Page 125 of Pure Recklessness

‘I should finish preparing for Paris.’

‘When are you back?’

‘End of the week.’

‘Have a good trip.’ I picked up my handbag. ‘And let me know if you hear anything from the potential celebrity narrators and D.D. Desire. I’ll send you the list of the other authors I have in mind first thing in the morning.’

‘Great. I’ll call down to Geoff and ask him to take you home.’

‘Thanks, but you don’t have to.’

‘Ellie,’ he warned. ‘It’s late. Geoff will take you home.’

‘Okay,’ I agreed, knowing he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Plus being chauffeur-driven home in a luxury car instead of taking smelly public transport wasn’t a hardship. ‘Thanks. Goodnight, Blake,’ I said, loving how good it sounded to say his name.

‘Goodnight, Ellie. Sleep well.’

As I headed towards the lift, I knew exactly who I’d be dreaming about tonight.

47

ELLIE

It’d been a busy week.

I knew that creating the app would be a big job, but now that I had to start putting everything into action, I realised just how humongous this was.

Organising the narrators and authors was the tip of the iceberg. This week I’d prepared a brief for the team who’d be working on it, which included designers, multiple developers, testers and engineers as well as an audio infrastructure team.

Luckily, Sated already had this expertise in house, but the brief needed to be thorough so that the department heads could allocate sufficient manpower to complete all the required tasks.

I was way out of my depth. I’d never done anything like this before. But I was determined to succeed, so I’d spent every second researching and planning every detail because today I had to send it to Blake for approval.

Blake.

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I thought about him.

We’d been emailing almost every day since he’d been in Paris.

All of our emails were very business-like. Although I probably thought about what happened between us at least once an hour (well, more like every few minutes), I was determined to be professional.

Despite him saying I could call him Blake, in my messages, I continued to address him as Mr Devlin. And I made sure that I didn’t include anything that would raise suspicion if anyone checked our emails at a later date.

I’d sent him my author wish lists and he’d given me their agents’ details. Blake had updated me on the celebrity narrators and I’d sent over a shortlist of some additional narrators to also consider. Although I’d now listened to lots of Sated’s audiobooks, my experience couldn’t compare to Blake’s.

To my surprise, he’d said the names I’d listed were exactly who he would’ve suggested, which made me beam with pride. I still had a long way to go, but seeing my progress and knowing how familiar I was becoming with Sated and the industry was a great feeling.

After getting the green light from Blake, I’d liaised with the audio team to check availability for the best narrators.

Although we didn’t even have any short stories written yet, narrators got booked up months in advance. So we needed to lock them down ASAP.

Despite our regular contact, as strange as it sounded, I missed Blake.

And as much as I tried to tell myself not to and to just be happy with the two wild nights we’d spent in his office, I still craved him.

It was a shame that nothing could ever happen again.

I turned my thoughts back to work.