how long have you been in here? It’s just gone eight.’

‘Oh.’

The boxroom was too crowded for a clock and Izzy never wore a watch. ‘Time to come out, then.’

Why on earth had she thought being unemployed was worth celebrating?

Because that decision had been made two days ago. Today she’d changed her mind. Two days from now she’d probably feel differently again. Par for the course with her wildly swinging thoughts lately.

Wildly swinging, dissatisfied thoughts.

So dissatisfied that she’d even considered ringing her mum to talk things through. Until she remembered that she didn’t do that anymore.

‘Come on, Iz,’ Poppy urged, reading her expression and holding the door wide. ‘You’ll enjoy it once you get out there.’

She certainly wouldn’t without a champers in hand. One look at the thronging mass in their flat reinforced that. All friends, but somehow still overwhelming. Would it be rude to go to a movie instead? To reward the kindness of all their friends who’d rallied for her with her absence?

She paused in the doorway. They wouldn’t be the first kind people she’d abandoned.

But tonight was not the night to be thinking about her parents or her dysfunctional childhood. Tonight was a night for stoic smiles and fellowship.

She followed Poppy into the kitchen, keeping her eyes down until she had the familiar comfort of a glass in her hand. ‘Please tell me there’s Lanson.’

‘Dunno. Brother dearest ordered the booze.’

There was—thank God—and Izzy polished off her first glass while rinsing the used party glasses already accumulating in the kitchen. She took care of a second while chopping up a platter of out-of-season veg.

Their extended circle of friends fell like Brighton seagulls onto her choppings.

‘God, I love this stuff,’ a tall brunette cooed, scooping a big dollop of dip onto some capsicum and then shoving the lot into her mouth and speaking past the crunching mess. ‘Yours?’

‘Speciality of the man of the house,’ Izzy said. And, no, dip wasn’t an odd thing for a military man to be good at. No more odd than Alex’s weirdly nocturnal habits, anyway.

‘Tash, Sally.’ She nodded, extending the platter for their grazing pleasure. ‘Thanks for coming. Hi, Richard.’

‘Love the pauper’s catering, Izzy,’ he gushed, drowning a sprig of broccolini in dip. ‘Very on-theme.’

Huh. If being poor was so entertaining why hadn’t she smiled more as a kid?

She shuffled forwards through the crammed-in guests, keeping herself and the veg creeping steadily towards the far side of the bright, eclectically decorated industrial conversion. Guests greeted and commiserated and dipped the whole way.

‘So what’s next?’ one of her downstairs neighbours shouted over the music and chatter.

‘Not sure,’ Izzy hedged. ‘Consolidation period?’

The pretty face folded. ‘Oh, I assumed you had something already lined up.’

Nope. Not a thing lined up. Though reasonable that her friends would expect that, because that was absolutely what normal Izzy would do. The Izzy they all knew.

Corporate, clever Izzy.

Top of the class and best in her department Izzy.

But new Izzy, it seemed, was channelling her mother, all of a sudden. Choosing principle over plenty. New Izzy was all about the moment and dramatic, flourishing statements. And nothing about reality.

She paused against one of the apartment’s large windows and caught her breath ready for another pass with the half-decimated tray. The sea of people momentarily parted and she caught a glimpse of Tori’s distinctive tri-coloured hair. She was perched happily in a man’s lap, her ‘take me’ heels kicked back, his strong hands the only thing stopping her from toppling backwards onto the floor in front of all their friends. Not her boyfriend’s slim, pale, slightly creepy hands. These were strong, tanned, non-Mark hands.

Uh-oh … trouble in paradise? Already?

The throng closed in once more, ending her worrying Tori sighting, and Izzy pressed on with her vegetables back towards the kitchen. Appeasing the masses.

Ooh … perhaps waitressing could be her new job. Apparently she had a knack for it and maybe the café down on street level would hire her, then she’d have no commute costs. Of course there was the whole issue of zero appreciable waiting skills.

The only after-school job she’d managed never to have in her long, exhausting childhood.

The final stick of courgette disappeared just before Izzy hit the kitchen doors. Of course it did. Because she’d cut just enough for the size of the crowd she’d unconsciously counted, and she’d shuffled forward in subliminal accordance with the diminishing supply.

Quantities. Numbers. They were her thing. Estimates and value assessment and principles of return. Whether it was Broadmore Natále’s investments or a pile of crunchy veg, the theory was much the same. Leverage all available resources and minimise waste.

Yawn.

No wonder she’d left. Her job gave her a fantastic income and that gave her a fantastic, inner-city lifestyle, but there wasn’t much else to recommend it. Not the fiddly commute, not the irritating, God’s gift boss, not the groundhog-day workload.

Job security just wasn’t enough anymore. Who had she been kidding convincing herself that achieving budget was the kind of professional achievement she’d been craving her whole life?

Sigh.

She dumped the empty tray into the sink and reached for the chopping knife.

When he’d set out tonight to get his way with a woman it wasn’t this woman he’d had in mind. And not this kind of way, either.

Still, Harry considered as he flattened his palm against the firm ass presently resident in his lap, things could definitely be worse. Maybe he could indulge Matahari, here, just ten more minutes. Spend a bit of time with a flesh-and-blood woman.

One who was happy to see him.

Plus, he didn’t know anyone here and he was grateful for the smokescreen while he carried out essential reconnaissance on Izzy Dean.

Isadora.

He’d almost pity her that if he weren’t so angry at being here.

A diva didn’t get any less diva-ish just because she was good at her job. Or good to look at. And she was, in a lanky, Keira Knightley kind of way. The glass walls of his office had given him plenty of opportunity to conduct an assessment when she was otherwise engaged. Or when she wasn’t. And he’d used them to the fullest.

He’d been grooming Dean to replace him when he moved on at the end of his stint, but after Wednesday’s spectacular meltdown …

Let her walk.

The firm could well do without high-maintenance attention seekers.

Yet here he was, cap in bloody hand, sent to persuade her to reconsider, because she’d walked on his watch. Which apparently made getting her back his responsibility.

