Hired: The Boss's Bride. Элли Блейк

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СКАЧАТЬ unusual empty space in his after-hours appointments diary, it seemed too interesting a prospect to miss.

      ‘You convinced me.’ He stood and grabbed his suit jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Though if anybody gets too drunk, I’m not going to be the one dropping them home. And don’t invite Manda.’

      ‘Deal,’ Kristin said, practically skipping as she led him out of the office.

      Veronica sipped a Bloody Mary as she watched Mitch Hanover smile and nod at a young, cute, skinny blonde draped all over him at the bar.

      He’d been true to his word. She hadn’t seen or heard from him once in the days since the interview. Which was a good thing, really, especially when she’d been reminded on a daily basis since why getting too friendly with the boss was a bad, bad thing.

      While finding an apartment that would accept a six-month lease, getting to know the Hanover House staff and frequenting the local hardware store to find some bargains for the changes she wanted to make to the gallery, she’d also had to deal with phone call after phone call from a bewildered Geoffrey, who as it turned out had taken her leaving far worse than she’d imagined he would.

      As it turned out he’d been about to offer her a key to his apartment. A key! Which wasn’t as petrifying as a ring, but still ridiculous considering they’d had two and a half dates in as many months. Ridiculous, but unfortunately not all that shocking.

      The great curse of her life was that the time she had spent looking after her sick mum had left a lasting impression upon her. A kind of Florence Nightingale tinge that she couldn’t seem to wash away. No matter how hard she tried to stifle it so that she could get on with becoming a successful, sought-after, self-confident businesswoman with space of her own, with a job that both broadened her limited horizons and absorbed her, her ambitions had again and again been smothered by men who missed all that and only saw a soft, mushy, empathetic shoulder to lean on.

      Explaining all that to Geoffrey had been pointless. There’d been tears, there’d been tantrums, there’d been the sound of ceramics smashing on the floor, and none of that had been from her end.

      A high-pitched giggle tugged her from her reverie and back to the long mahogany bar, glossy and shimmering with the reflected light of a half-dozen funky cone-shaped lamps above. Blondie was still there doing her all to show Mitch Hanover she could be soft, mushy and empathetic for him and much, much more.

      Blondie giggled loudly again and it screeched down Veronica’s nerves like fingernails down a blackboard. Mitch didn’t seem to mind in the least.

      Men…

      Today this man wore another dark suit, a different pale pinstriped shirt and an ever-so-slightly more frivolous tie—it was embroided. The tailored clothing made him look far too intense for her comfort, yet at the same time she still found him remarkably yummy.

      Especially when comparing him with the men of her recent acquaintance. Gold Coast men wore relaxed linen, bright ties, and none of them could remember the original colour of their teeth. Whereas Mitch Hanover was straight, intense, dark and self-contained. It was like comparing used-car salesmen with a Master of the Universe and she couldn’t deny she instinctively preferred the latter sort a heck of a lot more.

      Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t look like the kind of guy who needed a shoulder to lean on. His shoulders seemed plenty broad enough to handle a whole world of troubles and then some.

      ‘He never comes,’ Kristin whispered into her ear.

      ‘Who never what?’ Veronica asked, dragging her eyes away quick smart for fear she’d been caught staring.

      ‘Our venerable boss,’ Kristin said. ‘He never comes to these social things.’

      ‘Never?’ Veronica asked, turning straight back to gaze his way now she had a good excuse to do so.

      ‘Not once,’ Kristin said while sipping at her mixed drink through a skinny pink straw. ‘This is a total first.’

      ‘Maybe he didn’t have plans tonight.’

      ‘Maybe. Though it looks to me as if he’s busy making them.’

      Veronica experienced a rapid tightness in her chest at the thought. It felt a whole lot like envy. Which was an unforgivable reaction considering Geoffrey had been promoted while she’d had to move cities, change jobs and listen to him whinge about how she had put him out.

      She turned away from the bar for good this time and pointed to a set of deep cream tub chairs in the corner of the plush carpeted room. ‘So how about you and Mitch?’

      ‘Me and Mitch what?’ Kristin asked, sitting, then bopping on her seat along with the Elvis classic purring from the tastefully hidden speakers scattered about the opulent room.

      ‘Have you ever been…on?’

      ‘On what?’

      Veronica rolled her eyes. ‘On. You know… together. We spend so many hours with those we work with it’s only natural to gravitate towards one another.’

      Natural, she thought. That sounds way better than a pathological case of repeatedly mistaking the man in charge as a man in charge of his own life.

      Kristin choked on her drink. ‘Me? And Mitch? Mitch Hanover? A-blonde-a-minute Mitch Hanover? My boss? The man who pays my very nice wages? And lets me take Thursday afternoons off for a manicure and pedicure as thanks for the long hours I put in?’

      Veronica noticed she hadn’t actually answered the question. ‘You don’t think he’s cute?’

      ‘Of course I think he’s cute,’ Kristin said, without even a pause. Then she glanced at Mitch, who was now alone at the bar, talking into his mobile phone with a frown on his face. She took another sip, then looked thoughtfully back at her friend. ‘To tell you the truth, if he’d asked early on I wouldn’t have said no. It’s just…you see he has this particular thing for blondes. Fun and frivolous blondes. Much younger blondes. The kind who wouldn’t know a da Vinci from a Rossetti. Which could be dead dreary and predictable coming from another man, but for our Mitch it’s understandable, really. Considering…’

      Kristin’s words trailed off into an expressive sigh.

      Veronica couldn’t for the life of her think why being a gorgeous hotshot gave a man an excuse not to date women of his own generation. In fact, she found herself taking it somewhat personally. ‘How young?’

      ‘Zygotes. Truly. Wrinkle-free ones for whom gravity was a word they heard at school, not a physical affliction.’

      Veronica kept her eyes dead ahead and controlled her desire to look over her shoulder at the bar, and her handsome eligible boss and the blonde. Like a dog with a bone she asked, ‘Is there one zygote in particular?’

      ‘That’s the thing. They last about as long as a bottle of milk, and then from nowhere a fresh milk bottle magically appears on his arm. Or in the fridge. Or however such an analogy should go.’

      Well, what did you know? Mitch Hanover, for all the orderliness of his perfectly laundered button-down shirts, was a player. Could it be true that he wasn’t on the lookout for someone to darn his socks and pour his nightcaps any СКАЧАТЬ