Play Thing. Nicola Marsh

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       CHAPTER ONE

      CHARLOTTE WAITED UNTIL the boss from hell hung up before slamming down the phone and sticking out her tongue. Childish, but it made her feel good.

      She glared at the phone, wishing it would disintegrate so she wouldn’t have to talk to him again. Yeah, like that would help. She also had an inbox full of emails from Mr Alexander Bronson, asshole extraordinaire.

      The guy was demanding, arrogant and clearly had been put on this earth to make her life a misery.

      As if to emphasise the point, an email pinged into her inbox with a gut-churning subject line: One last thing.

      Sighing, she opened the email. And stopped breathing.

      Forgot to mention, Charlie, I’ll be arriving at the Sydney office tomorrow to follow up on my ideas to reconfigure staff. I look forward to meeting you then.

      He didn’t sign off. He didn’t need to. Superior beings from other planets were above mere mortals.

      Alexander Bronson, here, in the flesh, tomorrow. Torturing her. Tormenting her. Teasing her.

      Charlie. No one ever called her that. She hated it. She’d told him so. Which ensured he never called her anything else. No Miss Baxter for him. Uh-uh. The CEO of countless accountancy firms around Australia, the wunderkind who took ailing companies and turned them around, had an informality about him that won friends and influenced lowly accountants like her.

      The kicker was, her boss might be demanding and expect perfection, yet she couldn’t help but admire his work ethos. She respected him for it, she identified with hard work. It was all she knew in her lacklustre life. Which made it all the more annoying that a small part of her looked forward to their daily phone calls and his infernal teasing.

      Could she be any more pathetic? The highlight of her day was talking to her cocky boss who seemed to make it his life’s work to tease some kind of response out of her.

      Her cell rang and she glanced at the screen, dithering about whether to take the call. She adored her Aunt Dee but she couldn’t cope with any outlandish requests today. She had to prepare for her imminent meeting with the charming Mr Bronson tomorrow.

      Mentally chastising her goody-two-shoes conscience, she picked up the cell and stabbed at the answer button.

      ‘Hey, Aunt Dee, I’m at work so can’t talk long—’

      ‘Dear girl, I know you’re at work.’ Her aunt sounded breathless, like she’d jogged up a flight of stairs. Unlikely, considering Dee equated exercise with the devil’s work. ‘But I need your help and it’s urgent.’

      Charlotte instantly felt guilty that she’d contemplated ignoring her aunt. Dee had raised her when her flaky parents couldn’t be bothered, preferring to travel the world in search of the next village in dire need of education. Dee rarely asked for favours so the fact she needed СКАЧАТЬ