The tense anger of Broadmore’s human resources director, Rifkin, yesterday afternoon echoed back at him. Implying, but never saying outright, that Dean’s hasty departure was somehow his fault. As if her inability to accept constructive criticism and cede to authority weren’t the bulk of the problem. He’d argued that, but Rifkin had challenged him with a list of staff they’d lost since he’d come aboard and asked how they could all develop such terminal flaws after years of working together well.

Implication: his fault.

Harry’s interpretation: dead wood, well rid of.

Just because someone had been around for a while didn’t mean they were still adding value.

Even if she was the most talented person on his team.

Then again Rifkin hadn’t seen the words on the glass of his office wall …

‘Eyes forward, handsome,’ the vixen in his lap purred as if he’d been checking out her rack, not her friend serving celery sticks to the ravenous hordes. He dragged his focus reluctantly back to her eyes, which were more than a little liquor-glazed.

He was definitely off his game.

‘Are you sure you’re not uncomfortable?’ he tried, again.

‘No, I’m great.’ She wiggled her butt down further, which only served to make him significantly less comfortable.

A tiny brunette flopped down into the empty half-space next to them. Not quite big enough for her, leaving her pressed closely to him and, for half a moment, he feared his troubles had just doubled.

But then her eyes filled with casual sparkle and she leaned around him and said, ‘All right, Tori?’

Tori. That was what she’d mumbled while he was busy staring at Izzy Dean. And the little brunette was not a flanking assault; she was the extremely welcome cavalry.

‘Fantastic, Poppy.’ Tori waved her friend’s concern away with dramatic sweeps. ‘Having a great time. Have you met Harry?’

The brunette thrust out her hand. ‘Hello, Poppy Spencer. This is my flat.’

Which was pretty much polite social code for ‘who are you and who invited you?’ Just because he’d been out of the scene for a few years didn’t mean he’d forgotten the rules. Shaking Poppy’s hand was the perfect excuse to ease Tori into a slightly more upright and appropriate position without causing offence.

‘Nice to meet you,’ Harry hedged, unwilling to give away too much. ‘So this is your party?’

‘My flatmate’s actually. She’s just out of a dreadful job.’

‘Do you always celebrate employment changes?’

‘This one we do. Izzy’s been miserable for months. Lousy job, lousy new boss. She’s well out of it.’

Lousy?

‘Maybe a job is what you make it,’ Harry defended.

‘She made that one long enough.’ Tori pouted prettily. ‘You can’t polish a turd.’

To have his entire career aspiration and management expertise summarily written off stung. Like a bitch.

‘Would you like a drink, Harry?’ Poppy offered, though he wasn’t sure how she thought he would manage a glass with both hands full of busty, wriggling woman.

‘I’d love one,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t mind meeting your flatmate. Congratulate her on her … new-found freedom.’

Drag her back to the firm kicking and screaming, if necessary.

‘Conveniently they’re in the same place. Izzy’s hiding in the kitchen.’

Hiding? That wasn’t the woman he knew. Isadora Dean was always the centre of attention in any space. Laughing and shaking back her dark blond mop and generally being delightful to her adoring audience.

And thoroughly distracting to him.

She should have been in her element at a party that was all about her.

He set Tori to her feet and she happily took him by his loosened tie and led him through the crowd to the kitchen.

‘Izzy,’ she gushed dramatically, entering with him and Poppy in tow. ‘A man without a drink is a tragedy not to be borne.’

The woman in question emerged from behind the fridge door, a warm smile on her face, and turned automatically to the sink full of ice and beer. But the smile died the moment she saw who stood in her kitchen.

‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

‘Izzy!’ Poppy’s shock could have been for the language as much as the tone.

‘Dean.’ He nodded, cautiously.

‘What is he doing here?’ she hissed again, as if he weren’t in the room. Kind of desperately.

‘He’s a guest …’ Tory squinted, then twisted to look at him. ‘Isn’t he?’

‘He’s my boss!’ Dean sputtered.

Tori dropped his tie and it fell, flaccid, against his suit. Both women turned on him and there was a surprising amount of unity in the three angry female faces now facing him.

‘Ex-boss,’ he reminded her. Though hopefully not for long. He thrust his hand out to finish the introductions Poppy had started. ‘Harry Mitchell.’

‘You’re really him?’ Poppy squeaked.

‘But you’re gorgeous,’ Tori helpfully contributed. ‘I imagined you hideous and old.’

Dean’s face flamed. ‘Tori! Bad enough you’ve been giving him a lap dance—’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I didn’t know, Iz. Obviously.’

Dean reached for her glass and clutched it, white-knuckled, like a weapon. ‘Why are you here?’

‘To see you.’

‘I hope you’re not planning on begging her to come back.’ Poppy laughed. ‘You could have saved yourself the tube fare.’ Begging. Cajoling. Bribing. Little Miss Potty-Mouth had suddenly become Britain’s most wanted. As galling as that was.

‘There was an email circulating, inviting all staff.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m staff.’

‘You’re not staff, you’re my supervisor,’ Dean pointed out. He took a shred of comfort from her use of the present tense.

‘Management weren’t excluded,’ he thrust. As if staff communiques usually came with small print.

‘So, now even my party invites are sub-standard?’ she parried. ‘Common decency excludes you.’

Yeah, this was more the Isadora Dean he recognised. Uptight and defensive. And all pink and breathless when she was riled. Which he took care to do often. ‘Well, I’m here now.’

‘You’re not welcome,’ she pointed out, as if there was any question at all. And not the rudest thing she’d ever said to him. His memory filled with her offensive departure and then overflowed with the memory of those lips sucking on her finger.

He cleared his throat.

‘Could be worse. At least I’m not moving in.’

Dean blinked at him. ‘What?’

‘There’s a guy out there with two full duffel bags. At least you know I’m only here for a few hours.’

Poppy’s face creased. ‘Out there?’

He cast her a sideways look. Gentler, because he quite liked her and she’d genuinely tried to save him from Matahari earlier. ‘Go see for yourself.’

Poppy threw Dean an apologetic look and then excused herself, the party noise surging until the doors swung shut again as she stomped through.

One down, one to go. He needed Dean alone for this conversation. If he was going to demean himself it wouldn’t be with an audience.

‘He was pretty buff, too,’ he added casually, looking right at Tori.

To her credit she stood firm. For about four seconds. Then …

‘Sorry, Iz,’ she whispered before hastening out after Poppy.

Dean’s eyes darkened even further when his returned to her. ‘This is my home, Mr Mitchell.’

‘Harry.’

The indignation on her face did what it usually did to him and stirred around in places he tried not to disturb. Righteousness leaked out of her like wayward passion.

‘You weren’t invited.’

‘I hardly broke in. The downstairs door was wedged open. I think the law would back me on this one.’

‘Employee harassment laws might not.’

‘You’re not my employee.’ Not currently. The only reason he was letting his hormones off the chain just a little.

She grabbed the champagne bottle and refilled her glass, spilling it over in her haste. Liquid gold ran down her long, expressive fingers where she clutched the glass stem. ‘You truly expect me to believe that you were so bereft of something to do on a Friday night in London that you came along to the farewell party of an employee who’d just told you to—’

‘Careful, Dean. Do you really want to say it twice?’

Her anger subsided like the fizz in her champagne. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Isadora, how can we improve if we get no feedback?’ he asked reasonably.

‘Izzy!’ she gasped. ‘No one calls me Isadora.’

‘It’s on your file.’

‘But that doesn’t mean I like to be called it.’

And, just like that, he had her permission to call her by her familiar name, and hostilities between them cranked down a notch. Though not so far that he didn’t make a mental note for later to poke around a bit in the sore spot he’d just uncovered.

‘Fair enough. Izzy. If you call me Harry.’

‘I won’t be calling you anything for much longer. You’re not staying.’

‘I’ve not had my drink yet.’

She glared at him. ‘If I get you a drink, you’ll leave?’

‘Probably. I just let my strongest chance of hooking up walk out the door, after all.’

His dig had exactly the right effect. Izzy flashed fire again. ‘She is nobody’s hook-up. Tori is in a relationship, actually.’

‘Could have fooled me,’ he shot back.

She passed him an open beer as though it were a grenade. Icy cold, as a beer should be.

‘Interesting place,’ he finally said, swallowing down his umbrage with the amber nectar. He had a job to do and he wasn’t going to achieve it while she was still angry. That was why she’d quit in the first place.

‘We like it.’

Okay, not giving an inch. ‘Old factory?’

She took a long, deep breath and seemed to finally realise how rude she was being. Even if he wasn’t quite a guest. ‘Fire station. We have the top floor and turret. There are several smaller flats downstairs and the café down on the street.’

Oh, so grudging. And he’d be damned if he’d let her do that to him. So he started poking.

‘You have a turret?’

‘It’s my bedroom.’ Then her pale skin forked between her eyes. ‘Used to be.’

He opened his mouth to reply but she cut him off. ‘That is not an invitation.’

‘I’m very happy with my place overlooking the Thames, actually.’

Her hair swung in silky pieces around her angular jaw. ‘Swanky river view; why does that not surprise me?’

‘Why is it swanky to overlook water?’

‘It’s just such a cliché.’

He let that one through to the keeper. Better than admitting he needed the sounds and smells of the water splashing the sides of the embankment to keep himself sane. Awkward silence fell again.

‘How are you enjoying the sleep-ins?’ he finally ventured.

‘All two of them? Lovely. I could get used to it.’

Just part of what baffled him about Izzy Dean: apparently miserable in her job yet a work ethic strong enough to have her at her desk before everyone else arrived. Brilliant operator until the day she just … stopped trying.

He leaned one hip on the kitchen island and kept his voice as casual as he could so she wouldn’t remember that he’d virtually promised to leave when she gave him his beer. ‘When do you start your new job?’

Her pupils flared enough to see from across the island. ‘Not … immediately. I’m looking forward to some time off.’

‘Nice for some.’

‘Please …’ The word bloomed mist on the edge of her glass as she took a sip. His whole body tightened at the reminder of her spectacular performance in the office. ‘You can’t tell me your management salary doesn’t buy you whatever leisure time you want.’

‘Not if I want to keep making that salary,’ he muttered. ‘I haven’t had a decent break in five years.’

That, at least, was true. He spent nearly as much time at home researching the business as he did in the office delivering it. Downtime was lost time in his book.

‘Well, that explains a lot.’

‘Such as?’

‘Perhaps if you had a holiday now and again you would be a little easier to work with.’

With champagne came courage, apparently.

‘You think I’m hard to work with?’

She didn’t miss his emphasis. ‘I do, actually. I’m more of a more flies from honey kind of person.’

Yeah. He’d bet. Pretty much anything to do with honey fitted Isadora Dean. Her skin tone, her voice. His eyes drifted straight to her lips.

Honey. Definitely.

‘You think a manager should be nice to his staff, all the time?’ he said, to distract himself from that line of thought.

‘I think a working relationship is a partnership, not a tyranny.’

‘A partnership in which I pay you to work.’

‘Just think how much more productive I’d be if I was interested in earning your respect.’

Ouch.

But he at least took some solace from her use of the present tense. Maybe this whole thing was just a ploy for more money from an ambitious employee. Effective: he was authorised to up her pay packet by ten grand.

‘I have thirty-three direct reports in this role. Not too sustainable to be buddy-buddy with each of them.’

Especially not when he kept finding reasons to haul a particularly sexy and recalcitrant one into his office.

‘Boohoo.’ She tossed back the last of her champagne. ‘Anyway, officially not my problem since I’m not your employee anymore and never will be.’

He shifted closer. And he liked it. He’d never allowed himself to get this close to her before. Too dangerous.

‘Never?’

She stood her ground. ‘Nope.’

‘You have no price that you’ll eventually come to after a day or two of faux deliberation?’

Insult blazed heavily in her pretty eyes. ‘Nope.’

She pressed her hand to her breast and all it did was remind him she had them. His eyes went straight to those long, champagne-sticky fingers pressed against her blouse and the slight curve beneath. But he fought it.

‘Everyone has a price.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ She gaped. ‘To see what it will cost you to get me back?’

He wasn’t about to let her start thinking that she was special. ‘We invest a lot in our staff. I don’t like to see anyone walk away with that investment. Or our corporate knowledge.’

‘I signed your confidentiality agreement. Broadmore Natále’s secrets are safe with me.’

Actually, he believed her. She might be a princess but she’d always been a discreet and professional princess. Wednesday excepted. And peering up at him as she was—all enormous-eyed and unflinching—she certainly looked very sincere.

And he was through begging.

Rifkin be damned.

‘I told them you’d tell me to go to hell.’

Realisation dawned in her eyes. And with it, a hot little smile. ‘Oh, I see … You’ve been sent.’

He just glared.

She shifted onto one hip and the move changed the angle of the classy outfit she was wearing, highlighting the line of her body. ‘That must really pain you.’

You have no idea.

‘I gave it a shot,’ he breathed. ‘I need to get your keycard back, then.’

All warmth from their sparring drained from her eyes like the dregs from her glass. ‘Security can’t just disable it?’

‘They’re ten-quid access cards.’

She flushed and actually looked a little hurt that he didn’t even consider her worth ten pounds.

Really? That was her hot button—devaluing her? Handy to know.

‘Whatever. Follow me.’

The sudden distance she put between them was almost like a cool chill after the warmth of their heated discussion. Exactly when had it stopped being business and started being flirting? He took one final tug on his beer then left the three-quarters-full bottle on the kitchen bench and trailed her back out through the doors, being sure to appreciate the round sway of her arse.

Now that he could.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WATCH YOURSELF,’ IZZY murmured exactly as her ex-boss ducked sideways and down to avoid clipping his egotistically big head on the steel frame of the mezzanine stairs going up to the bedroom above them. Though a scar would probably only make him more handsome.

She shoved her shoulder against her door.

‘You’re kidding me,’ he said over the party music. ‘This is you?’

Spinning revealed him to be much closer than she’d expected. And it only served to remind her how tiny her new room really was. And how chaotic.

‘Much as I’d like to lock you in the store room as a hilarious prank and listen to you beating at the door while no one else could hear you, I do, in fact, need to sleep in here tonight. So I’ll just find my ID card and you can be on your way.’

‘What happened to the turret?’

Why did he look so concerned? ‘Poppy’s renting it to someone else.’

‘Your best friend evicted you?’

‘God, no. She’d never ask that. I swapped rooms. Economies of scale.’

‘Economical is right,’ he murmured. ‘I have a linen closet bigger than this.’

She smiled tightly. ‘Are you always so gracious?’

Colour streaked up his jaw and it confused her as much as a rare trace of humility in him always did. ‘I just … It doesn’t fit.’

‘Nothing fits, as you can see.’

He dragged his gaze the very short distance from the left of the room to the right, taking in her pathetic bed and her mounded-up belongings. ‘Is this because you quit the firm?’

Something about the size of him in her tiny room, the male scent swilling into every corner, the sexy accent and maybe the multiple champagnes in quick succession stole all but the most essential air from her lungs. But not so much that she couldn’t protest his monumental ego.

‘The world does not revolve around you, Harry Mitchell, surprising as that may be.’

‘So you chose to live like this because …?’

‘Because I’m careful with my money.’ Oh, such lies. ‘And because it’s easier for Poppy to rent the best room than this one.’

It had nothing at all to do with the fact that despite earning stupid money for the past few years she’d actually managed to put very little of it away for the rainy day that had now come. That she’d gone a bit spend-mad with the first real money she’d ever had at her disposal and then become ridiculously accustomed to it. Reliant on it. Which made the myriad belongings cluttered around them now very quality belongings … but still clutter.

And not the gently shambolic clutter of her parents’ meagre belongings. The clutter of someone with a life rapidly outgrowing her circumstances.

Much like her ambition.

She’d always had a disconnection between what she wanted and what life had given her. The only girl in her childhood estate with big-city ambitions.

Many people might call it denial.

Behind her, Harry leaned on the wall while she began the hunt for her work ID card. It wasn’t in the pile she’d hastily thrown together at her desk. No, that was because she’d been wearing it that day.

Her jacket … Where was Wednesday’s jacket?

She turned back for the door and paused in front of his inconvenient bulk.

‘Excuse me.’

Harry straightened and she squeezed past, the back of her calves pressing against her bed and her front brushing against the expensive fabric of his open coat. His lips twisted as he stretched taller to give her space and politely focused over her head on a point across the small room. Izzy rummaged around in the clothes hanging on the back of the door they’d just come through until she found the cropped jersey jacket she’d worn on Wednesday, and unclipped the security tag still pinned to its lapel.

‘There you go.’ She pressed it into his front as she squeezed past again.

His fingers automatically came up to catch it before she dropped it, but they snagged hers instead, pressing them into his not inconsiderable chest.

Izzy froze. Hard heat soaked through his cotton shirt and charred her skin.

‘Seriously,’ he urged as her eyes flashed up to him, his fingers still holding hers captive, ‘reconsider.’

His voice had dropped down somewhere much more gravelly and, down there, his accent did its best work.

‘Seriously,’ she mimicked. ‘I don’t go back on my decisions.’

‘Ever?’

‘Ever.’

‘Even the bad ones?’

‘Especially the bad ones. There’s no going back from those, only forwards.’ And she knew that from experience.

She glanced up into his fathomless eyes and heard her next words tumble from her lips. Surprised even herself with her candour. ‘That job was killing me. It was time. Regardless of everything else.’

‘You’ve only been in it for a couple of years.’

‘It’s not boredom. It’s—’ me! ‘—the work.’

‘So, go for a different job within the firm.’

She suddenly became aware that her fingers still pressed into his pectoral region and she tugged them gently free and curled them at her side. ‘What is it to you? Why do you even care?’

‘Because you were a good employee,’ he murmured down at her, all smoky intensity. ‘My best.’

Pfff. ‘We fought every day.’

He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and the move effectively pushed him out from the wall and a smidge closer to her. She didn’t step back. On principle. This was her domain, tiny as it might be. The scented heat pumping off him pleasantly consumed her.

‘You challenged me every day,’ he corrected.

It felt odd testing him now, standing this close and peering up at him. Hardly a position of power. Yet she felt as if the cards were all hers. ‘You made some bad decisions.’

It was only when his lips twisted so fully that she remembered what a nice mouth he had. When it wasn’t issuing ridiculous demands.

‘Clearly you thought so. But they were my decisions to make.’

‘If you just want a bunch of yes-men in your department then why are you here, trying to get me back?’

‘Because diversity is apparently healthy in a workforce—’

‘Not if it’s only token.’

‘—and because, surprising as it might seem, I appreciate spirit in women.’

‘Like horses?’ She snorted.

He wisely ignored that. ‘Spirit and brains.’

‘Uh-huh. So all those times you and I ended up locking horns, that was … appreciation making you flush red?’

He did it again now and it added a dangerous kind of gleam to his eyes.

‘You tell me.’

She crossed her arms angrily and it only served to plump her minor cleavage up a tad in the aperture of her blouse when viewed from virtually above. Which, naturally, he took full advantage of. Izzy dropped her hands by her side, instead, to take away his toy. It left his eyes nowhere to go but back to hers, all simmering and smart and way, way too close.

‘Come on, Dean,’ he purred, ‘you can’t say our … discussions didn’t give the daily grind a productive boost.’

There were times she’d have liked to have boosted Harry Mitchell right out of his twelfth-floor window. ‘Strange as it may seem to you, my productivity goes up when I’m respected professionally.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘You think I don’t respect you?’

‘You don’t respect my opinion. Anyone’s really.’

‘Disagreeing with it and not respecting it aren’t the same thing. Anyway, occasionally I did agree with you.’

She knew. And weren’t those days the most confusing of all? Because he did so unconditionally. And wholeheartedly. She bit her lip and his gaze went straight to the childhood gesture.

‘You know what I’m starting to think?’ he murmured, still checking out the nibble of her teeth on her lips.

‘Enlighten me.’

‘Maybe all our fighting was just sexual tension in disguise.’

The room was way too small for her bark of a laugh. It fairly ricocheted off the walls. ‘You must be joking.’

‘Not at all.’ He grinned and it was the most predatory she’d ever seen from him. And smug.

‘Because you’re so irresistible?’

‘Because we have chemistry. I thought it was just me but Wednesday put a big question mark over that.’

No, they didn’t. Not chemistry and not Harry Mitchell. Hot or not. ‘Maybe you’re just projecting your own hormones.’

‘You don’t feel it?’

Challenge, not question. As if he already knew the answer. As if she did, too. But they bred them tough in Manchester. She tossed her short hair back. ‘Not particularly.’

Liar, liar …

‘February twenty-first this year,’ he challenged. ‘We shared the same lift and the end-of-day rush pushed us together at the back. We didn’t speak a word to each other and the only uncovered parts of us touching were our ungloved hands.’ He stepped a tiny bit closer. ‘But we both walked out of the building rubbing the tingles away.’

‘No, we—’

‘April third.’ He lifted his chin. ‘I knocked back one of your ideas and you spent a good portion of the day glaring at me through the walls—all flushed and infuriated and eyes spitting—and I spent a good portion of the day with half a hard-on, as a result.’

No way her gasp should have caught quite that tightly in her chest. She should have been outraged, not breathless.

Not excited.

Her glares across her crowded open-plan office to his lofty glassed-in one had simmered, and not always with anger. She’d felt it but had no idea he’d been able to see it.

God …

‘You’re making these up.’

‘Check your diary,’ he dismissed, plunging his hands even deeper in his pockets. ‘June eleventh, just before lunch. You stood in my office giving me hell about the new ratios and I just let you run because I was curious.’

She swallowed back a lump of dread. She remembered June eleventh. The room had been practically soaked with awareness and she’d come away fairly throbbing from the argument. And then she’d beaten herself up all day about the inappropriateness of it all. He was her boss. He was the bad guy.

Words formed themselves despite her best intentions.

‘Curious about what?’ she croaked.

His lips twisted. ‘Have you never heard the saying that a person fights like they f—?’

‘Stop!’ Air sucked hard into her lungs and then froze there, trapped, making it harder to squeeze out, ‘I thought that was dancing.’

‘I found June eleventh extremely illuminating on that front. But nowhere near as illuminating as Wednesday. Wednesday was a real eye-opener.’

Her only hope of salvation here was in channelling a bit of Tori’s hearty sexual confidence. She tossed her hair back and met his eyes directly.

‘You never let on.’

‘Of course not. It wasn’t appropriate.’

Hysteria bubbled dangerously close. ‘And this is?’

‘You’re not exactly moving away from me.’

She glanced at the junk all around them. ‘That’s more a statement about my hoarding than your hotness.’

Crap. Not what she’d meant to say. At all.

His left eyebrow lifted. ‘I’m hot?’

‘You’re insufferable.’ That smug grin sure was.

‘You think I’m attractive.’

‘I think you’re dangerously close to a lawsuit.’

His laugh echoed her earlier bark. ‘For what?’

‘Employee sexual harassment.’

He waggled her ID tag. ‘You quit, remember?’

‘Then, sexual harassment just generally.’

He shuffled closer. ‘You still haven’t asked me to leave. That’s all it will take.’

No. Why was that …?

‘Maybe I’m hoping chivalry isn’t dead.’ Maybe, deep down inside, she wanted to give him one more chance to be a decent man.

‘Grand chivalric gestures were the only outlet for all the unrequited sexual frustration in the twelfth century.’ He shot her his best Cheshire grin. ‘Like our fighting.’

‘Well, then, perhaps your grand gesture could involve sweeping heroically out the door and nicking off.’

His smile this time was half laugh. And it was annoyingly appealing. ‘Or we could find a more traditional outlet for all the tension.’

‘No.’ It would be laughable if the very thought hadn’t divested her of the oxygen she’d need to do it.

‘Are you already in a relationship?’ he challenged. ‘I’m not.’

Izzy grasped desperately at the edges of the conversation. Harry’s eyes said he was dead serious, but how could he be? This sort of thing never happened to her. Despite her best efforts.

She sucked in some much-needed air. ‘Except with your career.’

His eyes dimmed oh-so-briefly. ‘My career and I have an understanding.’

‘When it gets you laid?’

‘Is that what you think this is about?’ He looked genuinely wounded. ‘Sex?’

Doubt crept in at the corners. ‘Unless you’re proposing a rollicking game of chess?’

‘Something tells me you’d be quite good at chess,’ he murmured. ‘I’m talking about exploration. A bit of good old-fashioned groping. Tangling tongues and heavy breathing. When was the last time you had that?’

Ah … no. Not a question she was going to answer. ‘You’re assuming rather a lot, don’t you think?’

‘You still haven’t asked me to leave.’

The simple truth of that stripped Izzy bare. He was flirting and she was, too, in her own clunky way. They were standing in a darkened, tiny bedroom close enough to get right into that groping without even needing to reach. They no longer had any kind of professional relationship to protect or reputation to preserve. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t some kind of weirdo or monster. And there was a strange kind of hormonal haze going on thanks to the intriguing fingertip preview of the hard body under his McQueen business shirt.

He was offering her a few hours of healthy distraction and making it clear that it didn’t have to end in sex and, most importantly, he was exactly the right kind of guy for a one-night-only appearance.

And she wasn’t throwing him out.

‘A good time but not a long time? Is that it?’ she murmured.

‘A great time, Izzy,’ he clarified, ‘but no … not a long time.’

Yes, yes, yes, her three champagnes ganged up to whisper violently in her ear. But everyone knew champagne was a tart. ‘Because you have your career?’

‘Because I’m not looking for a relationship.’

‘But you’re open to a fun night.’

‘That’s up to you, Iz.’

Iz …

That one diminutive sealed her fate, seducing her with its simple masculinity and emboldening her with its intimacy. That one diminutive made it easier to imagine—to stick her fingers in her ears and go la la la for a few hours—that they knew each other even vaguely well enough for what he was proposing. For what she suddenly realised she was contemplating.

And was desperately, obscenely hungry for. And maybe always had been.

What was there to know? He was gorgeous, he was Australian, he smelled like a god. What if he kissed like one, too? And what if she never found out, first hand? And she wouldn’t because, without turning up in his building at eight every morning, this was the last she was ever going to see of infuriating Harry Mitchell.

Intriguingly sexy Harry Mitchell.

Maybe he was right about their office bickering, maybe it was just the only work-appropriate way for the chemistry to get out.

Because she could sure feel it now, surging like a tidal current between them, urging her closer, urging her to say yes. Urging her to give in to the speculative curiosity she suddenly realised she’d always had about him.

‘Can I touch your suit?’ she asked, eyes not quite meeting his. Not believing she’d asked.

‘My … suit?’

She ignored his rich chuckle and stretched her fingers towards the same jacket he’d been wearing on Wednesday. He stood perfectly still as they feathered down onto the curve of his shoulder and even stiller when she flattened them against his breast.

Her suspended breath released on a strangled half groan. ‘It’s beautiful.’

Those blue eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Did you just climax?’

‘I wanted to do this on Wednesday,’ she confessed, smiling.

‘Well, you’re in luck. You can do whatever you want to me tonight.’

Whatever you want …

Her fingers curled back into a fist of their own volition and she reluctantly lowered it.

‘This is awkward,’ she whispered, all truth. Because she’d never, ever done the one-night stand thing. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Tell me to leave. Or step forward. Or touch my suit again.’ His shrug was the merest shoulder flick. ‘Totally up to you.’

Ugh …

She’d wanted chivalry but now that she had it she really wanted him to sweep her up into his arms in the boorish manner he usually conducted himself in and take the choice away from her. The responsibility. But his apparent ambivalence wiggled in under her carefully erected self-confidence and poked uncomfortably at the place where all her old insecurities still lived. Shouldn’t he be gagging to kiss her? Wouldn’t that be more romantic? The fact he wasn’t triggered her old insecurities—thoughts of every boy at school who preferred the racier girls, the prettier girls.

The cleaner girls.

Isadora couldn’t be poorer … the old voices echoed.

Except she didn’t feel poor tonight. She felt obscenely rich with opportunity. And, despite his nonchalance, Harry’s heartbeat under her fingertips just now hadn’t thumped as if she wasn’t good enough.

She locked eyes with his and stepped forward into his body, then linked her hands behind his head.

‘When I imagined wrapping my hands around your neck,’ she whispered, ‘this wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’

Now, that muscular neck was a convenient place for her to hook herself—like any of the fine outfits dangling from hangers around her new room—so that her lips were more levelly placed with his.

The surprise in his eyes was swiftly succeeded by masculine anticipation. His perfectly manicured hands slipped straight up to her ribs and bonded there.

And his lips met her more than halfway.

Soft flesh met its mate. Tongue touched on teeth. Large hands slid over her body—one up below her breast, its friend around and over the curve of her bottom—as his mouth plundered hers.

Thoroughly.

Indecently.

And she realised that all those secret glances she’d cast at his sexy mouth were shamefully under-informed about his talents. Of course he was a good kisser—the unspeakable ego had to come from somewhere—but Izzy hadn’t expected the haste with which she would slip from technical enjoyment to outright gluttony. She gave as good as she got, throwing aside the last of her self-control in the hormonal haze he generated, and giving herself fully to the experience.

Why not? Wasn’t this a time for new beginnings? Maybe the new Izzy took more risks than just professionally.

Plus it had been a long time since she’d been kissed like this. Not just well but … fantastically. And with intent. What would it be like to channel all the competitive challenge between them into a sensual encounter?

‘Oomph …’

It was only when she fell backwards onto her tiny bed that she realised something other than their lips had been moving.

‘How do you sleep on this thing?’ Harry gritted between kisses, settling himself awkwardly over her.

She gasped for air. ‘Badly.’

Then it was all about the kissing again. And the promised groping. Pretty darned good groping, really. The kind of flesh massage that made an A-cup girl feel like a supermodel. She returned the favour, grinding herself into his hip until the heat billowing out from between put their clothes at risk of spontaneous combustion.

Harry sorted that. Within a minute they were both shirtless and the only danger was the threat of friction burns on flesh as they pressed hot and hard against each other.

And then, out of nowhere, he announced, ‘This isn’t working.’

Every minor rejection she’d ever had in her life congealed into an aching ball midway down her chest.

Of course he wasn’t actually interested, she jeered at herself. Why would he be?

She reached for the edges of a blouse she no longer wore to pull them over her lace-covered breasts. But before she could do more than half shrivel at the finality of his tone, Harry pulled her to her feet, exchanged positions and then drew her back down with him.

On him.

She had no choice but to straddle his hips.

Oh … right!

Power surged through her as she stretched astride all that hard bare flesh, his eyes and hands roaming all over her torso, and then fell forward to pick up the kissing where they’d left off.

‘You’re very good at this,’ she breathed as he sucked torturously on her ear lobe.

‘Thank you,’ he murmured against her neck.

Not quite ‘ditto’ but infinitely better than ‘practice makes perfect’ and so she’d take it.

The kissing went on for hours. Surely hours must have passed, possibly days. London might have sunk away into the Thames and been rebuilt on stilts while they were kissing.

‘Iz, maybe we should slow it down a bit?’

His voice sounded pained and it occurred to her that maybe he was in physical discomfort. Certainly he had reason to be. She ground her pelvis against him in sympathy and whatever he’d been about to say next turned into an unintelligible gargle.

She’d done it to torture him, but all it did was add a burning kind of need to the pressure ache already resident between her own legs. As she repositioned herself more comfortably on him, she thought about her half handful of post-school partners, who’d ranged from eager but inexperienced to accomplished but in it for themselves. Yet, here she was closer to completion with a virtual stranger faster and more surely than any of them had ever inspired.

And in the next heartbeat, she decided how very much she wanted to see if Harry Mitchell was everything he thought he was.

And the decision was liberating.

‘We’re not stopping,’ she announced between heavy breaths.

Harry’s eyes blazed hot and dark back up at her. ‘Okay.’

Her hands reached behind her but paused at the snaps to one of Agent Provocateur’s most artful and clever lingerie pieces. ‘And you’re spending the night.’

‘Roger.’

Izzy took a breath, knowing what would happen to her slight cleavage the moment she removed the magic suspension. Knowing disappointment would probably stain Harry’s hot gaze when he saw he’d been taken in by false advertising. But this was a one-night stand and he was getting laid and—PS—she didn’t owe him anything. Least of all pendulous breasts.

She flicked the bra free. ‘And you’re going to show me whether you’re worth all your own hype.’

The devil grinned back at her and, bless him, if he didn’t keep his eyes fixed to hers even though a pair of boobs was now on offer. Secret points for that.

‘Abso-frigging-lutely.’

Izzy pressed up on her knees slightly and then reached down between them, fussing at his belt.

‘Look at that,’ she purred. ‘Something we finally agree on.’

CHAPTER THREE

IZZY STARED AT the broad, tan back just an inch from her nose and totally got why people would do the legendary walk of shame after a one-night stand. It was all well and good in the heat and hormones of the moment with a virtual stranger, but in the cold hard light of morning it was just plain …

Awkward.

Some time in the night she’d slipped from her exhausted slump across Harry’s chest down between him and the wall. That made it impossible to get out of her small bed without clambering over him, naked and undignified, and tumbling off the other side. And the ornate foot of the tiny bed made sliding out feet-first just as problematic.

Entombed between plaster and hot male body.

Radiating male body. The longer she lay here, the more like a sauna her bed was feeling. Who needed central heating with Harry around?

She could wake him, but she wasn’t at all comfortable about him seeing her body—especially her least favourite bits—in the full light of morning. Not that the tiny boxroom window let in much light at all but it was certainly brighter than the steamy dark they’d shared last night.

So then … what? Lie here, clenching her bladder until Prince Harry, there, deigned to wake?

Screw that.

Izzy arched off the bed and reached one hand beneath herself, grasping the edge of her pretty duvet—king-sized on account of her old bed—then she begged her abdominal muscles to cooperate and pushed up into a sitting position, dragging the covers up with her.

Cool morning air rushed in behind her.

Clambering over Harry’s legs wasn’t quite as confronting as his hips and she twisted left—taking great care to keep the duvet between them—and half crawled, half rolled over his calves, her eyes firmly closed as she robbed him of covers.

She only opened them when the timber floor was beneath her feet and escape was in front of her.

‘Elegant,’ a sleep-thick voice rumbled from behind.

Busted.

‘You sleep like the dead,’ she muttered back over her shoulder, tugging on the pyjama bottoms that had tumbled to the floor from under her pillow with all the on-bed activity.

‘I wasn’t asleep. And you didn’t even try to wake me.’

‘I’ve been lying there, legs crossed, for eternity. You could have let on you were awake.’

It was clumsy but she managed to get her PJ top on, too, beneath the downy protection of her covers.

‘And miss the Cirque du Soleil dismount?’

She had landed with quite a flourish. She threw back her duvet and only turned back when she felt certain it would have fluttered down onto Harry sufficient for everyone’s modesty.

He tugged it back up around him for warmth. But the move looked too easy, as if he was settling in for a long stay. The rest of her squeezed up as tight as her bladder.

‘Do you want first run at the bathroom?’

God, how polite was she?

‘I went earlier,’ he drawled, his accent more pronounced in the morning.

That would explain when and how she’d slid off him into the cool embrace of the wall.

‘Bumped into duffel dude heading out before dawn. A friend of Poppy’s brother. I gather she wasn’t thrilled about him being here.’

So … this morning wasn’t surreal enough. Now her boss was filling her in on her own flat’s gossip. Her pulse started to panic.

‘Hold that thought,’ she said, holding up a hand.

The plethora of hanging things clattered against her door as she opened it and hurried into the bathroom.

Relief only took moments but Izzy hung out in there, standing on the toilet mat to stop her feet from chilling on the stone tile floor, gnawing on the inside of her cheek and desperately trying to pluck reality from this weird fantasy she’d found herself in.

What was the protocol here?

Should she ask him to leave? Should she ask him to stay? Should she invite him with her flatmates to breakfast later? All equally terrifying concepts. They’d had a fantastic night of what Tori would call ‘monkey sex’ and overall she was very pleased with her first crack at a one-night stand.

Possibly her last if this excruciating indecision was always waiting in the morning.

Why couldn’t he have just tiptoed out like the coward he probably was ?

Finger-combing her short hair and briefly checking her face for panda eyes, Izzy turned back for her bedroom and entered with the words already forming on her lips.

‘So—’

But she needn’t have bothered. Harry had re-donned his suit in the time she’d been hovering like a coward in the bathroom. He was just tucking his tie into his jacket pocket. As he did he pulled her ID card back out of it. And held it out.

‘So, see you Monday?’

She just blinked.

‘At the office?’

It hit her then. What he thought their single night had meant. How deluded he was. And how exceptionally arrogant.

She left his extended hand hanging. ‘I’m not coming back, Harry.’

‘Sure you are. We’ll get on fine now.’

Was he joking? ‘Now that we’ve broken the ice with the exchange of bodily fluids?’

Metaphorically. If not for the convenient condoms he’d produced.

He shrugged. ‘We know each other a bit more now. Have each other’s measure.’

Extremely intimate measure.

‘Are you suggesting that our bout of horizontal yoga has somehow increased your level of professional respect for me?’

The outstanding quality of last night’s activity really didn’t deserve her dismissive words. But Harry Mitchell sure did. He frowned. ‘Izzy—’

‘Miss Dean, to you, actually.’

Both his eyebrows shot up. ‘We have four orgasms between us. I think we’re a bit past Miss and Mister, don’t you?’

‘My friends call me Izzy.’

‘And what do your lovers call you?’

No. She wasn’t about to confess how little time she’d given to nurturing relationships with anyone. Let him think she did this all the time. Better than giving him any kind of hint that he might be special.

‘They don’t.’

‘I’m not surprised if this is how you handle the morning after.’

Yeah. She wasn’t dealing with this well at all. But the man was a boor when his mouth wasn’t occupied with kissing and related pleasures.

‘You know what? I think we should probably just call it a night.’

Or morning.

The dark brows sank back down again and then formed a deep frown. ‘I don’t understand what’s happened here. I thought you were cool with something casual.’

‘I’m not hoping for more!’ she shouted far louder than the early hour would recommend. ‘The fact that you think—in a million years—that sleeping with me was all that was required to fix the abysmal mess that is our workplace …’

Because that was exactly it. He believed she was the problem. He had no concept of his own flaws.

‘We talked,’ he said. ‘We got along.’

‘Hell freezes over infrequently. The chances of us getting along again are statistically smaller than before.’

Ah, numbers. The warm sanctuary of maths.

Harry slid the ID card back into his pocket. ‘You’re a strange one, Isadora Dean.’

She straightened until her spine almost cracked and curled her arms across her chest. ‘At least now I’m free to be as normal or as strange as I care. And you won’t need to trouble yourself with how I feel. Thanks for last night and all the best with your career.’

But he couldn’t let it go so easily. He moved towards the door and stopped, a bare inch from her, and breathed his parting words down onto her.

‘Just one correction, Izzy. I will always be troubled—intimately—by how you feel.’

‘He did not!’ Poppy’s forkful of scrambled eggs suspended just before it reached her gaping mouth.

‘I kid you not,’ Izzy said. ‘Those exact words.’

‘Oh, my God. What a fantastic line.’

‘Tori!’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ Tori placated. ‘I mean, bastard!’

‘Thank you.’

Around them, Ignite’s busiest time burbled on, people nicking in for takeaway coffee before their Saturday jobs, others settling in for a breakfast as leisurely as Izzy and her friends. It made a confidential conversation more challenging but the buzzing noise of customers, clanking crockery and the music pumping out of the café speakers afforded some level of privacy.

Izzy hastily brought them up to speed with the events of the previous night.

‘I have to say, Iz, given how thunderous your face was when I left the kitchen, this is not how I expected the rest of your evening to pan out.’

‘You and me both, Poppy.’

‘I can totally see it,’ Tori announced. ‘He was too cute. And that accent … sigh.’

‘If I didn’t know how clever you were, Toz, I’d be shaking my head now.’

‘What?’ She shrugged. ‘I just appreciate pretty things. So, was he purely ornamental or was he any good?’

Insane heat flooded up from under Izzy’s T-shirt.

‘We’ll take that as a yes.’ Poppy grinned.

‘I’m not comfortable talking about this.’

‘You started it,’ Poppy pointed out reasonably.

‘I mean I’m not comfortable talking about the … details.’

‘I’m sure Prince Harry isn’t similarly constrained this morning.’

No. He wouldn’t be. Something told her one-night stands came much more naturally to him.

‘Look at it this way, Iz,’ Tori started. ‘Do you have feelings for him?’

‘Not good ones,’ she muttered.

‘Did he treat you well when you were his employee?’

He’d treated her with the same under-informed judgement she’d battled all her youth. ‘Not overly.’

‘Did he ever donate a kidney to you?’

An eyebrow lift was better than an answer. Not that Tori was waiting for one.

‘And do you ever plan on seeing him again?’

‘Absolutely not.’

‘Then you owe him nothing, least of all your confidence.’

And that was why Izzy had been Tori’s friend since sixth form, when she’d first arrived at Trenton as a scholarship entry. Unassailable logic, no matter how disguised beneath the crazy hair.

‘I guess not.’

‘So spill!’

She glanced between her two best friends, opened her mouth for a mute heartbeat and then just let the words tumble. All about how good Harry had been. All about how feminine she’d felt when she was in his arms and how forbidden it all was. How she should have done the whole one-night-stand thing long before now, and how she would categorically not be doing it again. About how she was still secretly thrumming from his touch and more than a little sore in more than a few places.

About what a jerk he was.

The girls listened intently, exclaimed or squeezed her arm in the right places and generally fulfilled their obligations under the universal BFF contract.

‘So Mitchell sucks in the office but rocks it in bed,’ Tori summarised.

‘Pretty much.’

‘Well, context is everything,’ Poppy rationalised. ‘And clearly he comes into his own one-on-one.’

My wordy lordy, yes.

Until he spoke.

Ignite’s maître d’, Marco, swung by their table to check on their breakfasts and chatted for a few moments. But the impatience stamped clearly on their three faces soon sent him drifting professionally off to be charming to someone else.

‘So … I saw a few half-hearted circles in the positions vacant section of yesterday’s paper,’ Poppy nudged. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Plenty of jobs if I want to do the same thing I’ve been doing for years.’

‘And you don’t?’

Nope. Not even a little bit. ‘Time for something new.’

‘Out of finance?’

‘I still love numbers but … not in

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